My little ad-blocking tool; adblock-c
24/12/2011 Filed in: Programming

First of all, Merry Christmas to whomever is reading this article! ;)

 I hate ads, and only tend to enable them on pages I use frequently (to support the page). I've been using various ad-block extensions/plugins with the browsers I use--I only use Chromium for the time being. I like the extensions, but with Chrome the ad-block extension does not actually remove the ads--it only hides them--fair enough you may say, but I like not using bandwidth on ads or material I never actually see. Therefore you can go back to use your machines /etc/hosts file. This is actually much better, because you can then "blacklist" the domains that hosts the ads; affectively never using bandwidth from these domains/hosts. This is easy, you just add the hosts to your /etc/hosts file and set their pointing IP-address to your localhost... problem solved. This is tiresome to do manually because there are so many different hosts handling ads. Therefore I decided to write a little tool. I made the tool in C, rather than a shell-script, this is because I like C, simple as that.

The C program grabs ad-block hosts lists that are provided by third-party providers that frequently updates these lists--you can also add addional ad-block hosts sources to a file yourself and then fetch this file to the program. The C program then merge these hosts to your /etc/hosts file... and voila... ads are gone! You can add this program to your crontab and have it update your host-file on a regular basis; ie. every day or week. You are never dependent on a browser extension/plugin after this.

The source is freely available and I invite you to tamper with it as much as you'd want. You can of course just download, and compile it yourself, then use it on your machine.

• You can grab the source here; https://bitbucket.org/Tobiaswk/adblock-c/

Please fork it and make changes/additions/fixes, I'd appricate that! Or just give it a spin ;)

Over and out! Merry Christmas and a happy new year! 

My new keyboard: Unicomp SpaceSaver 104
30/5/2011 Filed in: News

Hello,

Time for a new keyboard. I wanted a new keyboard, my old Logitech G15 was just disgusting to look at and a bit worn on some keys. I wanted a new keyboard, but with the old IBM Model M feel; in other words... buckling springs! 

These keyboard are not made by IBM/Lexmark anymore, but I found a company called Unicomp, they are located in the states. Turns out Unicomp bought the rights/patents and tools for building the Model M keyboard; a.k.a buckling spring technology. 

          This keyboard is absolutely amazing, and I do not regret my purchase in any way. It's not exactly the cheapest keyboard -- but I find the price reasonable. All in all, if you are a programmer, or just a person who use a keyboard a lot, then you aught to get yourself a decent keyboard. The buckling spring technology is amazing. Also, the build quality is actually pretty good, it does not look particularly well built, but it is build to last! A tank in disguise. It's a LOUD keyboard, makes the feedback even better, but not in a uncomfortable way in my opinion -- guess I'll hear from my neighbors sooner or later :D

   If you want to make a purchase yourself then you can head over to Unicomp's webstore.  

Moved server!
21/4/2011 Filed in: News

Hello,

 Last weekend I moved server. I am now hosted at prgmr.com. Prgmr offers a great VPS service and I'm already in love.

It's worth noting that you get MINIMAL support and need to set everything up yourself -- install os image, configure network and configuring/installing the software you want to use. There is no fancy webinterface like the services of Rackspace and Linode. Prgmr just provide your with a "out of band" console -- which basically means you are able to connect to your server whether is on or off and boot the machine or do whatever you want.

I really like this minimal service, because I like to set everything up myself.

I'm running CentOS and with nginx as a webserver. Fast as hell!

UPDATE:

Guess what... I've moved server again! The main reason for this is that prgmr is based in the states--and I'm located in Europe. Therefore I've moved to a host in Netherlands... more specifically: Tilaa.nl. I have been using them for about a week now, and I can't recommend them enough!