Timetravel Made Possible With The Samsung Galaxy S2

And yes. Another rant from an Apple fan-boy (I guess).

As you can read here, I have a Samsung Galaxy S2 at home, and the device is still in the original box. I did open the box, just to check the device, and as you may have read; the device went straight back into the box. Since then, it has been out of the box about four times, and not more than an hour. The main reason (for getting it out of the box) is that there a software updates that should fix problems with the device. I guess not the problems I have with the device..... I want to give the device a chance. I really do, but they don't come close to the Apple iOS experience. The Android eco-system has still light years to go.

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MacBook Wireless Borked Again, Still, etc.

A while back I had regular issues with the wireless adapter on my MacBook after I had upgraded to OSX Mountain Lion, but after the removal of Little Snitch (I still ran the beta version) it seemed that times were a changing... Seemed that is.

This morning I was fiddling about with my photo website, and needed to see the results in several different browsers. One of them being Google Chrome.
Trying to launch the Chrome app, it crashed immediately. Reopening didn't help. So I tried to download a newer version, since I hadn't updated mine since the upgrade to Mountain Lion. The result; It still crashed. Even after removing all Chrome (and Google) references on the disk, it still crashed.

So, it became time to consult the book of knowledge, and see what the Internets had to say about my little ordeal.

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Ziggo Internet, Juniper Firewalls and DHCP

At the house I have currently two ISP delivering broadband. Well, broadband isn't the correct word, since the the one of them is only a mere 256kbps (I think). The other is a 'whopping' 20Mbps.
The 20Mb connection is provided by XS4ALL, and the 256kbps is for free (if you have a phone subscription with Ziggo). The 256kbp is the minimum they provide to transport the phone calls, but if you're a masochist you can also browse the internet over that connection.

So, two ISP @ home. Combine that with a Juniper SRX firewall, and a dual ISP setup is born. The theory of that setup is that I connect both ISP's to the firewall, and use the 20Mb line as a default internet connection, but when that one dies, I automatically get switched to the backup line (256kbps).

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Unable To Turn On Wireless In OS X Mountain Lion

Last night I was minding my own business on the couch, when the wireless connection on my MacBook (UniBody)  decided to call it a day. According to the symptoms (no bars visible in the WiFi icon in the menu bar, no visible wireless networks in the vicinity), the WiFi adapter was turned off. Turning the WiFi back on was not possible though.

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Best 'Unboxing Videos' Ever

It's the best, mainly because it's terrible. It's a montage of several unboxing videos of the Google Nexus phone/tablet thinghy. I guess I would have thrown the entire box + contents out of the window. Google can learn a lot from other companies like; Nikon, Canon, Leica, Apple... Hell, even the shrink wrap on Microsoft products are easier to remove. Unboxing is an integral part of the new gadget/thinghy experience nowadays.

A (slightly biased) review of the Samsung Galaxy S2 Phone

Updated on Friday, January 20, 2012 at 14:58 by Willem

My employer decided to give its employees new smartphones. Mostly because we've been begging for them the last couple of years. Unfortunately, not the one(s) we (or perhaps I) have been asking for.

In my line of work I come across customers with wireless networks that need (some sort of) security in place. The only real question I get during those projects is; "Will it work with an iPhone or an iPad?" In my entire career, I haven't had a single question of that kind regarding Android or Windows Mobile phones.... There's no denying it; the iOS devices from Apple are huge. Even in the corporate market.

So, no corporate iOS device for me. Instead, they shipped the Samsung Galaxy S2 (listed as iPhone look-a-like) to me.

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Install KatzEye Focusing Screen in Nikon D300

Focussing manually has it's advantages. First, the number of potential lenses for your body sky-rockets. There are numerous old and new extraordinary good MANUAL FOCUS lenses available for the modern DSLR. Examples are lenses by Voigtlander, Carl Zeiss, and the old Nikon (Ai-S) lenses. The problem is that most of the modern cameras lack a decent (visual) indicator for when your object is in focus. My Nikon D300 has a small indicator (a dot) in the viewfinder which notifies you when you've got focus. But when you shoot with large apertures (e.g. f/2, f/1.8, f/1.4 or f/1.2) on MF lenses you have to keep track of your composition (through the viewfinder), and watch the 'in-focus' indicator. Something I find very hard to do. I allways seem to miss at least one of them. Missing composition is easy to fix in post-processing, but fixing focus can't be done.

Thankfully, there's a solution to this problem; Katz Eye Optics. These guys offer old-skool focusing screens for the modern digital SLR's. All you have to do is replace the focusing screen with theirs. You can do this yourself, or your camera brand service-center should be able to do it for you (at additional cost). I did it myself though, and ran into a problem (of course). But more on that later...

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Configure SSL Certificate for Juniper J-Web Interface

By default, the J-Web interface (GUI for the Juniper SRX firewalls) has SSL enabled. Like most devices with SSL out-of-the-box, the protection is based on a self-signed certificate. Self-signed certificates are easy (they come basically out-of-the-box), but they tend to nag you every time you connect to the GUI. So, it's time to install a proper certificate.

In this case, I use the XCA (1) software to create a new certificate. This certificate is signed by my own root CA, which I installed on all of my devices and Operating Systems. Basically, I trust myself.....

According to the Juniper support pages on SSL certificate usage, I found out that the certificates are to be in the PEM format. No problem for XCA.

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AVN Fritzbox and the 'Exposed Host' Setting

The Fritzbox 7340 is the only real available VDSL modem/router in the Netherlands. Too bad, since it has some bugs (but what piece of software hasn't???). Fortunately, the router works well, just as long as you use it as the only networking device in your (small) network.

In the last couple of days I've been busy to add the Juniper SRX100 branch firewall to my local home network. The idea was the following:

• The Fritzbox (FB) will remain the Internet router
• My web/mail/ssh server is placed behind the SRX100
• All the individual portforward rules in the Fritzbox are directed to the SRX100 by selecting the 'Exposed Host' in the FB.

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Enable Juniper SRX Firewall Logging

Juniper started to migrate their firewalls from Netscreen to the Junos environment 'a couple of' months back. The advantage is that there's a universal OS for routers, switches and firewalls. Just like Cisco IOS. The disadvantage is that the Junos OS is being adapted for the firewalls. So the foundations are there, but there are still lots of features missing and bugs are also still abundant.

The bugs are thankfully mostly related to the WebGUI. On the commandlinethe bugs are in the same league as the Cisco, Checkpoint and every other vendor bugs. No piece of software is perfect.

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