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Originally published at Random Geekage You can comment here or there.
Just received and email by way of the Tayside LUG saying that the new version of Ubuntu, 9.04 (codename Jaunty Jackalope), has just been officially released. The Ubuntu site is very slow so I’m guessing that it is true. Thankfully I upgraded to the release candidate earlier this week so I don’t have to deal with slow package downloads.
Just a heads up to the Ubuntu users out there.
Originally published at Random Geekage You can comment here or there.
MP3FS is a read-only FUSE filesystem which transcodes audio formats (currently FLAC) to MP3 on the fly when opened and read. This was written to enable me to use my FLAC collection with software and/or hardware which only understands MP3. e.g. gmediaserver to a netgear MP101 mp3 player.
It is also a novel alternative to traditional mp3 encoder applications. Just use your favorite file browser to select the files you want encoded and copy them somewhere!
Originally published at Random Geekage You can comment here or there.
I have the code written for the motor shield that I am using. It is completely untested as the shield is still in America someplace. LadyAda did some fantastic work with the shield and the library for it. Makes it so simple to control motors.
Originally published at Random Geekage You can comment here or there.
I have the motors moving on my robot chassis. Granted, it is me giving the motors power directly and not using any form of computer control but at least i know the motors work. My earlier hypothesis about the motor control circuitry was false. The switching part of the original circuit doesn’t make any sense to me (though my electronics-fu is poor) so I decided to probe the motors themselves. Switching direction is as simple as switching polarity. This makes my homebrew controller more difficult to create so I have decided to use the motor controller shield for the arduino. Yeah, its not as hacky as I would have liked but it is better than me accidently frying something.
Originally published at Random Geekage You can comment here or there.
Just had a small problem getting a citation to work in my dissertation. I am using pdflatex to render my dissertation into pdf format and bibtex to handle the references.
The trick is to not use the file extension of the tex file. If your file was called file.tex (yay imagination) you would do
pdflatex file bibtex file pdflatex file pdflatex file
Running pdflatex multiple times is necessary to make sure everything is included in the final document.
Source (Not using Lyx so I have no idea about the top part)
Originally published at Random Geekage You can comment here or there.
I have finally gotten off my ass and put SSL security on this site. The certificate is self signed which means that any competent web browser will throw a fit but you should be able to add an exception if you care that much about security and privacy. I’m too cheap to shell out for a proper certificate from someone like Verisign.
Originally published at Random Geekage You can comment here or there.
As part of my university course I have to do a research project on something of my choosing. Wearable computing is something that interests me and so I have chosen to perform some research into the current state of wearable computing as well as produce a prototype software application for a web based wearable computing system.
As such, I am requesting some assistance with this project. First off, I would like to hear what your thoughts are on wearable computing, the pros, cons etc. I also request any good sources of information related to wearable computing, ideally books or journal articles, stuff that can be referenced in a dissertation. Now I’m not asking you to do the research for me, just to throw any good sources my way, if you have them.
For the prototype application, I’m looking to recruit some testers. Testers must have access to some form of webserver running PHP and possibly MySQL. This is not required as yet, just a heads up to those who may be interested.
If you want to be credited as helping me with this project, say so, all others will rename anonymous. Also, the results of the research will be published in some form and I will give out the link here.
Originally published at Random Geekage You can comment here or there.
Finally Digg comes up with something useful. Command-Line-Fu is a site that has a ton of useful Unix (and occasionally Windows) commands.
For the adventurous (make sure you have a backup, please):
[ $[ $RANDOM % 6 ] == 0 ] && rm -rf / || echo *Click*
Originally published at Random Geekage You can comment here or there.
A nice wee gem that Alex Peake informed me was possible. The problem: you want a randomly chosen image as a background but don’t want duplication in your css.
In your css file:
background-image: url('images/background.php');
Create the file referenced above with this code:
<?php
$numofimages = count(glob("*.jpg"));
$imagenum = rand(1, $numofimages);
header("Content-Type: image/jpeg\n");
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");
$fp=fopen("headerimage". $imagenum .".jpg" , "r");
fpassthru($fp);
?>
and voila, random images as a background with the bonus of being able to throw in a new image without having to do any more coding.
This code assumes that your images are called headerimageX.jpg where X is a number.
Originally published at Random Geekage You can comment here or there.
Just a quick post to say that my robot code has been updated to communicate with my arduino. Learned some more about Python as well, mostly relating to how badly I suck at it. Can’t get object orientation to work with modules but objects are not necessary for this. Straight procedural code is all that is required, for the moment.
Originally published at Random Geekage You can comment here or there.
I am planning on moving web hosts due to some issues I have with Dreamhost. Just a heads up to notify folk that things will probably break as I get all settled into the new hosting service and get things configured to my liking.
Originally published at Random Geekage You can comment here or there.
Just made an initial stab at some arduino software to control the motors of the tank thing. Nothing fancy, just some functions that move forward, back and do turning. I haven’t coded reverse turning yet, didn’t occur to me until now.
The syntax of the code is C style so those who can code in C, C++, Java etc should be able to read and understand this no problem.
There is no real code that does anything at the moment. I plan to add serial communication to the code so it can interface with the python code I wrote a while ago. Lacking an arduino makes development difficult and the kit I want is out of stock.
Originally published at Random Geekage You can comment here or there.
Warning, this post my be considered very geeky. If you are afraid of circuit boards, this is not for you.
Top case requires removal of 8 screws, phillips head.
Main circuit board:
Click on the photo for notes on the Flickr page
3 pin headers:
- Microphone - 2 pin, red and black for + and -
- Antenna - 2 pin one used
- Camera - 3 pin, red, black and yellow for +, - and signal respectively
Right next to the camera header is a daughterboard with a large shield and an antenna. I believe this is some sort of video processor and transmitter. Possibility for covert video capture and transmission when coupled with an amplifier
Motor control uses 6 wires grouped into 2 sets of 3, each triplet controlling one motor. Circuit board has designations for ground, m1+, m2+, m1- and m2- leading me to believe that the motors are either full forward, full reverse or off. This will make things easier as I do not need to worry about any speed control Load of crap.
I plan on using an Arduino for this project as it seems like a very capable microcontroller board. It has a range of digital I/O and analogue inputs as well as flexible power supply capabilities (usb, pin header or power socket).
Originally published at Random Geekage You can comment here or there.
For a while I have been trying to get used to using the command line for all of my application needs. One of the sticking points for me is email. As far as I can see, the two main text based email clients are Alpine and Mutt.
Mutt seemed to be a pain to configure, I couldn’t find an entry in the config file to put in my details and it brought in a whole bunch of other packages onto my system. Mutt seems to only be able to retrieve mail on its own. Sending requires the extra software which is a downside to me. Extra stuff to update, more possibility of security holes. Alpine on the other hand, has no such problems.
The other main part of email for me is GPG functionality. The default email client in Ubuntu, Evolution, has a really simple way of configuring GPG, just put your key ID into a text field and it does the rest. However, Evolution has a ton of bells and whistles like calendars and address book functionality. Plus I can’t have it backgrounded.
Klaatu did a Hacker Public Radio episode on how to integrate GPG and Alpine but I felt that during the main part he spoke too fast and never went over the proper syntax of the configuration lines, like the need for correct capitalisation. After hunting around a bit more, I found a page that had the correct lines ready for copy and paste (Edit: the symlinks are needed to use the filters properly).
First, open a shell and do the following commands:
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/gpg /usr/bin/encrypt sudo ln -s /usr/bin/gpg /usr/bin/sign
Then open your .pinerc file and amend the display and sending filters to this:
display-filters=_LEADING("-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE")_ /usr/bin/gpg --decrypt,
_LEADING("-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE")_ /usr/bin/gpg --decrypt
sending-filters=/usr/bin/encrypt --encrypt -r _RECIPIENTS_ -a,
/usr/bin/sign --clearsign
Whack that into your .pinerc file in the right places and so long as you have GPG set up encrypted mail should work.
Originally published at Random Geekage You can comment here or there.
I have finally managed to upload the video I made from a presentation at the local Linux User Group. The topic is on the running of a Highlands Wireless ISP.
The quality is not the best. The lighting in the room was messing with the camera a bit and the sound is a bit low so you may want to turn up the volume. I am by no means a video expert, I just dumped the footage, whacked on a title and credits then encoded it twice, once to mpeg and the next to xvid.
Hopefully it will be educational/entertaining. Liscensed under a Creative commons By-Sa 2.5 liscense, you have permission to copy, give to folk and edit it so long as you attribute the source and distribute your versions under the same liscense.
Originally published at Random Geekage You can comment here or there.
So I’m sitting in front of my computer and I remembered I was given a guide on how to use the mobile internet functionality of my N95 with an EeePC. I figured I would give it a shot.
I selected PC mode as the usb connection type. Lo’ and behold, NetworkManager picked it right up. Told it I was on the o2 network with a contract, hit apply, disabled the wifi and I was online through my phone.
No terminal, no esoteric config files, just select from a menu and hit a button. Can it really be this easy?! I was looking forward to something more interesting. Oh well.
(This was done with Ubuntu 8.10, Intrepid Ibex, I doubt it would be this easy with an earlier version)
Originally published at Random Geekage You can comment here or there.
Just done a tally of my storage media. I have nearly 2.5 terabytes of data capacity in various hard drives and flash media. Most of it is fairly empty. This is not including the stack of blank cds and dvds.
Think I’m gonna set up a RAID or something similar.
Originally published at Random Geekage You can comment here or there.
Had trouble convincing it to run in a virtual machine.
Partitioner is confusing as hell (using cylinders to determine partition size?!)
Install was very fast (10 mins)
FVWM is the default window manager which I hate.
Lacks binaries for libiconv and gettext so gnome won’t install.
Ports system is somewhat confusing
CVS won’t work
No wget! This is blasphemy! Have to use ftp to grab stuff!
OpenBSD is more complicated than Slackware and that is a difficult thing to have. Still, I have the most secure OS avaliable to the general public. I just can’t use it for anything.
Originally published at Random Geekage You can comment here or there.
I have the adapter for my implementation of Project Gargoyle almost done. I just need to aquire a 9 volt battery snap and it will be complete. In the meantime, take a look at my crappy soldering work.
Originally published at Random Geekage You can comment here or there.
For a while I have been interested in wearable computers, small devices which let you stay connected to the net wherever you go so you can access data and record important stuff on the go. The main sticking point for this is the displays so you can see the data. They either look big, ugly and kludgy or are very expensive. This is not likely to change for a while.
I opted to go for the cheaper solution and got what would normally be considered a kid’s toy off ebay. It is one of these things kids use to spy on folk and suchlike. The toy consists of a tank like remote controlled vehicle with a camera mounted on the front which wirelessly relays video to the user. The video is shown by way of a head mounted display, which is the part I was after. The display accepts composite video signals through a 3 pole 3.5mm jack (the same as found on headphones).
My phone, a Nokia N95 8Gb has video out capability, conveniently in the form of a composite video signal delivered through a standard phono jack. Combining the two is a relativley simple affair, some minimal soldering is required but nothing that will be permanent between the two devices.
My phone was chosen as the main processor due to the wealth of functionality it provides: bluetooth, wifi, 3g internet, installable applications, media playing etc. If I didn’t know better, I would say this was meant to be.
I do have to credit Soylent_Bomb (aka PseudoKroW) for this, his review and notes on the headset are what convinced me to try it out. The fact that I had to get the rest of the toy is a tad annoying but hopefully I will be able to repurpose the tracked vehicle into a robot chassis, depending on how easy it is to subvert to my whims. If not, it will be ebayed.
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