BC32

I tried two classes of BC 32 today. As ususal, I expected some ginga moves in the warm-up track and a lot of evasive sidekick in track4. This time, movement in track 4 is a bit messy. I can not manage the combination of ginga, evasive sidekick and front kick on alternate leg. I recalled that in track 4 of BC31, we were required to mix ginga , evasive sidekick and jump kick and yet we did not have any problem. How come this time it seems more difficult ?

The recovery track, Muay Thai track and the last power tracks in BC 32 are a bit short, not more than 4 minutes. I did not make enough sweat. I love track 8 in BC31 (Back to UK) which lasts for over 6 minutes.

I expect the evasive sidekick in BC33 will be more difficult to learn. Lets pay more attention to this release. If we can not manage the movement in this release, we might not be able to make a step forward in advance moves in coming releases.

New CISSP Requirements

The current requirements for obtaining CISSP credential will be more demanding with effect from Oct 2007. This is good since it will boost the reputation of the title.

The minimum professional experience requirement for CISSP certification will be five years of relevant work experience in two or more of the 10 domains of the CISSP CBK, or four years of work experience with an applicable college degree or a credential from the (ISC)2-approved list. The current requirements for the CISSP call for four years of work experience in one or more of the 10 domains of the CISSP CBK, or three years of experience with an applicable college degree or a credential from the (ISC)2-approved list.

Candidates for any (ISC)2 credential will be required to obtain an endorsement of their candidature exclusively from an (ISC)2-certified professional in good standing. The professional endorsing the candidate can hold any (ISC)2 certification – CISSP, SSCP or CAP. Currently, candidates can be endorsed by an officer from the candidate’s organization if no CISSP endorsement can be obtained. The board believes that only an (ISC)2-credentialed professional bound by its Code of Ethics should provide a candidate endorsement.

Single iTune software to support multiple ipod players

This is a real situation of using ipod and itune encountered by me. I have 2 ipod players and only one PC with iTunes software installed. If I plug the first ipod player by USB, all the playlist and music in iTune will be syncrhorniozed. However, I can not perform editing of playlists or adding music for the 2nd ipod player because the iTune playlists and music contents will be transferred out resulting in corruption of all contents in the 2nd ipod player.

There is no mention on ipod user manual how a user can handle mutiple ipod players with a single iTunes software. I have renamed the default iTune music library database into something else and copy it to another set of music library database. The second database can be called upon by iTune and this enables me to have two sets of ipod contents within a single iTunes software.

How to set up a backup mail server

For some time, I wanted to find out how ISPs set up a backup mail server for serving many corporate accounts together. The logic is that if a company has its primary server failed, the incoming email will be queued up at the backup mail sever of an ISP by means of the following typical MX records:

xyz.com IN MX 10 mail.xyz.com.
xyz.com IN MX 20 relay.isp.com.

The trick is how to configure relay.isp.com as a backup mail server . It is really not too difficult if one has a fairly good background of mail relay. Just configure an ordinary Sendmail Server which acts as a relay host for the email destined to domain xyz.com in /etc/access. Since when the primary server ecncounters a failure, it might take several hours to resume to normal. The retry interval of the queued mail shall be set longer, say several hours.

I have tried to use two mail servers one backing up the other and the tricks above really work.

Wireshark to replace Ethereal

Due to trade mark issues, the software Ethereal has been changed to a new name called Wireshark (http://www.wireshark.org).

I find a lot of enhancements in Wireshark. The most obvious is that thee is no need to stop capturing if one wishes to analyse the packets. In installation, Winpcap 4.0 library is required. No need to worry, the installation program of Wireshark will remove previous version of Winpcap 3.0.

For those who are still using Ethereal, it is time to shift to Wireshark.