Sunday, 8 February 2009
Saturday, 10 January 2009
DEC PDP-8
picture taken in the Science Museum (London). Just heard on Steve Gibson´s Security Now Podcast that the Machine is called Minicomputer because of the minimalistic programming language used to program the machine. (Security Now Episode 177)
Sunday, 4 January 2009
Skoda Octavia 1.9 TDI Ambiente. rocks!
This weekend we came back from holiday, approx 600 miles mostly motorways. As I left way too early for the Calais/Dover Ferry I drove only around 60 miles for the most part. We were with two adults and two children and a boot full of stuff. When I arrived home the reserve light only just came on. There is still another 5 liters in the tank (55 liters capacity). The dashboard display showed 57.1MPG which is according to Google only 4.95 liters/100km. I am well happy with this car.
Monday, 15 September 2008
DiSqC 2.0 switch with a 1.2 receiver - 2 satellites via DiSEqC A/B
I have two zone 1 (40cm diagonal) satellite dishes. One dish is positioned at at 28.2 degrees east and the other one at 19.2 degrees east, each fitted with a standard digital monoblock. Recently I bought a DiSEqC 2.0 switch to connect both dishes to a Dreambox 600PVR receiver. The receiver only supports DiSEqC 1.0 and 1.2 but fortunately this is not a problem as switches are backwards compatible. I found a very useful article about DiSEqC on Wikipedia. However I had some problems at first with the setup as the box could not find any transponders automatically. I connected each cable to the box by itself and then it was no problem but when I tried the same through the switch the box could not find anything. It complety refused to work wit the switch even after reboot. I checked the configuration and everything was entered OK. As a last resort I tried a blindscan and this time it worked. After that I started another Automatic Multisat Scan the receiver found Transponders from both satellites.
Friday, 5 September 2008
Installed TrueCrypt today
I finally got around to install TrueCrypt on an older laptop. TrueCrypt is a free open source encryption software which lets you encrypt the whole windows partition so nobody without the correct password can access any data on the encrypted partition.
I wanted to do this for a while but unfortunately the CD writer was broken so I could not get past the point where it checked for the ISO image on the CD. Eventually I installed Daemon Tools Lite and mounted the TrueCrypt Rescue ISO file to a virtual CD drive. After that it was no problem to encrypt the whole partition as I could get past the install checkpoint. But please be careful if you cannot boot the TrueCrypt Rescue file from a CD or USB memory stick you might loose all your data if something goes wrong during or after installation. Always make a backup of your data first before you start anything like that.
When I startup my laptop now it boots the TrueCrypt loader and asks me for my password first before I can do anything else. Although everything gets encrypted and decrypted on the fly I haven't noticed any slowdown of the laptop.
One of the cool things you can do with TrueCrypt is that it can create a hidden partition. So in theory you could install another windows partition and access this installation with a different password.
I might install locatePC which is a free theft recovery software on the hidden drive and leave the password for this second installation with my laptop. So if it ever gets stolen someone hopefully will put in the password and go online while LocatePC is running in the background. This way I might be able to track the laptop and hopefully get it back.
I wanted to do this for a while but unfortunately the CD writer was broken so I could not get past the point where it checked for the ISO image on the CD. Eventually I installed Daemon Tools Lite and mounted the TrueCrypt Rescue ISO file to a virtual CD drive. After that it was no problem to encrypt the whole partition as I could get past the install checkpoint. But please be careful if you cannot boot the TrueCrypt Rescue file from a CD or USB memory stick you might loose all your data if something goes wrong during or after installation. Always make a backup of your data first before you start anything like that.
When I startup my laptop now it boots the TrueCrypt loader and asks me for my password first before I can do anything else. Although everything gets encrypted and decrypted on the fly I haven't noticed any slowdown of the laptop.
One of the cool things you can do with TrueCrypt is that it can create a hidden partition. So in theory you could install another windows partition and access this installation with a different password.
I might install locatePC which is a free theft recovery software on the hidden drive and leave the password for this second installation with my laptop. So if it ever gets stolen someone hopefully will put in the password and go online while LocatePC is running in the background. This way I might be able to track the laptop and hopefully get it back.
Sunday, 31 August 2008
Setup of an IP Camera with a Dreambox and DreamCamIp
DreamCamIp is a plugin for the Dreambox satelite receiver which lets you view ip cameras on your television and use it as a baby monitor for example (it supports motion detection). If you are not familiar with this box have a look on Wikipedia to get an idea of how amazing this little piece of equipment is.
The following setup has been tested with a Dreambox DM 600PVR made by Dream-Multimedia-TV.
I have flashed the Gemini v4.4 image (german site) onto my box. This was a little bit tricky as DreamUp didn`t work for me so I had to upload the new image via the webinterface instead. Be very careful if you flash a new image as in the worst case you might brick your box.
I bought a very cheap low end IP Camera (Edimax IC-1500) to play with. I hooked it up to my network and used the installer CD to do the initial configuration. Make sure you adjust the network settings when you run the install software. In my case it came up with a ip address in a different subnet. It was something like 192.168.2.200. I changed it to 192.168.1.102 as otherwise it would be in a different subnet and would not have worked.
You can find out what IP configuration you have by clicking on the windows start button and than click on Run... That will open another window in which you type "cmd" and than click on "OK". This will open a DOS window in which you type "ipconfig" and hit enter. Now you should be able to see what ip address your computer is using. Usually it is something like 192.168.xxx.xxx.
After I configured the camera it did a reboot and I tried to access the camera via my Firefox browser. It worked only partly as the camera uses ActiveX to display camera images. So I used the Internet Explorer instead which worked fine.
Next I went onto www.dreamcamip.com and also opened a dos box to established a telnet connection to my dreambox at the same time. On the website I clicked on the english flag and then "downloads". Choose the box you want to download the plugin for. Now copy and paste the easy install script into the telnet session. This will download and install DreamCamIp on the dreambox. Next also download "libcurl.tar.gz" onto your PC. I decompressed the tar file on my PC and than copied it to the dreambox via Filezilla into the /lib/ folder.
After that I edited the configuration files "cameras.cam" and "config.cfg". In cameras.cam I added my ip camera as "JPEG # A # http://username:password@192.168.1.102/snapshot.jpg/". Make sure you put your own username and password in.
Once you have done that it should work. Use your remote to access the plugins and start "DreamCamIp". You should be able to see your own IP camera now. Press the blue button on your remote to turn on motion detection. Press exit to come out of the screen. From now on the IP camera will come up automatically on your television if motion is detected.
The following setup has been tested with a Dreambox DM 600PVR made by Dream-Multimedia-TV.
I have flashed the Gemini v4.4 image (german site) onto my box. This was a little bit tricky as DreamUp didn`t work for me so I had to upload the new image via the webinterface instead. Be very careful if you flash a new image as in the worst case you might brick your box.
I bought a very cheap low end IP Camera (Edimax IC-1500) to play with. I hooked it up to my network and used the installer CD to do the initial configuration. Make sure you adjust the network settings when you run the install software. In my case it came up with a ip address in a different subnet. It was something like 192.168.2.200. I changed it to 192.168.1.102 as otherwise it would be in a different subnet and would not have worked.
You can find out what IP configuration you have by clicking on the windows start button and than click on Run... That will open another window in which you type "cmd" and than click on "OK". This will open a DOS window in which you type "ipconfig" and hit enter. Now you should be able to see what ip address your computer is using. Usually it is something like 192.168.xxx.xxx.
After I configured the camera it did a reboot and I tried to access the camera via my Firefox browser. It worked only partly as the camera uses ActiveX to display camera images. So I used the Internet Explorer instead which worked fine.
Next I went onto www.dreamcamip.com and also opened a dos box to established a telnet connection to my dreambox at the same time. On the website I clicked on the english flag and then "downloads". Choose the box you want to download the plugin for. Now copy and paste the easy install script into the telnet session. This will download and install DreamCamIp on the dreambox. Next also download "libcurl.tar.gz" onto your PC. I decompressed the tar file on my PC and than copied it to the dreambox via Filezilla into the /lib/ folder.
After that I edited the configuration files "cameras.cam" and "config.cfg". In cameras.cam I added my ip camera as "JPEG # A # http://username:password@192.168.1.102/snapshot.jpg/". Make sure you put your own username and password in.
Once you have done that it should work. Use your remote to access the plugins and start "DreamCamIp". You should be able to see your own IP camera now. Press the blue button on your remote to turn on motion detection. Press exit to come out of the screen. From now on the IP camera will come up automatically on your television if motion is detected.
Friday, 15 August 2008
Tech Podcasts
I do a lot of commuting every day all over the UK to our customers. When I bought my first MP3 player in 2001 it had 128 MB of memory and a build in microphone. I did some distance learning back then and recorded myself reading course books. It helped a lot with memorising all the stuff I needed to know for the exams.
After a while I got bored of listening to my own voice and I started searching on the internet for audio books and techy stuff. At that time it was really dificult to find anything interesting to me. For a while I put my player next to my telly and recorded documentations from the telly but the quality was awful.
Over the years I found more and more stuff on the internet that I could download but then something even better happenend: people started doing regular podcasts. I started listening to Leo Laporte, Todd Cochrane and Mike Smith and many others. Nowadays I can hardly bear listening to normal radio other than the news for more than 20 minutes. Compared with normal radio podcasts have the big advantage that they can cover niche topics very well. For example I am not in the computer repair business but I love listening to Steve Cherubina of Podnutz and Podnutz Daily. I learned so much just by listening to him when he talks about his daily work. Over time hopefully many more people will discover podcasts and learn something that interests them. Here is a list of Podcasts I listen to:
and many more.
After a while I got bored of listening to my own voice and I started searching on the internet for audio books and techy stuff. At that time it was really dificult to find anything interesting to me. For a while I put my player next to my telly and recorded documentations from the telly but the quality was awful.
Over the years I found more and more stuff on the internet that I could download but then something even better happenend: people started doing regular podcasts. I started listening to Leo Laporte, Todd Cochrane and Mike Smith and many others. Nowadays I can hardly bear listening to normal radio other than the news for more than 20 minutes. Compared with normal radio podcasts have the big advantage that they can cover niche topics very well. For example I am not in the computer repair business but I love listening to Steve Cherubina of Podnutz and Podnutz Daily. I learned so much just by listening to him when he talks about his daily work. Over time hopefully many more people will discover podcasts and learn something that interests them. Here is a list of Podcasts I listen to:
and many more.
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