Oh Hai, I Rebuilt Your Server
October 02, 2008

Over the weekend I rebuilt my home server system with a fair bit of excitement. I'm incredibly thankful that I've finally got Linux running at home again and have nice quality hardware to route my delicious packets with. I'm aware that I've been lacking in postings lately, so thought that I would post up my firewall script for sharing. Enjoy. :)

#!/bin/bash

INTERNAL=eth0
EXTERNAL=eth1

PORTS="22 80 443"

# Clear out existing stuff...
iptables --flush
iptables --table nat --flush
iptables --delete-chain
iptables --table nat --delete-chain

# Restricting all incoming traffic...
iptables -P INPUT DROP
iptables -P FORWARD DROP

# Allowing specified ports...
for i in $PORTS; do (
	iptables -A INPUT -j ACCEPT -i $EXTERNAL -p tcp --destination-port $i
	iptables -A INPUT -j ACCEPT -i $INTERNAL -p tcp --destination-port $i
	echo "Allowed incoming connections on port $i."
); done


# Allow all local connections...
iptables -A INPUT -j ACCEPT -i $INTERNAL

# Allowing all local interfaces...
iptables -A INPUT -j ACCEPT -i lo

# Allowing ping...
iptables -A INPUT  -p icmp --icmp-type echo-request -j ACCEPT
iptables -A OUTPUT -p icmp --icmp-type echo-request -j ACCEPT
iptables -A OUTPUT -p icmp --icmp-type 8 -d 0/0 -m state --state NEW,ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT  -p icmp --icmp-type 0 -s 0/0 -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT

# Related traffic should be OK...
iptables -A INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT

# Forwarding to squid...
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i $INTERNAL -p tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-port 3128

# Restricting hosts...  
for i in $RESTRICTED_HOSTS; do (
    iptables -A INPUT  -s $i -j DROP
    iptables -A OUTPUT -d $i -j DROP

    iptables -A INPUT  -i $EXTERNAL -s $i -j DROP
    iptables -A OUTPUT -o $EXTERNAL -s $i -j DROP
    iptables -A INPUT  -i $EXTERNAL -p udp -s $i -j DROP
    iptables -A INPUT  -i $EXTERNAL -p icmp -s $i -j DROP
); done


# NAT forwarding...
iptables -P OUTPUT  ACCEPT
iptables -P FORWARD ACCEPT
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o $EXTERNAL -j MASQUERADE
iptables -A FORWARD -i $INTERNAL -j ACCEPT
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

echo "SUCCESS"

Penne con Tomato y Salmon
September 29, 2008

Om nom. I have some delicious seafood recipe up my sleeve for an awesome pasta dish that fills your kitchen with fantastic smells and establishes a great basic sauce that can dress up any pasta night. What is it? It's salmon in a fantastically simple tomato sauce that will make any Italian proud. Primary constituents for this dish are tomatoes, salmon, onion and garlic. These are always a great combination and I'll shopw you how to make them into an awesome pasta dish.

Ingredients

• Salmon (I used a salmon steak here, as it has some fantastic fat that you know I'm all about)
• 1 medium onion (diced)
• 4 cloves garlic (diced)
• 3 branches of basil (chopped)
• 4 roma tomatoes
• 1 beefsteak tomatoes (I use the roma for intense flavors and this beefsteak for increasing available volume)
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil (don't skimp on this, seriously)
• Parmesan Cheese (some good cheese is worth the money, seriously you owe it to yourself to try this at least once)
• Red wine (something you would drink, of course)
• Penne pasta (or anything else thick, this is a thick coarse sauce that benefits from a big pasta capable of taking it up)

Method - Mise en place

Assemble everything before hand that you can. Chop your onions, dice your garlic and cut up your basil. Prep your salmon by cutting along the skin (seperating it) and removing any bones that you can find. Massage the salmon a bit and remove *any* bones that you feel. Reserve the skin, you're going to fry it seperately to make some awesome cracklin'.

Method - Tomato Prep

Ok, so you're working with fresh tomatoes and not canned ones. This is the way that things should be. Don't compromise your flavor for ease with a sauce, its so easy to make a right tomato sauce that you shouldn't let a little extra step keep you from it. Bring a pot of water to boil and gently place your tomatoes in for about 5 to 10 minutes. What you're doing now is trying to peel the tomatoes to get the skins out of the way so that you can make a nice smooth sauce. You'll know your tomatoes are ready when they start to split out of their skin. Once they're splitting, plop them into a colander and run them under cold water to prevent any further cooking.

By boiling the tomatoes you're making it nice and easy to peel off the skins. You should be able to remove them with your fingers quite easily, if not - they need more cooking.

Once done, just remove the skin

Method - Pasta

The pasta should be started second and its incredibly simple, really. Just bring some salted water to a boil and insert pasta. I threw in some of the wine to color the pasta and bring it more in line with the rest of the dish. Let it boil for about 15 minutes or until its al dente (tender, but a still firm). Midway through you should begin crafting your sauce...

Method - Sauce

This is pretty easy too. Heat a pan up to a medium temperature and add a good dose of quality olive oil and then pop in your garlic, onions and basil. Don't let this get too hot, if you see anything browning remove your pan and lower the temp. You're trying to make everything nice and soft - don't go fast, this isn't good here. When everything in the pan is fairly soft add in your tomatoes. I like to add in some chicken stock here too, just to make everything more tasty. This will continue for about 5 to 10 minutes until everything is nice and soft.

Whene everything's getting nice and soft you're going to be engaging in a bit of cheating. Take your sauce and pour it straight into a blender and get to making your sauce nice and smooth. I know, the traditional Italian will tell you that this is hogwash - but its far better than cracking a can of tinned tomatoes or *gasp* premade sauce.

Method - Salmon

Once your sauce is feeling nice and chunky and is in your blender, plop it back in on a low heat and get to working on your salmon. Crank a nice grill-pan up to medium high and make sure its totally hot. If you touch your salmon in and it doesn't sizzle, take it out and let your pan keep heating. Get your salmon and its skin in there and sizzling for a good 4 or 5 minutes and flip it. It'll be starting to change color and you'll definitely know when its done cooking.

Method - Finishing

Once your salmon is all done and your sauce is back in its pan go ahead and mix the pasta, salmon and sauce all together. You want this to cook together a bit for afew minutes in order to let al lthe flavors combine into some awesome beautiful flavor. Put the pasta in a couple bowls and go ahead and grate some of your fresh parmesan over this delicious combination of flavors to add some extra sharpness to the whole affair.

Five Spice Powder Ribs
September 24, 2008

Ribs are an awesomely easy meal to make well, and only require some preparation ahead of time to really shine. These particular ribs are spiced up with some fantastic Chinese five spice powder which lends them a unique, strong and unexpected flavor that totally rocks. They just need a little dry rub, a little marination and then about 45~60 minutes in the oven. Simple.

Ingredients

• Ribs. I used beef short ribs here, but pork or beef ribs in general will work well with this method
• Chinese five spice powder
• Garlic powder
• Red chili flakes
• White sugar
• Brown sugar
• Salt
• Soy sauce
• Worcestershire sauce
• Chicken stock

The Method - Flavoring

These require some time spent up front, but its mostly hands off. Mix up all of your dry ingredients in roughly equal proportions (except the garlic powder, use about half of your proportion) and start rubbing it nice and hard into the meat. You're doing a dry rub here that's going to be spending about a day melding its flavor into the meat, so use some elbow grease.

Once you've got the meat rubbed down, plop it into a high rimmed bowl or baking dish, cover and stick it in your fridge for at least 8 hours. Let those flavors permeate nice and deep.

Now, 8 hours have passed and your meat's got a lovely fragrance to it. Take your soy sauce and chicken stock and fill the bottom of your bowl about 3/8 of the way (I know, I had to be difficult) and squirt in a couple dashes of Worcestershire sauce. Go ahead and toss your ribs around to get liquid all over them and then put 'em back in the fridge for at least 2 or 3 hours. If you can, toss 'em around a bit half way through to get some nice easy coating.

The Method - Cooking

This is where the ribs become dirt simple. Once you've got your ribs all marinated and flavored up, kick your oven up to 350. If they're not already in one, get your ribs and they're tasty marinating juices into a high-rimmed oven-safe container and cover them in foil. Stick it in and wait about 45 minutes to an hour. The meat should easily come off of the bone when you've poked it with a fork and oh, the delicious smell will be filling your house.

These weren't actually dinner, I had already eaten about 4 hours earlier. Despite the fact that I was already utterly full I sat down and consumed three of these babies to great satisfaction. The five spice powder could be a bit difficult to find, but its certainly worth it once you obtain some. Once you do, be sure to give these ribs a try as they're a nice change from bbq / teriyaki ribs.

Shrimp Bisque - Holy Delicious Batman
September 22, 2008

Sunday cooking is always a good time for me, as the fridge is usually well stocked and I've got plenty of time to sit and stew about what I'm going to make with the delicious that's present. Tonight I turned to an old favorite for me, bisque. My usual bisque of choice is usually crab, but Paula Dean bless her butter loving heart, decided to come on my television and demonstrate shrimp bisque and I knew what was getting made this evening. Superior om noms came of this.

Ingredients

• 1 to 2 cups Shrimp (shell on, uncooked)
• 1 Onion
• About five cloves of garlic
• About 7 spears of asparagus (don't want it overpowering the bisque
• 1 package baby port mushrooms (you could use button, but... they're button.)
• A bunch of parsley (fresh, silly)
• 2 good sized potatos
• Tabasco (this can be omitted if you are weak.)
• 2 ribs of celery (pick from the inside'ish part of the celery bunch, its always better than the outer ribs)
• 1 can chicken stock (you could use fish stock, but I had chicken)
• About 1/2 quart heavy whipping cream
• Buttah.
• Optionally, some bread to make crutons from
• Dried Spices && Herbs: Dill, chili powder, Basil
• A couple good swigs of white wine into this baby would be awesome

I know, the list is a bit long but its fairly cheap to obtain these ingredients (save the shrimp, of course) and this really does make a ton of tasty food. You could also substitute canned crab in this recipe and it would be some damned good crab bisque instead (good stuff can be had from Geisha for about $1.50/can and you'd need 2 cans).

The Process

Before you get started with anything, and this is true of cooking in general, assemble, chop and prep your ingredients as much as possible. Crush and dice the garlic, mince the onion, break up the asparagus (you can hold the top in one hand and the bottom in another, snap it and it will naturally snap where you need to discard), chop the parsley, peel and chop the potatoes etc. Reserve the shells from the shrimp as you're peeling and deveining them.

This is called 'Mise en Place' or everything in (its) place. Its the concept of having everything ready so that while you're applying heat and time is of the essence, everything is where you expect and know it to be - making it a pleasurable experience of combination instead of a frantic dash to chop and find things.

k, good. You're got mise en place down pat? You're almost ready to get started. Group your onion and celery together with the garlic, and keep everything else separate. All of these items have different cooking times and since this is a bisque, we're shooting to have some freshness retained in the ingredients.

Get the potatoes boiling in one pot (I used a pan, no more pots available), put the reserved shrimp shells into a pot of boiling water (we're extracting the flavor to put back into the bisque) and get some butter melting in a LARGE pot over medium heat. You're well on your way to making some delicious. Once the butter's melted, start throwing in your onion+celery+garlic mix-up and let 'em sweat down a bit. You're not trying to get them to caramelize at all, so don't let the heat get up too high.

Your kitchen should be smelling lovely at this point and your cats should be coming to bother you. This is a good sign. Once the onion-celery-garlic almost trinity (onion, celery and carrot is a common start for French dishes) is starting to get a little soft pour in your can of chicken stock and mix in your dried herbs && spices. Keep it at a very low simmer for about 15 to 20 minutes until everything's very soft and you can't stop tasting the stock.

Do keep an eye on the shrimp shells. I wasn't paying attention and it boiled over creating quite a mess on my stove and sending me to panic mode cleaning everything up. Once you don't boil over your shrimp, it would be a good idea to start assembling your croutons.

Half-time: The Croutons

Sure, you could buy a big bag of store-bought stale crap. We're not about that over here, we want delicious and awesome and I'm not afraid of putting in a little elbow grease. Take any bread you've got handy and rip it up into some nice hearty chunks that won't be too big for you to take in a single bite. Toss 'em up with some olive oil (alas, I was out of olive oil and had to use peanut) and some of your dried spice/herbage. Get your oven going to 400F and stick 'em in for about 10 minutes or until crunchy. Obviously, these also rock for salads and warm fresh croutons always impress any friends you might have over.

Interesting side note, wikipedia suggests sautee'ing as an option. I wonder...

Back to The Bisque!

So, you've got your croutons getting ready and your bisque is starting to shape up with nice edible texture and deliciousness to the almost-trinity in the chicken stock. You're eating it straight out of the pot and its tastes good, right? This is the time to start adding in your potatoes and the rest of your fresh ingredients.

Strain your potatoes in a collander and get them into your forming bisque. While you're doing this, go ahead and take a turkey baster and get a good shot of the broth from the boiling shells. This will add a good shrimpy taste the whole matter, without having to overcook the shrimp. You can of course continue boiling the shells to get some awesome fish stock on hand.

Start with getting your mushrooms and parsley in there and letting them cook for about five minutes. Make sure that they're at a point where you'd eat them before mixing in the asparagus as you don't want it cooking for too long. If you've got Tabasco sauce on your mind, you can throw it in now too.

Once the asparagus is edible from the soup (notice a trend? I'm usually no longer hungry by the time I'm done eating. ;p) you're going to put your shrimp in. These guys should only take about five minutes or so and will change color to let you know they're done.

At this time begin mixing in your cream and sift in a bit of flour if you want it thicker. Your bisque is almost ready and your cats should be perched on your shoulder trying to snag a bite as you taste. It'll look a bit discolored at first, but after a bit it will pick up and get a nice creamy color. If it doesn't add more cream. This is the time to make sure everything tastes exactly how you want it, so feel free to season with salt, pepper or more tabasco sauce as you see fit.

Fin.

Your croutons should be getting done about now, and your bisque is definitely shaped up and looking good. Get yourself a hearty ladel full and top it with a nice layer of your giant croutons and be prepared for some awesome tastiness.

As usual, you can find the full photo set up @ flickr.

Digsby; I'm Digging It
September 22, 2008

Oh look, a screenshot. Its been forever since I've shared one, but I wanted to give everyone a good look at the latest IM client that David has gotten me hooked on; Digsby. Not only is it quite an attractive client (could you have guessed that I'm drawn to attractive looking things?) but it has some of the coolest functionality this side of Web 2.0.

If you want to see some of my older screenshots from when I ran Linux; you can get them over on my screenshots flickr set.

Its more of a 'social networking' client than straight up IM. It has full support for your standard IM services, of course, but it also has gmail, Facebook, myspace (ugh) and Twitter support out of the box. Its an awesome way to keep tabs on what's going around in your social circle. I love being able to at a glance check out what's going on, without having to visit each individual site or be running five different clients. (although Twitterific does pwn me on my Macbook).

It's also got fantastic theming support and some damned good looking themes. Right now I'm running a tweaked version of the iPhone Theme. It leaves a little to be desired in terms of font appearances, but I feel that it's worlds above the offerings of Pidgin and such. It certainly looks more at home in Vista than Pidgin ever did, and the chat window is definitely very attractive - even knocking off several Adium themes.

Its not without its flaws though. Like I mentioned, it leaves some to be desired with font rendering and choices. It also requires a central login to their site and your login credentials are stored up there. I'm always a little leary, but not enough to prevent me from trying it, of things like that. All in all though, I'm definitely digging it.

What are you waiting for? Go out and download it now for Windows, OSX And even Linux.

Yes, I recognize the irony of having a FireFox wallpaper whilst running Google Chrome.

Teriyaki Pork Chops - Om. Nom.
September 16, 2008

Yes, I actually ate dinner this evening. Its been awhile since I've taken the time to cook / eat dinner, so this is definitely fitting. Teriyaki anything is always a staple for me, since its so incredibly easy to make just about any meat delicious and Asian (which are two important qualities for my enjoying food).

The ingredient list is pretty simple...

• Soy Sauce
• Worcestershire Sauce
• Brown Sugar
• Pork Chops
• Lemon Juice

Like I said, pretty simple. Combine all of these things in a large bowl and marinate for at least a half hour. Overnight would be optimum. Confused about how much to use? Its an art, just try to get some good swigs of Worcestershire sauce in with a large helping of soy sauce and a couple teaspoons of lemon juice. Pat the meat down with the brown sugar and massage it all thoroughly.

White wine or sake would be a welcome addition to this marinade. :) The little bits you see in the picture are chopped ginger, which most people don't like but I absolutely adore. Enjoy it if you wish. :)

Cooking these is the simplest thing in the world. Heat a good frying pan (in my case, a cast iron skillet) up to a nice medium high heat. Like most pan-fried meats, you want your pork chops to sizzle nicely as soon as they touch the pan. If they don't, remove them until the pan's hot enough.

After the pork chops are all done, you can pop in some chopped onions and brown them up for additional flavor. I deglazed the pan with some white wine which made for an excellent sauce to top the pork chops with.

In the end, definitely delicious and something I make all the time.

Caturfriday Updates
September 13, 2008

I know, I know. There have been no updates in awhile. This time of year always ends up creating a lull in my posting frequency. There's so much going on, so many things to do and people to see that there's no time for posting.

I've written a bunch of songs, only a handful recorded but I'm kind of scared to post them. I've shared them with a few people who tell me that they think they're good, but its hard to tell if someone's telling you the truth or being nice. I'm going to the music store tomorrow to pick up some more recording stuff, since I broke my cheap-ass USB mic a few weeks back.

Over the last week or so I've managed to lose 4lbs, cut back my coffee consumption to 1 cup a day and have absolutely no soda. I also finally managed to do 17 reps doing free-weight lifts with a 35lb weight. I'm fairly pleased with myself, but feel that I have a lot more to go. I gained 10lbs over the Summer, and want to lose them already.

For now, I'm going back to listening to some Asteria.

New Kitties
September 08, 2008

This was a super busy week, so none of my personal projects got any real attention. There's new kitties up on my Caturday page, though. Enjoy them. :)