ChrisBellini.com

This is a reminder to myself. The next time I need to download my favourite packet sniffer, I shan’t look for Ethereal anymore, for Ethereal is now known as Wireshark. I’ve used Ethereal so much in the past, whether to track down a Russian spammer/WaReZ hocker or to detect a rogue worm running [...]

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Last week, it was reported that approximately 60 GMail users had all of their email accidentally deleted (Dena and I weren’t affected, thank goodness). Then no more than 24 hours ago, a vulnerability was discovered in that a malicious website can swipe your email address from a cookie if you’re logged into GMail at [...]

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How do you dress-up your Firefox? I don’t use any third-party themes, but here are extensions that I use on my computers:
Google Toolbar
Search term suggestions. Phishing detection. AutoFill for speedy completion of webforms. Spell check. This is a handy extension, but I’m not sure if I’ll have a need for [...]

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This might be the first part in a series. Ubuntu is unlike any Linux distro that I’ve ever used before. Its installation and quick ‘n’ painless and its ease-of-use are (currently) second to none. Ubuntu’s package management app, Synaptic, is stellar. It allows you to easily install apps (and their depenecies) [...]

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The first thing that I noticed about Vista once I had it installed was that there was an update available for it. Howerver, gone are the days of visiting the Windows Update website; it’s now finally built into the operating system.

So with some updates out of the way, I becan to use Vista for [...]

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A couple of weeks ago, I installed build 5384 of the second beta for Windows Vista. Yeah, you can find plenty of reviews on and screenshots from “credible websites” but I’ll post my findings from my point of view.
First, I’ll start with the installation. I wasn’t planning on wrecking my computers by installing [...]

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In the Simpsons episode, “A Tale of Two Springfields”, Springfield runs out of phone numbers in the 636 and needs to create a new 939 area code. Homer becomes irate because those with the 636 area code are in the “rich side of town”, and his number is changed to a 939 one. [...]

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Last summer, I posted a couple of entries relating to the upcoming Windows Vista that were a brief daydream from a developer’s point of view and musings on the possible inclusion of a more-verstile command-line interface. Then I tore it all down by espousing Mac OX X. Finally, we’re getting more and more details [...]

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I grew up in an arcade. Specifically it was the arcade on the bottom floor of the 101 Mall in Timmins and, to a lesser extent, the arcade in the Timmins Square. In the 80’s, a joystick and a few buttons were all that you needed. I also had an Atari 2600, [...]

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I had enough of hearing about how wonderful Ruby On Rails is, so I wanted to see it for myself. Being the type of person who’s interested in many things all at the same time, I had a reason to try out another much-talked about thing. In order to properly try out RoR, [...]

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Happy birthday to my wife, Dena! She’s 29 and lookin’ fine
For her birthday gift, I bought her a 4GB iPod Mini; the silver one. It was a little hard to track down a Mini, since they’ve been replaced by the scratcherific Nano’s, but I managed to. I know she’s gonna [...]

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Winamp 5.1 was released today!
Winamp now has a built-in podcast client. Up to this point, I was using iPodder to download from podcast feeds and then I’d listen to them in Winamp. I found that a bit clumsy, but now those days are gone. I came ever-so close to switching to something [...]

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