RSS recursion is not a toy

… that was syndication for the sake of it.

That’s what I said, word for word. Then a colleague pointed out that I could have twitter automatically update from my blog or Blakepics. And all hell broke loose.

I didn’t like Twitter as another way of updating my blog, or having it throw up all over my Facebook status every time I opened up my Twitter-enabled fridge. But reaching out to new audiences, and the potential to bombard mobile phone networks every time I bounce from one country to the next… Well suddenly it’s become quite cool.

And yes, I admit – I was tempted to install the application to syndicate my Xbox 360 status as well. But I’m not sure I’m ready to spam everyone that much. Yet.

“Kevin has just been killed by a bunny rabbit on Halo 3. Again”

Iron Chef America... Fuck Yeah!

I know a short blog post is highly uncharacteristic, but it’s especially relevant as I’ve just been talking about Twitter…

Is it just me, or does the new cover of Iron Chef America for Wii remind anyone else of Team America?

Just me then…

Most of the solutions I came up with involved things like ‘spending money’, which I’m slightly adverse to do if I can do it with the existing kit, so these are the really basic steps to turn the existing linux box (with both wireless and wired cards) into a useful bridge. As usual, don’t be fooled into thinking this guide is here for anyone else, as much as it’s here for me when I need to rebuild the machine and I’ve forgotten it all. But feel free to leave a comment about how much warmer and fuzzier I’ve made your life through your use of these “instructions”.

The current configuration

Fedora 8 installation
Wireless Ethernet (ath0) card is connected as 192.168.0.8
Wired Ethernet (eth1) card is connected as 192.168.1.8
Named/bind/DNS server already configured and set-up to accept requests on 192.168.1.8
The Xbox will be wired, on 192.168.1.20

Setting up Fedora

Setup the forwarding rules

#Outgoing requests
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s 192.168.1.8/24 -o ath0 -j MASQUERADE
iptables -A FORWARD -s 192.168.1.0/24 -o ath0 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A FORWARD -d 192.168.1.0/24 -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -i eth1 -j ACCEPT
#Incoming requests (port forwarding)
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -i ath0 -d 192.168.0.8 --dport 88 -j DNAT --to 192.168.1.20:88
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -i ath0 -d 192.168.0.8 --dport 3074 -j DNAT --to 192.168.1.20:3074

Save your rules so they’re applied on start-up
sudo iptables-save > /etc/sysconfig/iptables

Enable ipv4 port forwarding
nano /etc/sysctl.conf
Change this line
net.ipv4.ip_forward = 0
to
net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1

The client machine / Xbox 360

Now on your client machine (note this will only have a wired connection).
IP Address: 192.168.1.20
Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway: 192.168.1.8
DNS Server: 192.168.1.8

You’re going to need a DHCP server so that these settings are automatically assigned to the XBox 360. If don’t have one for your subnet already, you can set it up through dhcpd. You’ll probably want to do something about

Edit /etc/dhcpd.conf

ddns-update-style interim;
# HardWired
subnet 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
option routers 192.168.1.8;
option domain-name-servers 192.168.1.8;
authoritative;
range 192.168.1.10 192.168.1.20;
}
# Assign a static IP
host xbox {
hardware ethernet 00:45:40:10:FE:12;
fixed-address 192.168.1.20;
}

Then restart dhcpd
/etc/rc.d/init.d/dhcpd restart

Router

Remember those ports we forwarded on the server? You’ll also need to add port forwarding to your router, to forward the same ports (88, 3074) to the Fedora machine on 192.168.0.8.

And that’s really it. You should now be able to connect to the Internet without any troubles.

So I did a little more digging, and I found a nice little Wii WordPress plugin that detects if you’re using a Wii and displays the site accordingly. Nice big text, easy to navigate links, perfect for that in the armchair browsing we all wish we could do.

That’s all very well, but it doesn’t make much of Michael Bolin’s library. So I did what any self-respecting web developer would do, and hacked the two together in the dirtiest quickest way possible. So if you’ve got a Wii – try it out… Go to blog.puzzlebox.co.uk in Opera and see the layout especially designed for you. Click on an article to read it, and while you’re there, hit the Left and Right buttons of the d-pad, and you’ll skip between the articles as well.

Now then, about that Wii keyboard …