Tunnelblick is a very nice GUI for OpenVPN. A tunnel icon is added to the menu bar. You can click on the icon to connect/disconnect to your VPN.

The “stable” version (2.0.1) allows for connnecting to a single VPN. You create a ~/Library/openvpn directory and save your configuration file as openvpn.conf.

The 3.0 Release Candidate (I just now noticed that RC2 is out) allows for the ability to connect to multiple VPNs depending on the name of your configuration file. Save your configuration file as Server1.conf, Server2.conf (where “Server1″ is an arbitrary string).

I can’t see using OpenVPN on a Mac without it.

Firefox 1.5.0.2 was just released! This is especially great news for Intel Mac users. This is the first official release that’s a Universal Binary (meaning that it will run on Intel and PowerMac machines natively).

Besides some bugfixes, there doesn’t seem to be much else new besides being a universal binary.

Enjoy.

Right now you should take a minute to support the OpenBSD Project.

Chances are, if you’re viewing my website (geek!), you’ve used their work. They’ve developed OpenSSH. This software is included with operating systems from Apple Mac OS X to Redhat Enterprise Linux to Sun Solaris (pretty much all of them but Windows) as well as HP, Cisco and other hardware vendors’ devices. These operating system and hardware companies have been including OpenSSH with their products for years, which saved them the time to develop it on their own.

And that’s just OpenSSH. I’m not even going to get into why OpenBSD deserves your support… that should be self evident through the rest of the content on my site.

Free software is a double edged sword…
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I just bought one of the brand new Intel-based, dual-core Apple Mac Minis. It’s fast!

I upgraded my Mac Mini, at the time of purchase, to 1 GB RAM and 120 GB hard drive. It has such a small footprint on my desk. It’s sitting right next to my 19″ flat panel monitor and looks awesome. It has 4 USB 2.0 ports and a firewire port. It has an Airport (which I’m not using) for wireless access and a 10/100/1000 Ethernet port (which was NICE for transferring data from my PowerBook at 1 Gbps. (more…)

If you haven’t looked at OpenVPN yet, what the heck are you waiting for?

OpenVPN employs SSL to encrypt communcations. There are two aspects of OpenVPN that you should open your eyes to: it’s very cross-platform and it uses commonly used (and unblocked) Internet protocols (tcp or udp). (more…)