Technology

Setting up multiple WLANs in DD-WRT — Even for the extremely ungeeky, having WiFi available throughout your house is pretty much standard these days. And while the next logical step of securing that network via encryption (WEP is for n00bs — those in the know use WPA2-AES) may not be standard, it really should be. Assuming you do […]

Use DD-WRT to Create a Guest WiFi Network and Block ...

This entry was posted in Linux Technology and tagged block br1 bridge DD-WRT firewall guest network iptables Linux Skype WiFi on January 9, 2013 by Steve Jenkins (updated 3598 days ago)

APC RBC2 — The concept of “planned obsolescence” is nowhere more visible than in the battery backup (or UPS – Uninterrupted Power Supply) market. With the insane prices the manufacturers charge for batteries, it’s easy to compare it to the video game console industry: the companies must barely break even (or maybe even […]

Dead UPS Batteries? There’s a Cheaper Way!

This entry was posted in DIY Technology and tagged 1280 1290 APC battery backup RBC RBC109 RBC2 RBC24 RBC63 replacement battery S20BLK UB1280 UB1290 UPS on December 19, 2012 by Steve Jenkins (updated 4337 days ago)

Remote Cable Modem and Router Power Cycle — We’ve all been there. You try to load a web page, or check your email, or download a file, and nothing happens. “The Internet’s down!” is the cry at my house when we lose connection. It’s also the #1 reason why people call their Internet service providers’ tech support numbers, […]

How To Automatically Power Cycle Your Modem and Router on ...

This entry was posted in Home Theater & Automation Linux Technology and tagged automate Comcast Linux modem PHP power cycle reboot router script on December 4, 2012 by Steve Jenkins (updated 3598 days ago)

Arris TM822G Cable and Telephony Modem — To lease, or not to lease. That’s the question for anyone who gets their high speed Internet through Comcast Xfinity. Literally millions of Comcast customers (over 18MM, to be exact) are paying an extra $7 per month to rent a modem from the cable company, and if you’re unsure whether […]

Review: Arris TM822G DOCSIS 3.0 8×4 Ultra-High Speed Telephony Cable ...

This entry was posted in Product Reviews Technology and tagged Arris cable modem Comcast DOCSIS 3.0 EMTA telephony modem TM822G VOIP on December 3, 2012 by Steve Jenkins (updated 4167 days ago)

BlueFusion by Scoche — My wife’s been nagging me gently reminding me that she wants to be able to listen to her iPhone’s music library in her 2008 Cadillac Escalade ESV. Combine that with her patriotic respect of the law and love of automobile safety (she’s never got a ticket, and her first one […]

Review: Scosche BlueFusion Bluetooth Car Kit

This entry was posted in Cars DIY Home Theater & Automation Product Reviews Technology and tagged A2DP audio BFGMK BlueFusion Bluetooth Bluetooth audio Escalade GM hands-free Scoche Scosche on November 29, 2012 by Steve Jenkins (updated 4405 days ago)

Linux Uptime — I stumbled across this video today of a server move from a few years ago in 2009. I never even knew it existed until today! It was uploaded by one of my buddies, Chuck Goolsbee, who used to work at our colo center (but now works at Facebook). Because of […]

Moving a Server with 945 Days of Uptime

This entry was posted in Linux Personal Technology and tagged CheatCodes.com digital forest server steve cook steve jenkins uptime video on October 5, 2012 by Steve Jenkins

Postfix 2.9 Upgrade — I’ve previously written a how-to for compiling Postfix from source on a CentOS 5 box. I recently tried following the same steps on a CentOS 6 box, to upgrade from Postfix 2.6.6 which is installed by default. I’m glad to report that the same instructions will work just fine to upgrade […]

Building Postfix 2.10 on RHEL6 / CentOS 6 from Source

This entry was posted in Linux Reference Technology and tagged binaries build CentOS CentOS 6 compile Postfix Postfix 2.6.6 Postfix 2.9 Redhat RHEL RHEL 6 rpm source on August 20, 2012 by Steve Jenkins (updated 4332 days ago)

If you’re getting “temporarily deferred” Postfix log entries when trying to send mail to Yahoo! that look like this: host mta7.am0.yahoodns.net[66.196.118.34] refused to talk to me: 421 4.7.0 [GL01] Message from (xxx.xx.xx.xxx) temporarily deferred - 4.16.50. Please refer to http://postmaster.yahoo.com/errors/postmaster-21.html or status=deferred (host mta7.am0.yahoodns.net[66.196.118.35] said: 451 mta1336.mail.bf1.yahoo.com Resources temporarily unavailable. […]

How-To: Postfix configuration to reduce Yahoo temporary deferrals using Transport ...

This entry was posted in Linux Reference Technology and tagged 420 421 deferral GL01 Postfix refused to talk to me Resources unavailable temporarily status=deferred temporarily deferred Yahoo Yahoo Mail yahoo temporarily deferred on August 19, 2012 by Steve Jenkins (updated 3833 days ago)

I’ve been noticing some wonkiness with the admin area of our WordPress blog at CheatCodes.com EXTRA!. Through some experimentation, I noticed that all of the issues went away if I put CloudFlare into Development Mode. This, however, isn’t a long-term fix, so I decided to create a CloudFlare Page Rule for […]

Fixing WordPress Admin Issues with CloudFlare Page Rules

This entry was posted in Reference Technology and tagged cache CloudFlare Page Rule WordPress on May 7, 2012 by Steve Jenkins

This is one of those blog posts that’s almost 100% for my own benefit, since twice a year I have to fumble around with my phone system trying to remember how to adjust the clock to and from Daylight Savings Time. Of course, this would be easier if I knew […]

How to Adjust the Clock on a Panasonic Hybrid Phone ...

This entry was posted in Reference Technology and tagged adjust clock daylight savings time hybrid Panasonic phone phone system programming time on March 12, 2012 by Steve Jenkins (updated 3940 days ago)

As you may be aware from one of my previous posts, I decided to ditch both of my analog phone alarm companies in favor of digital monitoring using my Envisalink 2DS adapter which connects my DSC alarm panels to my in-home networks and, along with a host of other features, […]

How to Disable Phone Options on a DSC Alarm Panel ...

This entry was posted in Product Reviews Reference Technology and tagged 2DS alarm disable telephone DSC Envisalink Eyez-On panel on March 6, 2012 by Steve Jenkins (updated 4673 days ago)

Man – this post saved my bacon today: http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/rebooting-magic-way Was able to reboot a CentOS box with what appears to be a failing (failed?) file system. We had backups, but we’re evacuating the server now. 🙂

How to Reboot with a Bash Input/Output Error

This entry was posted in Linux Reference Technology and tagged bash error Input/Output Linux reboot on February 14, 2012 by Steve Jenkins (updated 4694 days ago)

Just in time for the holidays, CheatCodes.com has launched a mobile-optimized version of their video game cheats website. As with the mobile versions of many other popular sites (such as Facebook and Google), you can access the mobile version of the website by putting an “m” in front of the address: http://m.cheatcodes.com/ […]

CheatCodes.com Goes Mobile!

This entry was posted in Personal Technology and tagged cheatcodes CheatCodes.com cheats codes mobile on December 2, 2011 by Steve Jenkins (updated 4768 days ago)

As part of our preparations for winter, my wife gently reminded me last week that she’s been asking me to fix the gas fireplaces in the house for months. But as a geek’s geek, I can’t just fix a fireplace, I have to upgrade a fireplace! We have three gas […]

Review: Skytech SKY-5310 Fireplace Remote Control

This entry was posted in Home Theater & Automation Product Reviews Technology and tagged 5310 fireplace fireplace remote gas remote remote control Skytech thermostat on November 8, 2011 by Steve Jenkins (updated 4486 days ago)

I often say there are only two types of data: data that is backed up, and data that is waiting to be lost. Even if you’re the most contentious hax0r who always backs up your data, if your backups are stored in the same physical location as the source data, […]

How to Back Up a Linux Server to Amazon S3 ...

This entry was posted in Linux Reference Technology and tagged Amazon Amazon backup Amazon S3 AutoMYSQLBackup backup backup to s3 CentOS Duplicity Fedora Linux off-site RHEL S3 s3 backup server on November 5, 2011 by Steve Jenkins (updated 4504 days ago)

I’ve written a number of posts about the Ecobee Smart Thermostat since installing my first one in 2010. Since then, I’ve received a number of comments and emails asking if I knew of any discussion forums for Ecobee users. I didn’t, so I decided to launch my own using Google […]

Ecobee Discussion Forum for Owners, Installers, and Enthusiasts

This entry was posted in Home Theater & Automation Technology and tagged discussion discussion forum ecobee forum support tech support user forum user group on October 24, 2011 by Steve Jenkins (updated 3734 days ago)

One recommended way to help secure your Postfix mail server is enabling TLS (Transport Layer Security) for connections to and from Postfix. You can search for more detailed descriptions of exactly how TLS works, but basically it’s a crypotgraphic protocol that allows connections between systems to remain secure. It relies on a key […]

Configure Postfix TLS with a Free StartSSL Certificate

This entry was posted in Linux Reference Technology and tagged certificate csr free key Postfix self-signed SSL StartSSL TLS on September 23, 2011 by Steve Jenkins (updated 3448 days ago)

This is going to be one of those posts that is probably useless to everyone else, but valuable enough to me that I’ll read it over and over. These are the Git commands I use most when working with projects on my GitHub, and with Git repos to which I have read-only access. […]

Git Commands I Like

This entry was posted in Linux Reference Technology and tagged develop git git commands GitHub master merge push on September 20, 2011 by Steve Jenkins (updated 4839 days ago)

Amazon CloudFront — I found a great post by Clay Loveless who wrote a PHP script to batch invalidate files files on an Amazon Web Services CloudFront distribution. You rock, Clay. Amazon doesn’t even let us do that (yet?) via the AWS Mangament Console. Until now, when I wanted to manually invalidate a […]

Simple CloudFront Invalidation of a Single File via HTTP

This entry was posted in Linux Reference Technology and tagged Amazon browser CloudFront distribution HTTP invalidate invalidation PHP simple single file URL on September 6, 2011 by Steve Jenkins (updated 3598 days ago)

Another quick tidbit I learned when one of my CentOS boxes was slow to connect via SSH. Connection happened quickly when I would connect from a box on the same router, but connecting from my home machine caused a delay of 20-30 seconds each time. The fix was uncommenting this […]

SSH slow to connect? Turn UseDNS off

This entry was posted in Linux Reference Technology and tagged CentOS IPv6 Linux Redhat slow connect slow SSH sshd_config UseDNS on September 6, 2011 by Steve Jenkins

Google Favicon — If you try to access the URL of your favicon.ico directly (http://example.com/favicon.ico) and your browser opens a “Save As” window instead of just displaying it, then your Apache isn’t set up to properly deliver the .ico file type. Add this line to your httpd.conf file: AddType image/x-icon .ico Don’t forget […]

Favicon.ico not loading? Add an AddType

This entry was posted in Reference Technology and tagged .ico AddType Apache display download favicon favicon.ico Save As x-icon on September 6, 2011 by Steve Jenkins (updated 4855 days ago)

This is one of those blog posts that’s more written for my own benefit to refer to later than for the benefit of the Web-at-large, but if someone else happens to stumble upon it and it helps you out, then cool. 🙂 I had to migrate a Fedora box (the […]