Blog Site moved AGAIN

I completely forgot to mention my new blog site, since I did go over to publish my blog, website and podcast all in one place using Apple's iWeb.

Go here for my new blog, podcast and homepage:
http://sun4you.org/kobaan/RW

My blog's newsfeed is here:
http://sun4you.org/kobaan/RW/files/page0.xml

Hope to see you soon.

Bye,
Kobaan.

Special thx goes to Sun for hosting my site now !

Virtualization @ Mac Mini

This weekend I spent some time playing with virtual machines on my Intel-Mac.

Due to the lack of virtualization support in the current Mac OS X release, rumors say it might be introduced in the next major release of Mac OS Leopard, the only way to run another operating system simlutanously is by using a virtual machine emulation software.
For example: QEMU or its Mac pendant Q

Q is optimized for speed on Mac hardware and already available as a universal binary, which means that it will provide near native performance for x86-architecture based operating systems like Windows, or a linux distribution running beside Mac OS, e.g. Gentoo Linux ;-) as it doesn't need to translate all the CPU operations to a foreign architecture.


Q makes everything amazingly easy. Just download a OS-system image from http://free.oszoo.org or any usual installer-cd.iso, setup a harddisk-image by entering the amount of MBytes and boot.

I tried Gentoo 2006 and ReactOS (a WinNT-Clone) and both work perfectly and quiet fast besides Mac OS.



But right after installing the MacOS provided X11-package, I asked myself, why I would need another OS.
I found no reason.
Virtual machines shutdown.
Mac OS is simply great.

I'm not missing a single application that I had used before on win/linux, and thanks to Apples Xcode (IDE) I will write my own application if I'll feel that I would miss something.

Apple, Intel,
good job.

Todays special: Mac Mini - Intel Style

Year after year I enviously watch he development on Apple's newest Mac creations, Mac OS X, iPod's, iMac's, Mac mini and this year finally Apple decided to switch over processor technology from PowerPC over to Intel CPU's.

The biggest showstopper for me was their high selling prices . But with their new Intel Core chips which you can't buy yet for the PC market, and a relatively low price for a new revolutionary technology assembled together in a tiny little box, I couldn't any longer resist buying a Mac mini.Calculating together all the pieces, shows that the price is fair enough to buy, and as usual for Apple you can count on reliable prices for a long time period. So, if you buy later, it will cost almost the same and you will miss the technology advantage.

Compared to other processors, the Intel Core definitely has it's place, especially compared to power consumption (31Watts).

So here're some pictures of my new baby, the Mac mini Core Duo:

A new mac fan.

Support privacy !

This time I want to encourage all folks of you owning a router which is capable of running the OpenWrt system.

What you need:
OpenWrt can be installed on many different router-hardware.
See here for a list of supported devices.

What you get:
Compared to other router system-software, OpenWrt by default is a very slim system. You can think of "minimalistic"="more secure".

Almost everything you'll ever need can be simply installed as packages or compiled by yourself. (e.g. a webserver/VoIP-proxy a.s.o.)

For GUI-enthusiasts the white-russian-release also offers the possibility to update, and configure your router via web-interface, although most of you people will be happy to have ssh-access and therefore full control over you linux-routerdevice.

Getting even more:
Most of the listed hardware devices, can use external or internal memory-sticks, sd-cards or at least nfs or samba shares, to install more software or hold more data accessible from your router.

How you can help:
Back to my initial thought for this blogentry.
As your router is usually up 24/7, and most people have flatrates, there's a great possibility to support the TOR network by installing a tor-server on your router and use it(or not) from within your LAN by accessing privoxy on your router to browse the web anonymously for example.

What is TOR:
TOR (The Onion Router network) is a concept to tunnel networktraffic through multiple other nodes before connecting to the final destination node. That way it will be harder for evesdroppers to trace your origin IP-address, and for hosters more safe to offer content without the danger of being shutdown when a server-ip might get blocked by someone.

Further you can provide access to the whole internet, dedicated services or even dedicated addresses through your own TOR server.
If you don't want others to use your router to access the internet, you can just contribute as a tunnel-peer for other TOR-servers.

Where to get:
All required packages for OpenWrt-capable routers can be found here and a precompiled privoxy-package here.

I'm addicted:
Of course you can do even more crazy stuff with OpenWrt see here.


Peace !

X3 Reunion - Patch 1.3 - Xenon/Khaak Invasion Massacre

Since Patch 1.3 Khaak and Xenon become once more a real
threat in the X universe.


Some people already roll back to Version 1.2.01, as they suffer from massive universe wide khaak, xenon and even pirate
attacks backed by multiple carriers and destroyers.






The problem is that in former version, enemies that were killed
didn't respawn, that way the universe became more and more
quiet by time. Now with v1.3 all the destroyed ships recoreded
in the savefile will be respawned at once, thus sending huge
waves of enemies to the player and other races.



As a result, it might happen that complete sectors will be
entirely destructed by huge invasions, supply stations and their
ships being attacked, the whole economy that you knew before
will be gone.





But if you recall the beginning of the story in X3, you've been
warned by the senator, who said, that they can hardly hold 30%
of their fleet because of the war.






But that's bad news for us traders, who cannot afford an armada
of defence-ships or even destroyers to push back the enemies
or secure their stations and sectors.






Help is needed by other races KI ships, but as they might be
also destroyed and their supplies cut, you'll be finally on your own.









However further improvements have been done to the graphics
engine and overall speed is greatly improved allover.
Some storyelements should've been fixed too, but who will have
the time to find out that.



Protection of your profitssssss is what you need to care about
now.



Good luck.

Own X3 Map released

I know there are already some good sectormaps available, even for the latest Release X2 of the X-universe saga.

There're also quite a few lists with some more information available, so I decided to include as much information as possible into my very own map.
If you're interested you can download it here: http://home.mnet-online.de/tuxine/x3kobaanmap.jpg (gif and png version also available)


Features:

Showing all sectors for X3 by their names
Graphical Sectorsize
Mark Solar Power Plants
Mark Shipyards
Mark Docks
Mark Pirate Bases
List Superfreighter I/II availability
Relative Spacegate Positions
Mark profitable asteroids for each sector by ore, silicon, nividium
List sector protection M1,M2,M6 and TL availability
Energie Support/Shortage mapping through the whole map
Prepared non-functional space-gates
Marketprice comparison
Rocket Damage/Speed/Range data

Changes:
V0.5
Included marketprice comparison list
Included rocket-data list
Included Race color-coding

V0.4
High resolution clean-ups
set non-functional gates visibility

V0.3
Energy-Support and shoratge highlighted through the map (blueish background)
Legend scaled to a more readable size
Scaled some known wide sectors in width t.b.c.

V0.2
Translated Sectorname Avarice to german Habgier
Include information on highest asteroid value: ore, silicon, nividium
Added pinpoints (yet invisible) for non-functional spacegates
List Superfreighter I/II availability

V0.1
Include information on shipyards, docks, pirate bases, solar power plants
Include information on spacegate positions
List sector protection M1,M2,M6 and TL availability

V0.0
Scaled sectors by their size (middle spacegate distance)
Initial version based on old maps, with additional sectors

I didn't translate the map to english yet, this may follow someday later.

Last minute XMAS gifts

To all of you seeking for last minute xmas-presents, I can suggest this great audio CD of the korean band Bulldog Mansion which has a wide variety of different music styles as they play some funk, bigband, ballad, ska and rock.
In my eyes a perfect xmas gift for all people who want to escape the last frustating 5 years of english and/or german top100 music.

I just loved the songs of Bulldog Mansion when I did find a nice flash cartoon on the net: there she is (goto->amalloc) another part of this cartoon series will be published soon.