I finally received my Raspberry Pi in the mail this week. If case you're not familiar, it's a tiny (almost credit-card sized) computer. It was conceived as a low cost personal computer that could be mass produced cheaply to provide comuting opportunities, particularly in education, where they might not have otherwise existed. I ordered my Model B from Allied Electronics. Since release they've been pretty much perpetually on back order, but I got mine about 6 weeks after ordering.

The basic Model B comes with just the computer board and attached connection ports. I made a list of the things I would need prior to receiving the Pi in the mail. Most of the cables and connectors can be ordered with the Pi, but I just scrounged through my cable & gadget caches to come up with most of what I needed.

• 5V Micro-USB Power Cable
• HDMI <-> HDMI cable
• Ethernet Patch Cable
• USB Keyboard
• USB Mouse
• SD Card
• Case

The Power Cable. I had one of these laying around from an old Motorola Bluetooth headset charger. HDMI cable? Check. I always have plenty of those around because they're so cheap from MonoPrice that I buy more than I need. Patch cable? I've accumulated more of those over the years than I care to think about... including a nice 50-footer that I could use to connect to my router/switch from the guestroom (where the Television is) temporarily. An old Apple USB keyboard did the trick nicely along with my wireless Logitech mouse that I use when traveling. I bought a 4GB SD card at Best Buy using my Reward Points so it was, in effect, free to me.

The Case

That left just the case. I looked online... a lot. I saw a lot of cases. There are some amazing and impressive designs out there. That said, I couldn't justify spending $20 on a case for a $35 computer. That's like buying a $20,000 car cover for my JEEP. So for the short-term I settled on the Punnet printable case. This will help prevent any accidental short circuits while also keeping some of the dust bunnies at bay. Also, because the device will be located on a shelf in my network "closet" aesthetics aren't really an issue.

I downloaded the PDF from Squareitround

http://squareitround.co.uk/Resources/Punnet_net_Mk1.pdf

printed on some colored (red, of course) construction paper and set about cutting and folding. The finished prodcut turned out quite agreeable and the board fit nicely inside.

The OS

To install the Raspbian (Raspberry Debian, get it?) OS onto the SD card, I first downloaded the "Wheezy" image from the Raspberry Pi downloads page and verified the image checksum (what's the point of setting up a secure VPN if you don't know your source OS is legit?).

http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads

 The eLinux wiki has good instructions for preparing the SD card and loading the image. I used section 4.4 for a "mostly graphical" process from my Macbook Pro.

http://elinux.org/RPi_Easy_SD_Card_Setup

The Connections

It was time to bring everything together and fire up the Pi. I connected the USB power supply, Apple keyboard, wireless mouse, HDMI cable to the guestroom television and a nice long patch cable to the router in the closet. The little board sprang to life.

The first boot launches RasPi Config. Good details can be found here: http://elinux.org/RPi_raspi-config. Most importantly, change the default password! I'm planning to expose this machine to the outside world. It's absolutely critical that it not use the default password. Also, enable SSH to allow remote access for administration.

Even though the machine will be sitting "headless" in the close, I wanted to see the Raspbian desktop at least once, so I booted it up the GUI to have a look. It's slow by modern desktop standards, but given it's tiny size it's still incredibly impressive to see a full functioning Linux desktop running from such a small device. For my use case it won't matter anyway because I won't be booting to the desktop.

All the rest of the configuration I could do "remotely" via SSH. I chose a suitable static IP address on my internal network and added a DHCP reservation so I'd be able to predictably find the device on the network.

The VPN

For setting up the VPN, I followed the excellent guide at Scott Jordan's blog: http://unvexed.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-to-set-up-real-encrypted-vpn.html. His instructions are clear and concise and everything worked as expected.

It's worth noting (and it came up in the comments on the above blog) that PPTP VPN has been compromised by way of attacking the MS CHAP v2 Key Exchange. If you want to know more, read Moxie Marlinspike's excellent write up here : https://www.cloudcracker.com/blog/2012/07/29/cracking-ms-chap-v2/. It's not a trivial attack in that it still takes a great deal of compute power and/or time, but you should be aware of it.

The Dynamic DNS Address

To make sure you can access this server from where you are, you'll need to ensure that even if your router reboots and your WAN IP address changes, that you can still look it up by DNS name. I've previously used DynDNS and their Pro package is exactly that type of service.

The SSH Tunnel

In case you missed it, I wrote some time ago about connecting via an SSH Tunnel to provide for privacy. Now, with the Raspberry Pi, that's even easier to do. The same blog has another easy to follow article detailing how to configure and use the Pi as an SSH Tunnel endpoint.

http://unvexed.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-to-use-raspberry-pi-as-secure-web.html

As mentioned there, I added 443 as a listener port to allow me access back to my Pi even when the default SSH port has been blocked. This should be allowed almost anywhere. In fact, anyone blocking port 443 is basically telling me that they don't want me to use their network.

Securing the SSH Connection

Since the Pi is now exposed to the Internet and using the default "Pi" username, I wanted to dial up the security a bit and prevent a possible brute force password attack. I did this by enabling two-factor authentication in the form of SSH keys. The following video gives a nice tutorial on how to set it all up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVvcGb8GjVU

Accessing the VPN

I setup VPN on my laptop (as well as the wife's) using the instructions in Scott Jordan's blog referenced above. Setting up access on our iPhones and iPads was even easier. Just navigate to Settings > General > VPN and create a new PPTP VPN connection.

Conclusion

That's it. It took some hand-drawn sketches to explain to the wife when, where and why she should be using these secure connections, but I think she gets it. And as an added bonus, we can now access our Drobo fileserver at home from anywhere.

Dangerous Cliffs

Oh My!

Overlook - Tunnel Ridge Road

Overlook Panorama - Tunnel Ridge Road

Auxier Ridge Trail

Icicles

Trail Blaze & Tilley Shadow

Haystack Rock

Courthouse Rock

Ridge Top Hiking

The regular home poker game was canceled so I met up with a couple of the other guys at the Bonita Springs greyhound track to hit their poker room.  Imagine if a bowling alley hosted a poker game... It's pretty much like that.

When I got there, they were both still in the $65 tourney.  I got on the $1/$2 list and they opened a new table.  I was happy about that, because the running games already had some pretty heavy stacks in them.  I bought in for $200 along with only about 2 other people.  Everyone else sat with $100 or less.

I was card dead for a long time.  I didn’t drag a pot during the first dealer’s 30 minute shift.  But, I was only down about $20 because I really hadn’t played any hands.  I didn’t want to seem super nitty (not that anyone was probably paying attention) and not get paid off if I miraculously found a hand, so I opened to $12 with

from the cutoff after 1 limper.  Both blinds called.  The limper called.  I completely missed the Jack high flop and the BB lead out for $25.  Easy fold.

Much later, I was stuck about $60 after speculating a bit when I limped with

after a couple other limpers.  3 more calls behind me… damn near family.  The flop was

The action checked to me.  I checked hoping someone would take a stab.  They didn’t.  The turn came

for a complete rainbow.  Checks to the guy to my right who bets $15.  I called hoping to induce a trap or drop the hammer on the river.  Folded to the BB (FSU jacket) who called also.  River

Now the BB decides to lead out for $25.  The guy to my right calls.  And for some reason here, I got a bad feeling about the BB.  Calling the turn and then leading the river on that dry of a board felt like he had either a big Ace or a Ten…. I’m ahead of most of those, but decided to play it conservative and call; partly because I wanted to see what he had… he had played a few hands and was kind of a dick.  Instead, the guy to my right immediately tables his

.. the BB mucks, I show the winner and drag the pot and got back to a little over even.

Later still a guy sits down in the 8 seat (2 to my left).  Younger.  Looks like he’s there to drink more than play.  He played the most of the hands he was dealt (easy enough to do at this limpy table) while I was still card dead.  He shows down

for a rivered gutshot broadway after calling a PF raise, a flop bet and a turn bet from the guy in the 7 seat who flopped a set of Jacks.

So then this happens.... young drinker in the 8 seat is the BB.  UTG opens for $7.  FSU calls the $7.  One other call.  I’m on the button with

I make it $27.  SB folds.  BB makes it $67.  UTG mucks quickly.  FSU thinks about it for a while and looks pained and acting like he’s made a hero fold (later said he had 66).  Now I’m in the suck.  It smells like Aces, but I haven’t seen him play enough to know if he would do the same thing with AK or QQ-TT.  I see he’s got about $100 behind, but I asked for a count and really study him while he’s counting it out.  Jaw clenches when I first ask for the count.  No shaky hands counting it out.  He’s not really giving me much as he doesn’t seem like he’s intentionally avoiding my stare, but he’s also not staring back at me.  It didn’t look super strong … and there’s only 6 ways to make Aces pre-flop, so I moved in … and he snap calls and tables

No bailout on the board and my stack is down to about $45.

I played a couple more hands and then hit the road.

I love the fact that the iTunes Match service allows me to easily access all my music (6,000+ songs) from all of my computers and devices. However, that convenience comes at a cost... And not just the annual subscription price.

I wanted to make sure I had enough music on my iPad to get me through my flight from Fort Myers to Cincinnati. Fortunately, I remembered this before boarding by flight. Unfortunately, I didn't remember until I was already at the gate at Southwest Florida International Airport. Good news; free wifi. Bad news; painfully slow.

I ended up using my phone's LTE to pull down a few albums & playlists to tide me over during the flight. It worked out fine, but definitely made me think about adding LTE to my next iPad. Advancement from iPod to iPhone has meant introducing some planning for which music to "pack" for traveling. Of course, I always have my latest podcasts available thanks to DownCast.

I was hoping to spend this Christmas in Key West just like last year. But, since I wasn't able to arrange an earlier visit to Kentucky, that wasn't going to work out. I'm trading Christmas morning mimosas by the pool for freezing rain and snow in Kentucky. All the same, it will be nice to see family and friends. Plus, I brought my hiking boots and clothes and am hoping to get in some time in the Red River Gorge. The knobs, hills, and valleys will be a welcome change from the flat scrub of Southwest Florida. If I'm lucky, I may even be able to round up an old friend or two to hit the trails with.

Kentucky, here I come.