Information Systems Degree

It's been a long time since I updated this blog. The good news is that I have returned to Brazil for good and started school here to complement the technical degree completed in the United States of America.

I will continue to write this blog in English to sharpen my writing skills and for the simple fact that everyone in the IT field should know English anyway.

The classes I have taken so far, such as Computer Architecture and Organization, Algorithms/Programming Languages, and Information Systems will prove to be useful for any organization.

GitHub: https://github.com/fslima0

Raspberry Pi

Hello,

Ever since I finished building my previous desktop computer, I promised myself that my next PC would have to be really compact, following the mini-ATX specification.

Then last month I found out that there exists a piece of eletronic device called Raspberry Pi that is very inexpensive, compact and energy-efficient. It can run several Linux flavors and it is not slow with its ARM CPU and 512MB of RAM.
I bought one for labbing and programming and it's proven to be very useful academically. You can actually run a 24/7 server with some services running on this little board. Here's the picture:

Setting Up a Computer as Router/Wireless AP

I don't have an internet access at home, and for awhile I had been using a method called tethering which is basically connecting a computer to the internet using your cellphone's internet connection.

This week I figured out a way to configure my netbook as both a Wireless Access Point (so other computers can wirelessly access it) and a router (so they all have internet access). All it requires is a wireless adapter and a version of Linux installed.

The way to do that is by installing an application called hostapd. It's freely available on Linux and once it's installed it will serve as an Access Point so anyone who does a wireless search to connect to the internet will find it. This application even offers some security features such as WEP, WAP and WAP2 authentication.
Once it's configured correctly and running, you also have to setup a DHCP server to give IP address setting to its associated users. After that, you have to configure NAT (masquerading) and IP Forwarding (routing) using iptables so that users are able to share a single internet connection.
I have also upgraded my T-Mobile plan to the Unlimited 4G Plan and am going to use my Nokia E72 as a modem, my netbook as a router and wireless access point in order to share a single internet connection to all users in the household. Hopefully T-Mobile will keep its promise of unlimited "4G" without any data cap. Fingers crossed.

Arch Linux Distro

The UNIX course taken in college served me well and got me motivated to pick up things where I left off. I was using some other Linux distribution before switching to Arch Linux.

The main reason for choosing Arch Linux is that it's a simple distro and not as bloated as Ubuntu, for example. You actually know what each running process does and what is installed on the operating system because not many applications come pre-installed, only the essentials.

In contrast, I would not recommend using this distro on servers, only on desktop computers for geeks like me, because Red-Hat/CentOS and Debian are very stable with excellent package managers which makes it suitable for updating critical services hassle-free.

Besides that, ArchLinux is a very modern, high-customizable distribution.

CCNA Certificate

Here is my CCNA certificate. Now my current goal is to finish Community College.

CCENT Certificate

I just got in the mail my CCENT certificate! This certificate is my first step and every journey begins with a single step.

New Desktop Computer

I just purchased a desktop computer deal on the Internet. It cost USD $300 dollars.

Specs: AMD Quad Core CPU, 4GB DDR3 RAM, 1TB Hard Disk.