Google already offers their search engine service via IPv6 at ipv6.google.com. This works fine, although it doesn’t work with Gmail or Google Reader, as for some reason, they have not added those services to the ipv6.google.com domain — they only work if you are on the www.google.com domain.

However, there is a way to access Google’s IPv6 server and still retain the www.google.com domain: edit your /etc/hosts file.

To access Gmail and Google Reader via IPv6, add the following line to your /etc/hosts file (if you are on Windows, add it to your C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts file):

2001:4860:c003::68 www.google.com mail.google.com

If you are using Firefox, you will need to restart your browser before it picks up the changes (as it uses an internal DNS cache).

You can add support for other services such as Google Images by adding the respective domain names to the end of that line. However, I haven’t been able to get Google Maps working correctly at this stage.

Please note that the above IPv6 address may have changed since I wrote this post. To find out the most current IPv6 address that Google uses, use the following command:

dig +short aaaa ipv6.google.com

If the IPv6 address that you get from that command is different from the one I posted above, please let me know in the comments!

I wonder what the likelihood of Google adding AAAA records to the main www.google.com domain is.

This time, I’m not using Teredo or 6to4, but I’m using an AYIYA tunnel provided by SixXS. The reason I don’t use 6to4 is because we use DD-WRT v24 on our router, which for some stupid reason does not come with IPv6 support.

I am using the AYIYA tunnel by way of the AICCU utility (which is packaged in Debian and Ubuntu). AYIYA is cool because it can traverse NATs, and even doesn’t mind if our router reboots for some reason and our dynamic IPv4 address changes. It all works beautifully.

I’ve now got my own subnet, which is generously provided by my SixXS PoP, 2001:1938:309/48, which gives me, like, zillions of address space to play with. The whole setting up of IPv6 has been very educational. I would recommend that anybody interested in IPv6, or even just IP routing in general, route an IPv6 subnet at some stage, to just get a feel for the system.

Last one to ping6 -c 1 2001:1938:309:beef:21b:fcff:fe25:42e7 from their machine and tell me if it works is a rotten egg! Thanks, Paul — it worked!

This is just beyond ridiculous. You know, terrorists can use the telephone system to coordinate attacks, so why don’t we ban the telephone? I can make copies of music in my mind — why not ban thinking, too?

I wonder if the US-based companies that are being sued by the French record labels can be dragged over to France and prosecuted. The linked article says so, but if they refuse to fly to France to show up in court, can the French police ask the US police to seize them nonetheless? Can I be immune from ridiculous foreign lawsuits by residing in a country where it is legal? Does it make them liable because they are conducting their business in France by sending data traffic to that country? So many questions.

• Grab the nearest book.
• Open it to page 56.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
• Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST

And the result is:

“All I is knowing about myself is that I is very old, very old and crumply. Perhaps as old as the earth.”

From Roald Dahl’s The BFG. Haven’t read that book for years — I should read it again some time.

Would make a nice Ubuntu marketing slogan.

As you might imagine, PowerPoint and Impress are not actually as apt for the job as they could be if all you wanted to do is drawing. For that reason, you should give OpenOffice.org Draw a try. It’s very similar to PowerPoint and Impress in terms of layout and ease-of-use, but it is actually designed to be used as a drawing tool.

I used to dig out PowerPoint or Visio to do flowcharts and things like that. Now, I use OpenOffice.org Draw exclusively, because it is a much simpler tool for the simple jobs I throw at it.

So, next time you want to do a flowchart or simple drawing mockup on paper (maybe a photo collage), give OpenOffice.org Draw a try. It might just impress you.

I’ve been frequently updating my Battle for Wesnoth post — maybe I’ll consider moving it to a proper page, rather than a post, so this doesn’t happen again.

Wait, did I just mention my least favourite ISP, Telstra? Telstra opposing something draconian? You know when even Telstra opposes something, it’s bad.

Well, I thought I would save some time by creating the hardware audit form in a table separate ODT document, and use OpenOffice.org’s Insert → Section feature to add the linked document to my report. That way, I could edit the document with the table in it, and have the one linked inside my report automatically, as well as link the table to other documents.

That was all well and good, except after I saved and closed down everything, and attempted to open it the next day, every document that had been linked to my hardware audit form had been corrupted.

As ODF documents are really just zip files with XML documents inside, I opened one of my ODF files in an unzipper. Interestingly, all the files extracted fine, except for content.xml. This was the same for all the documents.

So, content.xml got corrupted after linking the document to an external document? I’m probably just jumping to conclusions — after all, correlation does not mean causation, and the file could have been corrupted by another way. I can’t think why, though, especially seeing as though I was working on lots of documents at the time, and only the ones linked to this particular table were corrupted.

Luckily, I have a backup that I made on Monday, so I only lost the work I did on it yesterday. Here’s hoping this doesn’t happen to me again.

Update: Another two documents got corrupted today. These documents were completely unrelated, and weren’t linked to any others. I’m starting to look at OpenOffice.org 3.0 as a culprit.

(Screenshot credit: Samy Boutayeb)

Kudos

First, let me say a big thank you to all the testers who helped me shape this port into what it has now become — your feedback has been beyond helpful! Your names have been set in stone for millenia to come in the README file.

Furthermore, I would like to congratulate the Battle for Wesnoth team and contributors for creating this awesome game, which is sufficiently worthy of being ported to just about every platform out there.

Download

And, without further ado, I give you: Download (v1.4.5; 77MB; Readme; Signature; Public Key)

Further Notes

I recommend that you do not download the above bundle on your OLPC XO-1, due to the large filesize, and general unresponsiveness I have found with the user interface. Instead, you should download the bundle onto a USB flash drive, and transfer it to the XO using the Journal (insert flash drive, open Journal, select flash drive, select Wesnoth bundle, select Copy to Journal from toolbar).

I haven’t yet created an entry on the Activity repository, mainly because of the bundle’s large filesize relative to most other bundles. On the other hand, if anybody wants to create an entry, feel free. All I ask is that you link to my above download link, so I can count the downloads.