1. Do not connect the receiver yet.
2. Download the driver for your operating system from the Microsoft download site (direct link to Windows 7 64-bit version).
3. Install the drivers.
4. Connect the receiver.
5. Windows will try to install the drivers for the connected device and fail miserably. But there’s no need to panic!
6. Open the start menu, right click on “Computer” and click “Properties”.
7. Select “Device Manager” from the menu on the left.
8. You should see an “Unknown device” under “Other devices” in the device tree.
9. Right click the “Unknown device” and click “Update Driver Software…”.
10. Select “Browse my computer for driver software”.
11. Select “Let me pick from a list of devices drivers on my computer”.
12. From the list, select “Microsoft Common Controller for Windows Class” and click “Next”.
13. From the list, select “Xbox 360 Controller For Windows Version: 2.1.0.1349 [13.08.2009]” and click “Next”.
14. Click “Yes” when the “Update Driver Warning” dialogue box is displayed.
15. The drivers should be installed successfully. Click “Close”.
16. Turn on your wireless controller by pressing the Xbox button for a couple of seconds.
17. To sync the controller and the receiver, first hold the little white button the the front of the controller. The green lights on the controller should start to rotate clockwise.
18. While the lights on the controller rotate, click the button on the receiver connected to your computer.
19. The controller and the device will sync and the upper left green light on your controller will eventually be the only green light turned on. You can now enjoy console gaming on your Windows 7 computer.

That companies with millions and millions of registered users are unable to keep our information safe is rather disturbing. But a major side effect of one compromised account is that there is a good chance you’ve used the same username and password for a lot of other services as well. Someone gets their hand on your login information at Sony and they automatically gets access to your other accounts: Facebook, Flickr, Dropbox and PayPal. Crap!

One solution is to use a unique username and password on every site. But can be very inconvenient as the number of accounts increases. Another solution is to use two-factor authentication.

One way to implement two-factor authentication is to require that the user has access to a token that only the end user has access to. An example of this is a credit card with a PIN code. You need both to get money out of an ATM, with only one of them you can’t. Another way is to use a password together with a one-time code provided by a token. This is supported by WordPress, and it is a great way to secure your account. Here’s how you do it.

1. Install Google Authenticator on your phone (Android version 1.5 or later, BlackBerry OS 4.2 – 4.7, iPhone iOS 4 or later)
2. Install and activate the Google Authenticator WordPress plugin.
3. In WordPress, go to the users configuration, enable Google Authenticator login for your user and follow the instructions.

Easy as pie. Now anyone who wants to access your account need your username, your password and the one-time code. It’s very hard for them to get their hands on all three.

The flip side of things is that if you misplace your mobile phone you are screwed and will be unable to log in to your account. If you run your own WordPress installation, this can be resolved. You can dig down in the wp_usermeta table in the database, find the googleauthenticator_enabled setting and change its value to disabled. This SQL statement should enable you to log in again without using the Google Authenticator code. Replace XXX with your own user_id:

UPDATE wp_usermeta 
SET meta_value = 'disabled' 
WHERE user_id = XXX AND meta_key = 'googleauthenticator_enabled'

The Google Authenticator field will be visible during login, but you don’t have to enter anything.

Another unfortunate side effect is that you can’t use the WordPress for Android application because it doesn’t support two-factor authentication. Since this entry was written, the author has added support for the WordPress for Android application.

• 3 dl (10 oz) brown sugar
• 3 dl (10 oz) light syrup
• 1 ts minced ginger
• 5 ts minced cinnamon
• 3 ts minced cloves
• 2 ts minced cardamom
• 2 ts baking soda
• 300 g (10,5 ounces) margarine
• 2 eggs
• 1 kg (2,2 pounds) flour

And here’s what you do with all those ingredients.

1. Heat the sugar and syrup until the sugar has melted, but make sure it doesn’t boil.
2. Mix the spices and the baking soda in the sugar & syrup mix.
3. Melt the margarine and add it to the same mix.
4. Whip the eggs and add them to the mix as well.
5. Now add flour in portions – not everything at once!
6. When all the flour is mixed well with the rest, leave the dough over night in the fridge, covered with a moist cloth.
7. When you eventually roll the dough, make sure you make it quite thin, but you probably will have to adapt it a little to your oven.
8. Poke the dough the tiny men a little with a fork before you put them in the oven.
9. The oven should be at 200 degrees Celsius (392 degrees Fahrenheit) and after about 12 minutes, your gingerbread men should be just right. Make sure to keep an eye on the first batch to make sure they don’t get burned.

With Ubuntu 9.10 it became even easier to set up LAMP, and it might be possible that you did it already when installing Ubuntu. This guide assumes that you have a clean installation of Ubuntu, without Apache, MySQL and PHP, but if you already have one or more of them installed, you can still go through all the steps because you won’t break anything doing so. Now, let’s get started (I assume that you are now logged in to the server you are planning to set up).

First, let’s make sure that our local package repository lists are up to date. You might get prompted for you sudo password the first time you run the sudo command. This is normally the password you used to log in to your account on the server.

$ sudo apt-get update

The next step is to install the A and the P in LAMP, Apache2 and PHP5. We only tell apt to install the PHP5 module for Apache2, but due to dependency control, apt will automatically install and configure both Apache2 and PHP5 for us as well.

$ sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-php5

Then we install the M in LAMP, MySQL5.

$ sudo apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client php5-mysql

During the installation, you will be prompted to enter a password for the root user. It’s not recommended to leave it blank, so enter password you will remember. MySQL support for PHP5 will also be installed.

The MySQL administration web interface phpmyadmin is not part of the classic LAMP setup, but it’s extremely convenient, so we’ll install that as well.

$ sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin

If prompted for automatic configuration of a web server during the installation, select Apache2 from the lists. You also want to configure phpmyadmin with dbconfig-common, so select “Yes” when prompted. On the first screen in the dbconfig-common installation wizard, enter the root password you chose when installing MySQL5. Then you have to set a password for the phpmyadmin user, as with the MySQL5 root password, you should not leave this blank.

And that’s it for the LAMP installation. You should now have a server with a web server, Apache2, a database server, MySQL5, and a great scripting language, PHP5. This means that you can for instance use the server for your own WordPress installation. This guide, however, does not cover setting up WordPress. Please refer to the WordPress site for detailed instructions on how to download, install and configure WordPress.

Have fun!

So I set off on a quest to find the ultimate Mini-ITX for a home server for my web server and mail server. The server had to be both powerful and silent, meaning no noisy power supply, no CPU fans and no clicking hard drives. The only real way to achieve this is by building a server with no moving parts at all. I also wanted to use a enclosure that looked nice enough to have in the living room. After a lot of research I ended up with the following hardware:

• SilverStone Mini-ITX SST-LC19R black.
• Corsair 4GB DDR2 XMS2 PC6400 800MHz.
• Samsung DVD±R/RW/RAM slim DL 8X SATA black.
• ZOTAC ION ITX F series motherboard. This motherboard has since been replaced by an ASUS AT5IONT-I.
• Two Kingston V Drive notebook 64GB SSD SATA/300.

If you decide to build a server with the same hardware as me, there are a few things your should be aware of when it comes to the ZOTAC ION ITX F motherboard, SilverStone LC19R case, Kingston V SSD hard drives and Samsung slim SATA DVD drive:

• The Serial ATA (SATA) cables that come with the ZOTAC motherboard are all angled. This means that you will not be able to use them unless you either attach your hard drives upside down (not possible with the Kingston V SSD hard drives) or get rising brackets or something similar. You have to buy new SATA cables that are not angled.
• The screws provided with the ZOTAC motherboard are too large to attach the Kingston V SSD hard drives. There are no screws provided with the hard drives,  so you have to get some smaller screws yourself.
• The USB cable for the internal card reader in the SilverStone case is too short and you will not be able to attach it to the ZOTAC motherboard. This means that you either have to buy an extension cable or consider buying the SilverStone LC19 instead, which comes without an internal card reader. I will not use the card reader in my box, so this is not a loss for me. The reason why I bought the LC19R was that the LC19 was unavailable.
• The SilverStone case comes with front connectors for IEEE 1394 FireWire, audio in and audio out. This is great, but there are no internal connectors on the ZOTAC motherboard for any of these, meaning that they cannot be used.
• That said, you will be able to use the two front panel USB connectors as that cable is long enough to reach the ZOTAC motherboard and it even has 2 internal connectors for USB (only 1 used used for the front panel USB connectors).
• No cables are provided for the Samsung slim SATA DVD drive. You have to buy a cable that fits to a slim SATA power and data connector, which, for some reason is not the same connectors used for SATA hard drives.
• You should also remember to buy a network cable. Even if the ZOTAC motherboard comes with an internal wireless LAN card, I will be using a good old network cable to connect to a network switch in my apartment. Because of this I don’t know if the wireless LAN card works or not in Ubuntu 9.10. This probably won’t be a problem if you’re using Windows, though.
• The ZOTAC motherboard comes with an Intel Atom 330 CPU with passive cooling. You should be aware of the fact that the CPU will overheat when the motherboard is inside the SilverStone case, even when the CPU is idling. This was a major disappointment for me, since the CPU had to be cooled down with a fan. To top it off, the CPU fan provided with ZOTAC motherboard is too large to fit in the SilverStone case. Thankfully you can move the case exhaust fan and attach it to the case by the CPU heat sink instead. This solved the overheating problem. If you want to use another fan, note that you can only fit 50x50mm fans inside the SilverStone LC19R case. A 3-pin connector is required to attach the fan connector to the ZOTAC motherboard.
• Since you are pretty much screwed if the CPU fan breaks down, it’s highly recommended that you buy a spare 50x50mm fan with a 3-pin connector just in case.

As you can see, there are quite a few gotchas when it comes to the hardware. I could probably have done a lot better research before I placed the hardware order, but it was hard to find information like this online. Even though none of the gotchas are critical, it’s rather annoying that most of the SilverStone LC19 front panel connectors can’t be used with the ZOTAC motherboard and that the Atom CPU didn’t stay cool enough with just passive cooling. When everything that can be attached and connected are actually attached and connected, the SilverStone case looks quite nice in my Hi-Fi rack.

So this is the reason why there hasn’t been any new entries this week, my spare time has been used to build the server and set up the necessary software. With a little luck, the server will be up and running tomorrow evening.

Update: As requested in the comments, here are some pictures of the box.

But of course, it’s not that bad. There is not much meat on the head, but the meat you find – like the chin and a small treasure behind the ear – taste great. If you want to go wild, you can also eat stuff like the parts of the eyes and tongue. Personally, I take rain checks on both. One method we use to make the head look like something we want to dig into is to combine the dinner with massive amounts hard liquor, especially aquavit. As you can imagine, this usually results in a massive hangover as well.

I stumbled across an article on a Norwegian news site today describing various types of food that can potentially help cure a hangover. I just wish I had read the article on Friday, so I would have had time to stockpile the recommendations. The author of the article had used another article as his source, and since hangovers really suck monkey balls, I thought I’d write a summary of both articles here just to make the information even easier to find.

There are four types of food and liquid you should have available the day after a night out:

• Eggs
• Bananas
• Water
• Fruit juice

Eggs

Eating eggs the morning after provides energy like any other food, which is the primary benefit. But eggs do also contain large amounts of cysteine, the substance that breaks down the hangover-causing toxin acetaldehyde in the liver’s easily depleted glutathione. Therefore, eggs can potentially help mop up the left-over toxins.

Bananas

Eating bananas the morning after a night of heavy drinking provides lost electrolytes like any food would, but it also specifically replenishes the potassium lost to alcohol’s diuretic effect. Other potassium-rich foods such as kiwi fruit or sports drinks work just as well.

Water

Replenishing the body’s water supply after a night of drinking combats dehydration, and it also helps dilute the leftover byproducts in the stomach. Adding salt and sugar to water helps replace the sodium and glycogen lost the night before. Non-caffeinated, non-carbonated sports drinks can achieve the same effect.

Fruit juice

The fructose – fruit sugar – in fruit juice helps to naturally increase the body’s energy. Studies have proven that it also increases the rate at which the body gets rid of toxins such as those left over from alcohol metabolism. Fruit juice is also a good idea the morning after because it’s high in vitamins and nutrients that were depleted the night before because of alcohol’s diuretic effect. Vitamin supplements high in vitamins C and B are also effective.

This means that the ultimate hangover-preventing breakfast would consist of

• A large omelet
• Lots of water with added salt and sugar
• A banana smoothie
• Fruit juice

Good luck! For me, this information came too late this time.