Delicious

Do you wish that your bookmarks could by synced between your browsers, so that you would have the exact same bookmarks on each browser you use?

Do you also wish, you could use your bookmarks on a browser that you are not permitted to install a toolbar or anything else?

Well check out Delicious which is a free social media bookmarking site by Yahoo, so it allows you to create an account or use your Yahoo ID.

You can install their toolbar in various browsers including Firefox and Chrome. You can go to delicious.com/YOURID and see all your bookmarks on the go.

Give it a try along with StumbleUpon and you most likely will end up with a huge bookmark list of great websites.

StumbleUpon

Do you get bored with the Internet? I mean do you know there are really cool websites out there, yet you just don't know their names to go to them?

Well check out StumbleUpon which through the use of a toolbar on your browser allows you to sign up for an account and tell it your interests.

After that, you simply click Stumble on the toolbar and it will send you to pages that other users with your same interests recommended and you will get a continious flow of interesting websites that you can bookmark on Delicious, more on that in a later post.

Linux Live USB Creator (LiLi)

Would you love to have bootable Linux USB stick that works as a LiveCD that automatically detects hardware and works on any system, but saves changes like packages you install and scripts you write?

Well check out Linux Live USB Creator (LiLi) at here which runs on Windows and can even can go find the fastest mirror and download the ISO of the Linux of your choice.

The entire software is designed to guide you through and is basically click and play.

WARNING: So that your thumb drive is not warn out quickly, many parts including the kernel are read-only, so DO NOT attempt to upgrade your entire system, especially kernel as you will completely break your thumb drive and have to remake it.

Easy way around this is to only upgrade certain packages for example in Debian/Ubuntu apt-get install xchat2, would only upgrade that single package, vs apt-get upgrade and/or apt-get dist-upgrade.

Debian/Ubuntu LiveCD

Do you wish that you could have a Debian/Ubuntu LiveCD that has exactly the software that you wanted besides what comes by default, for system administrator or maybe you need software for school like CISCO Packet Tracer.

The easiest way to do this, is to either install Debian/Ubuntu or one of it's derivatives on a physical machine like you normally install it or install it inside VirtualBox, VMWare, or other emulation software, if you don't have a free physical machine.

After you install the OS and set up all the software you want and configure it to your liking, simply follow these instructions at here at UbuntuGeek.

You can do either a LiveCD with your own personal settings (backup) or one for your friends (dist). You can also install it back to your hard drive later.

IP Addressing made simple, hopefully!

I am now going to focus on a topic that many computer users wish to know, but can't really seem to get the hang of. This of course is IP Addressing.

Basically all an IP Address is, is your computer's Social Security Number or street address number, that it uses to communicate on a network/Internet. (Of course the Internet is a network, just the biggest).

Unless your computer is not on a local network (Local Area Network(LAN)) or the Internet, your computer will not have an IP, because like I stated above, it's used in networking.

All machines must have different IPs. It's the same principle as SSNs or house numbers. Neither of these can be the same either because of identity issues (SSN) and mail would get screwed up (house number).

There are 5 different classes of IP addresses. They are A-E.

Class A - 0.x.x.x - 126.x.x.x
Class B - 128.0.x.x - 191.255.x.x
Class C - 192.0.0.x - 223.255.255.x
Class D - 224.0.0.0 - 239.255.255.255
Class E - 240.0.0.0 - 255.255.255.255

Note: 127.x.x.x is missing because it's used only for loopback, or going back to your own machine. Basically if you type in your web browser, http://127.0.0.1 you will go straight to your own machine, no matter what machine you go to.

Note: There are some IP classes that are for LAN use only and not for WAN (Wide Area Networks, which includes the most popular one, the Internet).

10.0.0.0-10.255.255.255 - Class B subnet by default

169.254.0.0 - 169.254.255.255 - Class B subnet by default - This is Zeroconf, and normally is an IP address you get in Windows if you don't set your IP either by telling it you have a DHCP server or by defining a static one.

172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255 - Class B by default

192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255 - Class C by default and the notorious in home networks

Now in networking, you normally only work with Class A-C, because D is for multicasting and E is reserved, so in other words both are not used in every day networks.

Before I define how the classes have default subnets I must explain what a network id and host id is.

Network Id - The portion of the IP address that identifies what (logical) network you are on.
Host Id - The other part of the IP address that identifies the host/device, such as a computer, printer, server, etc. Any of these devices are normally called nodes.

In most home networks, the IP address go as such, 192.168.1.x. In home networks, set by the default standard, though it can be changed, a Class C subnet is used. I will explain subnets later.

The octets of an IP address are from 0-255, though when it comes to the host section, 0 and 255 cannot be used although sometimes, in the network id, it's acceptable to use 0 and 255, like 207.255.x.x or 192.168.0.x, it's best to just stay away from 0 and 255 completely.

There are 3 different default subnets.

Class A - 255.0.0.0 - allows for 16,777,214 hosts
Class B - 255.255.0.0 - allows for 65,534 hosts
Class C - 255.255.255.0 - allows for 254 hosts

An easy way to remember what the 255s and 0s even do, is just to substitute them for network id and host id. Basically, 255 means network id and host id is 0 (zero).

So if you are using a 192.168 network, with class A, 192 is your network id, so any machine starting with 192 is all one logical network, not mattering what's in the last 3 octets, which are the host id. This enables you to 16,777,214 machines, which I think is a little much for a home network.

Then if you have a class B, only machines on that their ip start with 192.168 will be on the same network, so machines that may have 192.167 or 192.169, are on a completely different network. The last two octets are host ids. This also normally is way too much for a home network.

Then of course, a Class C, makes it that machines that start with 192.168.1 one network, but machines that may be 192.168.0 or 192.168.2 or whatever else are different networks. Only the last octet is the host id. This is usually ideal for home networks, unless for some strange reason, more then 254 nodes are needed.

My way to remember how many 255's go in each Class, is A is the first letter of the alphabet, so one 255 and the rest 0's. Of course B is the second letter, so 2 255's and the rest 0's. Then C is obvious, it's the third letter, and 3 255s and one 0s.

Now you are not forced by default subnets, meaning even though home networks, 192.168.1.x are almost always Class C, you could easily create a Class B, if for whatever reason 254 hosts machines are not enough. When it comes to IPs, more is better than not enough.

Now all of this information deals with how IP addresses work, but you don't have to literally set all of your machines and devices by hand, you can also use what's called DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol), which is a server that will run and by default most devices/nodes are set to DHCP, so even if you don't realize it, your devices will get IP address that the DHCP believes are free. Basically your node queries the DHCP server and sets it self to whatever the DHCP server told it to.

Note: Be extremely careful in a DHCP and Static IP mixed environment. You need to configure your DHCP server, so that it can't assign host ids in the range you want to be static. A conflict of address, will create a sitation where both nodes collide and cause all kinds of networking problems.

Notice: I do not claim this is a complete study of IP addresses and subnetting, but I'm just trying to give the normal every day user a glimpse in to the world of IP addressing so that it's not as confusing as it may appear. Also, there are different subnets than just those I describe, due to "borrowing" which were not discussed in this article, because for the normal user, there is no reason to throw away the defaults.

Photo Scanner: A great tool for elimating those huge paper stacks.

Do you have a ton of paper stacks that you wish were on the computer instead?

If you have a computer photo scanner, either a standalone or one in an all-in-one printer, just scan each page in to image format (I use jpg) or PDF, or some other electronic format that you like.

Now that you have electronic copies of the documents, you can use these locally, on a website, or even if you need to reprint out a page eventually.

So as you can see, this is so simple, no real instructions are needed.

Network Card Bridging

So you have Windows XP or Vista and you wish to bridge two or more physical or virtual network cards together? Well you can.

The reason for bridging, which just means sharing the network cards together in to one network, can be useful for various reasons. One major use is with virtual machines, if you already made the Microsoft Loopback Adapter or Tap-32 adapter and want the virtual one to access a real network, bridging can be great.

To bridge two or more network cards together in XP, all you need to go is go to your Control Panel, then Network Connections, select two network cards (hold down Ctrl as you click both cards to selet both at the same time), then right click either one of them, and choose Bridge Connections. That's all you need to do.

Now for Vista it's a little bit of more steps, you have to go to Control Panel, Network and Sharing Center, then Manage Network Connections, then do the same steps, but it works the same.

Now being that it's now a bridge, each card no longer has it's own individual IP address, but one now just for the bridge. So if it's two cards or twenty, it's one IP.

You will still be able to browse the LAN/WAN(Internet normally) with no problems on your machine, yet your virtual machines will now have access to the LAN/WAN. This is if you are actually bridging for virtualization purposes.