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Caller ID reception by GSM modem

nospam@example.com (James Valentine) — Tue, 19 May 2009 00:26:23 +0100

For the tech-heads amongst us,

if you should ever want to pick up caller id with a GSM modem, you should know that the usual AT commands to initialize the feature on the receiving modem don't work. So, for Google's benefit, these are useless:

AT+VCID=1

AT#CID=1

AT+CLIP=1

smotbd

Experts Exchange article

The new(ish) Broadcom STA drivers

nospam@example.com (James Valentine) — Sat, 09 May 2009 17:51:33 +0100

As much for my reference as anything, I'd like to make a note about the new Linux Broadcom drivers for wireless chipsets. It all went wrong for me when I upgraded kernels. Thankfully, I can still hook up via my phone.

Firstly, the README is very useful...

Secondly, this is the important bit:

Continue reading "The new(ish) Broadcom STA drivers"

Turning Ubuntu Desktop into Ubuntu Server

nospam@example.com (James Valentine) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:10:40 +0100

For personal reference as much as anything else, this seems to be quite a good way to get rid of a lot of GUI baggage when you've installed Ubuntu from the Desktop CD and have now decided to use it as a server:

$ sudo apt-get remove gdm gnome-* ... ...


 
Continue reading "Turning Ubuntu Desktop into Ubuntu Server"



Why is DVD authoring with open source software so d4mn difficult?
nospam@example.com (James Valentine) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 02:11:38 +0000
Converting the videos is easy enough. ffmpeg is the tool to use:



$ ffmpeg -i yourfile.avi -target pal-dvd -aspect 4:3 output.mpg



You can use any format for input that your ffmpeg is compiled to support, so this works just as well for Youtube and Google Videos that you cannot find the mpgs for:



$ ffmpeg -i youryoutubevid.flv -target pal-dvd -aspect 4:3 output.mpg



The problem with making your DVD is the actual authoring process. I've been using ManDVD with some success, although it seems to be slightly incompatible with modern ffmpegs (make sure to add a menu sound file, as ManDVD fails to instruct ffmpeg correctly to make a silent one to multiplex in), and can be frustrating to use: no working project save, for example. It will author and burn disks, but sometimes, if you're using ManDVD or another tool, the process will fail after the creation of the authored content in AUDIOTS AND VIDEOTS directories. If that happens, you can do this:



$ growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/dvd -dvd-video .



That will burn you a new, properly authored DVD if you run it from the directory where your VIDEO_TS directory resides.



As far as the authoring goes, what we need is a simple frontend to dvdauthor which will create an XML document and design the titles, menus and masks nicely. I know that I could make all the menu files in the GIMP, but I just don't have the time. I want a simple, templates-based approach. I'm happy to do all the file conversion, up front, and I'm happy to use cdrecord or growisofs to handle the burn. I need help with the DVD authoring, that's all.



Let's stop this from being a compatibility crap-shoot, and get a process that produces consistent, standards-compliant DVD content into order, without loads of scripting.



Edit


Ok, maybe I was ill-informed. I'm trying VideoTrans at the moment. It seems to be making a consistent and quite sophisticated menu system for the four videos I want to turn into a DVD. I'll see what the results are like.



VIM syntax highlighting for PHP heredocs containing CSS
nospam@example.com (James Valentine) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 01:19:19 +0100
Many people are aware of the power of PHP heredocs, in that they allow variable expansion without the escape-hell of " and ' quotes having significance. The only downsides are the strictness of the EOF marker locations and that constants cannot be used in heredocs.



I always used to be bothered by the fact that my code in heredocs was all-black, and not highlighted at all. I now realise that this is due to the fact that to get the highlighting you want, you need to choose your markers correctly. See this comment for details. No more drab EOF. I can assure you that the syntax highlighting allows for longer markers, like HTMLform and so on.



So this method works for HTML, JavaScript and SQL. Great. But what if you, like me, create "dynamic stylesheets"? Here's an example:

 
Continue reading "VIM syntax highlighting for PHP heredocs containing CSS"


Tor hidden services
nospam@example.com (James Valentine) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 11:39:07 +0100
This is my first hidden service, for testing purposes. smbzeu3ydgy63zlk.onion. Give it a click and tell me if you see anything!


Twitter: just add brain-power
nospam@example.com (James Valentine) — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 01:46:01 +0100
Like Alisha on Soft Tech Reviews, I feel like a late adopter of Twitter. Truthfully, I ignored the hype when the service came out, and the idea of using it to tell the world about the minutiae of my daily activities seemed rather stomach-turningly boring for writer and reader alike. Seems like I was just being uncreative.



Twitter is a tool like many others: it needs some thought in order to get the most out of it. Firstly, though, we've got to know what we're working with:





A means of posting 140-character messages to an audience, who can opt to be instantly notified by mobile text message, IM or e-mail wherever they are, and can respond if they wish.


An API which can be exploited to allow one's systems to integrate with Twitter, either by indexing and parsing twits, or sending and receiving them. This includes allowing computer systems to have their own accounts for the purposes of sending and receiving instructions and content to a human user.






That last point links directly into how I am using Twitter with Sandy. Sandy is a reminder service. It has some vaguely human characteristics, for example the ability to parse commands for times and dates, and to send a reminder by e-mail, mobile text or IM, even on a recurring basis. The Twitter interfaces are very useful. When Twitter's Jabber IM service is working (it isn't at the moment...), I can send a remind command through by that means, and also request information from the diary that Sandy keeps on my behalf. I can do the same through Twitter by text message, and this makes it very useful: I can set a reminder on the go, as though I were texting a savvy assistant.



People have written Twitter extensions for Firefox, and I can type a message in my Firefox address bar and twitter it directly to Sandy (so not a public message). Setting reminders as I think about them like this is very effective.



So, I've found a use for Twitter with a bit of ingenuity. I'll be expanding my use to include communicating with clients and  colleagues over the next few months, but for the moment, I'm very content to have it in my arsenal of contemporary, web 2.0 communications tools.



Changing the permissions of files separately from directories
nospam@example.com (James Valentine) — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 01:54:49 +0000
Sometimes you need to make use of several sources of knowledge to come out on top of a problem. Here's one such example, for my own reference. I didn't want to run "chmod -R 755 *" because all of my files would have the execute flag, instead of just the directories. Here's how to solve it (e-mail thread: read from the bottom up.



Matt,



Desquinn on the forums came back with this. It worked perfectly, so you might want to add it to your arsenal of house-keeping scripts. Just run these commands in turn:



$ find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;

$ find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;



Thanks for your help: problem resolved.

J.



UnitedHosting - Support Department wrote:



  Hello

  

  I dont know of a simple way to find where the permission is wrong other than to check each stage of all the files and folders this particulart component could be using, starting with most obvious such as the upload directory and the script that performs the upload.

  

  Maybe someone on the forums knows of a better way to do such a task.

  

  Regards,

  Matt

  UH Support 



Richard Stallman on (non-)interoperability
nospam@example.com (James Valentine) — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 00:03:44 +0100
Microsoft has frequently imposed non-interoperability; now, for example, it promotes the patented bogus "standard" OOXML instead of supporting Open Document Format. Microsoft believes it is so powerful that it can design an incompatible format, create obstacles to its implementation by others, and pressure most users to switch to it. Do you think users are really as foolish as Microsoft predicts?




I'll buy that. Thank you Richard.



Source: PC World


Getting a licence key for Office 2007 trial upgrade
nospam@example.com (James Valentine) — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 14:34:46 +0100
I'm very frustrated about Microsoft's new approach to licensing. The computers I am buying for home users come with Vista. Whilst I wouldn't subject my business customers to Vista, I thoguht that it would be harmless enough for light users, and in any case, many machines come with Vista Home Premium and you can't have XP or a OS-less version of the machine.



My issue is not the four to five reboots that seem to be required for many reasons when the machine is first used. It isn't with the cantankerous interface, per se. It is with the Office 2007 trial.



In case you don't know, people like me tend to order OEM software when new machines are purchased for our customers. I install this for them and deliver the computer in a working condition. Things are a bit different with Vista and Office 2007, however. Office now comes fully installed on a new computer, but it is necessary to enter a license key to use it. A trial key can be downloaded for free using the Trial tool which comes with the machine, or by using the MS Trial website. That allows 60 day's free use. At any point during this trial, you can pay for a new key through the website. Supposedly.



I have tried every way possible to do this, following all the instructions and being a but creative. The website is most unhelpful, referring to buttons that simply aren't there, and taking me around the same 4 pages in an endless loop of hopeless advice.



When I finally got on the right track, the payment website let me select my country of residence, but then did not allow me to continue. After several redirects around the web, I ended up (even after clearing the cookies and with a reboot) at a page with a menu on the left and one single line error in the content area:



You have experienced an error. Please clear all your cookies and try again. 



Has anyone else had this problem? Googling for it doesn't seem to produce any helpful results, but I've seen this on two machines, now.



Does anyone know if the trial upgrade cost is less than the OEM cost?



Cheers!


Copying a non-commercial DVD under Linux
nospam@example.com (James Valentine) — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 18:50:33 +0100
If you have a DVD that has been burned using a program like Nero or GnomeBaker, it isn't too hard to copy it on to a large drive as an ISO. That file can then be mounted with the loopback device for reading or playback. Think of this as ripping where disk space is no object, because what we are doing is copying the disk block by block on to the hard disk without any compression. Read how after the jump.



 
Continue reading "Copying a non-commercial DVD under Linux"


Becoming an employer: Kohera is growing
nospam@example.com (James Valentine) — Fri, 04 May 2007 11:19:42 +0100
I have decided to take the leap and... take someone on. There is just so much work to do, and I'm not spending enough time on getting new clients in. That is going to become someone else's priority, and I'm going to train them to do what I do. I think it is a winning formula, but I'd like your opinion on the job description, so here it is:

jobdescription.pdf. It is a very heavily performance-related pay system. I reckon whoever took the position would stand to double their money in a year and half once they had clients who were reliant on us. What do you think?


Ubuntu Feisty with Apache 2.2, PHP4 with FastCGI and MySQL support
nospam@example.com (James Valentine) — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 15:44:34 +0100
The latest incarnation of Ubuntu, Feisty Fawn 7.04 does not include PHP4. That's fine for most of the world, who should be using PHP5 anyway. But for the bunch of use who would like to enjoy all the benefits of Feisty on their production machine whilst still being able to code for web hosts who are still running PHP4 (there are many), this might be the solution.



This setup is similar to some of the "run PHP5 as a module, run PHP4 as a CGI" setups, except that I'm using FastCGI to wrap the PHP4 CGI binary. I only use PHP for the web, so I have not installed any of the packages non-essential for this task. Additionally, I have not bothered at this stage to set up a PHP5 enabled directory. If you want to do both at the same time, you'll have to look elsewhere. I'm not using PHP5 for the web very much at the moment.



One word of warning. This works for me. It may not work for you. In addition, it requires installing packages which are not even maintained for Feisty any more, let alone supported. It may possibly cause you problems in the future with packages that are written for PHP5 on Apache and are installed on your system, and which are then run with PHP4. An example of this is phpMyAdmin, which depends on PHP5, now, but still seems to run fine on PHP4 as a CGI. Be aware that it may be upgraded and lose PHP4 support in the future!




The setup steps come after the break.
 
Continue reading "Ubuntu Feisty with Apache 2.2, PHP4 with FastCGI and MySQL support"


Second Life - try before you buy...
nospam@example.com (James Valentine) — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 23:40:59 +0100
I thought rather than damn it straight away, I ought to give Second Life a chance. My tolerance for these sorts of things is quite low, although I did try Digital Space Traveller back in the day. Well, anyway, it is the pit of sin and villainy I expected, but has a very flexible interface. The idea of building new game objects whilst in-game is clearly absorbing. I don't imagine I will log in very often, and I certainly won't pay monthly for "land" in-game, but nevertheless, if anyone wants to meet in one of the less offensive parts of the game world, I'd be glad to load up the linux client again, which seems to work surprisingly well. There is the odd crash, but it seems smoother than the Windows version. My game name is Merves DeCuir.


Cross-platform GUI scripting
nospam@example.com (James Valentine) — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 00:49:08 +0100
I'm a heavy PHP user, and enjoy being able to write for multiple environments: the CLI, the web and OOP into the mix. I know there are things like Winbinder and GTK but it would be nice if there was a platform-agnostic method for GUI development that didn't involve compilation and allowed for portable scripting. Any ideas? I'm happy to use any language so long as it meets my requirements for bazaar-style throw-together coding and prototyping and doesn't rely on any particular IDE.



Answers on a postcard, I suppose (or in the comments, more usefully!) In the meanwhile, I'll get on with trying out the GTK bindings.