Firestarter firewall fun

I think it was Germaine Greer who commented that life is too short to stuff a mushroom.

I feel the same way about iptables. So much to learn, so little time.

So I'm cheating, using firestarter.

So I fires it up and puff! - my blog won't appear in firefox. It times out connecting to haloscan. I catch the faintest of whiffs of a puff of logic but I dismiss it. "Pesky haloscan down again", I thought and went about my business...

6 hours later, same story. My analysis is beginning to ooze "SEW (Simple, Elegant, Wrong) fluid" from every orifice. Could it be the firewall???

Yup. Turns out haloscan uses an IP address from the edge of the badlands and is blocked by firestarter by default. Full details here.

Sorted.