For our setup, we are utilizing cacti, a web-based host monitoring tool, that can monitor hosts through snmp. Its a php tool, and customizable. Its powerful enough to give you what you want, just the matter of configuration. The first thing, you have to make sure every host you want to monitor is snmp enabled.

syslocation YOUR_LOCATION
syscontact YOUR_EMAIL
sysname SYSNAME


You can verify that your snmpd daemon is responding to snmp request using snmpwalk. For snmp version 1, you can use,
snmpwalk -v 1 -c YOUR_COMMUNITY_STRING 127.0.0.1
For snmp version 2,
snmpwalk -v 2c -c YOUR_COMMUNITY_STRING 127.0.0.1

This configuration is for the end host you want to monitor. In Cacti, you will need to add the community string, and the IP of the host you want to monitor. Then, cacti will start polling information from these hosts through SNMP with the credential given.

For me, I would just want to use google mail, as inside google apps package. Google mail really a good thing we have in the internet world nowadays, as the email interface, emailing experience is different, and really useful. Just a few cons like no folder management. But you can still use labelling to categorize your email.

There are 2 ways you can use google mail on your own domain. Either registering for google apps at http://www.google.com/a/ or using your current gmail email account.

Using google apps.

Go to http://www.google.com/a/, and register for google apps account with your domain name. With google apps, you can have google docs, google chat, google site, calendar and a few more. But this example, google site will be ignored, as I’m using my current hosting account for site, I’m just using Google Mail in my google apps.

After the registration process, you will have to verify domain ownership. You can choose either 1 of 2 method, either configuring your MX record, your html verification. I think HTML verification will be easier, as you can simply create the file, with specific filename and content provided by Google, on your hosting account, and Google with check the file later.

After your google apps have been created, you need to modify your DNS record of your domain, specifically your MX record to tell where emails of your domain to be sent to. Please check it here, http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=33352. You can just refer below, the list of MX record to be changed.

MX Server address Priority
ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. 10
ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. 20
ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. 20
ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. 30
ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. 30
ASPMX4.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. 30
ASPMX5.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. 30


Google also suggest you to add this additional SPF (Sender Policy Framework) in your DNS. This is additional record to tell which server is supposed to send email at this domain name. As we are using google apps for our email service, we should tell google server is the only server which suppose to send email @ourdomain.com.

"v=spf1 include:aspmx.googlemail.com ~all"
* note the ~all, not -all.

Once finished, you can wait for the DNS record to propogate, and usable. You can check your MX record changes through DNSStuff.com, from here, http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?answer=116393

You can manage your account using your admin account, and login to your inbox through http://www.google.com/a/yourdomain.com. This is how control panel looks like.

Start creating email account for your domain users!!

Using your existing gmail account

This options is only for a specific email account of a domain. For example, you have a email account from your organization, and you dont like the web-based email client. You can use your gmail account to check all your emails to yourname@yourorganization.com in your current Gmail account.

Basically, you will forward all your email that were for yourname@yourorganization.com to YourGmailAccount@gmail.com. How to do it, it depend on your current email service. You might be able to change in your own web-based email access, or you might need to ask your domain administrator to do it for you. If you manage your domain yourself, please refer to your hosting control panel on how to accomplish this.

In your gmail account, you can go to Setting -> Accounts and click Add another email address. Enter yourname@yourorganization.com and Google will send a confirmation code to yourname@yourorganization.com. You might just need to check your Gmail account inbox, if you have done the email forwarding part. After you have confirmed the code, you can see yourname@yourorganization in your list of accounts, inside your Gmail account.

You may want to put your mail in mannerly order, by creating a email filters. Click Setting -> Filters, and Create new filter. You can create filter for all email sent to yourname@yourorganization.com, label it as MyOrganization, or skip inbox. You can just click the link to your label, and you will just reading your emails yourname@yourorganization.com.

This tips is available in Hacking Gmail by Ben Hammersley. This is a great book if you really rely on Gmail for your daily email. I really think Gmail is the best email service at this time.

While figuring out how to manage my pics, and easy insert into my blog post, I found this plugin. Picasa LigthBox 2. This plugin will retrieve our public pictures from picasa gallery, and have an easy interface to include them into our blog post. Besides, it provides a overlay preview to our users, using WordPress Lightbox Plugin.

Just put the WordPress Lightbox2 plugin into your wp-content/plugins/, activate it in WordPress Admin page. Do the same thing for Picasa Lightbox 2 plugin. Put into your plugin folder and activate it. After that, you can see a small button to add new picasa photo.

http://bogde.ro/computers/picasa-ligthbox-2-preview.htm
http://zeo.unic.net.my/notes/lightbox2-for-wordpress/

Last few month I have bought a electronic prototyping platform, which contains a mictrocontroller Atmega168. The board I bought was iDuino, a derivative from another electronic platform, that is Arduino. They are open source hardware and software platform, where you can customize the microcontroller to do almost anything. But right now, I just can blink the light

This is the iDuino board, a similar version of Arduino Diecimila. I just use the Arduino programming software, Arduino tutorial to start with the board. The only reason I bought iDuino instead of Arduino because its cheaper

iDuino is a breadboardable version. So, you can test your own circuit directly on a breadboard. There are a few version of Arduino you can choose from, according to your project need. This iDuino is a good start, and surely I will learn alot from it. It took me almost 4 month to get started, because of busy work. From beginning, i start buying tools, completing my toolbox, and now i have the time to play around with it.

I bought a unsoldered board iDuino, it took me almost one hour to solder them, and test it the other day. The board is connected to PC using USB, utilizing FT232RL, the same as in Arduino. So, I need to install USB Serial Converted driver, provided in Arduino programming software package. Arduino software provided with some sample code, and sample wiring to get started. At first when I try to load up a “blink” code, it gives me an error,

[code]avrdude: stk500_getsync(): not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_disable(): protocol error, expect=0x14, resp=0x51[/code]

I search around, and found the solutions in Arduino forum. i just need to go to Device Manager –> Ports, there is a USB serial port. At first it was mapped to Port 15. Go to its properties, Port Setting, Advance, change the port number to something below 10. Then change the port in Arduino software to what you have change, through Tools –> Serial Port. Now I can start the coding and projects.

There is one guy who already proposing for a sumo challenge, in Ittutor forum. I dont know when I can get involve. I’m a newbie. huhuh.. Tunggu Bro Rizal, bagi saya blaja dulu

I just found a new Photoshop tutorial, Its a simple tutorial, to create a Web 2.0 button for your website. It will look like glossy crystal look, some kinda elegant. The article is available here.

The tutorial is simple, showing a few suggestion on blending options that needed to give the glossy look. You will find it very easy Eventhough I’m not really into graphic and multimedia stuff. Huhuhu..

http://www.xtutorial.info/2007/11/19/13/

This is really a companion for web developers, a website that could test your design compatibility for different browser, just from this single website. This will be a time-saver tricks to check your work, and make sure everything will displayed smoothly on your viewers screen.

You can test your design for different browser. For Linux browser, test it on Epiphany, Firefox, Galeon, Iceweasel, Konqueror and Opera. For Windows, you can test it for Microsoft Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera and Safari. BrowserShot can also check for Max OS browser, Firefox and Safari.

With a few click, you can know how ready your design to be delivered

You might develop a website for your client using WordPress, and want to customize the login page. There are a hacks to modify custom login screen at BinaryMoon, but they also develop a custom login plugin to make your life easier. Just place the plugin into your wp-content/plugins folder, activate, and you already have a custom login screen. You can use different background image for the screen, by uploading it to wp-content/plugins/bm-custom-login/images folder.

Custom login plugin – http://www.binarymoon.co.uk/projects/bm-custom-login/

Once in a while, you might caught at a computer, updating your blog maybe, and you need to edit your pictures. Some would suggest a portable image editor in your pendrive. Another alternative would be online/web-based image editor.

One that you could try is rsizr. It will immediately prompt you to open a image file to edit. You can easily resize and crop any image file you uploaded. Rsizr use a special technique to keep the quality of the image edited. You may experience image quality loss, blurred text after resize, but not with rsizr. I have tried rsizr with 800 x 600 image, it resizes the image from 191kb to 121kb. After editing, the image can be save directly to your computer, or to your ImageShack account.

Another one that you could try is flauntr. Flauntr have a lot of feature for image editing. Just enough to make you comfortable without Adobe Photoshop. You can change hue/saturation, brightness, resize, crop, and you can also applying effects to your image, for example blur, greyscale or sepia. Give it a try

Rsizr – http://rsizr.com/
Flauntr – http://www.flauntr.com/

Just found this cool website, BigHugeLabs. You can create a custom badge, motivation poster, movie poster, calendar, and so much more with your own image. One important feature is, you can use any image of your own, either upload it, or import it directly from you flickr or photobucket account.

Its really makes me addicted!!

BigHugeLabs – http://bighugelabs.com

Just found this useful tool, once installed, it will create a new drive named “GMail Drive”. You can store your files in the drive, that actually store it in your gmail account space.

Gmail Drive will actually send an email to yourself, with the files added to Gmail Drive to yourself. Gmail Drive will login to your gmail account, and perform search function to sort the files viewed in the drive. You may want to make a filter, for emails with prefix “GMAILFS” to moved to your archived mail folder.

Bare in mind, Gmail Drive will break if Google changes its new system. The developer might provides and update with new system. So, dont panic if the tool breaks, and don’t highly depends on the drive.

GmailFS – http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm