Raam Dev

Hello, future.

InfoComm 08 in Las Vegas, NV

InfoComm 08 Booth

I went to Las Vegas, NV last week to attend InfoComm 08, the largest Pro AV show in history.

We arrived Tuesday morning and setup the booth without much difficulty. I have set up many show booths in my lifetime (my parents used to attend gift shows every year around the country) and setting up the booth in three hours was a breeze compared to the ten-plus hours it would take to setup my parents booth.

The following three days consisted of me doing a lot of standing between 9AM and 5PM:

Raam at InfoComm 08

The experience was not much different from the gift shows I had attended. Instead taking orders for product hanging on the walls, I needed to ask (and answer) questions about the company's product and talk to the people who came by the booth.

My boss let me take breaks to walk around the show and I saw lots of really nice screens and cool technology. One booth was selling remote control helicopters with HD cameras attached to them. He flew the smaller one around his booth and over peoples' heads while I was there. That's one way to attract a crowd of men who are fascinated by technology! Unfortunately I didn't take my camera with me, so I don't have many pictures of the show itself.

Taking down the booth was just as easy as putting it up, but we had to wait a good two hours for our boxes to arrive. Once we had the boxes we were out of there in an hour. My boss was flying back later that night and I planned to walk The Strip and then find a room for the night.

MobileMe – Why Me?

Adam Lisagor has a great post titled "Why Me?" talking about Apple's new MobileMe platform. What caught my attention the most was how he mentioned that Apple is moving the Mac operating system to a browser with MobileMe. Could Apple beat Google in the race to win over your browser?

Water found on Mars, NASA scientists confirm

It looks like all those Sci-Fi books that talk about life on Mars are becoming more realistic. If there is one thing that never ceases to inspire awe, it's life on Mars and the idea of standing on another planet exploring places where no other humans have stood (at least not in currently known history).

That feeling of awe is what I experienced when I saw this news headline this morning: Water found on Mars, Nasa scientist confirm.

Sure, there still isn't one hundred percent scientific proof that water has been found on Mars, but the scientists feel sure enough to confirm it. They saw a white substance, which was present a few inches underneath the surface, "melt" away over the course of a few days. That confirmed the substance wasn't salt or CO2 ice (CO2 ice would take hours, not days, to melt and salt wouldn't melt at all). Of course there's a chance that the substance isn't water either, but something unknown to scientists. I hope not.

Finding water on Mars would swing the door wide open to future human trips to the planet and would make setting up a base on the planet a whole lot easier. One of the biggest problems with human space travel is the need to transport our water supply, something that is both heavy and very costly. Having a base on Mars with access to water would not only allow astronauts to explore Mars, but also use it as a refill station for other exploration.

I just hope that near-future space exploration is not hindered by other events on this planet. We seriously need to fix our energy problems (by fixing our political problems) and stop turning our only home into a dumpster. Recycle!

The wild-west of Mexico a peek into the future?

Mexico is like the wild-west of the United States. There are gambling rules, but you're allowed to gamble with "credits". There are no privacy rules; if you use your phone to play an SMS game, your phone number and information is collected and sold to the highest bidder (but spamming is not allowed). The government encourages businesses to figure out ways of tracking people using technology (again, no privacy laws). Individuals, not businesses, own buses and they must individually get permits from the local towns where they want to run a route. Gas is subsidized by the government, so there is no gas competition. A lot of people live day to day buying food for one or two days because they don't have enough money to buy food for the week.

Vegan Discipline

It's difficult being vegan. Being vegan means you need to be willing to sacrifice. It means accepting the single vegan choice on a restaurant menu of fifty items and skipping a latte if they don't offer a soy option. It means making it known to the world that you don't eat meat when ordering an item you're unsure about. It means always packing alternatives (ProBar, almonds, trail mix). It means having respect and care for what you put into the one and only machine you are truly responsible for maintaining.

Headed to Las Vegas

I'm going to Las Vegas tomorrow to attend InfoComm with my boss. The flight leaves at 8:00AM and we setup the booth the same day. Wed-Fri we work the show.

Since I'm already out there, I decided to stay a few extra days and drive around a bit. My return flight is from San Francisco, CA at 11:40PM (I get back to Boston at 8:20AM Tuesday morning). I'm bringing my DSLR and I will try to post pictures every day with a map of where I've driven. You can also expect some Twitter updates if you're following me.

Father's Day Weekend

I spent the weekend fixing bathroom plumbing at Cumberland RD, helping my sister and brother-in-law put together a vinyl fence (note to self: vinyl fences suck), rode Thea's Honda CBR600RR around the neighborhood (first time on public roads with my motorcycle license), and played badminton at my parents place (my dad got a lot better!).

Installed DenyHosts to Help Prevent SSH Attacks

When the LogWatch report from yesterday (for web.akmai.net) arrived in my Inbox, it had over 20,000 failed SSH login attempts. Today I decided it was finally time to do something about all those attacks.

After looking around a bit, I found several different solutions. Some solutions utilized firewall rules and others monitored your /var/log/secure (or /var/log/auth.log) log files for multiple failed login attempts and then added those IPs/Hosts to the /etc/hosts.deny file.

I decided to go with the latter method and quickly found a nice tutorial for setting up DenyHosts (be sure to download the latest version (2.6 as of this writing) instead of the older version 2.0). Rather than reinvent the wheel, here is what the DenyHosts website says about itself:

What is DenyHosts?

DenyHosts is a Python script that analyzes the sshd server log messages to determine what hosts are attempting to hack into your system. It also determines what user accounts are being targeted. It keeps track of the frequency of attempts from each host.

Additionally, upon discovering a repeated attack host, the /etc/hosts.deny file is updated to prevent future break-in attempts from that host.

An email report can be sent to a system admin.

Since I was setting up DenyHosts on a RedHat-based machine (CentOS) and not a Debian-based machine, I needed to change this line:

update-rc.d denyhosts defaults

to this:

chkconfig denyhosts --add

Other than that, the installation steps were just as the tutorial described. I decided to enable the ADMIN_EMAIL option so that I would receive an email every time something was added to hosts.deny, but within minutes of starting DenyHosts I had a dozen attacks with a dozen emails on my BlackBerry. I had to disable ADMIN_EMAIL to stop the spamming!

To make sure DenyHosts was working properly I tried logging in with the wrong password three times. When I tried to connect again, here is what I received:

ssh root@akmai.net
ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host

DenyHosts also has the ability to report to a central server the hosts that are trying to break in and you can also download a list of hosts that have been reported by others. I choose to opt out of doing this for now. The DenyHosts statistics page is pretty cool. Notice how the majority of the hosts come from China? Hmm.

UPDATE:
I quickly discovered that DenyHosts was adding my IP address to the hosts.deny file. When I watched /var/log/secure I discovered the problem:

Jun 13 20:18:46 web sshd[5959]: reverse mapping checking getaddrinfo for 75-147-49-211-newengland.hfc.comcastbusiness.net failed - POSSIBLE BREAKIN ATTEMPT!
Jun 13 20:18:46 web sshd[5959]: Accepted publickey for fooUser from ::ffff:75.147.49.211 port 57926 ssh2
Jun 13 20:18:48 web sshd[5994]: Did not receive identification string from ::ffff:75.147.49.211

I'm not entirely sure how to fix this, but for now I added my IP address to /usr/share/denyhosts/data/allowed-hosts (I had to create this file) which prevents DenyHosts from blocking my IP no matter what (see this FAQ for more info). Also, I had to restart DenyHosts (/etc/init.d/denyhosts restart) before the change to allowed-hosts took effect.

iPhone: The future of mobile computing?

WWDC 2008 Keynote Address

I just finished watching the WWDC 2008 Keynote Address and I am fully convinced that the iPhone, along with the developer tools Apple is providing, will lead the way for a new generation of mobile devices over the next few decades. The applications they demonstrated, particularly in the medical and social networking fields, just blew me away.

If you have some time, watch it and tell me what you think.

Rubik's Cube Algorithms

Part One

ALGORITHM KEY

`F` = Front side
`U` = Up side
`L` = Left side
`R` = Right side
`D` = Down side
`i` = Turn counter-clockwise (otherwise, you always turn clockwise)

`Fi U Li Ui` = Turn the Front side counter-clockwise, then turn the Up side clockwise, then turn the Left side counter-clockwise, then turn the Up side counter-clockwise.

Watch the Part One video for a full explanation of how to use the algorithms below!

LIST OF ALGORITHMS

Fi U Li Ui

Ri Di R D

U R Ui Ri Ui Fi U F

Ui Li U L U F Ui Fi

F R U Ri Ui Fi

R U Ri U R U U Ri

U R Ui Li U Ri Ui L

Ri Di R D

Krishna commented that those last two are wrong; they should be:

U R Ui L U Ri Ui Li

Ri D R Di

Kev commented that Krishna's correction was incorrect. I've reverted to the original algorithm.

Part Two

Thanks for the Rubik's cube tips, Dan!

Passed Evaluations for Motorcycle License

I passed the evaluations for my class M license today with a 100% score on the knowledge test and only 4 points for going 1 foot outside the boundary box during the tight cornering phase of the road test (21+ points = fail). Many thanks to Jeff Thorpe and Ken Whitcher of Training Wheels for their guidance and instruction.

I felt the past two days were more an endurance test than a motorcycle license test; the 95 degree weather with clear skies and the class regulation that required boots, long pants, a long sleeve shirt, full-fingered gloves, and a helmet made for two very hot, sweaty, and exhausting days.

As is tradition at Training Wheels, Jeff took several photos during the biking sessions and a group photo at the end. They post these pictures online. Since they are a few weeks behind uploading pictures, my class (F23B) isn't there yet. I'll let you know when the pictures from my class have been uploaded.