While play a really good deathmatch in Quake 2 tonight my broadband connection starting giving me jit! My ping went from 20/30 up to 987! I lost the connection to the server I was playing on. Looked at the log of my PC-cillin Firewall and it reported someone commited a Smurf attack. From CERT Advisory: "The two main components to the smurf denial-of-service attack are the use of forged ICMP echo request packets and the direction of packets to IP broadcast addresses.

The Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) is used to handle errors and exchange control messages. ICMP can be used to determine if a machine on the Internet is responding. To do this, an ICMP echo request packet is sent to a machine. If a machine receives that packet, that machine will return an ICMP echo reply packet. A common implementation of this process is the "ping" command, which is included with many operating systems and network software packages. ICMP is used to convey status and error information including notification of network congestion and of other network transport problems. ICMP can also be a valuable tool in diagnosing host or network problems.

In the "smurf" attack, attackers are using ICMP echo request packets directed to IP broadcast addresses from remote locations to generate denial-of-service attacks. There are three parties in these attacks: the attacker, the intermediary, and the victim (note that the intermediary can also be a victim). "

Why the hell would anyone want to do such a pointless thing? Is there someone sitting somewhere going "huh huh cool man i made someone connection freeze up for two minutes".

POINTLESS!!

Have a VERY interesting talk at Scout Network the other night from a chap who had done a fabulous trek up one of the peaks in the Himalayas. He and five others of his army regiment went up to Mera Peak at a height of 6,476 m. (21,247 ft.) which is in Makalu-Barun National Park. The awesome magnitude of the highest peaks in the world in the back ground of his photos was breathtaking. Even the intensity of the sky and the way colours were very vibrant even at that height on a mountain was unexpected. He told us of his experiences of the Sherpa people, who are so very very kinda and very religious people. There was so much information and photos I cannot put them all down here. Look here for some more information on the trek that they went on and some photos.

It has inspired me to get mtself back into shape because I could one day do such a trek with my fellow Scouters/Friends. So im off to help do a hike for my friend David's Scout troop tonight. It may not be the Himalayas, it's probably not even 10 m above sea level, but it's a start. =P

Round and round in circles we seem to go. OK some of the 360 degree turns have been because I want to be sure we are clear on our design goals and are clear on what we are designing. Currently adding the Template Method and Strategy Patterns to the refactoring tool. Not sure what the output of this design phase should be but im feeling like theres a lot of crossover to the implementation phase at the moment. Not sure about this, maybe diving into coding far too early.

<choke> <cough> <splutter>

I am currently undertaking a class called Group Project for my degree. I began this class with the intention of improving my coding and programming experience. I thought that this would be a good outcome on completion of the class. However I had been struggling with the concepts in the class especially why and how to implement the Design Patterns of the Software Refactoring Tool we were maintaining for the class. To aid me I have borrowed from the library two books which will help me understand more.

1. Design Patterns Explained: A New Perspective on Object-Oriented Design by Shalloway and Trott.

2. Design Patterns Java Workbook by Metsker.

So far I've only read a few pages of the 1st book but things are starting to dawn on me.

For instance this made an impact:

"What is an object? Objects have traditionally been defined as data with methods. Unfortunetly this is a very limiting way of looking at objects"

If you had asked me to define an object before reading this data with method is how I would of defined them.

Also it seems I make a common mistake, 'young' computer scientists often do we often think about things at the implementation level too quickly.

I hope I learn a lot more and put it into practise.

I am a bad blogger. I admit it. I dont do it regularly I don't take advantage of what it could help me do.

I am going to make changes to this website and commit a lot of posts over the next few days, so those that read the site with email may wish to turn it off! If you are still interested in what I have to say and what interests me check back in a week or so. To HOPEFULLY see some changes

Expect a few posts after this tonight, some you might find interesting some you may not.

Well thats the new PC finally finally built. AMD Athlon 2600+, 1024Mb RAM DDR, 80GB HD, DVD, CDRW, Radeon 9700 128MB DDR, Audigy 2, 3Com NIC, 19" monitor - heaven! Of course when it come to the OS boy did I have troubles. Thanks to good ol' Win98 crashing (GPF GPF F**KING GPF) everytime I tried to install the Audigy sound card - I had to opt for an even darker evil - Win XP Pro. Ok so it's looks nice and it's fast and all my hardware is recogniced ( minus minidisc at moment) BUT! BUT! I am very weary of the reports that are surfacing about the information that is reportedly being sent back to Microsoft. I will have to try to keep an eye and see if anything is happening. Plus the fact that I created a 10GB partition because I thoguht I wont be using Win XP much so I dont need to give it a lot of space! I have 4GB left after installing the software bundles that came with the hardware and a few games!

I will hopefully have a copy of Debian soon, since it's become fashionable in my course and will, fingers crossed, like the greater speed and security of Linux!

Watch this space!

PS: Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix and Jedi Outcast are now going to be my life. Oh thank you LucasArts and RavenSoftware!

PPS: <MANTRA> MUST STRIKE BALANCE BETWEEN UNI AND GAMEPLAY, MUST STRIKE BALANCE BETWEEN UNI AND GAMEPLAY, MUST STRIKE....</MANTRA>