Instead of rambling off some of the cool new features, take a moment to watch this masterpiece in marketing from Apple themselves.

Guess Who?, originally uploaded by tigerpaw511.

This afternoon my friend at work was looking up websites as they appeared years ago. It’s the next best thing to a time machine. Using the Way Back Machine, you are able to see websites as they appeared at a specific time in the past.

I entered www.slazyk.com into the search window and came across this photo from the main page. Now it’s in Flickr, to enjoy for years to come. Here’s another one.

For the sake of simplicity, I will show you how to limit inbound and outbound bandwidth for one host.  In order to do this for multiple hosts you simply replicate the steps making a few changes to access-list names, class-maps, and policy-maps.

The first step is to create the access list that define “interesting traffic” or what IP you want to control.

access-list throttle_me extended permit ip host 1.1.1.1 any
access-list throttle_me extended permit ip any host 1.1.1.1

The second step is to define the class-map.

class-map throttle-me
match access-list throttle_me

Now you need to define your policy-map and call the class-map.

policy-map throttle-policy
class throttle-me
police output 1000000 2000
police input 1000000 2000

The final step is to apply the new service-policy to the PHYSICAL interface where the traffic will flow.  You CANNOT apply this to a sub-interface.

service-policy throttle-policy interface outside

In summary, this configuration was applied to the outside interface of my ASA.  This is the “choke point” for traffic and can be considered the edge of my network.  As stated above, you must apply the policy to a physical interface on your ASA.  The IP address 1.1.1.1 represents a public address that is statically mapped to a private address behind a sub-interface on my ASA.  The method above combines a little bit of each QOS function from the ASA to get what I want it to do.

Coastal Path, originally uploaded by tigerpaw511.

I recently started creating photos using HDR or High Dynamic Range imaging. The process involves taking multiple shots at different exposures of the same subject then layering them together. Once that is done the layered images can be enhanced by using a third party application such as Photomatix. For more information about HDR take a look at this Wiki entry.

Here are all the HDR images I have created so far.

Blizzcon 2007, originally uploaded by tigerpaw511.

I was given the opportunity to borrow a pass for a few hours in order to attend this years Blizzcon. For those of you that do not know what this is, it is Blizzard Entertainment’s annual conference showcasing the games they publish. They only sell a limited amount of tickets. With over 9 million people playing World of Warcraft alone, this is a much sought after event.

The hall was filled with far too many pieces of artwork to take a photo of them all. I took a few and those can be seen on Flickr. I was most impressed with the number of PCs they had setup in order to showcase the newest upcoming expansion – Wrath of the Lich King. There was literally hundreds of systems setup just for this purpose. There was also a couple hundred systems setup and dedicated to the second installment of the game Starcraft.  Even though I had a limited amount of time to spend on the floor, I was able to play the new expansion, check out the vendor booths and watch a couple of pro gamers go head to head. Impressive.