Fighting with computers

One of my computers needed an larger hard disk. It had WinXP installed and I did not want to reinstall it (and the many other applications that it had installed). But on the other hand I wanted to have a larger C: drive. I have used Symantec Ghost in the past and it does the job quite nicely. However I wanted to do this using free software, as I was not sure if the Ghost version I got was NTFS compatible and I did not want to buy a new one. Googling a bit will lead me to HDClone 3.1 of which there is a free version. This program clones your old harddisk content to the new one, keeping the partitioning scheme intact. You can create a bootable CD-ROM with the software so you can use it with systems without a floppy disk (alternatively you can boot from a floppy disk too). The program does a great job with a nice graphical interface. Once I was done with the cloning I used another shareware program called Boot it . It's main goal is to act as a boot manager, enabling you to have up ...

Until recently, I have been happy without decent 3D performance on my computer graphics card. But the Linux version of Google Earth spiced my curiosity. This and the fact that my old ATI Rage 128 Ultra refused to work properly with the "ati" driver that Ubuntu Dapper installed by default. I then learned that I could install an accelerated driver from ATI but I was not lucky enough to have it working flawlessly: The system was freezing quite easily, forcing me to hardware reset it. So I recover an old card my kids had discarded, that was in fact more powerful than the ATI one. It is an NVIDIA MX440 GeForce 4 with 64MB RAM. Again, I needed to install the special Nvidia driver for it, but now it is working. Do not think it was easy: I actually needed to perform some dark magic to get it working. The problem this time was not with the 3D not working but with Firefox. Everything was working fine till I started Firefox, then the mouse still could move but the rest of the system wa...

I've kept my children happy with their old computers for several years, with some graphic card upgrades every now and then. But after reading this article in Tom's Hardware site I decided it was the moment to give a try to the new Dual core Intel processors. I've to admit that I've been a happy AMD customer since the 386-40Mhz. Most of the time AMD delivered good performance cheaper than Intel. The exception to this rule had been several laptops non based on AMD processors (G4, PIII & Pentium-M) and one eventual Celeron so I could make some use of an ASUS Pundit box. So, I got ready for the challenge and decided I was going to buy a new motherboard, new memory and an 2.6Ghz 805D processor. I wanted to buy a 1GB 667Mhz DDR2 RAM to have room for some overclocking but unfortunately it was not available at the shop. I wanted a motherboard with a basic 3D card (Asrock775-TWIN-HDTV) but unfortunately was not available so I bought another mobo that had at least an AGP slo...

After some success on my laptop and using the released version, I have decided to install Ubuntu 6.06 on my main computer at the office that has been happily running SuSE Linux 10.0. I guess it is against my own advice (and common sense) to install a new software when the old one was giving you a good service, but I can't help it, I enjoy trying out new software versions (maybe I'll have to start a branch for "Installers Anonymous"). There is always a catch: My hard drive does not have space available and I really would like to keep SuSE Linux just in case. After all I have lots of stuff installed and working, like VMware or CrossOver Office and I do not know whether all these will run trouble-free on Dapper Drake (DD is the name of Ubuntu's 6.06) or not. I know from experience that VMware use to be quite picky about kernel versions. So I needed some free space on my hard drive before I could install Ubuntu. Catch 2 : I could not resize my Linux partition from SuS...

I've just tested the Google Earth beta for Linux with not very good results. First the install, you get a single .bin file that contains all what you need (or almost, read on). To install it you execute the downloaded file as a shell script. It will unpack the installation files and you get a nice window informing you about the install process. It does not take long. My first attempt was on SuSE Linux 10.0 and when trying to run the software I get a complain that I did not have Bitstream Vera font installed (the message contained a link for me to install it too). I wonder why they have not included that font (if required) in the first place in the installation file. Next the program starts but it just ends up blocking the system to a hardware reset. This time I cannot put all the blame on Google's camp as my ATI Riva 128 graphics card might be the cause of the system freezing. The 3D support on the driver is enabled and Yast2 tells you 3D support is "experimental". Ev...

I've always been curious about booting from USB devices. With most motherboards, the use of an external USB CD or DVD-ROM seems to be a no brainer. As USB flash memories now offer up to several gigabytes of storage, it seems they might serve for many pursposes. The guys behind Damn Small Linux think that it is a good idea to have a simple GNU/Linux setup that can boot from a credit card size CD-ROM or from a USB flash memory with only 50Megabytes!! I needed to try this out. I had most success using the USB-ZIP configuration on most of the BIOS on the systems I tried this out. I even have found a new life for that old 64MB USB 1.1 pendrive I bought several years ago. The system that includes a graphical environment, wordprocessor, Firefox browser, pdf reader, spreadsheet, xmms, vnc viewer, and a long list of other useful applications. All that was quite an achivement, and the developers want to keep the system size small. One of the drawbacks is DSL is based on a 2.4 kernel, but th...

I'm getting the hang of the different flavors of the Ubuntu thing. I tried Kubuntu while Dapper was in beta and now I've just installed Xubuntu (xfce4-based version of Ubuntu) which is specially crafted for "old" computers (low resources). The LiveCD allows you the same install as with the two more powerful siblings. I ran out of network sockets but I had a spare USB wireless device so I used it with this computer. The fact that the computer is old means it is only USB 1.1 so I won't be able to handle the maximum speed over the network, which is not a problem at the moment. The easiest way to access our campus WLAN infrastructure is by using a VPN tunnel over the open wireless link. There is nice webpage telling you how to do it, even if you use Linux, but I always like to try something new. Today I did it: I installed pptpconfig and I got it working at the moment. Defaults are ok but the "All to tunnel" option on the Miscellaneous data of the connectio...

I saw the link on Bruce Schneier's blog and and I found it quite funny (if you forget about the sad part, of course) Click on the image to start playing it

Imagine your computer gets a new type of malware that makes it download certain URLs every now and then. Imagine that software creates a special HTTP request with a fake "Referer:" header. Imagine that the purpose of that is to pretend that you are clicking on an advertising link. Imagine that the mentioned links are ads of porno sites. Imagine the software includes an engine to spread itself on your local network. Imagine your boss starts monitoring the employees network activities so you are caught red handed, at least apparently. Imagine that you are fired because of your alleged browsing activities. Now stop imagining. It might already happened to one of my clients and his colleague, both fired for the same reason (porn surfing at work) they claim it is wrong because they did not do that. I cannot tell you for sure because their former company is not interested in researching this matter any further. However, neither the cookies nor the temporal internet files nor the URL...

In a previous post I explained how I got my laptop running SuSE Linux 10.0. But I was not happy with the way Linux was working on my Acer laptop. Although I managed to get everything working ok (except the internal memory card reader) I was not very happy about the power management. I was not happy it took me some effort (including recompiling the kernel) to get audio working. But after all it worked. I have been giving away Ubuntu CD-ROMs to my students since 4.10 and I have installed Ubuntu to my brother's computer and both (my brother and his computer) have been happily working since then. It is a pity MP3 or Divx are not supported out of the box. Printing and OpenOffice and GIMP have been working like a charm. This time I thought maybe I should give Ubuntu are try, so I downloaded the latest beta (Dapper flight 7) but instead of Ubuntu I took Kubuntu, which is a blue-ish KDE-based versus Gnome-based Ubuntu. The new Live Cd includes a more or less painless built-in graphical ins...

I saw a couple of items on a PCCITY brochure that catch my eye. First one was the Freecom MediaPlayer-35 with a 250GB HD. I bought last summer a similar device from EasyBuy but I sold it after the summer as it was only 40GB capacity (though the fact it was USB-powered and only 2.5" made it quite portable). This unit is based on the use of 3.5" IDE hard disks which are cheaper and higher capacity than 2.5" cousins. This unit like many others in the market will handle your DivX, MP3 and JPG files so you can bore or scare to death your friends (worth mentioning it can also handle OGG audio). But it can also came with the relatively new feature of a LAN connection so you can also play contents from a Windows (or Samba) share on your home network. Network connection is just for streaming and video/music/photo files are transferred using USB 2.0. The unit can also play your ripped DVDs, menu included. Outputs are quite complete, including composite, analog audio, coax audio an...

They are playing this one now in Spain. And it seems that youtube has not a problem with you posting an ad even if your do not hold the copyrights of that ad. I guess this is what ads are for. Anyway, I think it is a funny ad.

I'm teaching a course on Multimedia Data Transmission and I had to give a couple of lectures on image encoding. So I had to attempt to build some understanding on how several standards work and their underlying math. As you are probably aware, JPEG standard allows you to encode continuous-tone images (photographs) with a typical reduction of 1:20 on the storage needs over other non-lossy methods. JPEG is based on the use of the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) that [basically] translates image spatial information to the frequency domain, where the weaker higher-frequency components can be removed without that being too noticeable. JPEG 2000 , on the other hand, is another image encoding standard based on the wavelet transform instead of DCT. Wavelets are families of functions that allow multirate analysis of signals. And here you will find the best tutorial on the subject I have found on the web. The end result is that wavelet-based image compression provides a smoother image tha...

After returning the CM Media 260 to the guys at Wikidi (that were quite nice with the return). I tried, again unsucessfully, to recycle an old Samsung DVD but unfortunately it was not large enough for all the stuff to fit in. So I went back to what I could find around and I bought, for the second time from the same seller, an Antler DM-318 case that seems to be a clone of Antec Minuet II case but with a distinct front plastic piece. This first image shows the original inside of the box. After several attempts and given the case only accepts low-profile PCI cards I "borrowed" the dual PCI riser card from my Pundit case: It didn't work, as none of the two TV cards were detected. Anyway, it was impossible to fit that in. So I went to an extreme solution. I put a sheet of 3mm Depron on the bottom of the box. I removed everything and I started from scratch. The new photo shows the end result. Unfortunately, right now everything is just laying on top of the Depron sheet witho...

I've been told I need to buy riser cards as an add-on for the box I bought. Unfortunately the cost of the box is already well beyond the cost I was willing to spend on this particular item. I'm not 100% sure it is not my fault, but I did not get that impression when reading the manufacturers specifications. What I understood was that you may buy AGP or PCI-express riser cards. Now I guess any of them also comes with a double PCI riser card. At any rate, I think I am going to recycle that old DVD player I no longer use and it is sitting in a cupboard and I am returning CM Media 260 box to the retailer. Let's see how this refurbishing project goes.

I've got my new box on Friday. The company I bought it from did a good job at delivering on time but all what happened next has been a mess. Firstly, when I open the box I discover the color is black and not the silver I have ordered. Not good, I emailed my supplier and they reach me on the cellphone to apologise and to offer me a replacement but not sooner than next week. I thought about it and finally I decided I would be keeping the box after all, just for the sake of getting the system rebuilt over the weekend. Saturday, early in the morning, I start the process of disassembling the old beige-box components of my PVR. When I am done (and a bit dirty as you know how the inside of a computer is), I unpack the CM Media 260 black box to start building the new system. Manufacturer's instructions ask you to disassemble almost everything first and so do I. I assemble the power supply (not without removing some screws from the power supply to have a smooth top surface). I then pla...

Apparently, lawyers at YouTube are not aware of what fair use is. I've just got a copyright infringement notice about the video I posted yesterday that was a 38 seconds excerpt of a >1500 seconds show. And that just because they were using my name, without my permission :-) Ok. I do not think this issue deserves more brains or more of my time.

It is not rocket science, you say. It is not, I do agree, but forget about getting it solved quickly once you do not want whatever they have to sell you. I just wanted to get an empty box that would fit in my TV table. My current TV computer uses a standard mid-tower beige-box. My only limitation was that I needed a box not taller than 14cm, but I had up to 50 cm width. It should be enough.... wrong! The first box I bought was a new brand, Antler , a Poland-based company. The product was nice and well priced but I had a problem: It only accepted low-profile PCI cards and I needed one full size PCI slot. I went back to the web and I found this nice article . Thanks to them I could narrow down my choices to a couple of boxes only: Siverstone LC11 or CoolerMaster Media 260. The last one does not come with a power supply so it could be cheaper, or so I thought. Unfortunately for CoolerMaster, the only partner they have in Spain that seems to sell retail is the Beep.es chain. It took them o...

Recently, I was involved in a development where remote access to a serial port was required. I was doing my development with a Rabbit core and I needed to get Internet access to a serial device and to simulate a serial port on the host PC. I learned that you could use RFC-2217 which is an extension to the telnet protocol. I went to nabble to get some help but I found out nobody seemed knowledgeable about that protocol. So I did my job, and when I got it running I wrote an article for an engineers magazine. Once I get the "go" from the editor I'll let you know where it is published. I used with quite success Fabula Tech's Serial Port Redirector which is RFC-2217 compatible, but it is not free. For a free redirector you could use HW-group's Virtual Serial Port but be warned this latter software does not handle break signal generation. The same thing applies to Digi One SP device that, although the manufacturer claims it to be RFC-2217 compatible, it is not ca...

I was approached by a lawyer whose client was an employee fired for porn surfing. The company threw some logs at the employee as a proof of his wrongdoing. However, the employee rejected these claims as erroneous and sued the company to get his job back. I was asked to double check what those logs really showed. Just to play safe, I decided to conduct my "research" from my home network instead of my employer's network. What I learned was somehow baffling, as most of the logs appeared incomplete showing only one small gif or jpeg per site with almost no html pages visited. While some of the images had some sex contents most didn't. Still, the names of the servers talked by themselves about the contents of those sites. Multiple visits to the same gifs suggests no caching on the browser, or ..., multiple clients. It reminds me the Migmaf trojan but that was way back in 2003. Unless I get access to the employee's computer I cannot make a better judgement now. At any r...