Kalkran.COM

As I've said in my previous posts, I'm now hosting the website on my NAS downstairs.

It comes with a lot of options, but I'd still like a few more options to have more control over what it does, without having to log into the SSH every time. That's why I'm working on an admin panel for some administration options. Of which the first function is the CPU / Memory monitor I've made.. I've included them on the right, because I wanted to try and make a WordPress widget as well.

I've still got a slight problem, though, I'd also like a network monitor. I've tried iptables, but it's not easy to get it to work and I'm not going to recompile my NAS kernel and void my warranty. Any other suggestions are very welcome!

Tutorial on those graphs coming up.

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Personal Blog

Hey guys,

I'm still alive, and I've been thinking about some nice topics to cover on my website again. I actually got the idea to start creating posts again a few weeks ago when I got billed for my annual subscription fee. Ever since I've been thinking, there's plenty of ideas I have, but none that I can actually finish. For example:

Anti-theft stickers

I've been reading about RFID tags lately, and I'm using them at work (grocery store, the RFID tags sound the theft alarm), nothing complicated but they have me wondering. I was looking on thinkgeek.com and I've found a funny RFID starter kit - for 99$ (plus like 20$ shipping to the Netherlands) - which looked like fun, but to spend 120$ on something that just looks fun isn't really my way. Nevertheless it hasn't slipped my mind completely yet, it just looks like so much fun to have a credit-card with a RFID-tag in it and I can use that to log in to my computer, open my door amongst many, many other possibilities.

I have also been browsing through my drafts here at my website admin panel and I've seen a couple of topic titles that I'd like to finish such as Building your own eShop, IRC Bot (continued), Filtering functions (think phpBB code), MySQL tutorials (UNION statements, complex statements), variable pointers (&$var) and many others. Most of them already have part of a tutorial or explanation to them, but I just haven't had the time to finish them. Which usually is the case when I get stuck on something and I can't be bothered too much to figure it out in a crystal-clear way, that makes other people understand it.

Even mental mathematics have come to mind, which ways can you use to increase the speed and accuracy of your guesses, easy ways to do large multiplications and divisions, even working from left-to-right instead of right-to-left while adding up will increase your speed and allow you to speak out the answer while you're still calculating, even though it might sound unlogical. From simplification (don't do 29*11, but 29*10+29 (319)) to handy tricks for squares, cubes and even quads.

The issue hasn't been time, I've got plenty of that, but will. The will to write something is back, but now the issue is whether I understand fully what I'm writing. I don't want to give any of you the wrong ideas, make you do things in the wrong way just because I said so without thinking.

I hope this'll keep most of you tuned for now, I promise there'll be an update before friday.

Thanks for reading.

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Personal Blog RFID

I know, I know. I can't make up my mind which wordpress layout I should stick with. Good thing is, there's billions to choose from. And this new one looks slick. And it's got some new features under the hood.

The code I've posted, the little snippets all over the site, they have "Code:" in front of them. But you can't select and/or copy it :). Also, it's nice to download prefab wordpress themes and edit them enough to make it work for my site.

For the time being, I think I'll stick with this theme; Also. I'll update more, since I'm on holiday in France and I'm bored shitless. I'm just thinking of original things to do. New methods to do things, but .. That's so hard. And it's even more hard to make up challenges for yourself, usually they're either too easy or too challenging and I quit halfway. Same goes for webdesign, I just suck at it. I keep trying, but nothing ever looks as I want it to. That's why I use the free wordpress themes you can find all over the intertubes every time.

So I ask from you, do you have any requests, things I should dedicate myself to for the greater good?

Thanks for reading through, if you have. And welcome back ;).
Kalkran

PS, Yeah, and no Fitts' Law, I know. But you'll just have to deal with that. It doesn't fit in with the rest of the layout anyway.

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Personal Blog

After a month and four days, it's finally time to update again! Don't expect daily updates, but about every other day.

This monday, my new computer is scheduled to arrive. It's a huge upgrade over this one:

Intel® Core2 Quad Core Q9300 Processor (2,50 GHz, 1.333 MHz FSB, 6 MB cache)
4.096 MB 800 MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [4 x 1.024]
256 MB ATI® Radeon HD 2600 XT gfx card
500 GB (7.200 rpm) SATA harddisk

those are the things that are upgraded most. The processor can be overclocked to 3.3 GHz. I'm gaining 3 Gigs of RAM, a new, good, graphics card and 340 Gigs of disk space.

Two weeks ago, I was on holidays to Tunis. Had a good time and when we got back, the weather over here was about the same as in Tunis. That was a bummer, and the weather only got worse since I got home. Hopefully there'll be sunny beach weather sometime this month...

Anyway,  no time to write :-o. Trying to make an AJAX example work..

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Personal Blog

A holy man was having a conversation with the Lord one day and said,’Lord, I would like to know what Heaven and Hell are like.’The Lord led the holy man to two doors.

He opened one of the doors and the holy man looked in. In the middle of  the room was a large round table. In the middle of the table was a large  pot of stew, which smelled delicious and made the holy man’s mouth  water.

The people sitting around the table were thin and sickly. They appeared to be famished. They were holding spoons with very long handles that were strapped to their arms and each found it possible to reach into the pot of stew and take a spoonful. But because the handle was longer than their arms, they could not get the spoons back into their mouths.

The holy man shuddered at the sight of their misery and suffering.

The Lord said, ‘You have seen Hell.’

They went to the next room and opened the door. It was exactly the same as the first one.

There was the large round table with the large pot of stew which made the holy man’s mouth water. The people were equipped with the same long-handled spoons, but here the people were well nourished and plump, laughing and talking. The holy man said, ‘I don’t understand.’

It is simple,’ said the Lord. ‘It requires but one skill. You see they have learned to feed each other, while the greedy think only of themselves.’

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Personal Blog