The Ultimate Machine - Trabant 601 (scale 1/43)

This is one of the latest members of the ex-Yugo models collection. Came straight from China. Very high level of details, scale 1/43.

I like those shades. Hard to believe that the model is only around 2.5 inches long (6cm).

Try to ignore the plastic chairs in the back... the thing looks like a real one. Too bad the color is not light gray or beige (two most popular Trabant colors from the "good old days").

Wipping Willow (backyard)

This one is also 2-year old one. But this one survived shipping and planting and is doing really well this year.

NSU Prinz 1000 TT (update)

Here are some photos of Norev model of NSU Prinz 1000 TT. In the first pic I left other Renault 4TL model. It is cool to have models in the same scale (in this case 1/43) for the comparison. Both of these are fairly detailed examples.

The only problem with this NSU model is that the headlights are little bit bigger that they were supposed to be. This can be seen in this picture. Classis NSU Prinz 1000 had two eliptic head lights and the TT (or sporty) version had these "two in one", same like Fiat 1300 or Chevy Nova I believe. NSU Prinz was a big competitor to VW bug. Eventually, VW bought NSU and made exclusive sporty line, nowadays known under brand Audi. I guess you can recognize where Audi TT name came from.

Citroen 2CV - "Spachek" from Solido 1/43 Scale

Another very nice 1/43 scale model. I believe it is from Solido. Not as detailed as some other ones I got, but has a working suspension, which is really cool. One thing I remember about this extremely popular (and R&R) car from France was that it indeed had very soft suspension. This car was fun to drive and had roll-up roof.

Another cool thing about this model is that roof can be removed and it has some level of details inside as well. It is fun to compare models at the same scale. Always dreamed about having this car... never happened, though.

Wiping Willow (second year)

This one came as an order via Internet. Not a good idea. It pretty much died after a week or so after planting. I had to cut the whole tree and left only the roots. It started from zero two years ago. This Spring and Summer it really made a progress (some pictures can be seen in older blog).

Mexican Fan Palm (update)

Got some input from my neighbor expert. Bought the fertilizer designed for palm trees. The hardest part was to clean the circle around the tree.

That St. Augustin grass is really like a barb wire.

Now, psssssssssssst! The quality control is taking place.

Ubuntu 8.04 Disabling Google Talk with Firestarter Firewall

Intro
I had this issue of trying to disable Google Talk on some of the workstations. Disabling ports 5222-5223 and port 443 did the job, but it also prevented Gmail from working as well as some other unrelated websites. The DSL router did not let me prevent connection to specific address (chatenabled.mail.google.com).

Solution
Not sure if it is perfect (needs tuning I am sure). I played little bit with iptables but this was not "straight talk", so I installed Firestarter via Synaptic.
Upon installation the Firestarter icon appears under Internet menu in the Applications. Click forward through initial setup wizard.

At the end, click on Save and it will start the Firestarter firewall and monitor.
In the main window, switch to Policy tab:
Select Outbound traffic policy, and click on the Add rule button (marked with "+"):

Put "chatenabled.mail.google.com" in the IP host field (without "" characters).


Click on green check mark to apply the policy. After that, the Google Talk will be disabled without disabling Gmail and port 443.
After this you can close Firestarter and it will still keep blocking Google talk and remember the setting after computer restart.