PREFACE

This guide is originally written by Corey DeGrandchamp who is an author on Tech Jawa, so it is posted here as well. For the original article (same content) please visit http://corey.degrandchamp.com/2012/02/01/guide-setup-working-siriproxy-three-little-pigs/

This guide is to tell you how to setup your own PRIVATE (or I suppose public…) SiriProxy server using the extremely well put-together “Three Little Pigs” proxy. It allows iPhone 4S’s and in the future iPad 3′s to feed Siri authentication keys/tokens to the server for other iOS devices to use. It also allows the use of SiriProxy plugins which allows for some advanced commands and very tech-savvy individuals to use Siri for things like home automation. We won’t get into that much of it, we just are trying to get iPhone 4 users up on Siri!

REQUIREMENTS

iPhone 4S (Or a friend/family member willing to help, even remotely).
iPhone 4 or 3GS running iOS 5.0.1 jailbroken. Save time by installing Spire on it now!
A dedicated, or VPS server running Ubuntu 11.10.
PuTTY, or a way to remotely access your server.

THANKS

First off, this guide is based on one written by Jeudi, but I had a ton of trouble with his. This should be some touch-ups and command changes, so thanks to him for the original, or else I would have been totally flying blind with all the Ruby stuff that follows (even though that’s where I had the most trouble…) Also thanks to Jacob and James who were kind enough to feed me some keys during testing stages.

STEP 1 – SERVER SETUP

Get your server setup!
If you haven’t already, go ahead and install Ubuntu 11.10.

Install all available updates, this can usually be done while installing the OS even.

Once all that is set, be sure to update your root password if it’s a brand new server.

sudo passwd root

Once you’ve changed your root password login as root, if you’re using a server with a GUI, make sure you log in as “Other” and then put root as the username and the password you just created.

STEP 2 – INSTALL BASICS

Issue all the following commands, if you get errors for dnsmasq that’s ok, but you shouldn’t get any other errors at this point.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y nano
sudo apt-get install -y dnsmasq
sudo apt-get install -y build-essential
sudo apt-get install -y openssl
sudo apt-get install -y libreadline6
sudo apt-get install -y libreadline6-dev
sudo apt-get install -y curl
sudo apt-get install -y git-core
sudo apt-get install -y zlib1g
sudo apt-get install -y zlib1g-dev
sudo apt-get install -y libssl-dev
sudo apt-get install -y libyaml-dev
sudo apt-get install -y libsqlite3-0
sudo apt-get install -y sqlite3
sudo apt-get install -y libxml2-dev
sudo apt-get install -y libxslt-dev
sudo apt-get install -y autoconf
sudo apt-get install -y libc6-dev
sudo apt-get install -y ncurses-dev
sudo apt-get install -y automake
sudo apt-get install -y libtool
sudo apt-get install -y bison
sudo apt-get install -y subversion
sudo apt-get install -y gcc
sudo apt-get install -y g++

If you get a dnsmasq starting error.

sudo nano /etc/dnsmasq.conf

At around line 78, change

#user=

to

user=root

Sane and close by pressing CTRL+O then Enter then CTRL+X.

STEP 3 – INSTALL RUBY

Download & Install RVM

sudo apt-get install -y rvm

sudo bash < <(curl -s https://raw.github.com/wayneeseguin/rvm/master/binscripts/rvm-installer)

Activate RVM

[[ -s "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ]] && . "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm"

Add RVM to your .bash_profile

echo '[[ -s "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ]] && . "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" # Load RVM function' >> ~/.bash_profile

If you're using putty or remote terminal access, restart it now.

Next install Ruby 1.9.3

rvm install 1.9.3

If you get a rvm command not found error, try this...

ln -s /usr/local/rvm/bin/rvm /usr/bin/

and then retry the previous step.

Set RVM to use 1.9.3 by default.

rvm use 1.9.3 --default

STEP 4 - RUBY SETUP

Run the following commands.

rvm gem update

rvm gem update --system

Edit gemrc

nano ~/.gemrc

Add this line with a return at the end.

gem: --bindir /usr/local/bin --no-ri --no-rdoc

To save and close .gemrc, press CTRL+O then Enter then CTRL+X.

Install the following gems.

rvm gem install eventmachine - -with-ssl-dir=/usr/bin/openssl
rvm gem install httparty
rvm gem install rails
rvm gem install json
rvm gem install uuidtools
rvm gem install rake
rvm gem install bundler
rvm gem install CFPropertyList

STEP 5 - INSTALL WEB INTERFACE

Run the following commands.

sudo apt-get install -y libmysqlclient-dev

rvm gem install mysql

sudo apt-get install -y apache2

Test if your server is online by going to http://server.ip-or.hostname/

Next we need to get PHP ready.

sudo apt-get install -y php5

sudo apt-get install -y libapache2-mod-php5

Restart Apache

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Install MySQL

sudo apt-get install -y mysql-server

Connect to MySQL

mysql -h localhost -u root -p

Create the required database

CREATE DATABASE siri;

Type exit to close the MySQL session.

Install phpMyAdmin

sudo apt-get install -y phpmyadmin

When it asks you which package to reconfigure automatically choose apache2, and answer yes to the second question.
This will also ask for your password three times.

Edit php.ini

sudo nano /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

Change around line 932, find

;   extension=msql.so

Change to

extension=msql.so

To save and close, press CTRL+O then Enter then CTRL+X.

Prepare phpMyAdmin

sudo ln -s /usr/share/phpmyadmin /var/www/phpmyadmin

Then restart Apache

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

You can test by going to http://server.ip-or.hostname/phpmyadmin/

STEP 6 - INSTALL THREE LITTLE PIGS SIRIPROXY

Clone the git repo.

git clone https://github.com/jimmykane/The-Three-Little-Pigs-Siri-Proxy

Change your directory.

cd The-Three-Little-Pigs-Siri-Proxy

If you have a security alert, continue with yes.

Generate the SiriProxy gem.

rvm all do rake install

Make a .sirproxy directory.

mkdir ~/.siriproxy

Move the config.

cp ./config.example.yml ~/.siriproxy/config.yml

Set up your own config.

sudo nano ~/.siriproxy/config.yml

You'll need to set your database password and change your.siri.proxy.server.com to your IP or hostname.
Save the file. CTRL+O then Enter then CTRL+X.
Edit openssl.cnf

sudo nano /etc/ssl/openssl.cnf

Around line 148, find this...

commonName  = Common Name (eg, YOUR name)
commonName_max  = 64

And directly below it, add this.

0.commonName = Common Name (eg, YOUR name)
0.commonName_default = guzzoni.apple.com
0.commonName_max = 64
1.commonName = Common Name (eg, YOUR name)
1.commonName_default = YOUR.IP.OR.HOSTNAME.HERE
1.commonName_max = 64

Close by pressing CTRL+O then Enter then CTRL+X.

Time to generate the certificate.

rvm all do siriproxy gencerts

Now you MUST install this ca.pem on the iPhone 4S and the iPhone 4/3GS that will be using Siri via Spire...
Email it to yourself, or you can put it on the web portion of your server for quick access via Mobile Safari.

sudo chmod -R 777 /var/www

cp /root/.siriproxy/ca.pem /var/www/ca.pem

With the above method your ca.pem is located at http://server.ip-or.hostname/ca.pem

Now we must bundle SiriProxy.

rvm all do siriproxy bundle

Then create the tables in the siri database.

rvm all do siriproxy gentables

STEP 7 - SETTING UP DNSMASQ

Setting up the dnsmasq.conf

sudo nano /etc/dnsmasq.conf

At around line 63, find the following

#address=double-click.net/127.0.0.1

Under it, add this...

address=/guzzoni.apple.com/YOUR.IP.OR.HOSTNAME

To close dnsmasq.conf, press CTRL+O then Enter then CTRL+X.
Then restart dnsmasq with the following.

sudo /etc/init.d/dnsmasq restart

STEP 8 - INSTALL WEB INTERFACE

We need to move some files, issue each of these commands.

cd

sudo chmod 777 /var/www

sudo cp -R The-Three-Little-Pigs-Siri-Proxy/webInterface/* /var/www/

sudo chmod -R 777 /var/www

Next we need to edit the config, if it gives an error ignore it for now.

nano /var/www/inc/config.inc.php

In this file, you'll want to replace your hostname with your hostname or IP address, as well as set an admin username and password for the web interface. Be sure to update your MySQL password here as well to your root password!
Close the file by pressing CTRL+O then Enter then CTRL+X.
Now we test...

mv /var/www/index.html /var/www/index.html.bk

Head to http://server.ip-or.hostname/
You should see the Three Little Pigs interface!

STEP 9 - START SIRI PROXY

First let us make sure named isn't interfering with dnsmasq.

sudo /etc/init.d/dnsmasq stop

sudo killall named

sudo /etc/init.d/dnsmasq start

Let's start SiriProxy now...

cd ~/The-Three-Little-Pigs-Siri-Proxy

rvm all do siriproxy server

If you'd like a way for the server to restart on crash, launch via this method.

cd ~/The-Three-Little-Pigs-Siri-Proxy

./siriproxy-restarter

STEP 10 - Configure Phones

If your server is behind a firewall make sure you forward all the proper ports, including 53, 80, and 443 for the server!

Start with the iPhone 4S, make sure you installed that ca.pem from earlier, that we dumped to the web address. From there you'll want to edit the DNS settings on your iPhone 4S that MUST be connected to (any) WiFi access point. Add your server IP address followed by a comma to the front of the DNS server list. This allows the proxy server to take requests for Siri (guzzoni.apple.com).

After that, have the 4S user use Siri, it should work fine, and it will feed it's authentication key to the proxy. Be sure at least one iPhone 4S user is using that DNS server to feed a key to the server once every 24 hours!!!

Next just point Spire to your proxy, https://your.server.ip.or.hostname.com/. Use siri...

SOURCES

http://www.paradox-productions.net/

http://am3yrus.over-blog.com/article-installation-of-jimmykane-s-the-three-little-pigs-siri-proxy-on-ubuntu-11-10-vps-97476772.html

http://k2designlab.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/multi-process-siri-proxy-with-automatic-authentication-for-iphone-43gsipod-touch/

https://github.com/jimmykane/The-Three-Little-Pigs-Siri-Proxy

http://www.howtoforge.com/ubuntu_lamp_for_newbies

https://github.com/plamoni/SiriProxy/issues/145

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=514214

http://www.ubuntugeek.com/screen-manages-multiple-sessions-on-one-terminal.html#more-1415

http://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/phpmyadmin

http://www.rackaid.com/resources/linux-screen-tutorial-and-how-to/

http://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/rubyonrails

http://www.liberiangeek.net/2011/03/login-root-ubuntu-11-04-natty-narwhal/

http://www.the-tech-tutorial.com/?p=1868

http://www..linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-software-2/ruby-rake-install-error-on-siriproxy-925111/

A little over a year ago our beloved founder Corey posted on his personal blog The Cable TV Revolution citing on how he went cable free in an attempt to save money. One thing about Corey that many don’t know is if the guy wants to accomplish something; there’s nothing that’s going to hold him back from achieving success. He’s one of the most knowledgeable Network Specialists’ I know, and probably one of the best guys I’ve known since we were in 5^th grade together. He was kind enough to show me how the configuration works.

Disclaimer: You will need to be somewhat knowledgeable in the realm of computers and the point of this is to have a media unit (such as a Boxee Box) to stream these files. This simply automates that process for you.

This setup is for Windows, you can find the setup for Mac users here.

So how does it all work?

TED monitors your RSS feeds of TV Shows you added to the list, when a new episode is uploaded TED snatches the torrent that best matches the criteria you set forth and downloads it. You have your copy of uTorrent monitoring the folder TED downloaded the torrent file into and auto-starts it. When uTorrent starts the torrent for the show it trashes the Torrent file. Once uTorrent finishes downloading the file it moves it to your New TV Show directory.

At the point it finishes, EventGhost kicks of SCRU to extract it if it’s a compressed Scene Release. Also EventGhost kicks off a batch script to wait 10 minutes for the torrent to finish seeding 1%. Once the 10 minutes are up, EventGhost kicks off theRenamer to properly rename the file, and theRenamer moves it to its’ final resting place. At this point the process still isn’t 100% complete, EventGhost then kicks off Belvedere to clean up all the extra little files you don’t need, images, nfo, txt files, etc. At the very end, EventGhost executes the Remove Empty Folders batch script, to clear the folder and await your next TV Show download.

Let’s Get Started!

First there will be a few programs, scripts, and configuration files you will need which I will provide here. You will need to make changes in some of these programs in order for them to work on your own setup, but I will detail that in the article.

Programs Required:

uTorrent

TED

SCRU

EventGhost

Belvedere

theRenamer

Files Required:

Remove Extra Files Batch Script

Wait Ten Minutes Batch Script

EventGhost Workflow (Right-Click and Save As…)

I’m going to go through each program individually on how to set them up.

First thing you want to do is create a few folders wherever you feel they are best fit on your computer. You will need a TV Torrents folder, New TV Shows folder, and TV Shows folder. If you already have the last folder created for your media unit to monitor, then skip making the last folder and we’ll set our programs to move files there.

uTorrent

If you only plan on using uTorrent to download TV Shows and not other files, then you can skip this next step. Otherwise, you’re going to need to run two instances of uTorrent at once which I will detail here. First install uTorrent, and we’ll go from there.

Once it’s installed go to your Program Files on your computer and make a new folder and name it something like “uTorrentTV”. Go into the original uTorrent folder and copy the uTorrent.exe file and paste it into your new uTorrentTV folder.

Next for Windows 7, go to Start, Run and type:

For Windows XP, go to Start, Run and type:

Once in here select all the .dat and .dat.old files, copy them and paste them into the “uTorrentTV” folder and the original “uTorrent” folder. After you do this, right click the uTorrent.exe file and create two shortcuts and drag them both to your desktop. Name each shortcut whatever you want, you can name one just “uTorrent” and the other “uTorrentTV”. Right-Click on one and select “Properties,” once the screen comes up change the “Target” area to original uTorrent install:

Copy the quotes and all. If you’re on 32-Bit Windows remove (x86). Do the same for the second shortcut except have the “Target” area set to your uTorrentTV folder:

Now open your copies of uTorrent, go into Options > Preferences and make sure “Start uTorrent on Windows Startup” is UNCHECKED.

In the instance of uTorrent that you’re going to use for TV shows. Go into Options > Preferences. From here navigate to the Directories tab on the side. Check the box for “Move completed downloads to:” and set the directory to your “New TV Shows” folder. In this same screen check the boxes for, “Automatically load .torrents from:” and “Delete loaded .torrents” set this directory to your “TV Torrents Folder”. Your screen should look like what I have below:

Next in uTorrent go to the “Queueing” tab on the side. For “Queue Settings” you can make those what you wish, if you plan on downloading a lot of shows at once you may want to increase the number of active torrents and downloads. For “Seeding Goal” set your “Minimum Ratio (%)” to 1, “Minimum seeding time (minutes)” to 1, and “Minimum number of available seeds” to 0. Under “When uTorrent reaches the Seeding Goal” check the box for “Limit the Upload rate to (kB/s)” and set the value to 0. Your screen should look like what I have below:

TED

Install TED and launch it, you’ll be making some changes here and I’ll show you how to add TV shows. Go to Extra > Preferences and stay on the General tab. Here you will just be changing a couple values. Under “Search for new episodes every” you can set this value to whatever you want, I leave mine at 60 minutes. Next under “When ted finds a torrent… Save it to” navigate to the TV Torrents directory you created.  Make sure “Open it in your default bittorent client” and “Download torrents for each show in its own folder” are unchecked.  Your screen should look like what I have below:

Under the “Advanced” tab make sure you uncheck  “Do not download files with these extensions” SCRU will take care of unpacking our torrents that contain compressed Scene Releases for us later on down the line. Your screen should look like what I have below:

Now you’re going to add a TV Show, it’s simple enough click “Add Show” at the top, and a screen will pop up. You can select one from the list or if there’s a specific one that you want that isn’t listed and you know an RSS feed for it, you can add it yourself. When you choose a show, on the right it’ll display the name, information, and below “Next Episode”, “Last Aired Episode”, and “Custom Episode”. If you are getting into a show by the second episode of the season you can choose “Last Aired” and it will snag it.

Otherwise you can choose Custom Episode and go to the first episode of the season and it will snag Episode 1 to the latest episode. However, it may not always find the earlier episodes if you go too far back (especially if you go back to previous seasons) so just use this at your own risk as it’s not 100%. I personally suggest if you’re more than an episode behind to obtain them through one of your other sources. In this area you will also see a check box for “Download in HD Quality,” do not use this. The reason being is it auto adjusts the tags you’re looking for to be “HD” and “720p”, however when it comes to TV show torrents they’re generally tagged as “HDTV”. You’ll be better off adding in your own tags, which I’ll show you how to do. Once you decide the route you’d like to go with the show, Last Aired or Next Episode click “Add”.

Once it’s added you can click the show and hit “Edit Show” at the top or Right-Click the show and choose Edit Show. Here you can make edits to the way you want to filter the show, the RSS feeds it searches, etc.

Under Filters, you will see six predefined feeds that TED is searching. At the bottom you can click add, and it will give you a list of pre-generated feeds to use. Some of them will take you to the websites RSS feeds for TV shows where you can grab the URL for the TV show you want and paste it in. These are considered “User-Defined.”

Navigate to the “Filters” tab and here you can narrow the results and quality of torrents you find. I did find you should do a bit of research for each show, as far as general size for a straight 720p vs. HDTV. This will help you make your decision on how you want to filter the torrents.Under “Size” for a half hour show a maximum size of 750MB is generally a safe bet but should be increased accordingly for longer shows, a minimum of 10 seeders, and searching for 720p OR HDTV tags. TED uses & , |, and ! to determine how you want to search tags. The & represents “AND” and the |represents “OR”, and the “!” to NOT search for something. Here are a few tag examples for you.

This is saying search for 720p OR HDTV

This is saying search for 720p AND HDTV

This is saying search for iPod AND xvid OR HDTV AND 720p.

This is saying DO NOT search for French OR Czech.

theRenamer

Go ahead and install the Renamer and launch it, there’s some settings you have to change to get it to execute correctly and cleanly for Boxee or your media streamer to grab it without issues. Click on “Settings” in the upper right hand corner.

On the first page you’re only going to be editing the area under “Fetch Folder” and “TV Shows Archive.” Under Fetch Folder, set the destination as the area you have uTorrent moving files to (New TV Shows directory). Also make sure “Include Sub Folders” is checked. Then hit “Save.” Under TV Shows Archive, set this destination as the final resting place of your TV Shows and hit Save. This would be your TV Shows folder. theRenamer will automatically create TV Show and season folders for you. If you’re going to be adding to a pre-existing TV Show folder, just make sure it’s 100% accurately named what that TV show is, so that theRenamer can just add to it. Also if you have season folders pre-created, make sure they’re named as “Season1” NOT as “Season 1”.

On the second page you can see there are a bunch of keywords listed here, if you find some shows not renaming properly once the system is in place. You can add keywords for theRenamer to search for and remove.

You can hit close on the settings, and at the top you can see “Force Showname,” this isn’t necessary but if you wish you can have TV Shows forced to be renamed something else. CSI Crime Scene Investigation is the full name of the show,  you can force it to be JUST “CSI”.

Belvedere

Install Belvedere and launch it, make sure you are under the “Folders” tab. At the bottom, click the left most + sign. And set the folder as your “New TV Shows” folder. Next click the + tab by the second window to add a rule. Name it “Folder Clean Up” and make it match the image below. To add a second condition in the image below, hit the + arrow to the right of the box. In the first condition enter this for the list:

There’s just one more rule to add, if you look at the image below the second part is optional. The first portion of the rule is because sometimes theRenamer will properly rename a .nfo, .txt, .sfv to the proper name of the show and it gets moved to your TV Shows folder. The second portion if you choose to add it, will delete TV Shows that have a creation date of 2 weeks or older. This will allow you to get rid of shows you already watched without having to manually remove them.

What you will want to do is set the folder to your TV Shows folder, make sure the rule is Enabled and Recursive. Make the rule match the image below, remember the second part is optional.

Once you have these rules created, you can save them and exit Belvedere fully; since EventGhost will launch Belvedere for us.

SCRU

Unpack SCRU and make a folder in your Program Files (x86) folder named SCRU (just Program Files if you’re on 32-bit), and drop all the files in the folder. Launch the program, you only need to make one edit to SCRU. Go to the “Settings” tab at the top, and under “Default Output Directory” set it to your “New TV Shows” directory that uTorrent moves completed torrent files to. You can now actually exit this program and forget about it. EventGhost will take care of the rest and run it from the command line for you.

EventGhost

Install EventGhost and launch it, you’re on the home stretch now of bringing it all together. This is where you’ll need the EventGhost Tree file, I suggest going into your Program Files (x86) folder (just Program Files if you’re on 32-Bit) and creating a scripts folder in your EventGhost directory. In their place the “EventGhostWorkflow.xml” file, “Remove Empty Folders” batch file, and the “Wait” batch file.

First in EventGhost, go to File > Options and make the settings match below.

Now go to File > Open, and navigate to the scripts folder you just created and open the EventGhostWorkflow.xml file. The dirty work is pretty much done for you, you’ll just have to make a few edits now. First under Autostart you’ll see “Plugin: Directory Watcher” Right-Click on it and click “Configure Item” set your Watch Path to the New TV Shows directory you have uTorrent moving files into. Also make sure “Watch subdirectories also” is checked, then hit “OK”.

Next Right-Click on “Extract Archives” and choose “Configure Item” in the “Executable” area, navigate to the folder directory you dropped SCRU in and select “SCRU.exe”. Under command line options edit the directory to be that of your “New TV Shows” folder. It should read as follows:

Click “OK”.

Next Right-Click on “Wait 10 Minutes” and choose “Configure Item” in the “Executable” area, navigate to the EventGhost scripts directory you put the XML and Batch files in and select “Wait.bat”, then hit “OK”.

Next Right-Click on “Rename & Move TV Shows” and choose “Configure Item” in the “Executable” area, navigate to the directory theRenamer is installed and select “theRenamer.exe”. Make sure the “Command line options” reads:

Click “OK”.

Next Right-Click on “Clean Up Unnecessary Files” and choose “Configure Item” in the “Executable” area, navigate to the directory Belvedere is installed and select “Belvedere.exe”. Make sure the “Command line options” reads:

Click “OK”.

Next Right-Click on “Delete Empty Folders” and choose “Configure Item” in the “Executable” area, navigate to your EventGhost scripts directory and select “Remove Empty Folders.bat”. Change the “Working Directory” to your “New TV Shows” folder and click “OK”.

You’re All Finished!

If you leave TED, EventGhost, and your copy of uTorrentTV running in the background on your computer, your automated system will never fail. If you ever need to restart just make sure these applications are running and you’ll be good to go! Just make your media streamer scan the final destination of your newly downloaded TV Shows and they’ll be ready to go within minutes to downloading. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, feel free to leave them in the comment section below. If you need in-depth help don’t be afraid to contact me on Skype. My Skype name is JacobRyan. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed!

The latest and greatest installment in the Call of Duty franchise just went live yesterday on XBOX 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. One issue that comes up every time a new CoD game is released is the NAT type issues. The game lists three different NAT types when you’re in the multiplayer section, they are Strict, Moderate, or Open.

Strict is a pretty severe issue for most, and that means your traffic really isn’t getting through to the game and you’ll likely have issues joining and hosting games if you can even play at all.

Moderate isn’t something to be hugely worried about unless you notice issues getting into the games. Most likely moderate would keep you from hosting games yourself though and should be fixed.

Open is where you want to be, all traffic between the game and the host/server is free flowing.

On XBOX 360 and PlayStation 3, you should just set a static IP address to your console and put it in the DMZ (De-Militarized Zone) on your router. The DMZ is a big security risk for a PC, but it’s nothing to be worried about the consoles.

If you’re like me, and on a PC and have a NAT type of Moderate it will drive you insane until it is fixed…

The quickest way to solve this, is to be sure UPnP and NAT-PMP are ENABLED on your router. Look around in the settings as each router is different, but be sure to enable them, or check the boxes next to those options. If you were at Strict before this should get you to Moderate, but there’s one more step to get from Moderate to Open, and that is actually a simple solution.

Open up Windows Firewall with Advanced Security and create new Inbound and Outbound rules for “iw5mp.exe” (Located in Steam\steamapps\common\call of duty modern warfare 3\) and be sure to explicitly allow all connection both inbound and outbound.

The default location for iw5mp.exe is as follows…

C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\call of duty modern warfare 3\iw5mp.exe

If you’re on a x64 system, it will be similar, just inside the Program Files (x86) folder instead.

Restart your PC for good measure and fire up the game one more time and verify your NAT type is now Open.

You can read the source article here!

1. You’re going to need to disassemble your CR-48 device. THIS STEP CANNOT BE SKIPPED. There is a small metal strip inside the case that touches a sensor on the motherboard of the unit. This protects against the BIOS being written over. To do this you want to remove all the screws on the case (circled in the image below). You’ll need a very tiny screwdriver for the small black screws, be careful not to strip them like I did or you may never get the casing off. You also have to remove the back two rubber feet (they’ll stick back on without issue don’t worry!) and remove the screws underneath as well. Once the screws are removed, start removing from the monitor hinges pulling upward carefully, work your way around to the side OPPOSITE of the power input, that side will come off very cleanly and allow you to avoid any breakage on the side with the input ports.
2. After you have the case removed, go ahead and flick the developer switch ON as shown below. Set the netbook on a smooth surface (since it doesn’t have it’s bottom, make sure its nothing metal) and plug the device in and turn it on. The CR-48 should tell you that the verification of Chrome OS is turned off, let it sit at this screen for a moment and it will eventually start “erasing the stateful partition”. Let the process complete and reboot. Upon reboot you’ll be at the Chrome OS setup screen as if it was out of a new box. You’ll want to at least get as far as when it lets you select your WiFi network. Be sure you’re connected to the network before continuing!
3. After you’re on WiFi, press Ctrl+Alt+Forward to drop to a shell.
4. Enter the username as chronos with no password required.
5. Now that you are logged into the shell, we need to download the BIOS file. issue the following command. wget http://www.techjawa.com/cr48bios.bin
6. It’s up to you to backup your current BIOS, you can do this by the issuing the following command. sudo flashrom -r backup.bin
7. It’s also up to you to BACK UP THAT FILE! Do something, copy it to your flash drive, boot into the CR-48 developer mode and email it to yourself or something. You’ll figure it out if you want it badly enough.
8. After you’ve taken care of that, or not if you don’t care about restoring it, we need to flash the new BIOS. Just issue this command. sudo flashrom -w cr48bios.bin
9. Wait for the process to complete, reboot, and that’s it. Now follow whatever guide you’d like for your specific operating system, and remember if you’re installing Windows 7, reset the BIOS to optimized defaults!
10. Enjoy! And don’t forget to replace the cover and attach all the screws again!

However I just noticed that with the latest Steam update, which adds the screenshot functionality, it IS possible!

Because of this Steam has just become my favorite game launcher, it has everything I need now.

As you can see in the picture below, I have Fallout New Vegas added as a shortcut (Non-Steam game), yet there’s a custom background image present.

It’s as simple as loading up the game, and using F12 to take a screenshot. If you have more than one screenshot saved locally for a game it will randomly select one each time you select the game.

Unfortunately, these images do NOT carry over to the list or grid views, but perhaps a Steam-savvy user can figure out how Steam is using the background images and force them to be used as the “title cards” in grid and list views as well. I’ll take a peek into it, but if you don’t see this post updated then I haven’t figured it out.

We can use this to our advantage by downloading a program that tunnels your (old) IPv4 to IPv6.

Touching base on Usenet really quick as well…

The blue, green, and red dots on the servers represent the groups they carry. Arrows between servers indicate newsgroup group exchanges (feeds). Arrows between computers and servers indicate that a user is subscribed to a certain group and reads or submits articles. If you really would like to know more details, I’d suggest you check the Wikipedia article.

1. You’ll need to sign up for an account at gogoNET.
2. Be sure you verify your account via email, give it a few minutes, and be sure to check your spam folder if you don’t see it arrive.
3. Next you’ll want to download the gogoCLIENT.
4. You’re also going to need an IPv6 compatible Usent client, we recommend SABnzbd.
5. So now we can go ahead and install the gogoCLIENT.
6. After it’s installed, you may want to go into your network connections and rename your new connection to IPv6 Tunnel or something similar.
7. Now we can launch the gogoCLIENT.
8. Once you open the gogoCLIENT just click connect and let it connect to the Internet.
9. Try hitting the IPv6 Google page, if it doesn’t work try restarting your PC, opening the gogoCLIENT again and give it a few minutes before opening a browser.
10. Now we need to sign up for the Usenet server that gives free IPv6 access, to do that head over to XS News, and enter your email address.
11. You’ll get an email with a server address, username, and password. We’ll be using that in SABnzbd.
12. Go ahead and install SABnzbd now. Follow the installation and setup until you get to the Server Details page.
13. Now refer to your email from XS news, punch in the hostname, username and password into SABnzbd, also enter the connections as 10, leave the port field blank.
14. That’s it, you’re done, hit up your favorite indexing site, if you’re new, and want to try a free one, head over to http://binsearch.info to nab some nzb files for use in SABnzbd.

NOTICE: Usenet server are generally as reliable as their cost, and since we are talking about free access here, it’s likely that the server will go down, so if you’re feeling so inclined, add the following servers as well, no username or password required, just set connections to 2.

• news.ipv6.eweka.nl
• newszilla6.xs4all.nl

Enjoy, hopefully this works out for you, and you can explore Usenet if you never have before.

It’s actually quite simple though, just follow these steps and you’ll be on your way to recovery.

1. Download the Google CR-48 Mario Image.

2. Extract the .bin file from the archive.

3. Rename the file to from “filename.bin” to “filename.img”.

4. Download the freeware Image Writer for Windows, which requires NO installation.

5. Extract the archive for the Image Writer program.

6. Insert your USB stick with at least 4GB capacity.

7. Run the Image Writer program you extracted in step 5.

8. Choose your USB drive letter from the dropdown.

9. Browse for the recovery .img file we renamed in step 3.

10. Hit the “Write” button and wait.

11. While it writes the USB stick, go ahead and boot up your CR-48.

12. Once you’re at this screen, and the USB drive is ready, pop it in, and follow the on-screen instructions for restoring.

What you will need:

Step 1: Install Pidgin
Step 2: Extract the two zip files downloaded earlier to a temporary directory.
Step 3: Copy the folder lib and share from the GTK+ Themes.zip to [Pidgin Installation Directory]\Gtk\ directory (These folders should exist so merge/replace them.)
Step 4: Copy the gtk2_prefs.exe from the GTK Theme Switcher zip file into your [Pidgin Installation Directory]\Gtk\bin\ directory.
Step 5: Find and download a theme – (Here)
Note: Take note of the theme name. You may know of a different site. If you want, post the link in the comments.
Step 6: Extract the theme zip file to [Pidgin Installation Directory]\Gtk\share\themes\
Step 7: You can now run the gtk2_prefs.exe to choose a theme. ([Pidgin Installation Directory]\Gtk\bin\) Select your theme in the new window and use the “Apply for all users” checkbox so that the changes are made to Pidgin’s private GTK+ runtime.
Step 8: Restart or open Pidgin and you should see your new theme.

If you want to customize the theme a bit further you can use a built in plugin to control more aspects of your theme. (Notably Text, Link and different colors across Pidgin)

Step 9: Open the Pidgin Buddy list.
Step 10: At the top menu click Tools\Plugins
Step 11: Scroll down to Pidgin GTK+ Theme Control and check it so it is active.
Step 12: Now with Pidgin GTK+ Theme Control selected click the button Configure Plugin along the bottom of the window.
I’m not going to go in to detail on how to configure the colors

Any feedback you have is 100% encouraged.

I recently published a post on my personal website which describes how to achive custom domain names with dynamic DNS services for free. Please read the entire post and direct any comments there. I felt since it was something I was experimenting with it would be better suited for my own blog than there, however the subject matter fits here as well. Click the logo up top or follow the link below to read the post.

http://corey.degrandchamp.com/2010/10/13/dynamic-dns-with-custom-domains/

PStart is definitely the most minimalistic option, but it works out well. It’s very light-weight and has ALL its settings and information stored in one single XML file. So the program itself is easily kept (and managed) on the root of your drive.

The first thing you’ll want to do is download PStart. Be sure to get the non U3 edition listed.

After you download it, install it to your thumb drive, which is pretty self-explanatory. After that, open your thumb drive and you’ll see PStart.exe in the root of the drive. I personally renamed PStart.exe just to Menu.exe, but if you do something similar to this, you will also need to rename the XML file it creates (when it runs for the first time) to the same name. Example would be Menu.exe and Menu.xml both need to reside in the same folder. If you have Menu.exe and PStart.xml you’re configuration won’t work. The simpler solution here is just to leave it as PStart.exe unless you’re picky.

After this, you can create an autorun.inf file that will let you launch the menu automatically. Keep in mind that Windows 7 has disabled autorun files from functioning off USB media, so this only works for Windows XP and Windows Vista, but is still handy to have in case you ever plug into an XP/Vista machine.

My autorun.inf file looks like this:

[autorun]

LABEL=Corey DeGrandchamp
ICON=.\CruzerMicro.ico

ACTION=Menu
OPEN=.\PStart.exe

shell\Menu\command=PStart.exe
shell\Lost\command=Lost.exe

This is how it looks when it’s working properly.

The LABEL and ICON attributes will affect how the drive looks in “My Computer” when it’s plugged in. I have a custom icon for my Cruzer Micro that I use, so I have that assigned also.

If you’re wondering what the “Lost.exe” portion of that file is, we will get to that later!

Once you have your autorun configured, and set a custom icon (if you wish), then it’s time to move onto installing apps!

Most apps I have are from the PortableApps suite of applications, and they can be downloaded individually from the AutoIt. We’ll specific component we’ll use is “Aut2Exe”. This will convert our .au3 file into a .exe to be run on any computer running Windows. I ended up using a custom icon for this as well, you can grab my icon below. Just right click and save it.

The Aut2Exe is pretty easy to use, just feed it your .au3 file and the .ico file, and tell it where to make the .exe file. I put mine in the root of my USB drive and tied it into the autorun file above.

Next up on the list, is a simple batch script that checks your USB drive for errors.

@ECHO OFF
CLS
COLOR 0A
ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO.
TITLE Checking %2 USB drive for errors…
ECHO Checking USB drive for errors…
ECHO.
CHKDSK %1
ECHO.
PAUSE

Just copy/paste the above and save it as check.bat and make a slot in your PStart menu for this as well.

And the last item is a way to eject a USB drive… This one is a bit more complicated… It will prompt you to close all open files and programs, you do NOT have to close the PStart menu before using this, just any open files, such as a portable application or a document from your USB drive. It’s just a friendly reminder, if you don’t close them, the drive will just fail to eject properly. After it prompts you to close the programs, it will wait for any key input to confirm you’ve closed them, then it will instruct the user to wait for the confirmation message that the drive has been ejected before removing the drive. See the screenshots below for more details.

This isn’t a simple copy/paste job for this, so I’ve packaged up everything that I’ve used as a .zip file. Just put it somewhere on your thumb drive and point your PStart menu item to the Eject.bat file.

Here’s the download: USB_Disk_Ejector.zip

That’s about all I have for you for right now. If you have any questions at all leave them in the comments here and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.