Hello world!!! -Make a long distance affair short

Today's technology makes everything impossible to nearly possible. Before I came here in Singapore, I made sure that long distance communication with my family would be manageable and economical.

To accomplish it, here are the few things I did.- First, I thought it would be necessary to have regular voice and video communication with my love ones. So, I installed Skype. Skype allows two parties to call each other for free and provides 24/7 availability anywhere in the world. In fact, it's basic feature was all that I needed.

To collaborate with my son, a grade schooler in his daily homeworks and studies, I found this web-based tool Scriblink at www.scriblink.com to be very useful. It is an online whiteboard-like, that enables one to connect privately with another to collaborate at anytime. There were jut fews things I had to guide him in its operation. He has to launch the site, invite me via my email, and wait for my confirmation. Thereafter, everything would run smoothly. In this manner, I could easily express my thoughts through free hand writing with the aid of scribling tools.

Try blending the two and make your long distance affair short too.

Hello world!!! -Control remote PCs with SSH

When I left my institution for a long vacation, I did'nt leave any blueprint behind about the network. All I know is, I could do the job done whether I'm here or there. Well, I was right. controlling remote PCs with SSH (Secure Shell) did a hell of a job. It is simple and yet so powerful.

Our network comprises of web proxy servers stationed in each building. We called these, child proxy servers because they connect directly to their big Mama and Papa called parent web proxy servers. One day, a child proxy got sick, so whom did they call? Me, right here in Singarpore job hunting. I told them not to panic, so I brought up my Putty, a client program for the SSH, Telnet and Rlogin network protocols and quickly login and diagnosed. I did that just after verifying connectivity with ping (packet internet groper). What happened? Luckily, it was a just a layer 1 problem. Layer 1 is the first, or bottommost, layer of the OSI Reference Model usually referred as the physical layer. It is where we usually find the wires (UTP, coax, fiber), connectors (RJ-45, DB-9), hubs and repeaters. Then, how come I was able to connect using SSH? Simple, one side (Internet) of the connection was good, but the other (LAN) was not.

As long as there's a route and access to the destination, controlling remote PCs will be an easy task to do. So there, SSH saved the day.