Visualize Your Disk Usage, Console Hacking

I've posted a new entry titled Visualize Your Disk Usage at Free Software Magazine. Ever wonder about what's been eating up your free space in Windows? Two free utilities that graphically represent disk utilization are analyzed and compared.

Continuing the discussion about subjugating game consoles... Over the last week, hackers have had a field day with the Wii. The WiiMote can be used in Windows using GlovePIE (see this HowTo for the script) and on OSX with DarwiinRemote. There's a video demo of the Wii-Mote controlling Half-Life 2 in Windows. If you're interested in Wii (well, Gamecube) home brew and emulators, check out wraggster's tutorial on how to exploit the GC Action Replay for just that.

PlayStation 3 Linux has also gotten some notice as it's pretty easy to just create an image of a Blu-ray disc, including movies and games. Inevitable and not particularly shocking, but some people just get the wrong idea and think that Linux is a piracy enabler. A tool is a tool; it's up to the user to decide whether or not to use it for good.

I've been teaching myself Ruby on Rails at work. It's turning out to be a great way of making CRUD (Create, Retrieve, Update, and Delete) based applications quickly and easily. I ran through part one of the classic Rolling with Ruby on Rails tutorial, turned around and in less than an hour created a prototype application that would have taken me at least a day to get to the same point in PHP. I do like how it pretty much forces you to use the Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern, separating business from presentation. Much to learn and even more to do before it's even close to production ready...

Speaking of PHP, I'm traveling to New York City on December 10th for a week-long Zend PHP Certification Boot Camp. While I've been using PHP and developing applications for a couple years now, it'll be nice to have some formalized training and certification. In my free time, when I'm not studying or visiting friends, I'm planning on watching David Lynch's Inland Empire and maybe even catch Avenue Q, the subversive Sesame Street parody.

I'm currently writing a follow-up for to the How to Configure an $80 File Server in 45 Minutes entry. I'll discuss how to take steps to protect, audit and secure your server. Imagine the relief you'll feel when you eliminate the script kiddie dictionary attacks from your auth.log!