EC2 Proxy/VPN

Today I ran across a post talking about using Amazon’s EC2 service as a VPN to secure your wireless connection when on a public wi-fi. I read through the how-to and figured I’d write up my much easier and quicker way of doing basically the same thing, plus I think it maybe a bit cheaper.

  1. Create a EC2 instance, you don’t need anything fancy just the very basic.
  2. After you’ve created a EC2 instance and downloaded your key pairs setup your ssh tunnel on your system by doing the following:
    1. Download PuTTY
    2. Download the PuTTYGen tool
    3. Convert the amazon EC2 key pair you downloaded to a ppk file.
    4. Under the Sessions section put the default user name for you EC2 instance followed by the EC2 instance URL in the “Host Name” section. (exp. [email protected])
    5. Click and expand the “SSH” section and click on the “Auth” section
    6. Under the “Auth” section click the “Browse…” button under the “Authentication parameters” and find the key pair that you converted to a ppk file using PuTTYGen.
    7. Under the “SSH” section click on the “Tunnels” section.
    8. Under the “Source port” input a random port like 7070.
    9. Choose the “Dynamic” radio button and leave the “Auto” radio button selected.
    10. Click back on the “Session” section and under the “Saved Sessions” give your session a name and click the “Save” button.
    11. Now click the “Open” button at the bottom of the window and you should now have a SSH tunnel to your Amazon EC2 instance.

Using the command line SSH:
– Open the tunnel by using a command like this –> ssh -C2qTnN -D [Random Port] ec2-user@[EC2 Instance URL] (exp. ssh -C2qTnN -D 7070 [email protected])

Now that you have the tunnel running all you have to do is point your browser/software to use the SOCKS proxy 127.0.0.1:[Random Port You Selected]. (exp. 127.0.0.1:7070)

Anti-Virus Test

Today I decided to test out a number of the anti-virus scanners that are floating around the internet. I didn’t do a very in-depth test, just gathered a archive of 3765 viruses and tested each anti-virus scanner to see how many of the viruses it found and how many files it scanned.

Note: Some of the viruses had files archived in side of them so the scanned number will sometimes be higher then the number of files I listed above.

Microsoft Security Essentials (Scanned: 3799, Found: 3668)
* Quick scan.

Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2010 (Scanned: 3851, Found:3680)
* Requires reboot after install.
* Slow scan.

Sophos Anti-Virus (Small Business) (Scanned: 3772, Found: 3631)
* Is designed for a management environment (10+ systems) and not a SOHO environment.
* Bad scan reports.

Sunbelt Vipre (Scanned: 190, Found: 13)
Don’t know what happened with this but it wouldn’t scan more then 190 files.
* Quick install.
* Requires reboot after install.
* By default it doesn’t scan inside archives.
* Can’t scan archives inside other archives.

F-Secure Anti-Virus (Scanned: 3757, Found: 3698)
* Requires reboot after install.
* Minimal interface
* If system has low memory it disables email scanning and other advanced process monitoring by default.

Avast Pro (Scanned: 3796, Found: 3644)
* Requires reboot after install.
* Quick install.
* Really quick scan.

Panda Cloud Anti-Virus
I stopped the scan after letting it run for about 10 min. and it had only scanned 233 files and only found 150 infections.
* Quick install
* High CPU usage.
* Requires network connection
* Very very slow scan.

ESET NOD32 (Scanned: 3739, Found: 3622)
* Quick virus database update.
* Very fast scan.

ClamAV for Windows (Doesn’t support scanning one file or directory)
* Easy install
* Can’t scan individual files or directory’s

Avira AntiVir (Scanned: 3773, Found: 3716)
* Quick scan.
* Bit high on system resources

AVG Anti-Virus (Scanned: 3774, Found: 3702)
* Somewhat slow install.
* Low system foot-print.

What Came First the Chicken or the Egg?

I was thinking today about the common question, what came first the chicken or the egg? Now this is a question that many people have heard and many have jokingly argued about so in this post I will show you my answer to what came first the chicken or the egg?

First off I don’t think the question is as simple as one or the other came first I think it is going to depend on your beliefs. You have to ask your self one question before you can start to analyze what the answer to this basic yet profound question could be. That question is do you subscribe to Darwinism or to creationism? If the answer is creationism then the answer in my mind would be one of two answers the first one being the chicken for God created the chicken and the chicken lays the eggs. The second possible answer would be both for God created everything.

A Darwinist could say that the egg came first. A bird very similar to the chicken but not evolved to be what we know now as a chicken laid an egg. In the possess of that egg embryo forming into a baby version of what ever bird laid it there was a mutation of some kind. The mutation changed the embryo enough that it grow into what we know now as being a chicken, therefore the egg came first, right? Well maybe not by using the above argument you could stat that the chicken came first for the egg was the egg of a deferent bird so therefore was not the egg that the question refers to. My argument ageist this is that once that mutation took form the egg became the egg of a chicken, not laid by a chicken but the protective home for the new chicken embryo, letting it grow and thus became a chicken egg.

A deferent view could be that the question refers to the first egg ever to come into existence if you look at it by this point of view then you would have to analyze life from the beginning and that again would depend on if you are for Darwinism or for creationism. Sens the creationism answer is relatively simple and is the same as the above stated answers I will look at it from the Darwinist’s point of view. If the question refers to the first egg ever to show up in life then sens chickens have been around a relatively short period of time compared to life and the chicken was not the first animal to lay an egg then the answer would have to be the egg came first.

Now the last point of view that I will cover is the egg and the chicken came to be at the same time. Now how can that happen? The idea is that as soon as the embryo changed in the egg from growing into the deferent type of bird and instead growing into a chicken the egg changed from being an egg for the deferent kind of bird into being a chicken egg, not the egg of a chicken but a chicken egg for it was housing the evolution of the first chicken. Therefore the egg and the chicken came into existence at the same time.

Tuolumne Meadows Trip

The week of July 19th to the 26th I spent in Tuolumne Meadows with my family. We had a good time but I would recommend the main valley (Yosemite) for any one that wonts to bike through the park or has kids. Tuolumne Meadows is very nice but not as setup as the Yosemite valley is. For one you are not allowed to ride your bike on any of the paths in Tuolumne Meadows. Also most of the hikes are too long for a young child. But other then that the trip when very well. Amanda’s mother came with us and she was a grate, she would watch the kids for when we went on a hike they could go on. If it wasn’t for her are time would not have been as good as it was. Well any ways I have some pictures from the trip and here they are.

You can see all the posted pictures in the Gallery