Master ?

Posted on the March 4th, 2010 under Daily Life by ari.bjornsson

How hard is to find a suitable masters project ? Let me tell you what I think: Holy cow! its hard!

I’ve been in contact with several Icelandic companies and come up with up to 10 ideas for a masters project within my field but somehow I can’t convince myself to pick one or the other. I think that I’m interested in too many things which is preventing me to focus on one specific project and it sucks big time. I also find it hard to be studying in Denmark with no company/contact network which would certainly open doors to local projects and perhaps with an opportunity of a job afterwards. I certainly can’t consider myself a master at decision making right now.

Why isn’t there an online service offering lots of potential projects for people like me ?

Appear to be located elsewhere while surfing the internet

Posted on the January 19th, 2010 under Daily Life, Tech by ari.bjornsson

When browsing the internet various information about you as an user is easily obtained, for instance your IP address which is often used to limit site or services availability depending on geographical location. Fortunately such restrictions are usually easy to bypass and I’m going to show you how to appear as you’re browsing from somewhere else using SSH Tunnel, SOCKS Proxy forwarding and Firefox browser. Don’t be intimidated by these “big words” because you don’t have to understand the technical aspects in order to get it to work for you.

However, before proceeding you will have to:

  • have a terminal access to a linux server located elsewhere (outside restricted area; school, friend, colleague)
  • realize that although using these known and legal methods and tools detailed here below, you may be doing something illegal because restrictions are usually in place for a reason.

SSH and SOCKS Proxy

Using Mac or Linux, simply;

  1. open up a terminal
  2. issue the command: ssh -D 8888 username@ip-address-of-server-located-elsewhere

Windows users should do the following by;

  1. downloading the terminal program Putty.exe from here
  2. rename it to ssh.exe
  3. move it to the windows folder on drive c: (c:\windows\)
  4. press the start button, select the Run dialog box
  5. issue the command: ssh -D 8888 username@ip-address-of-server-located-elsewhere

Make sure you change username and ip-address-of-server-located-elsewhere to the values you need them to be. After issuing the command you should be prompted with a required password, go ahead and enter your password to establish the SSH link to the server located elsewhere.

Command description:

ssh # command

-D # establishes the SOCKS Proxy

8888 # local port to connect to using browser

username # user name on server located elsewhere

ip-address-of-server-located-elsewhere # well, it’s the servers IP address

Firefox

Now you have to change the Firefox browser settings to use the link you just created instead of your regular internet. For Mac Firefox you do the following;

  1. File -> Preferences
  2. Advanced Tab -> Network section
  3. Connection Settings button
  4. Select Manual proxy configuration
  5. Enter in the SOCKS Host field: localhost
  6. Enter in the port field: 8888
  7. Select SOCKS v5 radio button

For Windows you do the following;

  1. Tools -> Options
  2. Follow the steps 2 to 7 detailed there above

Lastly, you need to edit one setting by entering Firefox about:config mode by clicking here. Change the parameter network.proxy.socks_remote_dns to true by double-clicking on it. Do not worry about the security warning you are prompted with, you can always change this value back to default by double-clicking it again.

See if it works

Now you should try to see if this is working for you, start by visiting the site whatismyipaddress.com, it should show you the geographical location and the IP address of the server you linked to instead of your real location. Furthermore, the network.proxy.socks_remote_dns = true parameter makes sure that you use the remote DNS in case the site or service is also tracing the DNS origin of the browser request.

This method works for me most of the time but it is not guaranteed to work for you. If it doesn’t redo the steps above, if it still doesn’t work then the site or service may not be so easily fooled.

Latest books I’ve read or listened to

Posted on the January 18th, 2010 under Books, Daily Life by ari.bjornsson

I’ve read or listened to a surprising number of books since November, if I take into account that during most of November and December, Malla and I were extremely busy with project work and exams. The amount is in fact 8 audiobooks and 1 physical book;

and

The “Unleash the Warrior within” book is a part of my “Getting Things Done” (GTD) process/transformation I mentioned in a previous post and I must say that I was a little disappointed by it. Perhaps my expectations were too high because I actually enjoyed reading the book and I’ve already picked out a few points which I’m going to implement as a part of my mental routine. It’s hard for me to explain what’s wrong with it, I guess I was just expecting some magic to happen and it never did. However, as with many of these guidelines, principles and methods, they are not of any use to those who don’t practice them so it remains to be seen whether this book has been useful or not. The next book in line is Your Brain at Work by David Rock which I hope will help me with my distraction issues. I’ll let you know if it’s any good.

The latest audiobooks are mostly by authors which I was unfamiliar with, well basically all of them except for my current favorite, Terry Pratchett. No that is not entirely true, I just rememberd blogging about James Rollins and his Ice Hunt book and how I was looking forward to listening to his Sigma Series. Now I’ve listened to the first book, Sandstorm, and what a disappointment! I almost gave up on it after listening to half of it but I decided to give it a chance and unfortunately the rest of the book wasn’t any better. I actually met a friend of mine a few days ago, the same one which had suggested I should try this author and he said that the series gets better and better so I’m thinking of giving James’ Sigma Series another shot.

R. A. Salvatore, Cormac McCarthy and Peter F. Hamilton on the other hand are making me wish I could put life on pause while I read all their books, twice. Considering the quantity of books, especially by Salvatore, it might take forever! Salvatore writes about human adventures in fantasy land habited by elves, dwarfs and goblins, McCarthy about violence and post-apocalyptic struggles and finally Peter F. Hamilton explores the future in his amazing Sci-Fi saga, the Commonwealth Saga. So good times ahead in the land of literature, but if you have read a book which you think I should read, please let me know, I’m always eager to read good books.