The Amigo's musings

Expiring email? no, not really

2007-07-27T01:33:00.000-05:00

After reading this article, I feel obligated to point out the total lack of features provided by such services. It's worse than providing people with something useless, it's providing people with a false sense of security.

The sales pitch
Here's a couple of choice quotes from BigString's about page and FAQ:

"BigString’s emails look and feel like any other emails that you get"
"If the sender chooses the non-print/non-save feature, then the email, while looking like every other email, will print nothing when the receiver clicks print on the computer and show nothing if the receiver tries to save the text or image.

How it works
BigString (or maybe we'll just call them BS for short) doesn't just send the words you type, that would leave the recipient with total control (as is the case for regular email). Instead, they make a picture of your words, store that picture on their web server and send an HTML email that has an embedded link to that picture.

Myth #1: BS messages look & feel like other email messages.

Most mail clients (including Outlook 2003+, Thunderbird, Yahoo Mail and Gmail) don't display images unless you ask them to. This is largely due to the prevalence of so called web bugs and the use of linked images in spam. Since the entire content of the message sent from BS is images, most readers will end up with something like this:
As far as BS claim #1, it doesn't look like other email I receive. Even after clicking to show images, it doesn't feel like other email I receive... the text doesn't wrap to my window width (obviously, because it's an image, it can't).

Myth #2: Can't save, print, copy or forward email
Since they're hosting the image on their server, they do have some control. Primarily, they can delete the image from their server so that it won't show up anymore. Does that make it hard to save, print, copy or forward? Well, if you use the buttons in your email client, the way you would for normal email, you'll find that messages do disappear. But due to the initial display as shown in the screenshot above, you've already been tipped off that this isn't a normal message.

There are two one-click methods that anyone receiving such a message can do to preserve the content:

Hit the PrintScreen key - It's been a built-in feature of Windows since Win95... just a single press and the entire contents of your screen are on the clipboard. You can then easily paste that into something like Paint (comes with Windows), a word processor, and even some email clients (e.g. Thunderbird). Tools like ScreenPrint32 and Directory Opus make the task even easier.
When viewing the message in a web browser (using Firefox or IE to check your Gmail or Yahoo mail), you can right-click on the message content and choose Set As Desktop Background.

Those may not be as convenient as saving a regular email, but it shows how easy it is for someone else to permanently save your message before it self destructs.

Looks to me like this message hasn't really expired. Not only that, but I've managed to copy it and post it for the world to see... a bit more wide-spread than forwarding it. You can even print it.

Other problems with BS:

I download all my mail before getting on a plane and compose replies that I'll send when I get off. Having messages from someone that show up as broken image icons means they get thrown in the trash... guess that person didn't really want me to see the message.
Email messages that are comprised solely of images are typically spam... meaning that spam filters are likely to catch mail from BS.
The only text in the messages sent from BS is "This email has been through a Virus, Spam and Spyware email filter." That's really reassuring! I bet no virus author would ever think of including that bit of text in their email. I think I need to re-iterate one of my previous points: BS is doing its customers a dis-service... it's providing them a false sense of security.

Is there a workable solution?
Well, in general, if you can see it on your screen, you can save it. Can a program try to stop you? Sure, but it's a losing battle:

Stopping the right-click menu:
It's possible for JavaScript code to block the right-click menu in web browsers. But browsers have the final say in what they allow. For example, in Firefox, got to Tools->Options->Content and next to "Enable JavaScript", click Advanced... Uncheck the box that allows scripts to "Disable or replace context menus".

Stopping the PrintScreen key:
A message could be delivered as an executable that prevents use of the PrintScreen key. Forgetting for a moment that you've just made the message unreadable to all but one operating system and broken one of the cardinal rules of email: don't attach executables, many mail gateways won't even bother running a virus scan, they'll just delete the message. How would a recipient work around your clever program that breaks the PrintScreen key? The word camera comes to mind here...

My proposal
How do you make messages are easy for a person to read, but hard to save/print/forward/copy? Well, you have to make some sacrifices. In particular, you have to loosen up on the "easy for a person to read" part... how about starting with "possible for a person to read and no more inconvenient than necessary".

If I wanted to prevent people from using the PrintScreen key, then I'd have to make sure that it wasn't just a way of disabling the key on the keyboard... it has to be something that a camera can't capture either. The best way to do that is to make it be interactive.

The simplest interface I can think of is this:

You open your inbox and have a message from me. It reads:

"You have been sent a secret message by The Amigo. To read the message, click here."

You click the link and it's a web page that uses Flash.
The message is black text on a black background. Your mouse works like a flashlight that will only illuminate the text close to the pointer.

It's far from perfect. If someone sent me a long message that way I hope they wouldn't expect me to read the whole thing. Meanwhile, instead of a camera, it would take a camcorder. Instead of PrintScreen, it would take screen recording software. It is harder for the user to capture, and you can easily dress it up with a cloak & dagger theme to add to the experience.

Bottom line: self-destructing email isn't. If you believe in it, your worse case may be similar to Michael Crooker, who believed Compaq when they said even they couldn't decrypt a secure hard drive.

Logitech MX1000 mouse locking problem solved

2007-04-10T14:24:00.000-05:00

So here's a problem that many people have posted about: "My mouse keeps locking up". The first thing to clear up is that there isn't a single solution to this problem.

Some people have found that they have a loose wire in their cord (mine is cordless).
Others have found viruses on their computer (mine's clean).

My setup: WinXP+SP2, using a Logitech MX1000 mouse. I really like the mouse, although I wish the drivers were more flexible. I'd like to customize what the thumb buttons do to be different based on which application has the focus. AutoHotKey goes a long way toward helping.

Anyway, after about 2 years of working great, it started locking up. Whenever it would happen, I'd have to turn the mouse upside down, flip the switch off, then back on. It didn't require re-syncing with the base station. Sometimes it would go for 2 days without locking, other times it would happen only 30 seconds apart. It was very frustrating.

When I started paying closer attention, I found that it would happen more often while moving faster, and more often when dragging windows from the right monitor to the left. But not all the time. Eventually I figured out that it wasn't where on the screen the mouse was moving, but somewhat related to that, it was dependent on where on the mousepad I was moving the mouse!

Having used the same mousepad for almost 2 years, there's a spot that's lost its texture and become smooth. If I move the mouse too fast over that spot, the mouse will lock... every time.

The solution was simple, yet totally unexpected: replace the mousepad! Since then, it's been working perfectly without locking at all.

15% Motorola discount

2007-02-27T17:35:00.000-06:00

Here's a coupon code you can use for a 15% discount on some Motorola products:

FRND_59397 (valid through March 21, 2007)

The Motorola store is online here: http://www.store.motorola.com where you can find things like cell phones, headsets, chargers and more. Use the coupon code above for a 15% discount.

You can buy some things there that you can't get from the carriers, such as unlocked GSM phones. If you've already got service with a carrier, you can buy a phone from Motorola without any contract, but the price will be more. The cheapest prices are almost always for new customers who sign contracts with carriers.

HOWTO: Remove a Sharpie marker stain from an LCD

2006-07-19T21:18:00.000-05:00

There are some solutions for life's little mishaps which you hope you never need. But when one of these unfortunate situations presents itself, it's nice to know that there is an answer.

It all started yesterday.
My girlfriend wrote me a note. At this point, I can't remember the contents of the note, but the circumstances surrounding the delivery are unforgettable. Ensuring prompt delivery, she put it on my computer keyboard. As I approached the computer, I see the note. I pick it up to read it and my other hand instinctively moves the mouse to wake up the computer. That's when I saw it... exactly in the middle of my pristine 20-inch LCD is a 1" long black streak. Staring at it in disbelief, I try to brush it off with my finger. It doesn't budge. That's when I put the scene together: the note was written with a Sharpie. The same Sharpie she reached for a week ago when I told her "this is for labeling CDs, use a pen for writing."

Needless to say, I wasn't happy. Rather than yell at her and get all worked up about it, I did a bit of googling (BTW, that's an official English word now). The Internet's a big place; lucky for me. I'm not the first person to face this problem. Although, a more common example is the intro: "My 2 year old son got hold of a Sharpie and..."

Like having the hiccups, people will give you all manner of advice. The trick is sorting out the people who are just guessing from the people who know. For all the proposals, I didn't see anyone say they'd tried them. Maybe they just wanted to see someone else try. Cross-referencing the list of what gets out Sharpie stains with a list of what not to use on an LCD, it came down to isopropyl alcohol.

The Solution.
A trip to the local drug store and $1.79 later, I had a bottle of 70% isopropyl alcohol. Grabbing a cotton ball and inverting the bottle to wet it, I was ready to test the theory. Turns out it works amazingly well. It's nearly impossible to tell that there was ever a problem.

The remnant of the mark is now much less noticeable than a Trinitron line. In fact, if you were here looking at my screen now and I didn't tell you where it was, you'd be hard-pressed to find it.
Click the image for a full-size closeup.

Kudos to the Internet which has once again helped a soul in need find that hard-to-find tidbit of knowledge.

How to run a secure wireless network

2006-06-01T22:04:00.000-05:00

The Goal: You want your users to have secure remote access to your network.

The Problem: All the existing wireless encryption protocols are insufficient. A quick google search will turn up cracking tools for WEP, LEAP, WPA and WPA2... they've all been broken.

Well, now you're thinking, "If they're all broken, why are they so popular?" They're not completely useless. For the average home user, it's simple to turn on WPA in their access point and on their laptop. They're not completely secure, but it keeps their casual neighbors out (there are plenty of easier targets out there).

But for a corporate network, using any of the encryption built-in to an access point is foolishly insecure. The reason that it's so easy to break those types of encryption is that they're very weak. That's not an accident. They have to be simple, and not require much processing power so as not to over-burden the poor little embedded processor in access points and Wi-Fi cards. Those low-powered chips just can't keep up with a full-strength encryption algorithm.

The Solution: Most corporate networks already have a means of allowing users to login from home (or elsewhere) across the insecure Internet... a VPN. Those VPNs have much stronger encryption because they're making use of a full-powered CPU to do the hard work. Leveraging that existing infrastructure for wireless users is just a short setup away.

Simply isolate all the Wi-Fi access points onto their own subnet. From that subnet, the only thing the wireless clients are allowed to connect to is the VPN server. Rogue wireless users can ping the VPN server, but failing to login, have full-access to nothing.

Such a setup relies on the same encryption for wireless clients as remote Internet users.

I run my home Wi-Fi almost the same way (with the exception that I allow unauthenticated users access to the Internet). After setting up my home network this way, I was pleasantly surprised at a luncheon event hosted by Counterpane when Bruce Schneier described using the same method.

USB Device Drivers

2006-05-18T22:59:00.000-05:00

I just bought a new scanner. It's the same story you've all been through... check the docs because some USB devices say "Install the CD first" while others say "Connect the device to your computer, then install the CD when prompted for drivers". Neither one is the magic "plug it in and it works" that we were promised when USB first came on the scene.

But why can't it be? I can be. There's an obvious solution. Sure, it takes a little bit of programming, but once it's done, the same solution can be re-used by every manufacturer.

Here's how it works: The USB device (printer, scanner, coffee maker, etc) has some flash memory (in today's ad, Fry's is selling 512M for $2). In that flash memory is everything they would have put on the CD. When you connect the device to your computer, the flash memory shows up as a standard USB mass storage device (just like your USB keychain does). At the same time, when your OS sees the new device, it also has the drivers available. Want an update? The files in flash include a URL to check for updates.

How hard is it? On the technical side, in order for the one physical device to show up as two (mass storage and a printer) it has to claim that it's a USB hub with two devices attached. Yes, it's possible, but nobody's bothered to do it (at least not that I've seen).

Just imagine: You buy a new USB toaster, plug it in and the drivers are installed automatically.

Software Updates

2005-12-11T11:19:00.000-06:00

New things to download:

ForceWare 81.95 - driver for nearly all nVidia cards
WinAMP 5.12 - Mostly bugfix updates.
Skype 2.0.0.43 Beta - New features like video chat
Paint.NET 2.5 - Finally out of beta
Audacity 1.3 beta - Includes a few new features

Audacity 1.2.4 is the new stable release. It doesn't include very many new features, most of the new features are in 1.3 which is still in beta.

And of course, Firefox 1.5 is out. But the bigger question is... are your favorite extensions updated to work with Firefox 1.5. Here's a quick rundown of my extensions and their success with FF 1.5.

Extensions that work fine with 1.5: (should auto-update without issue)

Adblock
Disable Targets For Downloads
DOM Inspector
EditCSS
fireFTP
Flashblock
Forecastfox
FoxyTunes
Gmail Notifier
Greasemonkey
Image Zoom
MediaPlayerConnectivity
Paste And Go
PDF Download
SessionSaver
Sort Extensions
SwitchProxy Tool
Tabbrowser Preferences
Web Developer

Extensions that can work with FF 1.5: (I had to get updates that are not yet available via addons.mozilla.org)

AutoCopy 0.6.0
BugMeNot 0.9
GDirections 0.9.99 (to install, save the download, then drag the .xpi file into FireFox)
Live HTTP headers 0.11
Venkman [aka JavaScript debugger] 0.9.85.jw2 (this is an unofficial hack that makes it somewhat work with FF 1.5)

Extensions that don't yet work with FF 1.5:

Event Spy 0.2.1
View Formatted Source 0.9.3.4

Now that nearly all of my FF extensions work with 1.5, it's worth it for me to upgrade. Are there other extensions you like that aren't on my list? Tell me what you like.

Firefox 1.5 (rc) and extensions

2005-11-05T16:34:00.000-06:00

So you've been using Firefox for a while and have even installed some extensions. Well, get ready for the biggest upgrade since Firefox's initial release. 1.5 will be out very soon, the curious can download the release candidate now. The release notes cover the major new features.

One major concern that's held me back is extension compatibility. I use many extensions in FF and some (but not all) of them have been upgraded to work with FF 1.5 yet. To save you the trouble of upgrading only to find that your favorite extensions don't yet work with FF 1.5, I'm posting my list here.

Extensions that work via automatic update:

Extensions that were intially disabled in FF 1.5:

After a bit of messing around, I got a few more updated:

Notes on the manually-updated extensions:
None of the ones that show as enabled in that last screenshot were able to update automatically... they all needed help of some kind.

Extension	Version	Notes
Flashblock	1.3.3	Tedious to update, see web site. Says that an automatic update will be available when FF 1.5 is released
Image Zoom	0.2	Update available on home page.
Auto Copy	0.6.0	0.6.0 is still in beta and works with 1.5 beta, but not 1.5 rc
SessionSaver .2	0.2.1.030	Update available on home page.
Greasemonkey	0.6.2	Update available on home page.

If there's an extension that you really want to work with FF 1.5, but the author hasn't yet updated it, you can force it to load. This isn't really the best way though (the extensions have version compatibility restrictions for a reason). But if you're willing to risk instability for some cool features, here's what you can do:

Download the .XPI (right-click -> Save as... on the Install link).
Rename the .XPI to .ZIP and open with your favorite zip tool.
Extract install.rdf
Open the install.rdf file in your favorite text editor and find where it says "em:maxVersion" and change the number after it to be the version of FF you're running.
Put the modified install.rdf back in the .ZIP and rename it back to .XPI

The more complex an extension, the greater the chance that it won't work. Since you're not actually checking the code and making any updates, it may really be incompatible with FF 1.5. If that's the case, then you'll have to wait for the extension's author to update it.

Happy browsing and keep an eye out for FF 1.5's imminent release.

Software updates

2005-10-21T15:10:00.000-05:00

Several major updates just came out. Most of them are worth the upgrade, but others should be considered first... I'll keep those seperate.

Update for sure - no reason not to get these

OpenOffice 2.0 - It's finally out of beta and the Windows version now has an installer!
nVidia Forceware 81.85 - Latest video drivers for nearly all current nVidia cards
WinAMP 5.11 - Most bugfixes
WinZip 10 Beta 2 - Adds some features, nothing to get excited about
Skype 1.4.0.78 - Has call forwarding, but still won't pop up the chat window for incoming messages
Ethereal 0.10.13 - Still the best packet sniffer around
Paint.NET 2.5 Beta 4 - More powerful than MSPaint and easier to use than PhotoShop
VMware Player - A free tool that can run existing VM setups created with VMware workstation or server
Thunderbird 1.5 beta 2 - Very stable (I use it all day every day). It's now easy to manage multiple identities per acct (quite handy). For reference, 7 of my 16 extensions work, the others haven't yet been updated, but that's not too bad, TB is quite usable without any extensions.
Flash Player 8 - It may not appear different to the user, but for developers, it's a major change. As they start developing content using the new Flash8, you'll eventually need the player.

Worth considering - some good points, but not shiny-happy all the way 'round

ACDSee 8.0($50 or free trial) - They keep adding more features and it keeps getting slower. Some of those features are very nice and quite powerful. But if you only want a viewer, try ACDSee 3.1 (Irfan view doesn't cache next/prev so scrolling with the wheel is slow)
Firefox 1.5 beta 2 - It's a nice upgrade, but if you depend on extensions, you may want to wait... many extensions aren't yet FF 1.5 compatible. I'm still using 1.0.7 because I'd rather have all 31 extensions work than upgrade to 1.5 and only have some of them. I'll check again when 1.5 is released.

Coming soon - the highlights of what to expect in the next several weeks.

Firefox 1.5 - Drag tabs to reorder, built-in SVG support, many other new features
Thunderbird 1.5 - Spell-check as you type, built-in phishing detection, ability to delete attachments and more

Lost: spoiler alert!

2005-10-19T15:39:00.000-05:00

If you haven't yet seen up through 2x03 "Orientation", finish watching, then come back here. As I write this, I've also seen 2x04, but it doesn't change any of my theory, nor do I spoil that episode.

There are several unexplained things that have been happening on the island. Maybe some of them can be tied together... I now have a theory that explains some key plot points:

How Locke can walk
Why the people in the orientation video were on the boat
Why Walt was abducted and how he appeared to Shannon in the forest


I'm moving away from the alien abduction theory and going with ... they're
in the Matrix!

How can Locke walk?
"Is it really so hard to believe? Your clothes are different. The plugs in
your arms and head are gone. Your hair is changed."
Locke can walk because he's in the matrix.  He's not burdened by "residual
self image"... he wanted to walk and explore so badly that when plugged
into a virtual reality, he envisions himself without the paralysis.

Same people showing up?
The people in the orientation video who started project Dharma showed up on
the boat and kidnapped Walt... they created the matrix and are free to come
and go as they please.  They came and took Walt... they unplugged him.  The
people who were on the raft (Michael, Jin and Sawyer) haven't seen the
video yet... when they do, they'll recognize the kidnappers and that will
bring them one step closer to realizing that there is no spoon.

Why did they take Walt?
"We have a rule.  We never free a mind once it has reached a certain age.
It's dangerous, the mind has trouble letting go."
Walt is still young enough to have a malleable mind.  They're afraid that
he'll quit believing and wake up.  Apparently, he figured out how to
communicate with people on the inside and sent the message to Shannon (her
hallucination).

This all still leaves the questions of how and why.  Are they still on the
plane?  Were they ever on the plane?  Perhaps they're in a simulator at the
Sydney airport.  What exactly do the numbers mean and why are they in
ascending order?  What happens if they don't press the button?  Will they
wake up?  It certainly doesn't explain everything, but I think it's
consistent and doesn't conflict with anything we've seen so far.

Software updates

2005-09-06T13:19:00.000-05:00

Some new minor versions:

nVidia nForce drivers 78.01 - Works for all current nVidia cards on Windows
WinAMP 5.1 - Excellent MP3 & video player
BSplayer 1.36 - Another great video player
OpenSSH 4.2 - If you have to ask what it is, you don't need it :)

Software updates

2005-09-01T13:28:00.000-05:00

Several new betas just came out:

WinZip 10 Beta - It's still not free despite what was posted to Slashdot
OpenOffice 2.0 Beta 2 - Site is down right now so I don't know what's new
Skype 1.4.0.47 Beta - Some new features (e.g. Call forwarding)
Paint .NET 2.2 Alpha 1 - Several new features added (e.g. transparent GIF support)

The next beta of Firefox (1.5 b1) is due out on Sept 8th.

Two sound cards?

2005-07-26T12:59:00.000-05:00

So you're using Skype, right? Well, even if you're not, you may be able to make use of this info in other ways.

Typcially, you'd have a headset handy for making phone calls and speakers for listening to music. It seems to work ok, but it's just a minor inconvenience that you either plugin the headset when making/receiving calls or you leave the headset in all the time, even for music.

There is a better way... two sound cards!
Adding a second sound card, leave the speakers plugged in to the first card and attach the headset to the second card. Leave the original card as the default and set Skype to use the secondary card. In Skype, under Tools -> Options -> Sound Devices, there thre three settings. Audio In, Audio Out and Ringing. Set both Audio In/Out to be your new sound card (the one with the headset). Leave the Ringing set to "Windows default device" that way, you'll hear the ringing sound on your speakers.

That's all there is to it!
Buying a second sound card isn't an expensive addition, shopping at a local computer show or even online, you can find one for < $10. The more expensive sound cards add features like digital output, environmental effects, better midi, higher sampling rates, surround sound, etc and none of those features will help a voice call sound better.

Taking it one step further
If you make a lot of calls from your computer, you'll start to feel tied down by your headset (who doesn't have a cordless phone yet?). There's a solution for that too! BlueTooth. You can find BlueTooth headsets at most electronic stores and cell phone shops. If you have a new laptop, it may already have BT built-in. If not, you can buy a small USB adapter that adds BT to your computer (desktop or laptop). Now you're not tied to your computer by a wire.

Also note that since BT is wireless, you don't need to buy a second sound card.

Have fun Skyping :)

Software updates

2005-07-25T11:30:00.000-05:00

Couple of smallish updates:

Software updates

2005-07-20T11:29:00.000-05:00

Last week's releases of Firefox and Thunderbird 1.0.5 fixed some security holes. Unfortunately, they also broke compatibility with some extensions. The 1.0.6 releases restore compatibility with those extensions.

Software updates

2005-07-14T15:38:00.000-05:00

Most of these updates are pretty small and primarily bugfixes. The Alpha releases are the ones with new features:

Skype 1.3.0.57
SecureCRT 5.0.1
SecureFX 3.0.1
Mozilla Suite 1.7.9 Release Candidate - Close to, if not the end of the suite builds
Firefox 1.0.5 - Security fixes
Thunderbird 1.0.5 - Security fixes
Firefox 1.1 Alpha 2 (Deer Park) - Not yet recommended to replace Firefox 1.0.x, just use for testing.
Thunderbird 1.1 Alpha 2 RC - No, I don't know why it's labeled Alpha and RC... is the real Alpha 2 still to come?

If all the Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird versions are too confusing, then just get 1.0.5 of both Firefox and Thunderbird.

Software updates

2005-07-07T09:58:00.000-05:00

Two minor updates:

Software updates

2005-06-30T12:42:00.000-05:00

A couple minor updates, and the long awaited Nvu 1.0.

Nvu 1.0 - The free, Mozilla-based web site editor
Skype 1.3.0.54 - Minor bugfix
GIMP 2.2.8 - Bugfix release

Software updates

2005-06-24T13:35:00.000-05:00

Several new updates this week:

nVidia ForceWare 77.72 - Driver for all nVidia video cards.
DivX 6.0 - video codec (based on MPEG4)
WinAMP 5.093 - minor update
OpenOffice 1.9 m109 - Freeware Office suite
NSIS 2.07 - Installer for Windows
SecureCRT 5.0 - Non-free, but very good telnet/ssh client for windows
SecureFX 3.0 - Non-free, but good ftp/sftp client for windows
Skype 1.3.0.51 - Free VoIP software
BS Player 1.32 - Free video player with some nice features.

WinXP x64: it's not yet ready.

2005-06-23T10:28:00.000-05:00

After much talk, I finally got around to building a new desktop system. I was overdue for an upgrade and this time, I went all out (well, almost). It's a dual Opteron system. With these nice new 64-bit CPUs, I thought I'd give WinXP x64 a try.

MS touts the advantages of 64-bit and how it's faster, supports more RAM and still lets you run all the same 32-bit apps. Those are all true, but there's one major problem that they're not talking about: drivers! On a 64-bit OS, all the drivers need to be 64-bit too. What's that mean? It means that you can't use the same driver that you downloaded for your Whiz-Bing 2000, you have to go back to Acme's web site and see if they have a 64-bit version of their driver. Oh, Acme doesn't make the Whiz-Bing 2000 anymore so they don't care about updating the driver.

In the two hours that I ran WinXP x64, here's the problems I found:

No Lexmark Printer/Scanner drivers (here's 32 pages of missing printer drivers)
No drivers for my Creative SB 16 PCI (yes, I use two sound cards)
No TweakUI for x64 (the Itanium version doesn't work)
No Daemon tools
No Sony Cybershot drivers

That was enough to put me off. I went back to the regular WinXP. In theory, it's not quite as fast as the x64 version would be, but it actually works. With regular XP, it also limits me to 4GB of RAM... guess I'll have to make due :)

I'm sure they'll get there soon, but vendors are going to have to start making x64 drivers before it catches on. Who knows, maybe XP x64 won't ever get major support... we may just have to wait for Longhorn (ETA: August '06).

Screen captures

2005-06-16T02:32:00.000-05:00

Ever since Windows 95, the PrintScreen key will take a screen capture by default. The only catch is that it's not obvious to the average user how it works. "Hey, I pressed PrntScr and nothing happened!" Well, as most of you already know, the screen capture is silently stored in the clipboard.

My typical screen capture routine is:

Press PrntScr
Win-R -> pbrush to launch Paint
Ctrl-V to paste into Paint (as of WinXP, it auto-enlarges the canvas without asking)
Alt-F4 to quit
y (yes to save before quit)
Enter a file name
TAB -> P (to save as PNG)
Enter (save the file and quit)

I've gotten pretty quick at it, but when you want to take several screen shots in a row, it's time to find a better way. Today I finally got around to searching and I found a better way.

I found a slick tool called Screen Print 32. It's just what I've been looking for. After a quick install it runs and I go through its setup screen to pick the options I want:

Capture Full Desktop or Active Window (just like Windows default behavior)
Capture Key: Prt-Scr (just like Windows default behavior)
Load at Startup: Yes
Enable Printing: No
Save Captured Area to Disk: Yes
Filename: Capture [rdate] [time]
File Format: PNG
Folder: \My Documents\My Pictures\Screen Captures

Now the aforementioned eight-step process is down to a single keypress. I simply press the PrntScr key and it pops up a small note to tell me that it's captured the screen (goes away in a couple seconds). Looking in my Screen Captures folder, I can see the .PNG files showing up every time I press PrntScr. I'm happy!

BlueTooth Headset

2005-06-15T10:59:00.000-05:00

On Monday, I got my BlueTooth Headset (Motorola HS820). So far, I love it!

At first you think "what's the big deal, wire/no wire, whatever". For years, I've been using a wired headset while driving. The car ritual was getting tiring

take phone off hip
untangle headset cord
plug headset into phone
clip phone back on hip
put earpiece in ear
clip lapel clip on (so the earpiece doesn't fall out)

It was enough that if I was going to stop somewhere on the way to work (e.g. dry cleaner's), I just wouldn't use the headset.

Well, with the BlueTooth (BT) headset, I get in the car and:

press button to turn on
hook headset on ear

I'll admit that it took me a while to come around to spend the money on something that was just going to save me those few steps. But now that I have, I see that there are even more benefits.

For example, while driving with a wired earpiece, it's still not so easy to use voice dialing. I have to take the phone off my hip, flip open the lid and press the voice dial button. With the BT headset, I can simply press the button on the earpiece and say the name... no need to remove the phone from its holster.

So that's all? No. I found another great use for the headset: Skype! Skype? Yes, Skype. :) I paired the BT headset with my laptop (built-in BT) and configured Skype to use "BlueTooth Audio" as the preferred device for conversations. Now I can make phone calls over the Internet without being wired to a computer... it's like having a cordless phone at home (how many people do you know who are still stuck with a corded phone?)

What about quality, features, etc?

Sound quality is identical to that of the phone (obviously, it can't be any better)
Volume is good (adjustable on the headset)
Mic seems good... I've asked several friends and they couldn't tell the difference
Uses internal, Li-Ion battery (non-replaceable)
Charges in about an hour
Uses same charger as standard Motorola cell phones
Very light weight (I've already forgotten I was wearing it a few times)
Hook flips to fit either ear

My only regret is that I didn't buy one sooner.

Software updates

2005-06-14T23:40:00.000-05:00

Latest software updates

Software updates

2005-06-02T23:38:00.000-05:00

This week's updates are mostly betas

Mozilla Firefox 1.1 Alpha 1 (Deer Park) - Not ready for mainstream consumption... many extensions haven't been updated to work with it yet. The good news is that by default, it installs in a new folder so it won't mess up existing FireFox installs.
OpenOffice.org 2.0 Beta (build m104)
NSIS 2.07 Beta 0
Winamp 5.092
SecureCRT 5.0 Beta 6
SecureFX 3.0 Beta 6

Software updates

2005-05-23T12:52:00.000-05:00

Two minor updates:

Star Wars: ep3 (no spoilers)

2005-05-19T10:59:00.000-05:00

Last night, Chris, my cousin Eric and I were playing Settlers. It was getting late.

"You guys wanna see Star Wars?"
"Sure."
"Do you think we can still get tickets?"
"Um, we wouldn't get home until 3..."
"That's ok with me."

It was 11:26 when we called the theater and asked if they had any tickets for Star Wars left. Sure enough, they had 61 tickets.

We jumped in the car and got to the theater at 11:40. As you might expect, we didn't get great seats, but it wasn't bad for not arriving ahead of time. We even found three seats together.

The movie was ok (nothing spectacular). Having seen ep2 and 4, there's a lot of questions about what happened inbetween. Well, watch it and you'll get to see the answers. Some things were pretty cheezy (sorry to be vague, but it's still openning day so I don't want to post any spoilers) and the movements of the CG characters were very un-natural so it looked pretty fake at times.

Anyone else going on openning day? There's still time...

Software updates

2005-05-13T13:39:00.000-05:00

This week's updates are all minor fixes, no major updates.

Romania: day 1

2005-05-08T23:20:00.000-05:00

Some friends of the family are from Bucharest. They've been in New York for about 15 years. We've known them just as long. Several months ago, they asked my parents and I if we'd like to join them on a trip back home to Romania. We said yes!

Jeff and Adriana went a day early, but the rest of us didn't leave until Friday. With Radu, Nineta and Mike in NY, my parents in DC and me in Chicago, we all made our own flight arrangements. The goal was to arrive at Otopeni airport as close to the same time as possible. Radu had given me their flight info and it turned out that our layovers in Amsterdam overlapped. When I checked in at O'Hare, I tried to switch the second leg of my flight to match theirs, but since that would have left me with only a 50 minute layover coming off of a 7+ hour int'l flight, the agent said I should wait and see what time I arrived in Amsterdam. If my flight made good time, I could switch to the earlier flight in Amsterdam.

The flight was uneventful. I tried to sleep (as it would be a short night and that was my only chance for sleep. I doubt I got more than about 30 minutes sleep... I just can't seem to sleep well while sitting up in a chair :(

Arriving in Amsterdam, I was surprised how much English I heard. Walking past shops, I could hear customers with Dutch accents conducting transactions in English with cashiers who were also speaking English with Dutch accents. Having arrived early, I made my way to the ticket counter. I asked about catching the earlier flight to Bucharest. The agent explained that since my bags were already checked through to Bucharest, I'd have to wait for the same plane. Had the agent in Chicago only sent my bags to Amsterdam, I could have moved my bags and myself onto the earlier flight. (a security measure) Thanks to the same Chicago agent who suggested I change flights in Amsterdam, I couldn't.

As long as I had the time, I went on to the gate for that earlier flight. I wouldn't be able to board, but I could wait with my friends. Sure enough, I met up with them on the way there. There was me from Chicago meeting friends from New York on our way to Bucharest, crossing paths in Amsterdam. It was strange and cool. Having only a short time to talk, they boarded their plane and I had two more hours to kill.

Passing the shops again, I stopped in to look for The Matrix. I've started collecting it in various languages (so far, only from places I've been). I found a copy in Dutch, but reading the details on the back (it wasn't too hard to figure out), the audio was only in English and French, but the subtitles were available in Dutch. Didn't seem worth it, just for the subtitles. Besides, I already have the French version.

Relatively speaking, it was a short flight to Bucharest. Arriving there, I met Radu, Nineta and Mike (for the second time that day). They had already met up with some of their relatives: Lorica and Mihai. We're all sitting at a cafe in the airport waiting for my parents (the rest of them had already been the for a while waiting for me). My parents are due to arrive in about 2 hours. As we talk, Nineta is doing most of the translating.

Before I know it, my parents have arrived and we're all heading into the city. Radu, Nineta, Jeff and Adriana are staying at Radu's mother's house (or "grandma's house" as I'll refer to it). The rest of us (Mike, my parents and I) will be staying at an apartment a short walk from there. For now, it's off to grandma's house. She lives in the second floor of a rectory and has a beautiful view from the balcony.

We're all quite tired. Most of the group got more sleep than I did, but not much. As it gets to be evening, it's now Saturday night and we left the US on Friday afternoon. No alarm clocks tonight :) Four of them will be staying here with grandma, but they walk with us to the apartment to see what it's like and help translate as we check in. It's about a 10 minute walk from grandma's house and I'm very happy to have luggage with wheels (thanks mom!).

We arrive at the apt building and the elevator's a bit small (three can fit, four can squish, but only if you don't have any bags). We've got eight people and lots of luggage. Our apt is only the 4th floor so we take the stairs. After walking up three flights of stairs, we look for a sign, expecting to be on the fourth floor. Well, we didn't count on the numbering being different :) We're now on the 1st floor! Turns out the ground level doesn't count. Ok, but what about the other two floors we passed? Those were mezzanine 1 and mezzanine 2. So our "4th" floor apartment that we're walking up the stairs to is really what an American would call the 7th floor.

We're all too tired to complain. We make our way in, steak out our territory and settle in for some sleep.

sleep, yes. I should get some now too. I'll pick up with day 2 soon. In the meantime, check out the pictures. Sorry they're not inlined with the text, but hopefully I've described things well enough so you can tell which pictures match with which parts of the story.

Software updates

2005-05-07T10:32:00.000-05:00

After being gone a week and spending a week catching up on everything, there've been quite a lot of updates.

Stopping inlined video

2005-05-03T11:20:00.000-05:00

Call me a control freak, but I want my computer to work for me, not against me. I don't want popups ad, blinking text or inlined video on web pages. I love Firefox because it lets me view the web the way I want.

Tabbed browsing is one of those features that I never really thought was interesting until I started using it. Now I can't live without it. (how did people ever survive without microwave ovens?)

It happens on occation that I middle-click several links and open them all in new tabs. Then as they're loading, I hear music playing. Grrr.... I'm already listening to music, and having a web page play a different song is really annoying. I shouldn't have to be subjected to someone else's music. Which tab is that? I don't want to close them all, just want the music to stop.

Video is worse. I run dual monitors and have my video drivers set so that if I'm playing a video, it goes full screen on the other monitor. I often watch TV on one monitor while browsing/coding/chatting on the other. Well, when a web page has inlined video, it starts playing full screen on my other monitor -- not what I want.

Time to do something about it. I had a long plane flight on my trip to Romania last week (vacation report coming soon) so I started tinkering with local files and figured out how to make it stop.

So if you want to block inlined videos (or anything else) from playing in web pages, here's how:

If you don't already have a userContent.css file, start a new one, if you already have one, just add to it.
userContent.css is located in your Firefox profile directory (click for help finding it). Inside your profile directory, open the Chrome folder. There's a file called "userContent-example.css" and it can be ignored (or if you're adventerous, you can read it for more tips).
Add the following lines to userContent.css:

embed[type="application/asx"] { display: none !important;}
embed[type="video/x-ms-asf-plugin"] { display: none !important;}
embed[type="application/x-mplayer2"] { display: none !important;}
embed[type="video/x-ms-asf"] { display: none !important;}
embed[type="video/x-ms-wm"] { display: none !important;}
embed[type="audio/x-ms-wma"] { display: none !important;}
embed[type="audio/x-ms-wax"] { display: none !important;}
embed[type="video/x-ms-wmv"] { display: none !important;}
embed[type="video/x-ms-wvx"] { display: none !important;}

Quit Firefox.
Save the file (if you save it while FF is open, your changes will be lost when you quit).
Restart Firefox.

Any of the above mime types will not be shown on web pages. If you find something that still plays (e.g. real player), you can use View -> Source to find the content type and add another line to block it as well.

Vacation time

2005-04-22T02:22:00.000-05:00

I'm off to Romania in 12 hours (hmmm... I have work before then and sleep before that, gonna be a tight squeeze).

I'll be spending a week in Bucharest with my parents and family friends (who are Romanian). I'll post some pics as soon as I can after I get back.

Latest hack

2005-04-21T11:05:00.000-05:00

So my cousin moved in with me almost two weeks ago. We've been getting along great and having lots of fun.

One problem. We both have wireless keyboards and mice. Can you guess where I'm going with this? Yep, they interfere with eachother. After reading Logitech's FAQ, their only solution was "move farther apart". Thanks.

After a bit of brainstorming with one of my coworkers, I came up with the idea to put some shielding around the receivers. So I grabbed an old kleenex box, wrapped it in aluminum and attached a ground wire. Not having another kleenex box (the perfect size), we used the box that last night's chicken helper came in for the other one. :)

It certainly helped... both mice work at the same time now, but my keyboard still misses some letters when he's typing :(

We'll play around with pointing the boxes different directions and such later, it was getting late last night.

My receiver:

My cousin's receiver:

The whole desk:

That's the latest episode of Numb3rs streaming off my TiVo and playing on the middle monitor.

Today's Sobe lid

2005-04-20T13:36:00.000-05:00

"The big yellow one is the sun."

Carputer pics part 4: Building the computer

2005-04-18T21:02:00.000-05:00

When building a computer for use in a car, there's a few things to consider... power, heat, size, shock protection.

Getting the easy stuff out of the way, I started with a small form factor (SFF) box. It's a P2 so it's not so power hungry and doesn't run as hot as today's current systems.

Next I swapped out the standard HD for a laptop drive. Being designed for laptops, they're much more shock tolerant than desktop HDs. When I mount the computer in the car, I'll also add some shock protection there... not sure exactly what form yet.

The first hard part was the power supply. Having previously speced one out and ordered it, it was time to install it. Putting the new PS where the old one was would put it too far for the ATX connector to reach the mobo :( Instead, I had to put it where the HD was. Of course, I then had to relocate the HD. After a quick trip to Home Depot for some self-tapping screws, my cousin Eric helped me get it all mounted:

The PS is mounted with standard mobo standoffs and is pretty securely in place.

With a computer that is now wired for 12v DC, I needed some sort of power plug. The PS came with wires, but I didn't want to just solder it into the car... makes upgrades tough :) So I took a 18" power cord that's used as a pass-through (from older PCs to their monitors so you have one switch that turns everything off). I cut it in half and soldered half into the carputer's PS. I soldered the other half into the car. Now I can easily plug and unplug the carputer.

The next hurdle was that taking the carputer out to the car for testing, I ran into a problem. It booted up ok, but didn't login to my wifi AP. Without a monitor and keyboard, I had no way of knowing what was wrong (software error, low power, weak signal...). So now I needed a way to power the carputer in the house for debugging.

Getting 12v DC shouldn't be hard... just use an old PC power supply. Well, it's not quite that easy :( An ATX power supply won't turn on until the mobo tells it to. So when it's not in a computer, how do you tell it to turn on? I found a couple guides on the 'net, but they didn't match up to what I was seeing with my volt meter. Turns out, I had an old Dell PS from a time when Dell made PSs with an ATX connector, but all the pins in different places.

Tossing the Dell PS, I got a real one and figured out which pins to short. Still no go :( More reading... turns out that you also have to put a load on the PS or it won't turn on. So I hooked up an HD from another machine:

that's the carputer under my testing PS and it's powering the HD in the case just so the PS will turn on. A bit odd, but it worked great.

Also note that for the carputer's PS to turn on, it waits for 5 seconds after the car starts (which is why it doesn't count as a load on the ATX power supply at first).

I also needed a way to simulate the ignition switch from the car on my new power supply. Scavenging the power button from a dead PC, I mounted it inside the PS with just the button sticking out:

Using another power cord, I put a plug on the PS so that I could power the carputer. Time to be very careful.... this standard looking plug has 3 pins, but they're: +12, Gnd, Ignition.... not 110AC!

I carefuly chose to put the proper end on the carputer side so that while it's in the house, it can't be plugged into an outlet with a normal cord:

Hacking a bit with a dremel, I added an on/off switch and mounted an old, dead HD to the top:

With this rather atypical setup, I'm now able to use the carputer in the house for testing/debugging/upgrading. A few quick fixes and now it's ready to go in the car.

Carputer pics part 3: Prepping the car

2005-04-14T14:19:00.000-05:00

The empeg comes with its own docking sled:

but it doesn't have an ethernet connection when it's in the sled. For most people, that's not a problem, but for me, I want ethernet in my car :)

The solution is to add an ethernet connector to the sled:

Just be sure to break off the clip on the RJ45 so you can still remove the empeg from the sled.

Needing to hookup power to both the empeg and my stock HU, I had to wire up custom wiring harness:

Now I can connect both head units and I've not cut any wires that came with the car:

The completed empeg looks like this:

Moving on to the actual carputer, I needed to get power to the trunk. Strangely enough, this involves taking off a wheel:

That plastic piece hanging down is the wheel well liner. Having unclipped it, I can now pass a wire from the engine compartment, into the wheel well and through to a gasket in the firewall to the cabin:

It was tough to get through the gasket and I didn't want to damage it (as it protects all the wires from getting cut on the edge of the hole). I took a small piece of coat hanger and zip tied it to my power wire. Then I cover the zip ties with tape and poked it through. Onn the other side, I grabbed it with plyers and pulled it in:

As long as I've got the car apart to run wire, I should also run ethernet (light blue) from the empeg to the trunk and an ignition sense line (dark blue) too.

Gathering the wires, I ran them along the driver's door frame

then past the rear door

then under the back seat

and into the trunk

The brown wire there has since been connected to the body to complete the circuit (lift the carpet, file off some primer, put in a self-tapping screw and you're done).

Now I've got a power plug, ethernet and an ignition sense line in the trunk. That should be all I need to do in the car (until it comes time to build a mount).

Software updates

2005-04-14T10:25:00.000-05:00

Some mostly minor updates

nVidia Forceware 71.89 - Windows video drivers for all nVidia cards since about 1998.
OpenOffice 1.9 build 93 - I think 2.0 was scheduled for Q4 of 2004... not sure when it's expected now.
Paint .NET 2.1 beta 3 - Just when 2.1 final was due, it's been pushed back a couple weeks and a beta has been pushed in its place.
GIMP 2.2.6 - A bugfix release.

Carputer pics part 2: Moving the climate controls

2005-04-13T01:21:00.000-05:00

After failing to find a pre-made extension cable (or even a wiring harness) for my climate controls, I set out to make my own.

In the close-up at the end of the previous article, the left connector has two rows of 10 pins and the right side has two rows of 8 pins. The brown plug is for a light that sits below the climate controls and points down to illuminate the ashtray (coin tray) and the cigarette lighter (power plug). Not needing a light inside my armrest, I removed it. The backlight is internal and still works fine.

Needing to make both a female connector to plug into the back of the climate controls and a male plug to connect to the wiring harness in the dash, I started working on the female side first.

My first attempt was to use an IC socket. The pin spacing was just right, but the two rows were too far apart. To bring the rows closer together, I cut the ends and sanded down the nubs that were left behind. Simply gluing the two halves together (lacking the previous gap in the middle) brings the rows too close. To compensate, I found that a piece of floppy drive ribbon cable glued in between gave the perfect spacing:

Right: a standard IC socket.
Left: modified to get the two halves just close enough.

It proved too difficult to wires soldered to the legs without having some of them come off while working on the others. It was also problematic to have the legs (and wires) pointing stright out becuase as mounted, there isn't much room below the bucket in the armrest. Just a couple mm below the armrest is the airbag sensor... something I really can't move.

Searching for another solution, I gave a PC floppy drive ribbon cable a try. Two problems: 1) the two rows of pins on the cable were way too close together so I was only hitting one row and 2) the pins on the climate controls are shaped like a popsicle stick while the pins a floppy drive are square. Both of these problems seemed solvable. To make the pins fit better, I sanded down the face of the floppy connector:

The connector now fit onto the pins more easily, but didn't make good contact. Looking closely at the picture above, you can see the gold-colored contacts are only on one side of each hole. Because the pins weren't square, they sometimes wouldn't make contact. I needed a way to make the hole a little be smaller. Enough smaller to make good contact, but not so small that the pins wouldn't fit. As I already had a floppy cable in my hand, I stripped the plastic off one of the wires and pulled seven strands of wire out (each about the thickness of a hair). Twisting the strands together, I put the mini bundle into a hole. To keep it in place, I folded it over and put the slack into the hole across from it. Since the climate controls' pins had their rows spaced too far apart, the second row of holes on the floppy cable wasn't going to be used anyway, so this wouldn't be a problem. Using a dot of super glue, I held the wire in place. I then repeated the process for each of the other seven holes on my test cable. The picture above shows four of them complete.

That still leaves the problem of the row spacing. How could I get the second row? Simple: use two floppy connectors. It took a lot of tweaking with a dremel to get the pieces filed down just right so that two of them together would fit into the connector. From the side, the look like this:

Confident that I had a working connector, I started soldering the ribbon cable some cat5 (plentiful around my house and I didn't have 3 feet of ribbon cable):

Next up was to make the male connector. Knowing the approx pin size, I went with a laptop<->desktop IDE adapter:

Again, the problem of row spacing came up. To get the rows farther apart, I use a dremel to cut off half of the pins:

and then stuck two of those together which came out to be perfect.

I took it out to the car for a test fitting:

and it seemed to work pretty well:

To get the wires to go inside the armrest, I'd have to make the one non-reversible step in this whole ordeal. I had to cut out a hole. Wanting to make sure I got it right the first time, I painted the frame of the connector on the back of the climate controls, then lowered them into place within the armrest. This left a nice mark inside the armrest showing me exactly where to cut:

If I ever do want to put the car back to stock condition, I can simply cover the hole with a piece of plastic, then put the stock felt square back on top :) Othewise, you'd still have to pick up the felt to see this:

And with a great sigh of relief, I was done and had working climate controls:

For the curious, it's been over two years now, and they still work just fine in there... helps that they're all digital and the sensors are remote.

Carputer pics part 1: Empeg install

2005-04-11T16:51:00.000-05:00

It started with a recon mission. I had to figure out the best place to install the empeg player.

The center panel started out with the stock Bose head unit above the climate controls.

The empeg mostly fits down inside the center console

but according to the developers, it would be a bad idea to mount it vertically. Also note that when the lid is closed, it needs space to go down inside... this isn't going to work.

Maybe on top of the air vents, just under the clock (or even replace the clock)

but that would require major surgery on the dash and a lot of work to make it look decent afterwards.

Hmm... it appears to be about the same width as the climate controls

this will require further investigation.

It's a little bit deeper than the climate controls

Seems like it could be mounted in the same frame along with the stock head unit

Ok, but then where would the climate controls go? In the armrest?

doesn't seem to fit.

Ah, but taking the faceplate off, there's plenty of room.

I think we have a winner.

Next problem: the wiring for the climate controls has about 3 inches of slack... I need an extra 3 feet! I'd rather not cut the wires and splice in extensions. That'd be really ugly and hard to solder all those wires sitting in the car. At this point, I should also mention that I'd like to be able to put the car back to stock so I want to avoid any permanent changes.

I called Nissan and asked if they sold connectors for the climate controls (should be quite easy to make some extension cables). The conversation went something like this:

Me: "Hi, do you sell a wiring harness for the climate controls in an '02 Maxima?"
Nissan: "Let me check... yes, it's about thirteen fifty or fourteen fifty, depending on the model. Read me your VIN so I can find the right part."
Me: "Well, I'm driving, but that's a good enough estimate. Do you also sell a reverse wiring harness that matches that?"
Nissan: "No, just the forward. But for your fourteen hundred, you get all the wires for the entire dash, what else would you need?"
Me: "Fourteen hundred?! I don't need all the wires for the whole dash, just a $10 harness for the climate controls."
Nissan: "Sorry, can't help you with that."

That was disappointing, but not enough to make me give up. I brought the climate controls in to work and a coworker helped me search through AMP's catalog of connectors. Eventually, we gave up as there's no part number or model number on this connector, nor on the circuit board.

(plugs on the back side of the climate controls)

Still determined, I started to wonder how hard it could be to make a connector that would fit on to the back. Then realized that I'd also have to make a counterpart to be the other end of the cable.

Software updates

2005-04-06T15:57:00.000-05:00

A handful of updates:
(or two hands depending on how many bits your hands hold)

CRT (and SecureCRT) 5.0 beta 3 - Very good, non-free Windows-only telnet (and SSH) clients.
PuTTY 0.58 - Free, multi-platform SSH client.
Paint.NET 2.1 beta 2 - Final version expected in a couple weeks
Skype 1.2.0.41 - Some minor fixes/changes.

Carputer progress

2005-04-03T15:51:00.000-05:00

I've been concerned that since I'm not using a machine designed for low power that I might be drawing an excessive amount.

A few days ago, a coworker and I went to my car at lunch and measured the power usage for my carputer. Measuring the inverter, GPS and carputer all at once, the draw is 5.5A @ 12.5V (with the car off). So that's about 70W.

Good news. Now I know I'm in the right ballpark so I went ahead and ordered a 90W power supply. It's one that's specifically designed for running an ATX computer in a car so it's going to eliminate the need for the inverter (should draw less power just by being more efficient). It's also smart about turning off the PC: when the car is turned off, it will tell the PC to shutdown nicely. If the PC doesn't, it will cut power after a few minutes to save the car's battery.

Now I can go back to focusing on the software side. Most of the wireless software out there seems to be geared toward cracking into encrypted networks. That's not what I'm interested in. Nor do want to just drive around and make GPS-based maps of where WiFi is. I think it's far more useful to use the WiFi for internet access (shock -- yes, I actually want to use it for what it was intended). Basically, what I'm looking for is a way to connect to my home AP if it's in range and any other open AP if I'm away.

The (apparently defunct) AP Hopper util seemed like a good candidate, but it doesn't appear to like my ACX111-based card. There could be a number of reasons for this... acx drivers were written by enthusiasts and may not be complete, I may have a defective card, maybe I have the wrong firmware file. The ipw2100 in my laptop works much better so at least I have something to compare to.

The first priority is to have it recognize my home AP so I can login when it's in my garage. The first feature I plan to implement is using it as a router/NAT so I can have my home PC upload new music to my empeg while it's still in my car. I'll probably end up using OpenVPN to do it.

The carputer: I'm not that far ahead

2005-03-30T23:29:00.000-06:00

I tell people I'm building a "carputer" and most give me a strange, puzzled look. I'm not the first to do something like this (Google currently shows >66,000 hits), but among people I know, I seem to be the odd one out.

What is a carputer?
For me, it's a PC in the trunk that will provide some interesting features. For others, it's an extension of an in-car entertainment system. In the future, there are many more possibilities.

Why?
It's a fun project and I'm learning a lot while working on it. Not to mention all the usefull features I'll get out of it. For example, here's some of the things that I envision doing. For the most part the hardware is trivial commodity hardware. The innovative part is putting it together in a new way and finding (or writing) software that can make useful features out of the existing hardware.

The hardware
I'm not using anything overly fancy. So far, my hardware consists of:

An old, small form factor (SFF) PC. It's a PII @233MHz with 64M RAM
A small GPS antenna
A WiFi card (occupying the only PCI slot in the PC)

The Software
After much searching, I decided on ArchLinux. It offers a full desktop GUI, and even though I don't need that, it's very easy to trim it down to the bare essentials. Sure, there's plentry of ultra-small distros, but that's not necessary (I've got a 20G disk)... I was looking for something that has many packages available and can easily have it boot time trimmed down.

Desired Feature List
Some of these are easy to do and others are difficult (some may not even be possible). All the hardware is present, it's just a matter of finding/writing the software to make these things happen.

Use the GPS to log my driving
Log where open wireless networks are so I can later ask where the nearest internet access is
Offload pix from my digital camera while traveling (plug a USB cable that's run from the trunk to the center console)
Upon finding an open WiFi connection, upload small data to my server at home (e.g. GPS logs).
When my home WiFi access point is visible in-range, upload large datafiles (e.g. pictures) to my server at home.
If my car gets stolen, I can call the police and tell them exactly where my car is.

When you also factor in that I already have an empeg as my sound system, the possibilities are further expanded.

Wired ethernet from the empeg to the carputer to allow my home PC to talk to the empeg while in the garage. This will allow uploading of new music without bringing the empeg into the house.
Audio announcements for things like:

pictures copied from digicam, safe to unplug.
open wifi is detected.
read GPS stats (I've already ported Flite to the empeg) for coords, altitude, velocity, etc)
read my email to me on my commute

Adding some other small pieces of hardware (webcam, OBDII interface, Palm), many more new possibilities arise:

Mount USB webcam inside front grill so I can take pictures of vanity plates. It would be nice if I didn't have to fumble around while driving to get my camera out, aim, focus (not on the windshield) and take pix.
Use of a Palm as a remote control... with so many features and a headless computer in the trunk, how else could I control it all. Oh, the IrDA port on the Palm is line of sight? No problem, I'll have it talk to the IrDA port on the empeg. Someone else already wrote a daemon for the empeg that will receive IR data and pass it on to various apps based on data type. e.g. beam a memo from a Palm (or my Accompli 009) to the empeg and it passes it to the TTS software which fades down the music, reads the message and fades the music back up.
Use OBDII<->Serial adapter so the empeg can monitor my car. From what I understand, development on OBDII software for Linux is still in its infancy, but I'm interested in learning.
If my car gets stolen, I can put a (digitally signed) file on my server at home and when the car checks in, that will be instructed it to use the OBDII interface to disable the ECU... now I can tell the police where my car is and that it's not moving. Perhaps even use the empeg to play a quote from HAL "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that." :)
I'm installing a 5 port 10/100 switch behind the head unit so I can have a couple RJ45 jacks in the car.
Eventually, setup a laptop with mapping software that will get my location from the carputer and possibly even give me directions.

Look back at my hardware list... it's nothing new, fancy or expensive. It's actually all pretty cheap now. If you learned nothing else from MacGyver, you should at least know that most hardware can be put to many more uses than it was originally intended!

I'm sure there's other things that people can thing of that I've missed... I'm open to suggestions for other features :)

Software updates

2005-03-23T19:18:00.000-06:00

Three fresh new releases

Firefox 1.0.2 - Worth upgrading for security fixes... 1.1 isn't due for about 3 months.
Skype 1.2.0.37 - The first non-beta to include SkypeIn
OpenOffice 1.9m87 - One step closer to 2.0

Software updates

2005-03-22T21:28:00.000-06:00

A couple new point releases:

Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.2 - No, you're not that far behind, there was no 1.0.1 release.
NSIS 2.06 - A nice installer for Windows (I've used it many times, works great).

Preventing Deep Linking

2005-03-18T11:35:00.000-06:00

It happens every now and then that some corporate website claims in their terms of service that nobody is allowed to link to anything other than their home page. This is obviously ridiculous and they will generally be mocked for claiming such a statement.

The general principal is that having a link to another site doesn't violate any copyright since you're not copying their content, just pointing to it.

Well, what if you could prevent that?

Suppose I make a directory on my web server that has such a long path that I can claim copyright on the directory name. That would mean that in order to link to anything within that directory, another site would have to reference the copyrighted text of my directory name. By doing that, I might be able to legally (but not technically) prevent people from linking to something like:

www.example.com/Roses are red, violets are blue, this is my content, it's not for you! (C) 2005 The Amigo/content.html

I don't have any personal need to try something crazy like that, but it just may work... thoughts?

Software updates

2005-03-15T22:52:00.000-06:00

Some pre-releases are making progress:

Paint .NET 2.1 Alpha 3 - Free, easy to use, decent paint program.
SecureCRT 5.0 Beta 2 - Commercial telnet/SSH client.
SecureFX 3.0 Beta 2 - Commercial FTP/SFTP client.

Software updates

2005-03-13T21:26:00.000-06:00

Recent updates of note:

Nvu 0.90 - A web site editor (spun off from Mozilla).
Forceware 71.84 - nVidia's 1st non-beta video driver release in 4 months.
Skype 1.2.0.21 Beta - Now supports incomming calls from regular phones.
Ethereal 0.10.10 - A cross-platform packet sniffer & protocol decoder.

All are free (as in beer) and Nvu and Ethereal are OSS.

Software updates

2005-03-01T21:25:00.000-06:00

Three new betas from VanDyke. Unlike most of the software I track, these are not free, but worth checking out:

CRT 5.0 beta 1 - Telnet client now including multiple tabs
SecureCRT 5.0 beta 1 - Like CRT, but includes SSH support
SecureFX 3.0 beta 1 - FTP/SFTP client

Software updates

2005-02-27T13:20:00.000-06:00

From alpha to beta, two major projects just released their first betas for their upcoming releases:

Mozilla 1.8 beta 1
OpenOffice 2.0 beta candidate

Software updates

2005-02-24T23:08:00.000-06:00

Mostly just point releases this time...

Firefox 1.0.1 has been released. The middle digit still being zero means you shouldn't expect to see any new features, it's mostly bug fixes and security patches.
BS Player 1.21 (build 816) - minor bugfix to 1.2
OpenOffice 2.0 Beta (m79) - drawing ever closer to the eventual 2.0 release.

Securing a MOO

2005-02-23T20:38:00.000-06:00

...or MUD, MUSE, MUSH, etc.

Target audience: An experience unix admin running a dedicated moo. Just mentioning the idea may be enough to spark the idea and you can do it on your own, but be sure to read the security section below.
This isn't for everyone. If it sounds confusing, then it's probably not worth trying to do this.

I recently discovered an archived copy of my old MOO from college. Having a cable modem, I thought, why not just host it on my Linux box and let my friends who used to play connect to it for some reminiscing. Then I thought about security. While it doesn't allow interaction with the host environment (my Linux box would still be safe), logins are done via telnet so the character passwords are vulnerable to sniffing.

So I set out to secure it while being as compatible as possible and not wanting to put too much effort into it. Since I'm not planning on keeping it up, just a quick "hey guys, remember this?"

The obvious direction is to use SSH. The basic idea is that users could SSH to my system and from there, telnet to localhost where they could login. Here's the steps I took:

Create a new user (I chose "moo"), make the password simple (e.g. "moo").
Change the login shell for moo to be /usr/bin/mooproxy
Save the code below to "mooproxy.c"
Compile it using: gcc -s -o mooproxy mooproxy.c
Move the new binary to /usr/bin/

/* mooproxy.c */
#include
int main(int argc, char *argv[]){
execl("/usr/bin/telnet", "telnet", "localhost", "7777", NULL);
}

Notes:

Be sure to change the port number to match where your moo is running.
Change /usr/bin/telnet if your telnet binary is located somewhere else.

Security:

Set your firewall to block the moo port (7777 in my case) as the users will come in via SSH.
Set your SSH server to disable port forwarding, SCP and SFTP access. ssh.com's server and Vandyke's Vshell server both allow per-user restrictions on port forwarding, but OpenSSH (the default for most Linux systems) does not. Leaving port forwarding enabled for a guest user is worse than the problem we're trying to solve here, so don't do it.

Disadvantage:

Customized MUD clients won't work.
Mis-configuring sshd can compromize the security of your whole network.

Advantages:

Character passwords are secure.
MOO server doesn't need changed, it doesn't even need restarting.

Variations on the idea:
If you're insistent upon running OpenSSH and want to allow port forwarding for yourself, but not the moo account, there are other options. You could pick an alternate port on your firewall and forward that to sshd on a different machine. That machine can have "AllowTcpForwarding no" in its sshd_config. It may even be possible to run two sshd's on the same machine using two different config files and listening on two different ports, but I've not tried that.

The only reason the C code is needed is because you can't put arguments to the login shell in the password file. Telnet needs at least one argument and in this case, two. Running telnet with no args would leave them at a "telnet>" prompt where they could then telnet to any TCP port on any system on your network... a bad idea. Using a shell script as the login shell also falls into the bad idea category. If you've got a suggestion on another way around having to compile the C code above, let me know.

If you have an sshd that allows very fine control of port forwarding, it's possible to allow the moo user to forward just to that one port. This would have the advantage of allowing the user the use of their preferred mud client, but at the cost of making it less user-friendly. Most sshd's aren't so configurable anyway.

Have I missed something? Do you have a suggestion for an improvement? Drop me a note.

Software updates

2005-02-23T17:56:00.000-06:00

BS Player 1.2 (build 815) - Slick, free video player for Windows
GIMP 2.2.4 - Free cross-platform photo editor (rivaling photoshop in features and difficulty of use)

TiVo Series 1 video streaming

2005-02-17T22:35:00.000-06:00

TiVo's added some cool new features to the Series 2 units. In particular, what they call "multi-room viewing". If you have multiple Series 2 TiVos, you can lay in bed and watch shows that the TiVo in the livingroom has recorded.

What? You don't have multiple Series 2 TiVos? But you've got a Series 1 TiVo and a PC (or more). Wouldn't it be nice if you could sit at your PC (or use your HTPC that's already wired to your TV) to play shows that you've already recorded on your TiVo? Well, you can!

It's more involved than a just couple clicks, but a mildly experienced hacker shouldn't have any trouble. Once setup, you'll be able to use a web interface to get a list of shows that are on your TiVo and click one to have it start playing. I installed this remotely for my parents in about 10 minutes (having practiced on my own TiVo) and they love it.

Here's what you need:

A TiVoNet, or similar, card (~$70 at 9thtee.com) installed in your TiVo.
TiVo Web Plus - a free download. (more info)
vserver - a free download. (more info)
TyShow - a free download. (more info)

Once you've got all those, it's time to start installing. It's been several years since I installed my TiVoNet card so I'll have to refer any questions to some online FAQs.

Installing TiVoWeb Plus
Short version: FTP the .tpm to your tivo and run it, then edit tivoweb.cfg and change TyShowLinks to 1.

Detailed version:

Open your downloads folder and extract the ZIP file. There are four files in there, but we're only interested in the one named TivoWebPlus-1.0-final.tivo.tpm.
Open a DOS window (Start -> Run -> "cmd") and CD to where you extracted TivoWebPlus-1.0-final.tivo.tpm.
Connect to the TiVo by typing: ftp 192.168.1.3 (use the IP address for your tivo)
At both the login and password prompts, just press RETURN
Once presented with an ftp> prompt, type: cd /var/hack
Then upload the file: put TivoWebPlus-1.0-final.tivo.tpm
Disconnection: exit
Login to the tivo: telnet 192.168.1.3 (use the IP address for your tivo)
Change to the hack directory: cd /var/hack
Run the installer: ./TivoWebPlus-1.0-final.tivo.tpm (note the ./)
I think it asks if you want to run it at boot, say yes. (sorry, it's been too long, I forget the exact phrasing)
Change to the new tivoweb-plus directory: cd tivoweb-plus
Unfortunately, it defaults to not showing the clickable links that we need so we'll have to edit the config file. If you've got vi installed, you can use that to edit tivoweb.cfg and change TyShowLinks = 0 to TyShowLinks = 1. If you don't have vi installed, keep reading.
Display the current contents: cat tivoweb.cfg
Copy the output to notepad.
Change the line that says TyShowLinks = 0 to TyShowLinks = 1. It should now look like:
UserName =
Password =
Port = 80
Prefix =
Theme =
DescriptionHover = 1
MultiDelete = 1
TyShowLinks = 1
EthernetInterface =
Copy the new text.
Rename the original config (it will be our backup): mv tivoweb.cfg tivoweb.cfg.orig
Start a new config file: cat > tivoweb.cfg
Paste the text you copied in step 17.
End the file by pressing CTRL-D.

Now you should be able to browse to your tivo: http://192.168.1.3 (again, use your tivo's IP address). Since we've changed the config file, you'll need to click on the Restart link at the bottom and select Full Reload. This only restarts the web server, it doesn't reboot the TiVo.

To see a list of what's on your TiVo, click Main Menu -> User Interface -> Now Showing. There should be a column on the right end of each row labeled "view". It won't work yet, but soon...

Installing vserver on the tivo
Short version: extract vserver-ppc-s1-exec from the .tar.gz and upload it to the tivo as just "vserver". Add a line to rc.sysinit.author to launch vserver in the background at boot time.

Detailed version:

Extract the file "vserver-ppc-s1-exec" from the .tar.gz (WinZip can do it)
Rename vserver-ppc-s1-exec to vserver.
FTP vserver to the tivo as done in steps 3 - 7 above.
Login to the tivo as in step 8 above (if you're still logged in, that's fine)
Go to the startup directory: cd /etc/rc.d
Enable writing to the root filesystem: mount -o remount,rw /
Make a backup of the startup file: cp rc.sysinit.author rc.sysinit.author.orig
Add a line to launch vserver in the background: echo "/var/hack/bin/vserver >& /dev/null &" >> rc.sysinit.author
Set the root filesystem back to read-only: mount -o remount,ro /
Logout: exit

That's all the work that needs to be done on the TiVo side.

Installing TyShow on Windows

Create a new folder for TyShow (e.g. C:\Program Files\TyShow).
Extract the RAR file to the new TyShow folder (use WinRAR - more info).
Doubleclick register.bat to install the codec.
Doubleclick TyExtension.reg to associate the files.

Now you're all set to go
Point your browser at the TiVo: http://192.168.1.3/nowshowing and click the "view" link to the right of a show. If all went smoothly, you'll see Windows Media Player play the show. While it's playing, it doesn't affect the TiVo. That is, you can watch one thing on the TV directly from the TiVo and something else (or the same thing) on a PC at the same time.

Enjoy.
With thanks to all the folks that have worked hard to write these programs and give them away for free!

Debugging web pages with Firefox

2005-02-11T23:20:00.000-06:00

You've started designing some web pages. The concept is pretty simple. Just type up some HTML to get the layout you want and type your content in the right boxes.

Expanding beyond a single page, CSS becomes necessary to maintain consistent style. But it's a bit of a pain when you're trying to get things exactly right. Keeping the CSS file open in one window and a browser next to it, saving in one, reloading in the other... there's a better way.

Using the Web Developer extension, you can open the Edit CSS sidebar (screenshot) . It shows a tab for each stylesheet used for the current page and you can edit the contents directly. Remember to save your changes when you're done. The page is updated in real-time so there's no need to hit reload. Trying out different settings to see what works best is very easy. While you're checking it out, look at the other things that the extension can do.

Moving on, JavaScript is the next area we need some debugging help. When there's a syntax error in JS code, it will halt and none of the code will run. It's usually obvious when this happens as none of the JS on your page will work. If you've got the Web Dev extension installed, you'll see a red X on the right (screenshot) corner indicating there is a JavaScript error. Clicking on that button will open the JavaScript console (as would selecting "JavaScript Console" from the Tools menu). The JavaScript Console is a log of errors and warnings from any JS code, not just the current page. Don't be surprised when you open it and see tons of errors... they've been accumulating over time.

It's probably easiest to clear the logs in the JS console and reload the page so you can see all and only the messages pertaining to the page you're working on. For most errors, it will show which file and line number caused the error. To make things even simpler, clicking on it will open that JS file in Firefox's source viewer with the line in question already highlighted.

Moving on to the harder to find bugs... What about all those bugs that aren't syntax errors? You've got some interactive content, but when you click on your button, it's not doing what you want. It's pretty easy to out grow the JS console and need something a bit more powerful. That's where Venkman comes in. It's Firefox's JavaScript Debugger. It's not included with Firefox because most people don't even want to know what JavaScript is, let alone debug it.

To get started, browse to the page you want to debug. From the Tools menu, click on JavaScript Debugger, it may take a few seconds to load. In the Loaded Scripts pane is a list of all the JS files that are in use. This includes all tabs in all windows and even some extensions so the list may be long. Filenames that have a "J" in front of them are regular JS files. Files with a "?" in front are typically web pages that have inline JS. Expand the section for the JS file you're debugging to see a list of functions in that file. Double-click a function name to open it in the Source Code pane. The dashes to the left of the code are lines that can have breakpoints set by clicking on the dash. With a breakpoint set, the program will pause when that line of code is reached. Suppose you've got a table cell with an onclick function that's not working the way you want it to. Set a breakpoint at the top of the function that's called for the onclick event. Go back to the web page and click on the cell. The debugger will come forward with your code active, but paused. The current line (your breakpoint) will be highlighted. Using the Step Over button to walk through the code one line at a time, keep an eye on the Local Variables pane. It shows all the variables that the current function is using. If you want to tweak the code as it's running, there's a textbox below the black output pane where you can type commands (e.g. fields[i].className = "thumbnail").

Those who are already familiar with source code debuggers will want to check out some of the more advanced features. The Local Variables pane has a tab for Watches, right-clicking on a breakpoint and picking Properties gives options for conditional breakpoints and triggers, and there's also some Profiling options in the Profile menu.

Complexity begets complexity. When you're writing JS and XSLTs that take your XML files and modify them so much at runtime that they don't resemble the page source, how do you see what it looks like? Ok, maybe that was jumping ahead too far.

Say you've got a basic HTML file and you wrote a simple JS function that is called when you click a button on your page. Each click of the button adds a new row to a table on the page. But then you notice that the new rows don't have the same background color as the original rows. Selecting View -> Page Source doesn't show the extra rows in your table because they weren't there when the page was loaded. You need a way to view dynamic changes to your content.

The DOM Inspector (sometimes called DOMi) is tool for viewing run-time attribute and structure of a document. If comes with Firefox, and is an option at install time. To use it, browse to your page and select "DOM Inspector" from the Tools menu. The window may look empty, but there's a lot there just waiting to be opened up.

You can expand all the HTML tag and then the BODY tag and browse through your whole document tree that way, but if your page is large and/or complex, it could be hard to find the element you're looking for. The DOMi give us an easy way to find what we want...

Click on the Inspect button in the top right. Now you can see your page in rendered form. If that's not the page you want, put the correct URL in the box at the top and click Inspect again. Next, click on the "Find node by clicking" button and click on the part of your page that you're interested in. The document tree will expand and highlight the element you clicked on while the top right quadrant will show details about that element.

Looking at the list of attributes for the node you clicked on isn't all you can do. By right-clicking on them, you can add, remove or change their values. And those are just the HTML attributes on the element. What about all the properties accessible through JS? They're all there too. In the titlebar of that pane where it says "Object - DOM Node", click the dropdown and select "Javascript Object". At first, it just says "target", but expanding that, you can see all the JS properties, events and functions that are defined on the selected element.

What about CSS debugging? That's in there too! Going back to the dropdown menu for the Object pane, select "CSS Style Rules". The pane splits in half and in the top half, you'll see all the CSS rules that are being applied to the selected object. Rules whose "File" starts with "resource://" are part of Firefox itself (built-in, from the theme or a user stylesheet). In general, the interesting ones you should recognize by their URL. Selecting one of those rules will show all of the properties it assigns below. In there, you can add, edit or delete properties. Keep in mind that changes you make there can't be saved.

Without tools like these, debugging dynamic changes to your page (often called DHTML) involves a lot of guess work and headaches. I've come to depend on them so much that without these tools, AmigoPix wouldn't have all the features it has now (not to mention some of the fun features I've got planned).

Re-evaluating our calendar system

2005-02-10T14:00:00.000-06:00

Yes, the basic calendar: January, February, etc...

We've been using the Gregorian calendar since October 15, 1582. Most people just accept that it's how the calendar is and never give a second thought to how it could be improved. Well, I'm not most people (ok, quit laughing).

There are some features of the calendar that we're forced to accept so let's start with those:

The length of a year is determined by Earth's orbit around the Sun.
The length of a day is determined by Earth's rotation on its axis.
Dividing one by the other gives about 365.2425 days per year.
Because there aren't a whole number of days per year, we need some sort of leap year system.

Ok, so what features are left that we can change? Well, there's days per week, months per year, hours per day, minutes, seconds... enough variables to have some fun.

Let's look at a simple example of what's wrong with our calendar. Ask your friends what day of the week they were born on. Do you expect any of them will know the answer? Do you know?

Here's another problem: anything you pay for by the month (cell phone, cable TV, car, house, etc) costs you 10% more per day in February than January.

I'm proposing a new calendar system. Replace the 400 year old Gregorian calendar. We can't go totally metric (bound by the 365.2425 days/year), but we can make all the months be the same length. Not to be too disruptive, let's keep a week as 7 days, but make a month be 28 days. Every month. It would require 13 months to make a full year so we'll have to name the new one something, maybe "Triscadecember". While we're at it, fix the names of September, October, November and December (they should rightfully be months 7, 8, 9 and 10). Doing that, we get a few interesting properties:

Every month is exactly 4 weeks, calendars become reusable.
The first of every month is always a Sunday, easy to remember.
Every American holiday (except Easter) will always be on the same date and the same day of the week from year to year.
There will never be a blue moon :(
The 13th will always be a Friday (I'm not superstitious, are you?)

Ok, but there's still a few things to work out. Since 13 months of 28 days is only 364, we need one extra day. Let's call that day New Year's Eve. It's a very special day. Since New Year's isn't affiliated with any religion or culture (ok, some cultures do still have their own calendars, but the point is New Year's isn't exclusionary) we're able to give it special status without offending any of the overly sensitive freaks. The special dispensation we make for New Year's Eve is that it's not part of any month, nor is it even a day of the week... it's simply called New Year's Eve and falls between Saturday, Triscadecember 28th and Sunday, January 1st.

Leap years would still occur in the same years that they do now (having to deal with that extra 0.2425 days per year). So we'd have an extra day to stuff into the calendar. The only way to avoid the nice balance we've achieved is to give Leap Day the same special dispensation as New Year's Eve. So the year 2008 would end with Saturday, Triscadecember 28th, then Leap Day, New Year's Eve and then Sunday, January 1st 2009.

Such a system does have its drawbacks. People born on a Wednesday would never have their birthday fall on a weekend. But most perceived problems are just differences. Date books, software, etc would need to be updated, but accounting for New Year's Eve not being a day of the week is trivial compared to dealing with the mess we're in now.

But in the end, it's the transition that's hard, not using the system. Much as we've learned from the metric system: once everyone's using it, things are much easier. Convincing America to change even though the rest of the world already has still seems to be impossible :(

Software updates

2005-02-10T10:19:00.000-06:00

New software available as of Feb 10:

Nvu 0.81 (Mozilla's HTML editor)
OpenOffice 2.0 Beta (m77)

That link for Nvu isn't to the project's page (because it hasn't been updated yet). It's the project lead's blog (Daniel Glazman).

The ultimate energy source

2005-02-07T19:30:00.000-06:00

We're continually searching for better ways of collecting energy from renewable sources using environmentally friendly means. Over the years, there've been some rather interesting propositions (such as solar panels in space, where there's never a cloudy day, and using microwaves to beam the energy back to Earth). For now, we've got quite a few methods that are being employed and are slowly catching on. Wind farms, solar collectors, dams, etc are helping, but it takes a long time to make the change.

Fuel cells are interesting, but that's just another small step along the way. They burn clean, but how was the hydrogen collected? How did they purify it and deliver it to the hydrogen station? It's not some magical unlimited clean energy source... most of the methods used to produce the hydrogen (generally extracted from water) cause pollution themselves. So it's not really reducing overall pollution, it's a shift in where the pollution is happening (instead of your car's exhaust, it's happening at the hydrogen plant).

Once you've got a clean source of electricity, you've got a clean way to make hydrogen. But it all comes down to finding that source of energy.

This is where theoretical physics and science fiction start to blend. Just like the fuel cell example, anti matter (yes, it really exists; produced at places like Fermilab) can be used as a fuel (stored energy). The problem with anti matter is that it's very expensive to create. Any time that you convert energy from one form to another, you lose some of it (usually as heat and/or light). Anti matter is such a compact form of stored energy that you need very little of it.

How much energy is stored in anti matter? Remember Einstein's classic formula: E=mc²? This is what it's for. If you had as much anti matter as there is water in an ice cube, it would hold more energy than 62 million gallons of gasoline!(ref: 1, 2) Ok, but you read the Fermilab article and you're saying: "Sure, but if it takes 10 million times more energy to make anti matter than you get out of it, what's the point?".

This is where things get interesting. The trick is: Don't make the anti matter, collect what already exists. In 1997, astronomers discovered that there's a "fountain of anti matter" at the center of our galaxy. There's enough energy stored in there that if we could harvest it, not only would all of Earth's energy needs be met, new forms of scientific discovery would be opening. Space exploration and even more exotic things that are currently considered to be "provably impossible" might become possible. For example, transporters (yes, like on Star Trek) are currently "impossible" because you'd need more energy than can be found on Earth (not to mention other details, like we don't know how to do it :).

Ok, so there is a catch: we don't have access to all that anti matter. Trying to send a space ship to get it is currently far beyond our means. At present, we can't even send probes outside our solar system. Think about the distant stars you can see in the night sky. We don't have any means of getting that far, yet by comparison, that wouldn't even be the first step towards reaching the center of our galaxy. If you had a wall mural of our galaxy and put your finger on our sun... your fingertip would not only cover the Sun, Earth and Mars, your fingertip would cover those "distant" stars in our sky. If we can't even dream about getting past your fingertip on that mural, how will we ever get an arm's length away to collect all that anti matter?!

Don't go to the anti matter, bring it here to us. We've known for some time (decades?) that wormholes do exist (no, not like Star Trek)... only on a sub-atomic level. For the purposes of collecting anti matter, sub-atomic worm holes might be big enough. But here's where the problem comes in. We can't create worm holes, nor can we hold them open, or even predict where they might be.

So when will we be getting our free, clean, unlimited "energy from the stars"? Well, I'm not holding my breath. In fact, I don't really expect to see it happen in my lifetime. But it's out there, taunting us. I hope that some day we're able to figure out how to collect it.

Software updates

2005-02-05T16:56:00.000-06:00

Updates from 2/4:

Mozilla Sunbird 0.2 (free calendar client)

Updates from 2/3:

The future of Television

2005-02-05T14:02:00.000-06:00

So you've got a TiVo and you like it. You can watch what you want, when you want. Sometimes you forget that other people can only watch whatever's on at the moment. You encourage your friends to get a TiVo. You can't live without yours, how can anyone else?

Those of us who are "ahead of the curve" can enjoy the benefits for now, but what would happen if everyone had a TiVo? Things would be mighty different!

Looking into my crystal ball, here's what I see: PVRs will become ubiquitous. TiVos will have an option to stream a show directly from the network's web site. Maybe even similar to BitTorrent to help reduce the load on centralized servers. The biggest problem for the networks is that they need to make money off of it. To combat the current P2P model of trading commercial-free shows, ads as we know them will disappear. They'll become inline ads (or maybe even plot topics), a la The Truman Show.

The public will love it, being the ultimate PVR. PPV channels won't convert right away, they'll be rather stubborn about their content, but eventually we'll reach the saturation point and everyone will get their TV over the Internet. When that happens, cable companies will be more focused on Internet service than cable TV (they're already heavily invested so they won't mind the change).

Trouble will arise when the networks want to add DRM keys that require the player to contact their server every time you watch a show. Hackers, of course, will have a way to bypass this system. The public will remain ignorant because their store-bought PVR "just works" and they don't know it's reporting all that for them (ignorant bliss). Initially, it won't be bad, they'll settle for the stats they get by counting downloads from their web site, but when they try to pass a law that either limits the number of playbacks or requires all playback hardware/software to report usage statistics, the public will start to pay attention.

With HDTV trying to become the new standard and the Broadcast Flag killing fair use, it's going to be a rough battle. We've got the potential for a really cool system where everyone can get what they want. The challenge will be big media's greed vs the desires and rights of the public.

I don't think that's all too far off... probably less than 10 years.

Software updates

2005-02-04T14:57:00.000-06:00

A new version of NSIS (2.05) was released today.
A new version of Nvu (0.80) was released a couple days ago.

New blog: AmigoPix

2005-02-04T11:04:00.000-06:00

I've started a seperate blog for AmigoPix to kick-off the v0.1 release. The techies can subscribe to it and those who aren't interested don't have to be bored by the geek speak :)

The biggest needs I have right now are graphic design and usability feedback. If you can contribute, please let me know.

There's a lot of work yet to be done, but it's coming along nicely. Features of note that will be coming in the future:

Web-based admin system to allow editing of titles/descriptions and image rotation.
Better sorting options.
Statistics to track which pics are the most popular.
Virtual folder for things like "New in the last 7 days", "Most popular".
Searching pictures by keyword or description.
A unique "browse by auto-category" that creates virtual folders based on keywords.

Gmail invites

2005-02-03T13:49:00.000-06:00

I have some gmail invites to give away. First clicked, first served:

I'm surprised it's still in Beta and hasn't be opened up to the world yet.

If they're all gone by the time you read this, check isnoop.net's invite spooler for more.

WiFi everywhere

2005-02-02T16:14:00.000-06:00

I recently spent Christmas vacation with my parents. They have a computer and cable Internet access, but no WiFi devices (yet). I turned on my laptop and a quick scan showed 19 (yes, nineteen) Access Points in range! After trying 2 or 3, I was able to browse the web. Now, I must caution that there are added risks when doing this. While most likely, it's just someone who doesn't realize that WiFi goes through walls and can easily be shared with neighbors, there's a small chance that they could be watching what you're doing (you are using their network after all).

On the flip side, I run an open AP. It's named "public" and I serve up free Internet access (well, for anyone within 100m or so). But that doesn't mean I want people to abuse it...

Last night, I notice that my Internet bandwidth is under heavy use. Could I be infected with a virus that's trying to spread itself? Could some other infected machine be hitting mine? I checked the graph, and it was symmetrical. That is, both upload and download were in heavy use. Well, either of my initial fears would have been one sided so it's probably something else. I run some traffic analysis and see that it's BitTorrent traffic. I use BT, but I wasn't at the time. Sure enough, it was coming from my WiFi AP. I double checked my wireless clients to make sure I hadn't accidentally started BT.... nope.

Connecting to the AP, I see that there is another user online. The name is similar to a nearby AP. So I'm sure my neighbor just booted up and didn't pay attention to which AP he connected to. Rather than do anything devious, I simply blocked his MAC addr so next time he should stay on his own AP. Both his client and AP start with the same two letters (capsed) as if they were initials. I clicked on over to Infospace and looked up a list of my neighbors (low turnover rate on my street). Sure enough the initials match the resident right next door to me (explains the strong signal strength).

So now the question is: Do I knock on my neighbor's door and say, "Sorry about dropping your BitTorrent connection from your Toshiba laptop last night, but you were using quite a lot of my bandwidth."? Or is that a bit too Big Brothery?

Ok, I can hear the question already: "If you don't want your neighbor on your AP, why call it 'public' with no encryption?" Well, casual use is fine, but I don't want someone hammering it, sucking all the upstream bandwidth and transferring potentially illegal files with IP as the source. I'll be installed firewall rules to block p2p stuff, but allow general web use.

AmigoPix: A different kind of photo gallery

2005-02-01T09:25:00.000-06:00

Like many people, I take lots of pictures with my digitial camera and want to share them with friends. The obvious solution is to post them on a web site and send the link out to everyone.

Things get interesting when you consider that I have >10,000 pictures (>10G). Sure, Gallery is nice (and has lots of cool features), but it imports all your pictures into its own database. I really don't like that.

The next point to consider is that I like to use browse my pictures more quickly than via the web (and full screen). Normally, I use ACDSee for this and just roll the mouse wheel for next/prev. If I were to publish all my photos on a web site, I'd have two sets of photos to keep synchronized... what a pain.

My solution: serve the photo gallery from my home web server (I can also map a drive letter for easy viewing). Having evaluated several packages, I found that I like Singapore which has a very nice look when browsing. But I wanted to add features and I don't know PHP. So I started my own project.

In October of 2004, I began coding a simple gallery app in Perl. By the end of the first weekend, I had it up and running on my web site. Since then, I've been working hard to add many new features and it's coming along nicely.

I'll post more as things progress.