I managed to get QuickTime Streaming Server (actually Darwin Streaming Server) and QuickTime Broadcaster running between my laptop and a slow old G3.
I’ll post notes at some point after I’ve had some more time to play with it and I’m sure everything works. The biggest challenges were skirting my own firewall and working around my ISP’s block on port 80. Otherwise it wasn’t too difficult, just somewhat poorly documented.
Several of my sites were getting their referer logs spammed by porn sites. A little snooping through the logs revealed that all the spam, 50-400 hits a day, was coming from a single machine:
tom1.xcite.net (216.169.111.198)
Others have also noticed spam from this IP.
I thought about writing a letter to xcite.net, but after calling them (no one answered) and googling them, I decided it would be pointless. My solution was to use Apache’s Mod_Rewrite to redirect requests from that IP address. Instead of just denying access, I decided to forward their requests back to xcite’s servers. Here are the two lines I added to my root htaccess file:
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} ^216\.169\.111\.198$
RewriteRule /*$ http://www.xcite.net [R]
That should end the problem without screwing anything else up. Not a perfect solution, but better than turning off the referer pages.
Update: According to my raw server logs, the spamming machine tried to hit my site again today at 3:20 and 10:30. Apparently everything worked and 122 accesses were redirected back to xcite.net.
Update 2: Apparently Charles at Little Green Footballs was also getting hit with a similar attack.
I figured out and wrote a three-step workaround for serving Named Virtual Host sites with Rendezvous and Apache. I’m trying something new with this one and sending it around to see if someone besides me will publish it. Someone will.
Virtual Hosts, mod_rendezvous_apple, and Apache on Mac OS X
at O’Reilly’s MacDevCenter.
The Origin of Trogdor (Flash, loud, funny)
I’ve been seeing references to this thing popping up all over, and no, I can’t explain it…
Wow what a story: “Blogs save lives” At very least they saved this guy a lot of grief.
Live video feeds from Baghdad:
Sunrise in Baghdad happens around 10:30pm EST. This page barely works for me, but the “Mother of all War Websites” has an extensive list of cams. Too bad it’s presented as a mess of semi-functional Java.
The free version of Real Player only allows one window at a time. However on OS X you can duplicate the application and run an unlimited number of copies simultaneously as long as each has a unique names. Note that this is a very processor intensive application and three small windows almost completely bogs down my PowerBook. These look fantastic, but I still don’t like RealPlayer…
Watching these feeds, I’m wondering why I don’t have live video on my site yet. If these guys can set up multiple webcams in Iraq with little more than a briefcase, I should be able to do it in my apartment. In theory, it shouldn’t be any more complicated than hosting a network video game. The camera which will become my new outdoor webcam was ordered today and should be here next week (backordered). Annoyingly, my PD-100 continues not to be recognized by OS X. I downloaded the Darwin Streaming Server and Quicktime Broadcaster last night, hopefully they won’t be too hard to get working whenever I get a few minutes to try them out.
Bob Arnot was just reporting live on MSNBC from the middle of a firefight outside Al Kut. A family and several children were somehow caught in the middle, probably used as human shields by the Iraqi army. All were apparently rescued by the Marines. Arnot was with the civilians in a foxhole, comforting a young girl who couldn’t stop crying. He gave a three-year old a fig-bar from some humanitarian rations. In the middle of a battle a little girl ate some American snack food and smiled. Constant gunfire could be heard, sometimes larger guns would overwhelm all other sounds.
One can never adequately count their blessings.
update: MSNBC video of the report.
