• If you’re new to all this, as a good starting-point may be this page which goes over each of the search-directives in detail.

• Then, once you have your head wrapped around the general idea , you may find this straight-to-the-point quick-reference guide (with an available PDF version, to boot) more useful on a day-to-day basis.

I wouldn’t say that I’m a Google samurai, but I know my way around a handful of these search operators and I’ve found them to be remarkably helpful toward finding what I’m looking for.

All the same, plenty of Generation Y poseurs like to shop at Hot Topic, thinking they’re edgy and counterculture when in reality they’re lining the pockets of The Man. And that’s where MySpace fits in. Sure, many users think of it as their private treehouse for them and their closest friends, but when your treehouse is home to 72 million other people, your exclusive club isn’t so exclusive, now is it?

To be sure, I have nothing against capitalism. Yes, I’m the kind of guy that buys beverages at Starbucks, and happily — hey, if a given company happens to be profitable due to an effective business model, I’m ok with that. (Well, as long as said company isn’t evil; see also Clear Channel.) Having said that, if you like MySpace because it’s a a website offering “photos, blogs, user profiles, groups, and an internal e-mail system”, that’s fine. It just doesn’t mean you’re more 3l337 for the sake of doing so.

Getting back to KMFDM, I enjoy their music and I’m on their online mailing list (so far, so good). However, in the mailing sent out today, they proudly announce the 1-year anniversary of their MySpace page. Well, what’s the use in having a MySpace page if you have a perfectly good actual domain name? All right, the maneuver be excused if they’re merely trying to make their music available to more listeners. All the same, a part of me is worried a bit that KMFDM could be somewhat HotTopicifying itself — making ventures based on marketing perception rather than substance.

The real deal is what the WRT54G can do, with the right replacement firmware, that you’d only expect to find on a commercial-grade router costing several times as much.

You could use the WRT54G as a repeater or a bridge. Create a wireless distribution system (WDS) or a mesh network. Run a VPN server. Or a VoIP server. Or a managed hotspot with a RADIUS server. Manage bandwidth use per protocol. Control traffic shaping. Support IPv6. Boost antenna power. Remotely access router logs. Operate the router as a miniature low-power PC, running a variety of Linux applications.

[…]

In any case, I’ve been running DD-WRT for several months now and it’s been working great. My favorite feature may be the static DHCP set up — you can define a MAC address for which it will alway receive the same ip address. (That can be pretty handy to ensure that port forwarding always works as intended.)

While the firmware is well coded, there are some circumstances where the stock configuration runs into trouble. The first major one is Bittorrent; apparently, the high number of connections can overwhelm its poor little mind. However, if you set “Maximum Ports” to 4096 and both “TCP Timeout” and “UDP Timeout” to “120 seconds”, Bittorrent should be back on track. (All of these options are under Administration → Management.)

However, I found that AIM still became disconnected from time to time. Well, to say that it was “disconnected” probably isn’t fair; rather, it would occasionally have a connection blip where it’d disconnect and then immediately reconnect. It was mostly only an annoyance, but I had wanted to get to the bottom of it.

As a first step, I installed the beta of v23 SP1 as I had recalled reading on the forums that a few connection-related bugs had been squashed since the v23 release. I followed the upgrade steps on the wiki, but I’d still occasionally see AIM disconnects.

After some further reading on the forums, though I read a recommendation for setting both “TCP Timeout” and “UDP Timeout” to “600 seconds” to remedy AIM disconnects. I gave it a shot and, sure enough, it worked. I’ve not had any AIM disconnects since then — and Bittorrent has continued working fine as well :).

FeedLounge, in case you haven’t heard of it, is a web-based RSS reader created Alex King and Scott Sanders. If I were trite, I could say that it’s “Bloglines + Web 2.0” but even typing that sentence makes me wince. In plain English, here're a few of FeedLounge’s advantages:

• Tags — This one made the most difference to me. Down the left side of the screen are various categories, or, in this case, tags. And, like other tagging applications, items can be assigned any number of tags. So, for instance, I could put A List Apart in both “css” and “xhtml” if I wanted to.

• Background Updates — Because it's all Ajaxy, most of the interaction requires no explicit server hits. So, as feeds gain entries, those entries just appear and the count next to the feed name is updated. Of course, this is all done without interrupting the rest of the screen; any entries which you may be in the middle of reading remain just where they are.

• Granular Feed Reading — One of my big gripes with Bloglines was that if you clicked on the feed from the left side of the page, all of the entries from that feed would appear on the right side of the page (and they would all be marked as read). Naturally, that type of interface is available in FeedLounge as well, but there’re others from which to choose as well. The one I use is a 3-pane layout, similar to what you see in many e-mail clients. And, just like an e-mail client, the individual entries are only marked as read as you move from one to the next.

• Full Keyboard Control — FeedLounge’s documentation summarizes their keyboard support saying that “what you think should work, does” (or words to that effect). And, indeed, that’s pretty much been the case. For example, when viewing entries in the 3-pane view, the up and down arrow keys move from one entry to the next (just as you’d expect).

In all, I’m really pleased with FeedLounge. Were I less convinced, I might have signed up for a month at a time, but I’ve paid through for the year.

Four Jobs I’ve Had in My Life:

Newspaper Delivery

Library Page

PC Support Technician

Front-end Developer

Four Movies I Could Watch Over and Over, and Have:

The Matrix

Return of The Jedi

Equilibrium

Lost in Translation

Four Places I Have Lived:

West Chester, PA

Blacksburg, VA

Alexandria, VA

Dallas, TX

Four TV Shows I Love To Watch:

Mythbusters

Six Feet Under

Space Ghost

The Daily Show

Four Places I Have Been On Vacation:

San Francisco

Cape Town

Düsseldorf

Boston

Four Websites I Visit Daily:

Google News

Slashdot

PalmInfocenter

Ask MetaFilter

Four Favorite Foods:

Chocolate Cake

Avocados

Pancakes

Blue Cheese

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, yes, I coded that as a definition list :). And, sure, I could tag four people with the meme, but do we really need more propagation of this one across Teh Intarweb?

I wouldn’t go so far as to say the prerequisites are steep, but they’re not a shoo-in for everyone. Among other things, the author only tested the sequence on OSX Tiger (10.4) and it needs an unlocked Treo 650. Fortunately, I have both of those :). Basically, it’s a matter of installing scripts (on the Mac) for a generic GPRS modem), pairing the Treo with the Mac, and then configuring the network on the Mac. Of course, there’re a few sub-steps to each of those, but the article includes plenty of screenshots as well.

I have WiFi set up at my apartment, so I wouldn’t often need to use this, but this could be particularly useful for places like airports or coffee shops. Sure, there’s often WiFi there, but not the free kind ;). And, with my unlimited data plan, it doesn’t cost me anything extra to siphon some TCP/IP from my phone to my laptop.

All the same, if my speed tests from yesterday are any guide, I’m in for about 12 KB/sec with that kind of setup. On the bright side, that shouldn’t be straining the Bluetooth connection (which can apparently handle 721 kbit/sec or 90 KB/sec), but I’m not exactly going to be steaming XviD over that kind of connection either ;).