Switcing to New Blogger Beta

Though officially it's still in beta stage, the new blogger seems to be rather good.
The new features (at least as far as I can tell) are mostly for the blogger account itself - such as new and better templates, a web-based interface for editing them (instead of editing the template's HTML/CSS in a plain text editor, a-la notepad), google-style spell checker, and merging the blogger account with the google account. Also, they finally added tags ("labels") for each post!
As for now, the only features I still miss in blogger are per-post links to web2.0 sites like digg and technorati, and a side-list of all the blog's tags.
Well done, Google..

update (24.11.2006, 00:25):
It seems they do have this labels-list thingy, so I added it to the panel on the right side. Not sure if I didn't notice it before, or they've just recently added it..

Suddenly

Things which you don't expect them to happen, may come out the most powerful or exciting events in your life.

To know someone is suffering through a period that isn't measured in days, nor weeks, neither months - but years - that's a really terrible situation. But you can't be shocked when he (or she) goes away. I really do believe that death is preferred on suffering without a cause or a realistic option to get cured.
On the other hand, things which you don't expect them to happen - and such things can be caused by many reasons (if you were busy with something else, didn't really expect someone to behave the way they did, didn't ask for a reward for your doings, etc) - these can really make me shiver.

The course, which I've been commanding and instructing in the last 3 or 4 months, is over now. I put so much effort into it - not because I wanted someone to thanks me, but only because I really truly believed it's for a good cause. For the future kids, you might say.
My grandma, my father's mom, died last month. She's been sick since young age, and was barely capable of communicating with the world in the last couple of years. Rest in peace.

You figure it out.

Clean Colon - The Do-It-Yourself Version

So it appears some people actually pay to get their own guts clean, or whatever this "kit" does.
Why would they do such a thing? Well, I just don't know, but you have been warned - it ain't no fun!
(got it from gmail's ad-sense: "This site guarantees to remove really gross stuff from your gut.")

Healthy?

- "Are you a healthy person?"
- "Yes! Err... wait. maybe. hmm... no?"
(from my yearly visit to the dentist, about a week ago. He got a new dental hygienist)

It's been a while since anyone questioned me about my health. Actually, I can't really recall when was the last time I had to explain to a doctor about my Chron's. All the doctors I visit these days are already familiar with my disease, so I don't have to explain it all over again each time I go through regular health-related procedures.

So, it made me wonder. Do I consider myself healthy? Or even, does it really matter?
Obviously, I'm not the same as I was before it all began, two years ago. I have to take my pills after each meal, and I have to be careful about the types and amounts of the foods I eat, every day. And that's without even mentioning the psychological projections of this whole story.
On the other hand.. well, that's about it, at least for now. Unlike many others, and in contrast to my physical condition when the disease erupted, right now I have almost no physical affects (pain, injuries, exhaustion , etc.) caused by the Chron's.
I feel fine, and sleep very well. I go to work, go out with friends, and I can even do whatever sport I'd like to (just have to get in shape first..)

So.. Is that healthy enough for you, punk?

Physical Matters

Had my surgical examination this week in Ichilov, and everything seems to be ok.
"Why do you even bother to come here?", the professor asked, jokingly.
Short talk, a few knocks on my belly, and a large scar all across it.
That's all, quick and simple.

See you next year, I hope.

In search for a decent firewall - Part I

In the last few weeks I've spent a lot of hours in search for a good software-based firewall.
I didn't look for any super-sophisticated features. I just wanted to control my PC's incoming and outgoing connections, allow or deny programs from accessing specified ports, monitor which programs are running at the moment and prevent stuff like port-scanning.
unfortunately, I went through a large variety of firewalls and anti-virus software, each one had it's own problems. And the bottom line? Just read it, and see for yourself.

For a clean start, I have recently installed my legal (believe it or not) copy of windows XP SP2 over an all-new hard disk drive. The only anti-virus and firewall software I installed since then was Symantec's Norton Internet Security 2005.
Everything went fine and without any special problems, until last month. Every once in a while, the Norton stopped working and asked me to re-register itself on the internet. So after a few reoccurrences, I decided to try some alternative firewall and antivirus software.

After removing all of Symantec's products, the first programs to try were Kaspersky's AntiVirus 5 and AntiHacker 1.8 (which are actually the 2005 versions). Unlike Norton, both of Kaspersky's programs don't burden the operating system, and actually they're almost unnoticed!
The AntiVirus interface offers all of the basic features I looked for: Fast and easy scanning, with automatic daily updates from the internet. It also protects the PC from some of the common spyware and adware. Kaspersky has its own unique technology, adding some metadata to the NTFS tables, and therefore claims to scan files even faster than other AntiVirus programs.
The AntiHacker program is user friendly as well - It has all the features I was looking for, and it also loads up really fast at windows startup. The problem started every time I launched my eMule client: only a few minutes passed, before it decided to freeze all of my PC's internet activity, since it might be under a DDoS attack.
Now, How is it possible that every time I'm using eMule I'm having a DDoS attack? And why is this the only firewall that noticed that? And above all, why can't I control the firewall's response, once the attack is recognized?

As you can already guess, I got annoyed, removed KAH, and moved on to Sygate.
This one was no better. Although Sygate has many advanced features (well, at least more than KAH had), it just didn't let me connect the internet- Not even when I set it on "Permit all" mode, and not even when I shut down its process!
Just to clarify, I'm connecting to the Internet via Cables. This means that my modem has to identify itself in the Cables' internal LAN, and only then I can connect to the internet, using a VPN dialer to my ISP. The first part usually works fine, unless it is blocked by a firewall. And that's exactly what happened in my case with Sygate.
The same problem reoccurred when using Outpost firewall, so I won't write about it too.

The next one I tried was BlackIce, which didn't meet my expectations.
Although It gives alerts on every IP that tries to scan your PC, it doesn't do anything else. It doesn't control the programs internet access, not in the software level, nor in the port/protocol level. Actually, it doesn't do anything other than that, and it also doesn't integrate with SP2's Security Center (Although I don't really care about the last one).

Moving to the next firewall, Kerio.
This one had all the features I wanted, but also had one big problem - for an unknown reason, It generates a huge bandwidth overhead. I just couldn't use above half of my bandwidth capacity. This weird problem was specially noticed when using P2P networks, such as eMule or even Bittorrent. It also loaded the CPU usage up to 100% even when there were only a few dozens of opened connections (again, as a result of using P2P networks).
CA's tiny personal firewall 6.5 was about the same. Actually, it looked just like Kerio. It's major disadvantage was a very long loading time (about 10 seconds) when Windows starts.

To be continued..


Special thanks to AlleyCat and Yakov for helping me with this post