Well, the last sale was about a week ago now, and since I didn’t want to deal with that massive line I head over about 30 min after they “open”. My plan was to find a machine to replace an old P4 Linux server I had running, so I head back to the computer cage to wait my turn to get in and see what’s left. From what I could tell of people going to checkout, the desktops everyone was getting were Gateway Core 2 Duo machines. When I could get in most of what was left of the desktops were Gateway Pentium D machines, but after looking around and digging in the back row on a bottom shelf I found a couple of Core 2 Duo machines with no RAM. So I picked up one of the Core 2 Duo’s with no RAM, a Pentium D with 3GB of RAM, and a  monitor all for $8.

The sad part of this story is after I got everything working and did some tests and research, I found the $2 Core 2 Duo that I bought is better than what I’m currently using as my desktop and “gaming” rig. So I’m gearing up for a switch-over between all the systems that I currently have. My plan is to take the Core 2 machine and make that my main desktop and “gaming” rig, then take my current desktop (an AMD Athlon 4450e) and run XenServer on that with a some virtual machines as a replacement for the P4 Linux server.

UPDATE 4/10/2012: After backing up my current desktop and getting ready to start switching hardware between machines, I found out that my graphics card won’t fit in the Core 2 machine. The graphics card requires two slots and the PCI-E slot in the Core 2 will only allow one slot due to the motherboard layout. So I’m moving forward with using the Core 2 machine as the XenServer, which limits me some since it doesn’t support hardware virtualization and the AMD does. This mostly keeps me from running any Windows VMs and since I don’t plan on running any Windows VMs anyway, it’s not that big a deal. I’ll go through later and post about my setup and configuration.

Steps:

 First, go to DNS-O-Matic and setup an account. This should also work as an OpenDNS account so you can use the same log-in on both services.

 On the account home screen, add accounts for any dynamic DNS accounts you use. In my example I just have OpenDNS and DynDNS setup. There are a lot of services that DNS-O-Matic will support, they currently have 29 listed on their supported services list.

DNS-O-Matic Supported Services

Now we need to setup the router to update DNS-O-Matic. I use DD-WRT v24-sp2 (13064 10/10/09) on my router and it supports updating a Dynamic DNS service. On my router this is under the Setup -> DDNS tab. For my version I have to setup DNS-O-Matic as a custom DDNS service with the following fields.

DDNS Service: Custom
Do not use external ip check: No
DYNDNS Server: updates.dnsomatic.com
User Name: <your DNS-O-Matic/OpenDNS user name>
Password: <your DNS-O-Matic/OpenDNS user name>
Host Name: all.dnsomatic.com
URL: /nic/update?hostname=
Force Update Interval: 2

I shortened the update interval from it’s default (10 days) because I got a couple of times where DNS-O-Matic wasn’t up to date with my IP address. If your router has a setup for DNS-O-Matic, by all means use that instead of creating a custom setup, I don’t have that option with my version of DD-WRT. I hope this helps get Dynamic DNS services setup.

The Lifehacker article didn’t have quite the same success as the article they originally based the idea from. It looks like they spent $60 of their $100 credit to get 8 GB of free space, the original article maxed out 16 GB using just under $10. Both of them used Dropbox while I went a similar route with SugarSync. There are some advantages of SugarSync over Dropbox. The two that stand out the most are they currently offer a larger amount of free storage over Dropbox (5 GB vs. 2 GB), and they don’t cap the maximum amount you can get from their referral bonus (which is also larger than Dropbox, 500 MB vs 250 MB).

While running the ads for about 3 days I spent a total of $43 in credits; this netted me 304 click-throughs, 33 sign-ups, with 13 currently completed that have awarded me bonus space. Of course if those other sign-ups can download the SugarSync software in the future, and I’ll get the bonus space when they do. Read more after the break for some ideas I have regarding this method along with some other ideas for using my free AdWord Credits.

While this works pretty well, I think there are some various tips that I have that might improve on the steps given by Lifehacker.

1. Set the ads Cost-Per-Click (CPC) really low. The original article set the default CPC at $0.05 (five cents) and Lifehacker left theirs at an “Auto” setting which set the CPC at $0.94. This is part of the reason that Lifehacker spent so much on the campaign and the source article only spent $10. I set my default CPC in between at $0.50 and I would recommend setting it lower than that. If I was doing this again, I would set the default at $0.10 and then move some keywords up if I needed to.
2. Be sure to target the ads in all countries and for all languages. Most of my sign-ups came from GMail addresses but I did get a few from non-English speaking countries (.vn, .th and .pl). If you’re feeling up to it you could target just the countries that the service is offered in which will save you any clicks from someone who probably can’t sign up anyway. But be aware that the lower you set your CPC, the more important foreign sign-ups will become (cheaper advertising costs).
3. You need to be aware of the AdWords “Delay.” As much as Google loves to bring real-time information to everyone, the AdWords team hasn’t caught up yet. Any stats that you get from AdWords dashboard are going to be about a day old. But if your campaign is still active, your ads will still be running and you’ll be paying for any clicks. Keep that in mind if you want to stop your campaign before your credit runs out.

• Dropbox space.  This has been the bulk of this post, you can get a max of 8 GB extra for free accounts and 16 GB for their pro accounts.
• SugarSync space. I talked about this here and it is also mentioned in the Lifehacker article comments. SugarSync offers unlimited bonus space for referrals. You get 500 MB if your referral signs up for a free account and 10 GB (bonus space) if they sign up for a paid account.
• SpiderOak: This is a service that is similar to Dropbox and SugarSync. This is one that I found after running my SugarSync ads, it appears they have a couple of different options. One looks like a referral link that grants an additional GB to you and your referral up to a maximum of 50 GB extra. It also looks like they offer an affiliate program that “compensates” (money?) when people sign up for free or paid accounts. I haven’t looked into this yet but getting paid when someone signs up for a free service sounds pretty sweet.
• Other Various Affiliate programs. There are to many of these to list. You can Google anything about making money online and run across plenty. The bulk will usually involves the end user buying something and lets face it, it’s WAY easier to get someone to sign up for a free service than to buy something. But, it might be worth it since the credits are “Free Money” to try your hand at it.

Which brought me to an idea about someway to track this backlog. A quick Google brought up a site called “The Backloggery” which lets you make lists and status’ of video games, but from what I could tell has to be manually updated. This always presents problems because most of the time if it has to be manually done, at some point it won’t get done at all. A favorite achievement tracker of mine is “TrueAchievements” which automatically updates achievements, but is Xbox specific (well, Microsoft gamerscore specific) and doesn’t have a good mechanism to handle backlogs because of the way it’s developed.

So this might be a little bit longer of a wish list that I’m looking for in a site, but if parts can be done separately I don’t see why they couldn’t be consolidated.

• Cross-platform; all consoles and PC.
• It would be interesting to see how overlap (same games on multiple systems) is handled
• As automated as possible.
• There probably will be some points that can’t be automated, but it seems the bulk should be able to.
• Again, it would be interesting to see how a combination of automation and manual updates are handled
• Have some statistics available.
• Track progress over time.
• Incentives to make progress.

Basically I want the best features from The Backloggery, TrueAchievements, xbox360achievements, and ps3trophies all on one easy to use site. Is that so much to ask?

UPDATE Additional thought 3/2/12: Some way to prioritize which games in your backlog you should play first. It would be cool to take different things into account to come up this; like Metacritic score, average time to completion, length of time owned, etc…

Parts List:

1. Old Dell Dimension 4400 – bought at university surplus sale, $5
2. Various old IDE hard drives I had sitting around – two ~20 GB; one 160 GB, probably cost me something at some point…
3. USB thumb drive – “borrowed” from family, free

I followed the standard install guides around the interwebs, going straight to the horses mouth at FreeNAS.org (here) is a good option. I’ll do some quick steps here for install and some of the setup, but let me tell you what the setup looks like. I mentioned that I have the 160 GB drive setup as the boot drive with OS and data partitions, the OS is pretty small so there’s lots of data space. I have the two smaller drives setup in a RAID 1 configuration using the software RAID in FreeBSD.

• First setup the computer to boot from a CD drive. There are some ways that you can install FreeNAS without needing a CD but it’s easier to go ahead and install from a CD.
• Download the liveCD that matches the system you are installing on and burn that onto a CD. Pop that into the computer and boot up the FreeNAS CD. If you are installing to a USB drive don’t plug it in yet, it will write the config file to the USB and will cause errors on the install because the disk is in use.
• Wait until the console setup menu comes on screen (if you want to install to USB you can put it in now) and select option 9 to install to disk

"Console setup"
"*********************"
1 ) Assign Interface
2 ) Set LAN IP address
3 ) Reset WebGUI password
4 ) Reset to factory defaults
5 ) Ping host
6 ) Shell
7 ) Reboot system
8 ) Shutdown system
9 ) Install/Upgrade to hard drive/flash device, etc.

• This will bring up the following install menu, the first 3 are going to be of most interest to us right now.

"Install"
"*********************"
1 ) Install 'embedded' OS on HDD/Flash/USB
2 ) Install 'embedded' OS on HDD/Flash/USB + DATA + SWAP partition
3 ) Install 'full' OS on HDD + DATA + SWAP partition
4 ) upgrade 'embedded' OS from CDROM
5 ) Upgarde 'full' OS from CDROM
6 ) Upgrade and convert 'full' OS to 'embedded'

• After selecting one of the install options you’ll get some info about what it’s going to do. In any of the Install options it should ask you to select the source location and the install location. Once the installation is complete go back to the main menu (press ESC), remove the CD and select option 7 to reboot the computer. Once the computer reboots make sure that Option 9 (Install OS) doesn’t show up, if it does you probably didn’t take out the installation medium before rebooting.
• Select option 1 to assign the network interface you will use. Most of the time if there is just one FreeNAS will use that by default but this makes sure that the OS uses the right interface.
• Once you’re back to the main menu, select option 2 to assign the IP address for the LAN. Most of the time you will use DHCP to automatically get the IP address from your router. Be sure to take note of this IP address so we can do the setup in part 2.
• Back at the main menu select option 5 and try to ping another device on your network to make sure you are connected (optional).

Now you have FreeNAS installed, granted it’s not very useful in it’s current state. We’ll cover the basic setup in Part 2 and start adding some features that you can actually use.

Setup Tab:

• Basic Setup
  • WAN Connection: PPoE
  • Service Name: blank <- I had a problem getting my DSL to connect when I would put in “Verizon DSL” the best thing I could tell from my searches was there is an issue with having a space in the service name.
  • Router Name: DD-WRT
  • IP/Subnet Mask: 192.168.1.1/255.255.255.0
  • DHCP Start IP: 192.168.1.100
  • Three boxes checked for DNSMasq
• DDNS – Future Setup

Wireless Tab:

• Basic
  • Mode: AP
  • Channel: 9
• Security
  • Mode: WPA2 Personal Mixed
• Advanced – All Default

Services Tab:

• Services
  • DHCP Server, Used Domain: LAN & WLAN
  • LAN Domain: huss

Admin Tab:

• Management
  • TCP Timeout: 300

Before

simple, got the job done, not very good looking…

After

This is missing some of the lava rock and some stepping stones but looks much better as you can see.

A little explanation first, I’m going to mark my progress as best I can for the games I have. Games that are crossed off will be sold/traded when finished otherwise they are kept. Obviously I can’t really trade or sell my PC games very easily so all of them are going to be kept. From newest console to oldest (PC games last):

Wii

• Lego Batman – More than half
• No More Heroes – Just Started
• Redsteel – Not Started
• Star Wars: Force Unleashed – Finished
• Zelda: twilight Princess – Finished

Nintendo DS

• Zelda: Phantom Hourglass – Finished

X-box (not 360)

• Halo
• Halo 2
• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

PS2

• Devil May Cry
• Final Fantasy X
• Grand Theft Auto 3
• Grand Theft Auto Vice City

PC

• Half-Life 2
• HL2 Episode 1
• HL2 Episode 2
• Portal – Finished Main Story

DH

MusicBrainz is one of the better tools I’ve used to clean up meta-data, especially if it doesn’t even exist for some files. It has an ability to scan files to generate an “audio fingerprint” and match that against it’s database to come up with possible matches. The two weaknesses I’ve run into using it so far is that it’s database is entirely community driven, which isn’t itself a bad thing but it seems that there’s not a good way to remove invalid data from their database. You’ll understand once you search their database and get 4 album results with the exact same name but 4 different number of tracks for each, or a slightly different capitalization scheme. The only other weakness i’ve run into is probably with the software i’m using, but the Picard tagger doesn’t have the ability to play music while you work (a must if you are using it’s scan functionality). Here is the documentation page for the Picard tagger which is the one i’m currently working with. From there start with the Getting started guide or go to the more in depth documentation.

MediaMonkey is the album art heavy weight that I’ve seen. it’s one of the few that will embed album art into the music file if it can, and flexible enough to save it to a file if it can’t. MediaMonkey will also tag files, but doesn’t have the scan feature of MusicBrainz. By default will will use Amazon to find album art, although that can be changed with various plugins. another great thing is that it has a built in player so you can play music while you’re working on your music (seems kinda obvious, right) which makes the work go by so much quicker. One of the better write ups I’ve seen so far is an older write up in Lifehacker with step-by-step instructions for embedding album art using MediaMonkey, even though it’s old, everything they’ve written still holds true.

Now go forth and rid the world of bad meta-data and album-artless music files…

There are a number of other things you can do if you feel to lazy to put together this milk jug, simply putting a rock in the tank can have the same affect, of course you’ll want to be VERY careful not to crack the tank and make sure to clean it off very well before you put it in the tank. As you can see you can use about anything to take up space in the tank, the big criteria is that it doesn’t get in the way of the mechanism or damage the toilet or septic system.

and the fact of the matter is that if you have more than just a simple on-board video card you may already be set to do multi-monitor setups. To determine if you have more than one display available right-click on your desktop and select “properties.” after clicking on the settings tab all you need to see is more than one display to determine if your machine is capable of running a dual-monitor setup. Now, granted just because you are capable doesn’t mean you can run a dual-monitor and get the performance you want.

Leave this window open because we’ll need to activate the monitor here, but first grab that second monitor you have sitting around.

1. Find the extra monitor port you should have and plug the monitor into that extra monitor port you have. Technically it doesn’t matter the size of the monitor so it doesn’t have to be the same size as your current primary monitor but it does make for a more enjoyable dual-monitor setup.
2. Once the monitor is plugged into both the extra monitor port and a power outlet and set in a good position on your desk, we need to activate the secondary monitor in the display settings window we have open.
   1. To do this select the secondary monitor in the display settings by clicking on the monitor w/ the number 2 on it.
   2. Then check the box that says “extend my desktop to this monitor.” It’s important to note that the resolutions, color depth and other settings don’t have to be the same for each monitor, but again keeping them the same makes for a better experience.
   3. Make sure your second monitor is on, click “Apply” and keep your fingers crossed. If the second monitor flashes on congratulations, your second monitor should now be an extended desktop of your first. You’ll want to take this time and adjust all the settings to make your dual monitor setup to your liking. You’ll want to be sure and click the “Identify” button to flash a number up on the monitor then change the layout on settings box to match what is actually on your desk; for example if you have monitor 2 on the left side of monitor 1 you’ll more than likely want to drag the second monitor to the other side of the primary in the display settings window. Depending on your desk layout this might be easier than trying to move the monitors around.
3. Take this time to play around with all the settings, each time you make a change click the apply button to test it out before committing to the change. This also has the added benefit of if a change you make has a negative affect, all you have to do is wait and windows should change the settings back to original. Of course your mileage may vary and there’s no real way to write for all setups.

If something didn’t go according to plan or your setup can’t handle dual monitors as is, you’ll have to do a little extra work to get a second monitor setup. Most likely buy a second video card or a video card that can handle dual output. Here are two GeForce 6800 cards with 256MB video RAM that will easily handle your dual monitor setup. Both are running $75 at the time of this writing.

XFX GeForce 6800 for PCI Express

XFX GeForce 6800 for AGP

Jump to Materials List

Obviously you’ll need to download and install a version of KeePass. There’s KeePass for Windows, KeePassX for Mac and Linux and KeePass Portable a windows version installable on removable media to take with you wherever you go. All of the versions can use the same database so that way you can keep one version of your database and use it between all types of computers.

1. After installation we need to create a new database, do this by clicking the “New” button in the toolbar, under the file menu, or by pressing CTRL+N.
2. Next, you are prompted to set the master password and optionally a key file. Type in the password you want to use, you’ll see a scale below the input which indicates how secure your password is (the higher the better). Be sure to remember this password, if you forget it there is NO backdoor to get your entries from the database. If you want to use a key file along with the password for improved security, check the box to use both and select a location to save it (be sure to see the note about key files after the setup steps). When you click ok it asks you to retype the master password to ensure you got it right. If you elected to use a key file follow the sub-step below if not you can skip to step 3.
   1. If you are using a key file KeePass now needs some random input to generate a key for that file, and you can do that using random mouse input or random keyboard input or both (using both is your best option). So click the “Use Mouse as Random Source” button and start waiving the cursor around in the static filled box until the bar below the button is full.
   2. Next go over and start filling in the text box with random keyboard input; letters, numbers, special characters, the more the better also be sure to use a mix of upper and lower case letters. Don’t worry your not going to need to remember this later… When your done click ok.
3. After setting up all the security related to your database, KeePass suggests some password groups for you (note to KeePassX users: I don’t think this is the case and you will need to set them up yourself, the default groups are a main General folder with subgroups of Windows, Network, Internet, eMail , and Homebanking ). We’ll go into how to make changes to password groups later, for now lets create our first password entry.
4. So now the meat of what we’ll be doing, creating entries in the database.
   1. Click the “Add Entry” button on the toolbar , under the edit menu, or press CTRL +Y to get the add entry window.
   2. Select the group and icon to use for this entry if the defaults don’t suit your needs.
   3. Fill in a title for the entry, your username , and Password along with a URL, Note, or expiration date (technically you don’t need any of that data but what good is a blank entry). You can also import from a number of other formats under the “File – Import From” menu to save some data entry.
5. The main window works like a standard explorer type window, you can drag entries around to move them between groups, you can drag groups around to make them subgroups, and right click on a group to rearrange it. You can create, modify or delete groups or subgroups by right clicking in the group pane or under the edit menu.

Now that we have everything setup the way we like lets briefly go over how to use KeePass, some useful options and some tips. The most basic way to use KeePass is copy the password to the clipboard, by default KeePass will clear the clipboard after 10 seconds for added security. There is also an auto-type feature but it should be noted that this could expose your username and password to keyloggers, also make sure the cursor is in the username field. The default for the auto-type feature is to type you username, press tab, type your password, and press enter if the site you are on expects something different you’ll have to set up a custom auto-type. Both of these can be accessed using the edit menu with the entry you want to use selected.

The options window under the tools menu has a number of features that are useful when turned on. Under the security tab the Lock workspace on minimize and on locking Windows or switching Users requires the master password to be re-entered when one of those actions occurs. Turn one or both of these on if the computer you use could be accessed by other people. In the Interface tab check minimize to tray to save space on your taskbar. Under the Setup tab you can create a file association with kdb files so KeePass will open any kdb files you double click on. Look under the options on the Advanced tab and check/uncheck an features you want to enable/disable.

For those of you using KeePass Portable, the size of the USB drive shouldn’t come into play unless you are using it for other things. With that said I’d recommend at least a 2 GB USB drive because once you start with the portable applications it can be hard to stop. I have a 2 GB USB drive and I’m currently using half just for many different portable applications, leaving me the other half for data files and any other must have applications I might find.

The last tip I can offer is to let you know that you can store any data in KeePass that you might not want to write down because of security. Any ID numbers that can easily be forgotten; like social security numbers, drivers license numbers, passport numbers can be kept in KeePass and since the database is encrypted you don’t need to worry about these being stored on your computer. You can even keep credit card numbers securely for when you are shopping online and don’t want to have to go get your purse or wallet to get your credit card information. For any additional help you can visit the KeePass homepage at http://keepass.info/

Note about key files: Key files are meant to be a separate part of the overall key and therefore only really make sense when kept separate from the database like on a floppy, USB drive, or CD. However, if you use a key file, you must have this file in order to open the database. So if you have the file on a separate media and loose it with no backup copy your entires are lost because you will not be able to get into the database. For further explanation see http://keepass.info/help/base/keys.html

Materials List

• Software (Pick any you need from below):
  • KeePass (For Windows) – FREE!
  • KeePassX (For Mac or Linux) – FREE!
  • KeePass Portable (For Windows, Easily used on removable media to take with you) – FREE!
• Hardware (Optional, but you will need a computer…):