Section "Screen"
Identifier "screen1"
Device "device1"
Monitor "monitor1"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1920x1200" "1440x900"
EndSubSection
EndSection
Afterwards I used System->Preferences->Screen Resolution to change the resolution and it works beautifully.
I recommend you make a backup of your xorg.conf file. Who knows when you might mess with it and everything goes wrong. It’s nice to have that backup in case things take a turn for the worse.

• -l – Specifies the username on the remote server
• -N – Tells SSH not to run any remote commands.
• -f – Has SSH run in the background.
• -D – This is the option that actually creates the SOCKS server.

Thank you Mike Lundy for preparing the command for everyone!
Now that we have SSH running in the background as a SOCKS proxy server, we need to configure our applications to use it. For our example we will look at configuring Firefox to send all of its traffic over SSH.
Under Tools->Options, navigate to “Advacned” and click on the “Network” tab. When you click on the “Settings” button, it will bring up options for “Connection Settings.” Here you can manually configure your proxy settings by clicking the “Manual proxy configuration” radio button and then under “SOCKS Host:” type “localhost” and the port specified in the ssh command you issued earlier under “Port.” Click “OK” and you now have all of your Firefox traffic being tunneled through SSH.

First let’s get some background on something called public key encryption (PKE). PKE consists of two parts: the public key and the private key. The public key can be used by anyone; The function of this key is to encrypt data that is meant for your eyes only. The private key on the other hand should be protected as it decrypts any messages encrypted by your public key. So let’s say Person A, Alice, wants to send a message to person B, Bob. Alice doesn’t want a third party, Eve, to read the message so she wants it encrypted. For simplicity’s sake, let’s pretend Alice and Bob already have established trust and have each others public key (otherwise we are still open to man-in-middle attacks). Alice will encrypt her message with Bob’s public key and then send it. When Bob receives it he will decrypt it with his private key; his response will be encrypted with Alice’s public key and Alice will decrypt it with her private key. That’s the jist of PKE; we could go more in depth and look at digital signatures, but that would be beyond the scope of this article.

So now that we have some background on PKE, let’s talk about SSH. SSH or Secure SHell is meant to replace insecure protocols such as Telnet, FTP, and RCP (SSH, SFTP, and SCP respectively). SSH uses PKE to encrypt its data that is sent over the network. A problem we can see is that SSH seems to be limited in it’s scope. What about POP3 email or regular HTTP traffic? How do we encrypt that? With SSH we can setup a proxy server that will allow us to to send our data through an encrypted “tunnel.” In the next part of this series, we will look at setting up these tunnels and configuring our applications to use them.

Let’s take a look at the script to see how it works.

The first part will define some parameters to establish a database connection.  This includes information such as the host, username, password, and the database.

This next part is important.

header(‘Content-type: text/xml’);
print “<?xml version=\”1.0\”?>\n”;

This sends the appropriate header information to the client telling it that this is in fact an XML file. Without this line, your feed will show up as plain text and will be read as such.

After the header information, we begin the actual RSS feed. This should look familiar as it was covered in the previous article. Simply fill this information out as it relates to your site or have it retrieve the information from another source, such as your database.

<?php
 // Connection to db
 $mysqldb = new mysqli(HOST, USER, PASS, DB);
 // Query to select posts

 $query = “SELECT * FROM posts”;
 $result = $mysqldb->query($query);
 if($result->num_rows) {
  while($row = $result->fetch_array(MYSQLI_ASSOC)) {
?>

   <item>
    <title><?php echo $row['post_title']; ?></title>
    <link><?php echo $row['post_link']; ?></link>
    <author><?php echo $row['post_author']; ?></author>
    <description><?php echo $row['post_content']; ?></description>
   </item>
<?php 
  }
 }
?>

This is the part of the code that fetches the posts from the database and turns them into the RSS feed. Simply retrieve all of your posts from the databse and use a while loop to print them all out as items of the feed. Once the loop is done, close the channel and RSS tags and you’re done!  You now have an RSS feed that will update itself when you update your MySQL database.

Now that we have a working example of RSS in action, let’s dig a bit deeper and see what’s inside an RSS feed. For this article, we’re going to use RSS 2.0 as our primary example.

An RSS feed is made up of two main parts: information about our feed and the items in our feed.

Information about our feed describe what the feed is all about.  It includes elements such as the blog title, link to our blog and description of our blog. All of this information is mandatory.

The other part (items) can be thought of as each individual blog post. Each item has elements that describe the post. These elements include the title of the post, the link to the full post, the full content or snippet of the post, the author, and date published. All of these elements except the author and publication date is mandatory.

Let’s take a look at a sample RSS file

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rss version="2.0">
        <channel>
        <title>nickpeters.net</title>
        <link>http://www.nickpeters.net</link>
        <description>Blog of Nick Peters</description>
        <item>
                <title>Blog Post 1</title>
                <link>http://www.nickpeters.net/blog-post-1</link>
                <author>Nick Peters</author>
                <description>This is a Blog Post!</description>
		<pubDate>Mon, 26 Mar 2007 09:39:21 GMT</pubDate>

        </item>
	<item>
                <title>Blog Post 2</title>
                <link>http://www.nickpeters.net/blog-post-2</link>
                <author>Nick Peters</author>
                <description>This is a another Blog Post!</description>
		<pubDate>Tue, 27 Mar 2007 011:52:38 GMT</pubDate>

        </item>
        </channel>
</rss>

Let’s first take note that this information is very minimal, but it should be enough to get key ideas across. A full list of elements can be found here.

From looking at the information above we can see that the name our blog is “nickpeters.net,” the URL of the blog is http://www.nickpeters.net and the description is “Blog of Nick Peters.”

This blog has two posts: “Blog Post 1” and “Blog Post 2.” Each post has a link, author, description and publication date.

RSS feeds are pretty self explanatory; it’s an XML file that describes the contents of a blog for easy manipulation in clients such as RSS readers.

Next we will see how easy it is to create an RSS feed using PHP and MySQL.

In this series I want to cover a couple topics:

• What is RSS?

• Digging deeper into RSS
• Creating an RSS feed with PHP

Before we begin, let me pose a question: Are there sites you check frequently? Perhaps you check a friend’s blog on a daily basis or refresh a news site to get all of the latest headlines. This in itself can be time consuming, especially if you check multiple sites on a daily basis. RSS’s most popular application solves this problem; it will notify you when a site has been updated. Instead of checking your friend’s blog, you can subscribe and be notified of updates.

In order to use RSS for this purpose, we will need two things:

• RSS Reader

• RSS Feed

I prefer to use a web-based RSS reader such as Google Reader. (See this post to find out why)

To add an RSS feed to Google Reader, click on “Add Subscription” and type in the URL of the site (nickpeters.net for example).

When we click “Add” we will now be subscribed and notified when nickpeters.net has been updated; It’s that simple.

Firefox2.0 has built in support for adding an RSS feed to the reader of your choice. See that RSS Icon in the corner of the address bar? What happens if we click on it? We’ll be redirected to another page that allows you to subscribe to the site using an RSS Reader of our choice.

Now that you have two ways to subscribe to a site, try this out for blogs or news sites you visit on a regular basis.

Next, we will take a look inside a basic RSS feed.

• Bookmarks: When I’m at my various workstations I usually bookmark websites that are of interest to me. This concept is not new, but what happens when I need to access a bookmark from another computer? I could always sync the bookmarks manually or possibly write a script to do it. Instead, the usage of an online bookmarking site such as del.icio.us or ma.gnolia solves this issue. These services allow for access to your bookmarks from anywhere you have an internet connection. I personally use del.icio.us (although I will be looking into ma.gnolia soon), so I will use it as my example. With del.icio.us you either install a plug-in for firefox or put two buttons on your Bookmarks Toolbar; one for viewing your bookmarks, and the other for bookmarking the site you’re on. It’s a very simple process that has led to a large list of bookmarks that I still need to check out.
• RSS Reader: RSS is one of my favorite web2.0 technologies that I use on an daily basis. First I used Vienna to manage my feeds, but I found myself having to export my list so I can sync it on my other computers. This obviously had it shortcomings. Then at SHDH 13 I was introduced to the wonder that is Google Reader. Google Reader is an online RSS feed reader. Besides being cross-platform and accessible everywhere I go, the greatest feature isn’t even in the program itself. Like a lot of people, I use firefox. One of my favorite new features in Firefox 2.0 is how you can click on the RSS feed symbol when visiting a web site and add the feed to your online reader of choice. This makes it just as simple as bookmarking a website with the del.icio.us buttons.
• Office Applications: We have all used a word processor or a spreadsheet program; Microsoft Word and Excel being the more popular of the two. Google has created (or bought-out) their own version of these programs for online use: Google Docs & Spreadsheets. Sure there are desktop freeware alternatives, but by using online applications you don’t have to worry about any time consuming installations or running updates. Another feature worth noting is how it saves the documents you are working on in a central location. Just today I was talking to a co-worker about how he was able to work on a school assignment on his home computer (running Ubuntu Linux) and continue with his assignment during his lunch break with his work computer (running Mac OS X).
• Mail/Calendar: You should start to see a trend by now, so it should be obvious what my recommended online email application of choice would be; Gmail/GCalendar of course! Back when I was using windows as my primary workstation, I used Outlook for my mail and calendar needs. I often found myself needing to access mail or contact information from a remote location to look up information. Instead I had to wait till I got home to look through my archived mail or contact list. When I made the switch to mac, Entourage (The Outlook clone) seemed like the natural choice since I was never a big fan of mail.app. The process of exporting my data from one OS to another AND from one data format to another was much more difficult than it should have been. This is when I made my official move from a desktop email client to an online email client. I currently use gmail as my primary email client and haven’t looked back. Google Notifier will let me know immediately when I get a new email or if there is an upcoming calendar event. This makes the entire gmail suite feel like a desktop application.
• To-do list: We all use stickies or scattered text documents for our to-do lists. Using a site like voo2do lets us store all of those stickies or text documents in 1 central location. It’s great for jotting down random ideas wherever you are. I also heard about using Google Calendar as a to-do list. This may seem like more of a logical choice by allowing me to consolidate my services to 1 provider and add native features.

I hope this has demonstrated the benefits of using web 2.0 applications in the place of standard desktop applications.   There are many alternative programs than the above listed, so if you don’t like my recommendations, go out and find something that suits your needs. There are some downfalls of using these applications, such as when you don’t have an internet connection, but I feel the benefits far exceed the downfalls.  Remember that the above posted solutions are free, usable on any platform and you don’t have to back up your data (especially handy when you format and need to reinstall applications).

Other videos to try out include the following:
The sinking of the titanic
Casino Ending (I think I crossed a line with this one)
Man slapping his wife at a dance (co-workers choice)
Anyways you get the point. You may have to start the music a few seconds into the video to get the full effect.

Enjoy!

So great, RSS sounds neat, but how is it used? RSS can be used with 3rd party applications, but instead I’m going to talk about Google Personalized Pages. I’ve noticed one of the most commonly used homepages for people is Google. How about we get some more use out of that Google homepage?

Do you have sites you visit on a daily or regular basis? Perhaps you have a news site that you check every morning at work? Chances are those sites have RSS feeds. For me, I check out sites such as Digg and Slashdot. I check these sites frequently because they are updated on a regular basis. Instead of going to the site, I can add the RSS feed to my Google personalized page. This feed will give me the title and URL of the of the news articles that have been recently added to the website.

So how do we start our Google personalized page? We first go to the Google homepage and find the link at the top right that says “Personalized Home.” Already we see a lot of new content including a calendar, weather, date & time, etc. To add our RSS feed we go to the “Add Content »” link at the top left of the page. Once there we can do one of two things: search for the RSS feed or add it manually. The easy way is to obviously search for it. For our example, we will add the Digg RSS feed. Simply type “digg” in the search field at the top, hit the search button, and click on “Add it Now” button next to the search result. To see the RSS feed, click on the “« Back to homepage” link. There you have it; we have the RSS feed that is dynamically updated when new content is added to the website.

So what if you don’t find the RSS feed in the search or you have the URL of an RSS feed you would like to add? Go back to the “Add Content” link. Next, go to the search form and click on the “Add by URL” link. In the new form that appears we will enter the URL of the RSS feed for the site. Continuing our example, we will add the Digg RSS feed: http://digg.com/rss/index.xml. After we add it, go back to your homepage and you will see the RSS feed has been added to the homepage.

Now that you know how to find and add RSS feeds to your Google Personalized Page, go ahead and rearrange the various feeds to your liking. Google makes it easy to do this by using drag and drop methods.

There is one last note I would like to add. Google personalized pages can be used anywhere you sign on. For example, I use this as my homepage at both work and home. If I make a change at work, it shows up when I come home and vice-versa. This happens because it uses your Gmail account to save your data. If you do not have a Gmail account, you may create a Google personalized page account to use for this purpose.

The ingredients are as following:

• 1 Part Crown Royal
• 1 Part Sour Apple Pucker Schnapps
• 1 Part Cranberry Juice

The first thing you may notice is that I refer to the ingredients in terms of parts. The reason I do that is because this drink can be made as either a martini or as a shot. Typically a shot glass would hold roughly 1-2oz. and a cocktail glass can hold about 8-12oz. of liquid. Thinking in ounces will be important later on. For a shot, we will use about 1/3oz. of each ingredient and for a martini we would use roughly 2oz. of each ingredient (adjust accordingly if making multiple shots/martinis at a time).

To prepare we fill a martini shaker 1/3-1/2 of the way full of ice. I prefer using crushed ice because there is more surface area to cool down the drink. After that we add in each ingredient. When adding ingredients you should go from the least expensive ingredient to the most expensive, that way you don’t waste the more expensive alcohols if you mess up and have to start over. When pouring in the liquids I strongly recommend the use of pourers. Notice how good bartenders never pull out a shot glass when pouring shots. Pourers allow you to pour the alcohol out in a continuous stream. For this reason, you are able to count to measure the alcohol poured out. Remember how I mentioned thinking in ounces will be important later on? Here is why: when using pourers, every 3 seconds of pouring your alcohol is 1oz.; 1/3oz. is about 1 second and 2oz. is about 6 seconds. Counting when using pourers is faster than having to pull out a shot glass and much more impressive.

When all of the ingredients are in the martini shaker, put the lid on and shake with your wrist for a few seconds. The point is not only to mix the ingredients together, but to get the drink cold as well. Warning: if you shake it for to long, the ice can melt and dilute your drink with water. Finally, pour the drink into a shot glass and shoot!