If this makes no sense to you, then you don't need it - I don't plan on helping anyone with it. However, if it does make sense it might be very useful.

What I am going to demonstrate allows you to secure you internet connection on your laptop when you are a coffee shop or when you are somewhere where they are blocking your favorite site and you want to get around that by piping all your laptop traffic through you home computer or external server, encrypted over SSH.

This assumes both machines have SSH and are *nix flavor (mac,unix,linux). If you are using windows I think you can still do this somehow but I don't care and you can figure it out yourself.

Its really just a few simple steps. The first step is to connect to your server/home computer from from the laptop:

ssh -p SSH_PORT -D LOCAL_PORT USERNAME@SERVER

SSH_PORT = The addres you communicate over ssh with. You can leave off the -p SSH_PORT if you are using ssh on the vanilla port 22.

LOCAL_PORT - The local port you want to use for the SOCKS proxy. I would suggest something like 8080 but it really doesn't matter. Just make sure its one you are not using.

USERNAME@SERVER - The normal username@server you use to connect to your home machine or server over ssh. e.g. myuser@mysite.com. It can also be the IP address if you don't have a domain name.

Once you have connected open up a SOCKS proxy complaint app. A common one is Firefox and great because its a web browser, so that is the kind of traffic you want to secure when surfing somewhere sketchy.

In your firefox prefs, choose the network tab.


Then set up the proxy settings to point to localhost 127.0.0.1 and the LOCAL_PORT port you choose above.


You should be set to go. To test and make sure open you /etc/hosts files and add an entry for:
0.0.0.0 google.com

Now open up another browser. When you go to google it should be site not found as you are redirecting google to 0.0.0.0 for your comp. However, when you use firefox with the SOCKS proxy it should still work when you go to google.com because the traffic is being piped through SSH to your server or home machine.

Once you are done with this test remember to take the google.com entry out of /etc/hosts and also remember all you traffic is only encrypted and piped via firefox.

Another simple test is to check your IP from your browser. Visit in firefox. The IP should be the same as your home computer/server.

To shut down the proxy just kill the process for the ssh connection to the server.

You can also set you entire system to use the proxy but that is for another day. Well here is a clue on a mac. This is in the system network preferences. Safari should be proxied afterwards.

(E:southernyankee) sent me this pic she took of me at zoar. I wish I
could have got this pic a month ago when I was much buffer but it's
better than no pic.

Despite (e:jon)'s tale of friend gone dead on rocks I decided to go climbing today and brought (e:southernyakee) with me.

It's done and I survived this time.

Seriously, news channel 4 just did a special report about the "growing
trend of staycations."

There is a wikipedia page explaining staycation.

Despite the wind throwing lots of pear babies on the ground, it looks like we might have the most pears ever. This year I am just doing pots of juice and a pear themed party.

This one kicks the squirrel face's butt.

It's a little chilly on the porch so (e:mike) is bundling in this cute
multi-print ensemble.

Nameless Bitch is going into women's boxing. She needed a name and I thought "Cornish Game Hen" is awesome because she is from cornwall and game hen's are great.

So for the first time in a long itme, I fired up illustrator and here is what I came up with.

The BBQ yesterday was awesome - (e:metalpeter,48749) has pics. We had a great mix of people. No one got too drunk for once and the food was delicious. In addition, we got to catch up with (e:leetee) and (e:uncutsaniflush). My phone was dead for most of the day so I got no pictures ;( I think (e:metalpeter) got a bunch.

(e:southernyankee) arrived with an amazing fruit basket complete with mini-bananas, we had a bunch of cakes. Robert and James made delicious salads and some testy orange jello marshmallow suspension. (E:tinypliny) made that cake from (e:tinypliny,48738) which I thought tasted great although I suggested she add bananas next time.

After the BBQ (e:sounthernyanke)e, (e:mike) and I went to Pure to go see Junkie XL The place is set up pretty nice with a large main dance floor bar, a catwalk on a second level overlooking that. There were also some side room VIP style bars.



I don't go out much downtown so maybe its normal but to me it was the most ethnically mixed buffalo moment I ever had. On the dance floor there was seriously every kind of person and they all appeared to be getting along. Arabs, indians (lots of them) asians, white, blacks. The even had a dance off competition that I thought was going to be a fight but ended up being them each taking turns and cheering each other on.

(E:mike) and I went out to dinner at wasabi the other night. I thought it was exceptionally yummy but I think (e:mike) was overwhelmed by a boat full of sashami as it was his first japanese cuisine experience. We ordered the love boat which I know seems funny but it was a good selection of fish for two and the price was reasonable. Because (e:mike) didn't eat so much I ended up eating the equivalent of several small fishes worth of sashimi. I think it might have been the first time I was totally full on sashimi.