By William | Published:
April 19, 2008
This is a bash script that uses netcat to connect to a list of URLs and sorts them in order of response time. I used it to check a list of proxy web sites but it can be used for any kind of web site.
I was not able to post the code directly without messing up the formating so here is a link.
It will take a list of URLs like this:
google.com
apple.com
http://google.com
http://www.apple.com/babla.html
Here is an example of how to use the script (i.e. for CRON):
/path/to/script/dir/speedcheck.sh < /path/to/script/dir/list.txt > /path/to/script/dir/list.tmp 2> /path/to/script/dir/list.error; cp -R /path/to/script/dir/list.tmp /path/to/script/dir/list.output.txt
This takes list.txt and writes the sorted output to list.output.txt and any errors to list.error .
If you wish to display the output as a list of clickable hyper links you could use a php script like this (link).
By William | Published:
March 25, 2008
Here is a list of a few possible solutions on how to bypass firewall rules, which would include unblocking websites at school, college or work.
- Use an SSL VPN service that runs on port 80 or 443. This will work if you can install software on the computer you are trying to use.
- Use a web proxy site like alwaysbrowse.com. This is probably the easiest thing to try.
- Use Firefox Portable. Some computer administrators put restrictions on Internet Explorer, to only allow access to Intranet servers. If you can’t use a USB flash drive, you can also try emailing your self the application.
By William | Published:
February 21, 2008
I took the German CLEP exam today and received 4 semesters worth of credit for German classes. Just wanted to write down some thoughts I had while taking the test.
The harded part of the exam was Listening. They played back several short dialogs in German and then would ask a question relating to the dialog. There was no way to replay the question or the dialog, so it was very important to remember all the small details. Please feel free to ask questions if you have any.
By William | Published:
January 24, 2008
If you are looking for an easy way to switch between multiple spell check dictionaries in the Pidgin IM application, have a look at the the Purple Plugin Pack. This plugin pack includes a plugin called Switch Spell which enables you to do just that. To install this on windows download the *win32.zip file that they provide and extract the switchspell.dll to your C:\Program Files\Pidgin\plugins folder. Now all you need to do is restart Pidgin and enable Switch Spell in the plugin manager.
(Note: In order for this to work you need to select multiple Aspell dictionaries during the regular Pidgin installation)
By William | Published:
January 21, 2008
woopdidoo…. I made it onto the Fall 2007 Semester Dean’s list.
By William | Published:
January 17, 2008
Every time I need to edit a /etc/aliases file on one of my servers to change an email address I forget the correct way to convert the file to a hash database. So here it is:
# nano -w /etc/aliases
# newaliases
# /etc/init.d/postfix restart
By William | Published:
January 16, 2008
I’m back from my vacation in Germany and have about a week before my classes start. I had an 8 hour layover in Atlanta (ATL) with no computer. It was not fun.
I’m in the process of checking out a webhost called Nearlyfreespeech. I actually just finished moving this blog over to their server cluster.
By William | Published:
December 4, 2007
If you are trying to remotely provision your Grandstream device with a configuration file you need to first create a list of ‘P##’ values that contain your options. Grandstream does provide a template with most of these values. Once in a while however I come across an option that I have seen in the device’s own config web page but not in this template file.
Fortunately the ‘P##’ values are included in the source code of the device’s HTML pages. Just right click on the configuration page that you are interest in and click “view page source”. Here is an example of how it looks like:
<td align=right><i>Layer 2 QoS :</i></td>
<td> 802.1Q/VLAN Tag
<input type=text name="P51" value="0" maxlength=5 size=7>
The above shows that the P51 value is for 802.1q and vlan tag number.
This page on Voip-Info.org may be interesting to you if you are dealing with remote provisioning
By William | Published:
November 28, 2007
Are you tired of the default ring tone that your Grandstream IP phone equipment is using?
Are you annoyed that the ring tone sounds just like the dial tone?
Well I created 2 new ring tones that have been tested on a GXP-2000 phone.
Ring tone #1: .bin file .wav file
Ring tone #2: .bin file .wav file
To install these on to your device you need to setup firmware provisioning using tftp or http.
By William | Published:
November 4, 2007
Back in March when we all had to deal with the new daylight savings time changes I had researched what the new configuration would look like on Grandstream VOIP devices. Please have a look at my previous article before blindly taking any information from here.
The rule I had originally published and the one that Grandstream now publishes is:
3,2,7,2,0;11,1,7,2,0;60
The 7 in the above string of numbers is suppose to stand for Sunday. Following this rule: DST starts on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November. Well yesterday happened to be the first Saturday in November and apparently the Grandstream programmers were working on the basis that Sunday is the first day of the week and not the last, changing the 7 to a 1.
The new rule with this Fix would look like this:
3,2,1,2,0;11,1,1,2,0;60
It is possible that the above is also incorrect. I know for certain that the last half is correct 11,1,1,2,0;60 .
There could be a firmware bug were 7 does stand for Sunday at the start of DST but changes to 1 at the end of DST. The way to test this would be to setup a test NTP server and change its date to the first Saturday in march 2008 and see if the phone has the correct time. Unfortunately I don’t have time to do it myself, but I would be happy to publish the results of the test.