tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-154638532008-01-17T13:42:14.997+11:00SimonBlogger148125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15463853.post-35600492550375949812007-12-02T12:25:00.000+11:002007-12-02T23:38:29.314+11:00

Recently, my 30 year old fridge decided it had had enough, and it promptly died. In the process, (I think the motor bearings ceased), it overloaded the circuit, and caused the circuit breaker to trip. Unfortunately, the timing of this caused the power to go out just as a disk write was occurring on one of the disks in my media server, which caused it to get reasonably bad corruption, rendering

Simontag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15463853.post-105006555268397622007-10-08T10:36:00.000+10:002007-10-08T10:39:15.146+10:00

Here's how to almost workingly build wolfgl, on Ubuntu Feisty Fawn. I had been playing wolf3d under dosbox, but the performance of it was a little bit annoying, pausing every now and then, and music stuttering, which fiddling with the cpu cycles didn't really help with, I decided to find a native port. I found wolfgl, however it hasn't been compiled for years, and there was no source available.

Simontag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15463853.post-17779462064112619102007-08-13T07:04:00.000+10:002007-08-13T16:48:52.380+10:00

Built a new machine using an M2N-MX motherboard, tried to boot up Ubuntu, received error about "MP-BIOS bug: 8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC". Looked in the bios, and was able to disable "ACPI APIC Support", which was able to get the machine to boot. I found this page, which had instructions for fixing the problem properly, by disabling the HPET table. This was only available after updating

Simontag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15463853.post-16656998499755884182007-07-12T22:23:00.000+10:002007-07-12T22:47:34.140+10:00

I decided to try migrating one of my real linux machines into a VM. It's a machine that doesn't do much (ssh/imap server), and is an old P166 with 64MB ram, and a 4GB hard drive, that's almost full. The process I ended up using to migrate the machine, was to create a new VM under vmware, with 64MB ram, and a 4GB disk, same as the real machine. After that, I used LTSP that I also have installed

Simontag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15463853.post-77847381047129230812007-04-28T16:49:00.000+10:002007-04-28T16:56:01.623+10:00

here's another quick one.. I posted my blog update, for the first time since I had to get a new shell account, and move all my content, and I found that my blog hadn't updated. It turns out I used to have an index.html symlink to the real html file that blogger updates, but in the process of downloading and uploading all my content, that symlink got turned into a normal file. I then had to work

Simontag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15463853.post-59089033697741102042007-04-28T16:12:00.000+10:002007-04-28T16:24:56.905+10:00

This is a fairly quick one.. I decided to scan around for any open wireless, using Kismet. I found an AP with a hidden essid. Locking onto the channel for a little while resulted in finding the essid. I configured the wireless interface to hook on to it, forced the channel manually, and bang, I was on. They even had dhcp running, too easy. I wanted to see what AP I was connected to, so I went

Simontag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15463853.post-1167790047663385972007-01-03T13:04:00.000+11:002007-01-03T13:11:23.550+11:00

I had another go with the SRAM card I bought yonks ago, I still haven't managed to access it in my laptop. I found this page, with some details on editing the /etc/pcmcia/config file. So I tried that, I added: card "SRAM Card" version "SMART Modular Technologies", " 4MB FLASH Card " bind "memory_cs" but had no luck. I give up. I can't believe it's this hard, I should just be able

Simontag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15463853.post-1159778993067786952006-10-02T18:33:00.000+10:002006-10-02T18:58:50.293+10:00

I'm trying to get kismet running on the Toshiba Portege I installed Dapper on recently. It's not turning out to be too easy. The problem is that the wireless adapter in the laptop, a Toshiba Wireless MiniPCI card, which is just basically a pcmcia Lucent/Agere wireless card with a cardbus controller on a MiniPCI card, won't run in monitor mode. Initially the card had firmward 8.10 on it, and

Simontag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15463853.post-1156325664806103822006-08-23T19:26:00.000+10:002006-09-04T15:07:51.853+10:00

I installed a new kernel on one of my ubuntu machines, and then I shut it down, and installed the DViCO FusionHDTV DVB-T Lite I've borrowed at the moment. When I booted it back up, the kernel detected it, but /dev/dvb didn't exist. (I reconfigured vmware, with a kernel module for the new kernel at this point). [4294701.717000] Linux video capture interface: v2.00 [4294701.758000] bttv: driver

Simontag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15463853.post-1156302320971571552006-08-23T12:49:00.000+10:002006-08-23T13:05:20.986+10:00

I had issues with setting the time on my debian box, using ntpdate the other day. I decided to dist upgrade the box, I don't really know why, since it meant downloading 100M of data, and I still couldn't set the time. Afterward, I noticed that I couldn't use IMAP from my laptop to that box anymore. Argh. I knew what I'd done.. the dist upgrade would have updated imapd, and the standard imapd

Simontag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15463853.post-1155001864662493972006-08-08T11:15:00.000+10:002006-08-22T23:19:39.843+10:00

OK, so here's attempt 2 at configuring mythtv. I managed to find some documentation, surprisingly, at http://www.mythtv.org/docs, the bit I was interested in here. However, before running myth-setup again, there's a few bits and pieces I had to do, mainly setting up the guide data feed etc. I found this page. (Considering the nvidia driver install was mentioned as part of that documentation,

Simontag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15463853.post-1154997779355403542006-08-07T22:03:00.000+10:002006-08-08T10:53:04.220+10:00

I setup an Ubuntu machine for a mate from work. Installing was no problem, I partitioned the disk, setup the files, rebooted and it was all working (after discovering the BIOS was set to only boot from the DVD drive, and fixing that). I then downloaded VMWare server, cool that it's now free, installed that, requiring the installation of make, gcc, and a few other bits and pieces. I installed

Simontag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15463853.post-1154837912938061622006-08-06T13:47:00.000+10:002006-08-18T10:21:13.530+10:00

I decided to install the USB IR adapter I bought yesterday, and setup my phone. What a pile of crap this adapter is. It came in a blue box, "USB to IRDA adapter for mobile phone users" it says on it, part number MI620. Immediately upon taking the adapter out of the box, I noticed that the clip together nature of it wasn't very good, it was already falling apart. I just pulled at the top a tiny

Simontag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15463853.post-1154836051944313012006-08-05T13:43:00.000+10:002006-08-06T13:47:31.956+10:00

I went to the computer fair, and bought more ram for my laptop, and a USB IR adapter, so I could setup my new phone. I got scammed on the memory, I had to buy DDR1, as opposed to 2, since it's all my laptop will support, and the DDR1 was actually more than DDR2. I paid $180 for 1gb of DDR1, the DDR was only $155. I also bought a USB IR adapter for $19. I wasn't sure about the memory, I was

Simontag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15463853.post-1152335039219692482006-07-08T15:01:00.000+10:002006-07-08T15:03:59.233+10:00

I put the CF into the adapter, and put it in my laptop, dmesg said: [7282644.736000] Probing IDE interface ide1... [7282645.000000] hdc: SanDisk SDCFH-1024, CFA DISK drive [7282645.612000] ide1 at 0x100-0x107,0x10e on irq 3 [7282645.613000] hdc: max request size: 128KiB [7282645.613000] hdc: 2001888 sectors (1024 MB) w/1KiB Cache, CHS=1986/16/63 [7282645.613000] hdc: cache flushes not supported

Simontag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15463853.post-1152333935305206522006-07-08T14:11:00.000+10:002006-08-13T02:31:35.930+10:00

I went off to the computer fair, to buy some memory for my Jornada. There was stacks of fake memory sticks there. I didn't see any fake SanDisk stuff, in fact I only saw one place with SanDisk stuff. I wanted a 2GB CF Ultra II, but they didn't have any, only 1GB. They had 2 GB, but not Ultra II. I couldn't find anyone else with SanDisk stuff, so I decided to get the 1 GB Ultra II. I looked at

Simontag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15463853.post-1152334632196479342006-07-07T20:51:00.000+10:002006-07-08T14:57:12.196+10:00

I updated the firmware in the prism 2.5 card, from 1.3.6, to 1.7.4. I didn't have any hassles doing that. I thought after doing it, that the sensitivity seemed to have increased, because the sounds ministumbler was making before and after were different. I found this was because before flashing it, I had the Jornada running off the charger, and off batteries afterwards, and it must provide less

Simontag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15463853.post-1152189730691579442006-07-06T22:24:00.000+10:002006-07-08T14:50:44.460+10:00

One of the wireless cards I was using in the Jornada, out of the SMC ap, marked WL11000-2, only had firmware versionb 0.7.5, and so a lot of functions weren't available. I wondered if that was some of the issues I was having with the drivers in the Jornada, and using ministumbler. I found pages here and here related to updating the firmware. I downloaded a few different firmwares, and then went

Simontag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15463853.post-1152017297830203112006-07-04T21:50:00.000+10:002006-07-04T23:35:21.623+10:00

So I turned up home, and there was a parcel there. I unpacked it, it's the Jornada 720 I bought off ebay. I had a quick look at it, tried turning it on, nothing, just batteries flat I hope. I check the CF door, and there's a SanDisk 32MB CF card in there, cool. I dug out the charger, and the figure 8 power cord, it's got a US end on it, logically. I check, and it's a switchmode PSU, 100-240V.

Simontag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15463853.post-1152017912250293282006-07-03T10:48:00.000+10:002006-07-04T23:19:37.416+10:00

I bought a 2GB SanDisk Ultra II CF card, and a 1GB Sony Memory Stick off eBay a few days ago. I got the CF for $87, and the MS for $47. I picked up the parcel from the post office, and when I decided to check up about counterfeit memory, I discovered that both the CF, and the MS were fake. The CF didn't have a SanDisk hologram on the box, the box said it had a lifetime warranty, but a folded

Simontag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15463853.post-1152019052215121412006-06-28T21:05:00.000+10:002006-07-04T23:17:32.246+10:00

A few weeks ago, I found out about "SelecTV", a new paytv provider. They run of PAS8 satellite, as opposed to C1. Because PAS8 is only 10 degrees to the left of C1, you can fit 2 lnbs on the same dish. I tried mucking around with the 1.2M satellite dish I've got spare, but I couldn't find anything at all. Some of it was to do with no having the correct LO frequency in the decoder, since the

Simontag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15463853.post-1152018091908348662006-06-26T20:42:00.000+10:002007-02-07T22:08:22.686+11:00

I ordered a 1 GB SanDisk Memory Stick for my camera on the 3rd. I was immediately, after putting the order in, informed that they had no stock, and my order went on back order. They claimed they were going to have stock in 3 days, so I figured I'd wait, it was pretty cheap, $109 or something. I ended up waiting over 3 weeks, and then gave up. I emailed them, and told them not to bother, and

Simontag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15463853.post-1145494776813328712006-04-20T10:52:00.000+10:002006-04-20T10:59:36.830+10:00

I decided to install tystudio on my laptop. I downloaded it from here. Ran the install: sudo sh tystudio.i386.sh Which resulted in: Verifying archive integrity... All good. Uncompressing TyStudio...... TyStudio, the Ultimate Tivo Media Software! Version 0.5.0 Automated Linux Installation Script by the TyStudio Team Begin installation process now? [yes]: Please type the path to install

Simontag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15463853.post-1142689388775205812006-03-19T00:31:00.000+11:002006-03-19T00:43:08.790+11:00

OK, I've finally come up with a workable solution, for last.fm, and using XMMS/winamp, and my ipod. Setting the time back on my ipod didn't work, because the clock is fixed when I attach it to a machine. Therefor yamipod, without being fixed, is no good. I found another thing, called "audiopod goes iscrobbler". It reads the play counts file off the ipod, and will drop the entries into the

Simontag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15463853.post-1142387920584537632006-03-15T12:46:00.000+11:002006-03-16T15:59:43.553+11:00

Whenever I search for music, I keep seeing results on google in reference to "last.fm". It's an online charts thing, and it looks like the people who use it have some reasonable taste in music. The crap you hear on the radio was no where to be seen in the charts. I decided to see what linux support was like. I was surprised to find that there's an XMMS plugin, and several other linux players,

Simon