Pioneer One - An independent sci-fi drama web series premieres

Pioneer One is a tv series that premiered online-only last week.
As the story goes a space object sprayed radiation over North America. Homeland Security immediately begins investigation fearing a terrorist attack. However the truth isn't so simple and the implications of what they found can involve the whole planet Earth...
Pioneer One is the work of Josh Bernhard and Bracey Smith, the guys behind another indie success named Lionshare, in collaboration with VODO. The pilot is the first episode in a season of seven. The story will unfolds during a total of four seasons.
This first episode cost just 6000 US$ and additional 20000 US$ are needed to produce the next three episodes. Pioneer One is a project made possible by donors and other forms of fund raising.
You can download the episode and watch it for free. There are several ways you can do it by checking the series page on VODO. From the same page you can help the production by making a donation (from 5$) or spreading the word.
I think this is really an interesting project especially because of the fact that this is not an unexperienced amateur work (no offence intended) but a show of high qualities and high expectations. From what I know regular tv series are getting more and more costly by the day and this is perceived as a problem even by certain producers (check the articles from a Sfy manager on Boing Boing). Pioneer One demonstrates how budget could be cut down by thinking smart, a little of courage and a leap of faith.

Google Chrome Logo Domino

Dominos are fun and by looking at the work of this guy (and all the many other works he did) I finally know what self control mean...

The Treat of the Week #016

Illustration by Rob, at the Aquaman Shrine

Dell states: Ubuntu Linux is safer than Windows

The VAR guy spot one very interesting statement on Dell’s website.
By looking at Dell.com/ubuntu there’s a list of ten points why Ubuntu Linux is a great system.
At point 6 Dell shows its guts and write in plain black on white what follows:

I don’t know about you but I see a trend in Linux system adoption and diffusion which is getting more and more steep every year. Security is surely one of the best reasons why users should venture in adopting a Linux distribution as their computer system. While the fact that the vast majority of malware is written for MS Windows this is not at all the only reason why Linux systems are safer than Windows ones. There are strong architecture, environment and philosophy differences that make the security split between the these two systems look more like a rift.

wizzywig revamped and serialized

If you're a geek or a technology enthusiast you must absolutely read wizzywig.
wizzywig is a comic, a work of invention but based on real facts. It tells a story of hacking in the golden age of computer history, when all was hard cored technology embraced in a halo of mystery, like a clockwork sorcery, so much different from the glossy fashionable era of 2.0 web.
3 volumes were published so far by the author, Ed Piskor, and believe me they make for a wonderful gift to yourself or any real geeky person you know.
Now Ed's come up with the idea of revamping the comic and republish it as a serial on http://www.wizzywigcomics.com/
I judge wizzywig one of the highest example of comics in general and the fact that it's now available to everyone on the web it's just fantastic.
You can follow the series every Sunday and Wednesday at  http://www.wizzywigcomics.com/.
You can also buy copies of the volumes here.
Here below the freshly published revamped first page of volume one.

How to set DDclient for OpenDNS in Ubuntu Linux

OpenDNS is one of the public domain name servers available to the users.
When setting the DNS IP address to 208.67.222.222 or 208.67.220.220 your client will lookup the domain name using OpenDNS servers. Apart from the security advantages (that I don’t want to discuss here) one killing feature of OpenDNS is the possibility to effectively set content filters for your client computers.

Imagine you’re a father and don’t really want your 6 years old kid to stumble upon (yes you can involuntarily stumble upon them) adult websites while surfing the web. You should be with your kid when he/she does but we know that this isn’t always possible even at home. OpenDNS gives the user the possibility to filter several categories of websites and even to create personal blacklists and whitelists.

The problem is that OpenDNS recognizes a user through his/her IP address. This works fine in case of static IP but doesn’t work with dynamic IP addresses that are assigned by the ISP to the user at every session.
DDclient is what we need to do the trick. It’s basically a perl client designed to catch the user’s IP address and perform the update of that for certain services.
You can find and install the script directly from the repositories, just look for DDclient in Synaptic.

While performing the installation the script will render a setup form that you must fill in with basic data about the task DDclient has to do.
Anyway I found that also by filling in the form the IP address update for OpenDNS doesn’t work. This is not a big deal because we are gonna modify the configuration script.
Open a terminal and type:

sudo gedit /etc/ddclient.conf

Enter the following information in the text file

/etc/init.d/ddclient status


sudo ddclient


ssl=yes


# Configuration file for ddclient generated by debconf
#
# /etc/ddclient.conf


pid=/var/run/ddclient.pid
use=web, web=whatismyip.org
protocol=dyndns2
use=if, if=eth0
server=updates.opendns.com
login=XXXXXXXXXXX
password=XXXXXXXXXX
Home

Customize the following data:
login --> your login name in OpenDNS
password --> your password account in OpenDNS
Home --> change this with whatever name you gave to your network in OpenDNS

Save the script and close.
Now type:

sudo /etc/init.d/ddclient status

This will check if DDclient in running. The ouput should be something like this: Status of Dynamic DNS service update utility: ddclient is running

DDclient is configured by default to run as a deamon, therefore you shouldn’t have to do anything. Should you have issue with it running check first the configuration file to spot syntax or command errors. You could also type sudo /etc/init.d/ddclient restart to see an error output.

To check the update of the IP in your machine try to switch off and on the router a few times, obtain a new IP address from your ISP and check the setting page of OpenDNS. You should see the new IP address associated with your network (gives a few minutes to the trick to happen though). You could also monitor changes in /var/log/syslog

Well, you’re now set up to effectively filter what your kids will access on the web.

Revolutionists of the small screeen - Google introduces the Google Tv

Google's doing that again. They're taking good ideas, trying to make them better and the hammer down the old ways to shape the future. This time their target is the old school, fence-and-spear, tv. They took Boxee's idea, insert new concepts and are about to sweep the video fruition scenario like a combine harvester.
Let's just pray and hope Google will succeed in being what mammals were for dinosaurs...
Introducing the Google Tv