Hasta La Gadget!

The purpose of using a Dynamic DNS service is to map your WAN (or Public) IP address to a name. A domain name is easier to remember and it is not affected if your WAN IP address changes, unless you signed up for a business account which offers static public IP address.

Dynamic DNS is a service, mostly free, and there are quite a few of them available. One option would be to just Google for one but I wanted to make sure that the service is supported by my router.

List of Dynamic DNS providers supported by my router.

I have a paid account with NoIP.com, DynDNS was a popular choice until they quit offering their free service early April 2014. I randomly settled with “ChangeIP.com”.

Steps Overview:

1- Verify the current WAN IP address
2- Sign up with a provider to secure a (or several) domain name(s)
3- Decide on the process to update the IP, via a client software or router feature.
4- Testing

1- Current WAN IP address

Your WAN (Wide Area Network), also called public IP is assigned via DHCP by your ISP. It may or may not change. I have noticed that if I swapped routers the WAN IP would change. I guess because the router MAC address changed.
The WAN IP address can be lookup from the router interface or simply Goggle it “what is my ip”.

The WAN IP address is available from the router.

Last resort, ask Google!

2- Sign up with ChangeIP.com

Head over to “changeip.com” and “SIGN UP!”
Fill out the form and “Click to Continue >>”

Select “SERVICES” (#1) then “Free Dynamic DNS” (#2).

Create your domain name.
Come up with a value for the third level name (#1)
Browse through the available domain name list and pick one (#2)
Add Domain to complete the setup (#3)

For this “how-to”, I came up with “go” for my 3rd level name, “onmypc.net” as the domain name. That made up my name resolution as “go.onmypc.net”. Since the domain must be unique, your choice may or may not be available.

Come up with a domain name that is easy to remember for you.

To check the new setup, find the “Quick Navigation”(#1) and “DNS Manager”(#2)

Click on your domain name (#1) to display the name to IP mapping.

The mapping looks good. The IP matches the values we got from Google and the router status page.

This completes the name to IP resolution process.

3- IP updater

The next step is to decide how the public interface IP address is going to get updated when it changes.

Update via a client software.
ChangeIP.com has a client updater available for download. Back to the “Portal Home” (#1) and click on “Downloads” (#2)

“Homing Beacon” (#1) is the Windows version. There is a bash script for Linux users. Proceed to download the “Homing Beacon” file.

Run and Install the “Homing Beacon”. It requires .NET 4.0. If .NET is not present, it will be installed via the “Homing Beacon” installer.



Account settings:

Enter your ChangeIP.com username (#1) and password (#2).
Type in your reserved domain name (#3), set the frequency, from 5 to 30 mins (#4) and “Save” (#5).

The domain name I picked, now resolved to my WAN IP.

Update via the router.

Log in your admin GUI router page. Look for the DDNS settings. On my router, it is from “Setup” (#1) then DDNS (#2). The feature is enabled (#3), I selected ChangeIP.com as my “DDNS type”  (#4), filled out ChangeIP.com username (#5), password (#6) and hostname (#7). The process was completed the update (#8).

Best practice: If your router supports the DDNS feature, go for it.

4- Testing.

“Start” > “Run” > “Cmd” to bring up the command line.

We could use the command “ping”, such as “ping go.onmypc.net” and it should return a WAN IP. However the right utility is NSLOOKUP as NameServerLOOKUP.
The syntax is just like the ping command, NSLOOKUP [SPACE] domain name.

The name should resolve to the host computer WAN IP address as it did in the screenshot below.

Success! The domain name resolves to my public IP address.

This last output completes the “How To setup a Dynamic DNS” tutorial.

 Best Practices:

I would chose to set up the updater on the router, rather than installing a client application. Software wise,I try to only install what I really need.

Since there are other free Dynamic DNS providers, I would set up another account and have a failover, in case one happens to be offline for whatever reasons. You could either install two clients updater or set one up on the router and the software for the other on a PC within your network.

If you find the service useful, consider getting a paid account. The cost is a few dollars per year.

Conclusion

Knowing your how to connect to your network by a name is the first step to host various services on your home PCs and access those services from a remote computer with an internet connection.

To make use of Dynamic DNS requires knowledge of “How To setup port forwarding” rules. That technique allows Internet traffic to be forwarded to your workstations and/or servers hosting some kind of services on your local network.

How to Set Up Dynamic DNS

, original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in Computers, networking,

Now that the FIFA World Cup is about to kick off in less than a fortnight’s time over in the spiritual home of soccer (the rest of the world calls it football), Brazil, I am quite sure that many of us footie fans have already bought our favorite team’s jersey to wear as a show of support, gone for some basic face painting classes as well as fire up Electronic Arts’ FIFA series on our consoles, tablets and computers to keep ourselves occupied before the real deal happens. Well, AVAST has warned you to take note that there are fake soccer gaming apps on the Google Play store which show nothing else but ads after installation.

Yes, it works on the same modus operandi as that of YouTube videos that claim to offer you the full movie but upon clicking, you realize that it is nothing but a scam – with a 2 hour long video pointing you to a different URL. AVAST’s warning comes in good time so that your smartphone or tablet won’t be knocked out of commission due to ad-overloaded, data-hungry apps.

Some of the fake soccer gaming apps mentioned include Corner Kick World Cup 2014 and Free Kick Champion, while the “Fifa 2014 Free – World Cup” and “Football World Cup 14” apps also happen to fall under the grey zone as they go around collecting data that has nothing to do with the apps’ functionality.

Filip Chytry, anti-malware expert at AVAST, chimes in on the situation, “This is unfortunately a quite common and sneaky way for developers to make money. With applications like this, the only person who benefits from them are the developers who receive money for each click on the ads displayed in their app.”

AVAST: Fake Soccer Gaming Apps Are Actually Ads On A Roll

, original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in Gaming, avast, world cup,

Turns out that AJ Taudevin, who wrote Chalk Farm with Kieran Hurley, and Julia Taudevin, who appears in the 55-minute play with Thomas Dennis, are the same person. That’s another way of saying that the charged feeling expressed by the mother in the one-act at 59E59 Theaters is shared by both author and actor and therefore movingly synergistic.

Maggie (Taudevin) is trying her best to raise son Jamie (Dennis) at the North London Chalk Farm Estates. When they both get caught up in the 2011 riots that spread across many boroughs in the city, including theirs, she’s a devoted single mom and he’s a typical kid.

Since boys will be boys during exciting, if troubled times, especially if they fall in with friends rougher than they are, they can easily join the mobs rushing a Sainsbury supermarket and participate in the criminal activity. Many of them, like Jamie with his rebellious teenage streak, will disregard parental advice, no matter how basically good a lad he is.

He likely will, if he decides an act of defiance confirms he’s past the age where he should be carrying a lunchbox to school. That’s what Jamie’s been forced to do because, despite his balking, Maggie insists on it.

Hurley and Taudevin tell the Maggie-Jamie story in a stripped down manner and on a stage where 15 busy flat-screens–three on each of five polls–are the entire stationary set and a couple of black stools are occasionally carted on and off.

For the most part, Maggie and Jamie address the audience alternately. Though they relate to each other from time, their more frequent isolated speeches serve to underline the separation between them. And that’s what Hurley and Taudevin are getting at. At the same time as they take a close look at lower-class struggles–at one despairing moment Maggie declares that whatever she does, she’ll always be poor–they also shape Chalk Farm as an acknowledgment that parent-child relationships will always be governed by something bigger than that: the pull of outside forces, the tug of history.

It’s a hard reality to swallow, and Hurley and Taudevin handle it skillfully in the short time they’ve allotted themselves.
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No matter how much changes over the coming millennia, it’s a sure bet that storytelling will endure. The human desire to hear stories indisputably goes back to pre-recorded times and will certainly stretch to times yet to be recorded.

The continuing question about stories is how they’re told, and it’s raised by the two one-acts–Sawbones and The Diamond Eater–at HERE that Carrie Robbins has dramatized somewhat awkwardly after being told them by her late husband RD Robbins. Since he was a physician, it makes sense that both pieces involve health care and are undeniably moving as well as gruesome.

Sawbones is set in 1862 and several years after and recounts how unschooled black Union soldier Jebidiah E. Wall (Gregory Marlow) aids army surgeon Cordell S. Cuttaridge (Wynn Harmon) in a leg amputation of Confederate soldier Elmer Cobb (Thomas Leverton) and subsequently becomes drawn to medicine.

In The Diamond Eater, Dr. Kuttermann, (Timothy Roselle) serving against his wishes in that capacity at a concentration camp in 1945, is ordered by Oberschaarfuhrer Dietz (Tony Naumovski) to carry out an experiment on kidney transplants between a gypsy (Jenn Vath) and Avraham Millstein (Eric Kuttner), a jeweler who’s been keeping a 15-diamond cache safe by eating them, passing them through his body and eating them again.

Known as a costume designer (she designed the costumes here), Robbins effectively connects with both plays, although not without overdoing them. In Sawbones, she loses sight for a time of who her focal character is, Jebidiah or Dr. Cuttaridge. The latter takes over the second half of the one-act with lady friend Miz Cora (Erika Rolfsrud), the proprietress of a salon, so that Robbins gives the impression she’s got two plays on her mind. The Diamond Eater drawback is less problematic and has to do with an introductory speech that relates tangentially to the plot but could be dropped without major loss.

Tazewell Thompson directs, keeping things straightforward and unflinching, and he sees to it that his cast members do the same.
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Ayn Rand definitely has her advocates. Only a few months ago, Austin Shakespeare presented Jeff Britting’s stage adaptation of Rand’s Anthem at Baryshnikov Arts Center. Now fairly hot on its heels comes Anthem as a musical. At the Lynn Redgrave, it has a book by Gary Morgenstein, music by Jonnie Rockwell and lyrics by Erik Ransom.

Comparisons are well known to be odious, but in many instances they’re also irresistible. So here goes. Whereas the Britting’s version bordered on being beneath contempt, the latter is several notches above contempt–primarily because it’s extremely well-rehearsed by director-choreographer Rachel Klein and co-choreographer Danielle Marie Fusco with cast member Brian Joseph Ferree helping on the Cirque du Soleil rope-dangling effects.

To fill in Rand readers who’ve forgotten the Anthem ins-and-outs and for Rand non-readers who’ve assiduously avoided Anthem as well as The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and Rand’s stentorian plugging for capitalism and libertarianism: In a future totalitarian state, Prometheus (Jason Gotay) spurns appointed spouse-to-be Hera (Remy Zaken) for Queen of the Forest Athena (Ashley Kate Adams) and in the name of individualism foments a war between Athena’s forest army and the one overseen by First Citizen Pandora (Jenna Leigh Green) and Second Citizen Tiberius (Randy Jones of Village People fame).

Plenty of money has been poured into this Anthem so that set designer Robert Andrew Kovach (who maybe designed the eye-popping costumes, too?), lighting designer Kryssy Wright and sound designer Sean Hagerty can give the production an expensive and imaginative look. Michael Gayle’s five-man band also does its best with the quasi-rock rhythms and beats.

The problem–no surprise here–is Morgenstein’s inability to make anything more than sophomoric of Rand’s tired plot. Rockwell’s music is lively enough but undistinguished. Ransom’s lyrics are trouble, though. “Mundane” only begins to describe them. The one that stuck out for me is in a love song where the singers declare that with their feelings “taken past rationality/How can I face reality?” It’s also a hoot when in the title song, the ensemble merrily agitates while repeating “Our anthem is anarchy,” as if they had any idea what anarchy entails.

Two incidentals: 1) Anyone worried about the far future may be comforted to know that people still say “awesome” and that break-dancing persists. 2) If the If/Then producers are looking for an Idina Menzel belting understudy, Green’s their ticket.

More than once I’ve noted that steakhouse menus around the U.S. don’t differ by as much as the cut of fried potatoes. All, obviously, serve hefty steaks and chops and the quality of the meat everywhere has gotten better, although the more links a steakhouse chain adds diminishes that quality significantly.

Which is why I favor singular, individual steakhouses whose personality is evident in the way they treat people and whose quality is more easily controlled when there’s only one larder to stock and one kitchen to cook it. Crowds of regulars don’t hurt either.

For those reasons I am willing to pronounce that, overall — quality of food, hospitality, wine and cocktail service, and ambiance — Porter House, four flights up in the vast Time-Warner Center in New York (which also houses Per Se, A Voce, Masa, Bouchon, and Landmarc) is celebrating its tenth year in business with a dining room packed for lunch and dinner seven nights a week. There are reasons for that.

Most obvious is its location, with a grand panorama on Central Park, Columbus Circle and the long lighted stretch of Central Park South all the way to Fifth Avenue. Few restaurants in the world can match that view, and the interior of Porter House is as broad, deep and handsome, with tables well separated, thick tablecloths, and a perfect lighting provided by the sun-, twi- and night-lights of New York.

Chef-managing partner Michael Lomonaco, manager Tim Brown and a fast-moving staff keep Porter House hopping without the slightest lag in service, and wine director Brad Nugent is always on hand to make the choice of wine according to your taste, your dinner choices, and your budget, all from an award-winning wine list.

Porter House’s menu doesn’t differ much from those of the city’s highly competitive steakhouses — the cuts of meat are carefully selected, the seafood plateau lavish, appetizers like marrow bones impressive for their size and succulence, and the side dishes from onion rings to creamed spinach well honed. Mistakes are rare at Porter House after a decade in business, and I have received very few reports of poor food or service over the years.

Some of my favorite dishes consistently include the clams Casino, the pan-seared sea scallops with capers and brown butter, and a truly jumbo lump crabcake, just lightly bound and served with a tangy horseradish cream. I have always wondered why they don’t serve the gargantuan lobsters that are pretty standard fare in steakhouses. The American “Siberian” caviar, at $96 for 28 grams is not only expensive but, given the blandness of that species, not worth ordering.

Aside from the signature porterhouse steak (for two or more), the juicy veal chop and gargantuan Colorado lamb t-bone chops are as fine as any anywhere. Someday maybe I’ll try the burger.

Desserts are no afterthoughts here, going beyond the usual cheesecake and including a childlike fantasy of a chocolate sundae.

Even if Porter House didn’t serve steaks at all, its beauty and fabulous location make it worth a visit, at least at the new Center Bar just outside the Porter House doors. Add in those great steaks, and it would be hard to find better.

Porter House New York is open daily for lunch and dinner, with dinner appetizers ranging from $14-$22, and entrees $29-$59.

The new Angus Club Steakhouse on the East Side of Manhattan just opened in January so it cannot be expected to have the panache of Porter House, nor does it have the view, with half of it underground. But owners Margent Maslinka (also wine director), Chef Edward Avduli, Aldin Gacevic and Zef Makaj, all veterans of well-established Wolfgang’s Steakhouse on Park Avenue, are trying to prove they may be one of the friendliest, most accommodating steakhouses around. Their welcome is warm, their private dining rooms many and individually designed for various size parties and atmospheres, and the service staff aims to please.

A lot of thought and money has gone into this warren of rooms, the most pleasant the upstairs bar, which overlooks the street. There are fine touches everywhere — soft brown leather chairs, antique mirrors, cork-wrapped columns, a grand staircase, snakeskin walls, and golden lighting. The main 76-seat dining room (above) plus private spaces, however, is down that staircase, and, frankly, I didn’t find the reclaimed barn wood walls particularly cheery. It’s fairly dark down there, and, since business has not yet caught on very strongly for the amount of space Angus Club occupies, it can be pretty lonely down there.

You won’t find any surprises on the menu, but the beef is dry-aged on site for up to 35 days and the lobsters weigh in at three pounds. Otherwise, potions are generous for the appetizers and the prices are a click below Angus Club’s competitors’, with a bone-in, 22-ounce sirloin at $46 and a porterhouse for two at $98. The lobster goes for $95.

Start off here with the yellow fin tuna tartare or the thick slab of Canadian bacon, then a great slab of impeccably cooked meat, especially the porterhouse, sliced for two or more, and a side of steak fries and creamed spinach. You’ll go home full, you’ll go home happy.

If Angus Club succeeds in a very busy steakhouse neighborhood — Palm, Spark’s, Smith & Wollensky, the new Davio’s, among others are within a t-bone’s toss — it will be on the good will that the owners are trying so hard and so honestly to build. That counts.

Angus Club Steakhouse is at 135 East 55th Street; 212-588-1585; www.angusclubsteakhouse.com; Open for lunch Mon.-Fri., dinner Mon.-Sat. ; Dinner entrees $33- $49.

He ran next to me the whole time.

And I was ashamed I couldn’t run as fast as him. He’s 8 and I’ll be 40 this August. And I watched him choose.

He could have run fast and far up ahead where his friends were, where the best times were, where the winners were.

But his glasses kept swiveling in my direction and he kept up a steady steam of chatter when all I could do was wheeze through my aching lungs and wonder how I’d make it another step, let alone another mile.

For the first time in our nearly nine years together, I was the choice in his hand. I felt all vulnerable at being left behind by this son who watches documentaries about Usain Bolt and dreams only of being fast. And I watched him choose me.

His slow mother, shy of running and nervous about being at the back alone. His mother who still told him to go on, run at the front, I’ll be fine here by myself.

And over my own rasping conversation and pumping knees, his answer floated back on the breeze like so much grace, “But I want to run with you, mom.”

And parents ran past us dragging crying kids, snarling under their breath that they should “keep up already; stop walking,” as my son looked over and caught my eye every time I shame-facedly confessed I needed a break to walk for a while, and told me, “That’s fine, mom, that’s fine. This is called a Run-Walk 5K race. So walking is totally fine.”

And then he’d lean over and hug me and we’d walk together on the side of the trail.

There is fast and there is kind, and today my son was both. Just not at the same time.

We ran past an old detention center and both gazed up at the guard tower and broken spotlights, the windowpanes all shattered through by rocks thrown by kids or detainees or who knows who.

We ran single file along stubbled trails of tall grass and over bridges and down rocky hills, me worrying he’d trip and him flying fast down the spitting stones, laughing — all blond hair and grace.

We ran and breathed and ran. Blue sky. Green, rough grass. A cutting breeze that chilled us when we arrived too early at 7 this morning, an hour before race time.

We ran and we walked and always he was right there beside me checking in and pushing me and encouraging me and telling me over and over, “I love you, mom. I just can’t stop saying how much I love you ’cause you run with me.”

And I loved him back in my aching chest that felt sure it couldn’t do another mile — and then it could. Because my 8-year-old believed in me.

He tells me he’s small for his age, and I ask him why he thinks so.

“It’s what all the kids say,” he tells me.

But when we cross the finish line, him cheering me on the whole way, every hard, burning step, all I can think is —

You’re a giant, son.

You’re a giant of a man to me.

Lisa-Jo Baker is the bestselling author of the newly released book, Surprised by Motherhood: Everything I Never Expected About Being a Mom.

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