Reblogged from 8057art:

the importance of a quick break, sometimes defines next steps on our creative development path, pushing our limits even beyond where they use to be…looking back at our past expressions, one can get a clear view of how we deconstruct shapes and forms, breaking it down to a fun game of matching color and emphasizing contrasts driven by our unquiet mind …

Read more… 43 more words

Reblogged from Corie B:

Mixed media on panel, 19 x 24

REBLOGGED FROM CORI B. "SOLID and THUNDERING DARKS WITH ICY SCRATCHES OF LIGHT"-NAT.HILL

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Tanzania currently has shillings, and the exchange rate with Canadian dollars is about 1 for 1600. Now that’s going to be so easy to calculate once we’re jet-lagged and on bumpy roads for 12 hours a day… That’s why Jayne is bringing her tiny calculator and amazing maths skills. Me, I’m not too quick with the maths. But she is! Therefore, she’ll be in charge of shopping. She won’t mind.

A topic that has kept me glued to the computer screen for endless hours (some would call it obsessive sifting of anecdotal stuff…I call it Research), is where to stash my cash while on the road. Not that I have trust issues with people (ok, I do, but that’s a whole other post), but with the lack of ATMs in rural Tanzania, we’ll need to bring lots o’money. So, where to hide it? I’ve come across some pretty imaginative places. Others just ridiculous (that guy who hid his money in his underwear, I’m looking at you). Money belt, bra pouch, sock pocket, empty deodorant container, under the soles of shoes. Oh, and in your hat. Because we all want to spend 10 hours in direct sunlight with a wad of money an inch thick sitting on top of your head. I won’t tell you where (refer to trust issues above), but I’ve found really good spots to hide my dough. Now, knowing me, I may forget some of them and will find “free” money for the next ten years strewn all over my travel gear. But hey, it beats the alternative…THE FANNY PACK!

– Nat

I can’t imagine, after being up there, that I would want to live anywhere near the needle though as the viewing binoculars have quite an epic zoom on them, even seeing directly into some apartments!

Even though we had only been out for 3 or so hours we still needed our daily rest time. The rest of the day was fairly basic. Emma & I went & got our final lot of groceries in Seattle chatting about how we both really loved it here even though its thigh-chillingly freezing.

We’re off to Austin tomorrow afternoon which means I don’t have to tactically layer 2 x pants, 3-4 tops plus a hoody, at least until New York.

Nat

Super Producer, Luney Tunez sits down with HHS1987 Behind The Beats segment. Luney Tunez produced Rihanna & Future’s smash hit “Love Song”, and countless amounts of other hits. He talks to us about when he found his love for music, producing, artists he’s worked with and more. He talks about his production, his favorite beat, using Fruity Loops, and he gives advice to new producers on the come up.

katy jade Dobson’s painting of horses

This was reblogged from katy-jade Dobson’s art blog

“PASSIONATE STROKES CHARGED WITH WILD ENERGY”-NAT.HILL

Painting for sale...

The Swindon & Cricklade Railway is a preserved line, which was once part of the Midland and South Western Junction Railway, it is now a shadow of its former self but thanks to the work of volunteers the line is in the process of being extended from it’s current base at Blunsdon in North Swindon. Like the smaller railway at Coate Water  Nat  aims to show a range of jobs and ages.

The photos Nat produced have shown how it looks after numerous projects with the cooperation of the local council and volunteer groups to refurbish M Shed after it was rebuilt in the 1950s. It eventually reopened as a museum to preserve the dock railway which runs alongside the water and several cranes situated along the harbour, all to remind us of its importance in preserving the past.

Look deep into nature and you will understand everything better.
—Albert Einstein

We got a great view of the Space Needle & the skyline as well as snow capped mountains.

We then walked along the pier to an arcade with an indoor carousel. We purchased our cotton candy (when we called it fairy floss she had no idea what we meant), chose our horses & then Emma & I quickly realised we were the oldest on there by at least 15 years. But who cares because it was amazing fun!

We then headed back to the hostel, doing grocery shopping at Target on the way, and napped for an hour or so.
After a tip from our roommate, we decided to go out at Capitol Hill, a great nightlife area with lots of gay bars. Whilst getting ready & having a few drinks, it was announced that 2 guys staying at the hostel had moved to Seattle & just got married so we headed down to the basement to celebrate with them. We made friends with the people who live & work here, had a few drinks & then headed out.
Getting slightly lost along the way, we made it to the right spot & as we walked into the 1st bar we had chosen, we discovered our roommate sitting right by the door. After our $3 cover charge & 5 jagerbombs & 3 ciders for $50 (plus the bottle of vodka back at the hostel) we had a pretty freakin fun night of crumping & laughing right up until closing time.

After the DJ lied to me 3 times about playing Britney we walked home again in the rain but we’re getting use to that now.

Nat

This has been reblogged from the Art Mark site

the spiritual world the paint hold.paintings by Mark Toner

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Reblogged from Stefanie Jasper Artist/Photographer:

Meaty, meaty, MEATY!

If I had one word to describe this stick, it would be the word above. Probably what most would call leathery. I likened it to eating a good, satisfying steak. My friend, Mike Marlow from Capitol Cigars in Denver recommended i try it the last time i was visiting, and I am entirely glad i did. Construction is awesome all the way through, solid, with a good draw, decently smokey, with that pleasant oily feel that you will enjoy have follow you the rest of the day. A very, very slight sweet aftertaste that compliments the leathery main notes through out.

Very satisfying. Definitely a smoke I would bring out constantly and recommend to others.

91 (A)

Papasi

Meaning “tick” (i.e. the insect) in Swahili, Papasis are a name given to the various Zanzibar street touts and other, erm, “solicitors”, who latch on to you and follow you around, offering tours, directions, information, and whatnot. For a price, of course. Always for a price.

They wait for jet-lagged tourists at the Zanzibar ferry and airport, at popular venues and on street corners across from hotels. From other travel blogs, these young men will interfere with your transactions in every possible way as they try to get a commission. Many merchants have signs that they don’t pay commissions to papasis, but others have given up trying to avoid them. I’m of two minds about this: on the one hand, I understand poverty and the desperate need to make money, something, anything. I’d even be tempted to hire one to keep the others the hell away! Yet at the same time, these aren’t local Zanzibaris; they’re pushy young men from the mainland who will prey on the naïveté and fatigue of visitors and scam them. They aren’t welcome by their countrymen either. Bad for business, I guess. Plus, I don’t appreciate being on the receiving end of constant harassment and stalking. It reminds me of a trip to Egypt a few years ago (before the craziness erupted).

Our guide had warned us, as she led us to the Gizah plateau to visit the pyramids, that men would wait behind the Pyramids, away from everyone, and would harass and follow us, trying to sell us cheap trinkets or bogus services. She was right! As soon as we turned the corner and stood on the far side of the Pyramids…sweet baby carrots. Here they come! Half a dozen young men were waiting with hands full of stuff. A pair of them decided my young son and I looked like the perfect catch. I’m usually nice and pretty laid back, but as they accosted us and pushed their crap in my face, my temper went up a notch. And when one of them attempted to put some crappy sheik headdress (I know, sheik headdress in EGYPT) on my kid’s head, my blood pressure went “shooooosh” into the stratosphere. I told him in rapid-fire French Canadian what I thought of his tactics and to not. Touch. My. Kid. Ever. Again. What does he do? He plants the sheik thing right against my chest and let it go, hoping my instinct would be to catch it. Then of course, it would become mine and I would have to pay for it. Smart move. Except by that time, I was past being nice. I let the thing drop to the ground and walked right over it. Oh boy, the guy was not impressed! But he backed off right away. Doesn’t he know the motto: don’t touch a bear cub in front of its mother.

So, Zanzibar papasis, I hope it won’t come to this. Even Canucks get pissed off!

– Nat

ReUsed ART.

MIKE STILKYS

book into art installations check him out.

The objective is to use 192.168.1.32 as a VPN server to connect 192.168.1.0/24 to remote clients assigned addresses within 192.168.2.0/24. Because 192.168.1.1 NATs 192.168.1.32 to its WAN address, 500/UDP and 4500/UDP must be forwarded to 192.168.1.32. Because 192.168.1.1 can’t be configured with routes to 192.168.2.0/24, 192.168.1.32 must NAT 192.168.2.0/24 to its own address (end users can’t add static routes to the 3801HGV and it doesn’t run a routing daemon, and adding static routes to all the other devices on 192.168.1.0/24 is impractial.)

SERVER CONFIGURATION

The strongSwan release (4.5.2) in Ubuntu 12.04 doesn’t seem to be able to support negotiations between client and server in this NAT configuration, but 5.0.2 does work, and it’s easily built from source.

Once strongSwan is installed, generate keys and certificates as instructed at http://wiki.strongswan.org/projects/strongswan/wiki/IOS_(Apple).  N.B. that the DN’s CN and the subjectAltName must be the same as each other and the clients’ name/address for the sever.  Because 192.168.1.1′s WAN address (which is used as the CN/san) is dynamically assigned, there is automation on the VPN server to generate a new server certificate when it does change.  Although I’ve not known the WAN address to have changed in more than a year, the check runs hourly.  As long as the same (or another already trusted) CA is used, updating the server’s certificate won’t affect the clients’ configurations.

Here are sanitized but otherwise working configuration files.

ipsec.conf

config setup

conn ios
    keyexchange=ikev1
    authby=xauthrsasig
    xauth=server
    left=%defaultroute
    leftsubnet=0.0.0.0/0
    leftfirewall=yes
    leftcert=serverCert.pem
    right=%any
    rightsourceip=192.168.2.0/24
    rightsubnet=192.168.2.0/24
    rightcert=clientCert.pem
    auto=add

ipsec.secrets

: RSA serverKey.pem
username : XAUTH "password"

strongswan.conf

charon {
        threads = 16
        plugins {
                sql {
                        loglevel = -1
                }
        }
        dns1 = 192.168.1.1
}

pluto {
}

libstrongswan {
}

Here’s a shell script which enables IP forwarding so clients can reach 192.168.1.0/24 and NAT so hosts on 192.168.1.0/24 can respond to clients.  The commands can be integrated into the start up process as appropriate. The iptables commands below simply add the necessary rules; more work is required to automatically bring the NAT rules up to policy with each run ala Puppet.

#!/bin/bash

IPTABLES=/sbin/iptables
SYSCTL=/sbin/sysctl

$SYSCTL -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=1

$IPTABLES -n -t nat -L | grep -- "ACCEPT     all  --   " >/dev/null
if [ $? != 0 ]; then
    $IPTABLES -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s -o eth0 -m policy --dir out --pol ipsec -j ACCEPT
fi$IPTABLES -n -t nat -L | grep -- "SNAT       all  --   " >/dev/null
if [ $? != 0 ]; then
    $IPTABLES -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s -o eth0 -j SNAT --to-source 
fi

CLIENT CONFIGURATION

iOS client configuration is relatively straight forward.  Read the strongSwan wiki article mentioned above.  One wrinkle I found on Mac OS X 10.7 involved having a stray copy of my CA certificate in my login keychain after placing all the necessary keys and certificates in the System keychain.  The server certificate couldn’t be validated until the login keychain copy of the CA certificate was removed.