Luke Sheldrick's Blog

My ‘cloud’ IM setup

Luke Sheldrick — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 23:00:19 +0000

For a long time now, I’ve had a number of different applications I use to connect to various different IM (instant messaging) mediums, such as Irssi for IRC, Pidgin for Jabber/MSN/etc on my desktops/laptops and usually BeeJive on my iPhone when I’m out and about.

This has all ‘kinda’ worked, it hasn’t been the most elegant of solutions, but it did do what I need it to. Until you add something like the iPad to the mix.

The problem I had, was I’d be signed on to say MSN on my MacBook, and then decide I’ve worked enough for the day, so sign off. Then whilst watching TV in the evening, want to send a message to someone, who only uses MSN, so grab my iPad and sign on via BeeJive. Well that kind of works, except, if I forget to sign off BeeJive, it keeps me online on their ‘cloud’, so I can connect back at any time via the iPad, only the iPad though.

If someone was to send me a message when the client is closed on the iPad, sure it sends a push message to it, but no other device. If I go out, and I know someone has sent me a message, I can’t connect to it via BeeJive on the iPhone, as it doesn’t keep them in sync. Same as if I wanted to log in with the MacBook, I can’t see what that message was.

So I decided this doesn’t work how I want and need it to. So I set about designing my own solution. The aim was to set something up running on my infrastructure, at little or no cost (not always easy when you add any iOS devices in the mix), and reliable.

What I came up with, works really well for me, so thought I’d document what I put together.

The server components run on a machine that is always on, the is the core of the solution. The underlying OS I used is a Fedora 14 box (so Fedora rawhide – the development branch). The packages I’ve used are widely available on pretty much every Linux distribution, ports (OS X, *BSD), so the OS here, really doesn’t make much of a difference.

Server side:
Irssi – a cross platform IRC client.
ZNC – a cross platform IRC bouncer.
BitlBee – a cross platform IM gateway for IRC.

Client side:
Colloquy Mobile – iOS IRC client – use this on the iPad and iPhone.
Adium (Beta) – OS X IM client – use the beta version as it supports IRC.
Pidgin – a cross platform IM client – use this on any Windows or Linux machines i happen to be on.

Again the client side really doesn’t matter, just as long as you have something you can connect to an IRC server with, it should be all good.

The setup uses BitlBee to connect to MSN, G-Talk, Jabber, Facebook chat, and pretty much any other IM network you’d want to connect into. BitlBee presents it’s self as a IRC server, and you contact list is all shown as a room. When you chat to someone you do so as you would traditionally. That part worked a treat.

At first I just had Irssi running with the proxy module enabled, this allows you to reconnect into your Irssi session, with a local client, and ‘pose’ as remote session. This worked well, so I just left Irssi running in a remote screen session, then when I wanted to connect in and chat, I would just open say Pidgin locally, and it would connect to all the rooms the Irssi session had.

This was fine, however, Irssi on it’s own doesn’t support playback. What I mean here is, if someone had sent me a DM, Irssi would have it, but when I logged in with Pidgin, Irssi wouldn’t send me a copy of that message, it only forwards new messages. For these kind of features, I’d need to employ a bouncer, not the thuggish type that stand outside nightclubs, but an IRC bouncer.

I tried a few, but settled with ZNC. I should point out here, that when using ZNC, there isn’t really any need to use Irssi in the equation any more, I just kept it as have a few custom scripts, and all my historic logs are there, so decided to keep it.

ZNC will connect to all your favourite IRC networks, keep you online, and when you connect to it with your client, it will replay all the conversations and DMs you missed since you last connected in. this was exactly the functionality I was looking for.

There are also a host of other cool things you can do with ZNC, so I have mine configured to set me away everywhere 5 minutes after my client disconnects. Also if you team colloquy mobile up with ZNC, you can have it push message your iPhone or iPad if you’re mentioned in a chat, or if someone sends you a DM, I have mine set to only do this if there are no other clients connected, else when I’m at computer having a conversation, both my iPhone and iPad have a bit of a push message spasm. This push message function was exactly what I was looking for to replace BeeJive, except this pushes it to all my devices, not just the one that has my account singed in.. neat I thought.

This my no means is the simplest way to set up your MSN, but for if you want all the prerequisites I did, it really works.

The server topology may be a bit complex so have (for my sins) put together a diagram of how it’s set out, along with a few screenshots.

Any questions, please feel free to ask.

Web interface and more from your Huawei E5830 (Three MiFi)

Luke Sheldrick — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 22:02:04 +0000

Last year I bought a Three MiFi aka the Huawei E5830. The small box of magic has a 3G sim and a battery. It’s basically a wireless router. What this allows you to do is to ‘share’ the 3G connection to 5 wireless devices, as well as an additional one via usb.

So when I’m out, it’s great. If I need to use my netbook, laptop, iPod Touch, or my iPhone or Blackberry if their connection is poor, I can just switch on my MiFi, and as long as there is a decent Three data signal, I’m good to go. It’s a lot more flexible than just having a 3G dongle or using the inbuilt 3G modem on my laptop and netbooks, as I can share it with a number of devices at once, effortlessly.

The problem with it, is it comes with some poorly written software which is windows only app to configure the device, which can only be used when the MiFi is connected via USB. Not ideal? Well no not really. Quite often I’ll let someone I’m with leach off it, and want to set the password to something easy to share, and turn mac filtering off. This is often when I’m out and about, and I only have one windows machine, which is my work laptop, which I’m not in the habit of keeping with me. Also the interface gives no stats as to how much data I’ve used, or any logging.

So I was looking around the interwebs the other night, as I thought there must be a way around this. The previous wireless router (albeit not battery powered but still made by huawei) I had, did have a web interface at least. Turns out there are a number of different firmwares available if you’re a bit brave, which unlock the good stuff.

First of all have a read of the flashing guide here. The process is pretty straight forward if you follow the instructions. There are two versions of the firmware available out there, one by another network, which brands with their branding, which I wasn’t a fan of. There is also the official firmware (not from three though) which is what I used, and so far am quite happy with. You can get that from here.

Make sure you follow the flashing guide, and if like mine if you flash b0rks half way through and your device then doesn’t turn on, not all is lost. Follow the guide again, and keep trying. For best results use XP. However if you’re going to use Vista/7, then ensure you run the exe as administrator, else it will get half way through the flash, then b0rk, leaving you with a MiFi that wont boot.

Once you’ve updated the firmware it should reboot, and the come back as normal. I noticed that it seemed to turn on a lot faster Also turning on 3G/Data and Wireless seems a lot quicker too. The standard Three utility will still work as before, just connect via USB. However now you’ll have web access to the Mifi, with all the goodies unlocked. So go to 192.168.x.1 where x is the subnet you set, default is 1 (so 192.168.1.1). You’ll get a login screen, the username is admin, as is the password.Then you can go in to all the advanced features. You also get a bandwidth usage which is really nice to have if you’re always running out.

You can also change the config quite a bit, which is awesome. Two things that used to annoy me, that I had to turn it on, then turn wifi on, and then 3G, it should just do it all when I turn it on. Now I can set this… WIN.

Also noticed that it has a mobile (well looks iPod/iPhone friendly) gui too. Point safari to the same IP and you get

So a lot more usable, and I can say goodbye to being stuck to Windows for it. Good luck, let me know how you got on.

A walk down memory lane

Luke Sheldrick — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 23:49:45 +0000

I’ve been at Mum’s over Christmas, and is always a bit weird coming back to the area.
I moved away to Southend-on-Sea (Essex) when I was 14, and lived in Essex until very recently.

I was meeting Mum from work today, to go on to visit my Brother for the afternoon. As I’m one of those people who are usually early, and I had a few hours to kill so thought I’d go for a wander.

There was always an area near to where I used to live, that was totally different to the surrounding area, and always somewhere I’d love to escape to. I always dreamt of living in one of the houses, and today was a bit of a shock, to realise, well actually I could if wanted to. At that point, I realised, I’m getting old. It’s like I always wished I’d work in IT, with a nice car…blah blah when I was older, and now I actually do it’s a bit like, well what do I do now? Well I know next time I have to move, which I hope isn’t anytime soon, that I’ll be looking in SE16.

Anyways back to the houses, they’re all in a small bit of Bermandsey, by the Thames, and Greenland Docks, but they have the most picturesque surroundings. Most overlook their own water features or ponds (like the above), and I just find them amazing.

Throughout my visit, I was followed by the Cygnet above… maybe he was trying to butter me up, so if I moved into the area, I’d keep him in stock of moulding Hovis.

Amazingly, the car above, I’m sure has been in that same parking space, since I left, when I was 13 (so a few years). Still has up to date TAX, but never looks as though it’s moved. Amazing.

A new view

Luke Sheldrick — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:29:34 +0000

So I’ve been really quite lax on updating here, for a number of reasons really or more excuses if I am honest.

There has been a lot of change since I last wrote an entry. I finally bit the bullet and moved back to Central London. I’d been living in Southend-on-Sea since I was 14, but for a number of years worked back in the city, and the commute was just too much in the end.

So I am now living in E1, with my new flatmate Andrew, just up the road from where the above was taken. The best thing is, it’s only about a mile walk into the office, so I don’t have to depend on public transport or worry about traffic anymore, which is great. I was cycling for the first month or so, but it seems I had forgotten about crime in London, and someone kindly pinched my bike whilst it was chained up outside the flat, so won’t be cycling for a while.

Living in the city has been great so far, lots of places to go, people to see, and am quite enjoying it so far. Still feel like the new guy in town, as don’t hardly know anyone locally, but that’s just a time thing, so I’m not overly worried. However if you do read this, and are in the area, am free for coffee, beers and bar mitzvahs.

I foresee lots more changes over the next few months, especially at work, however can’t really go into much as there haven’t been many announcements as yet.

Have a heap of stuff I could rabble on about, but I’ll save it for another time. I do hope to keep the blog more regularly updated however I don’t seem to get the same urges anymore since twitter has kicked off. If you wanted a more frequent update, check out www.twitter.com/an0key

Windows 7 RC1, Boot Camp & VMware Fusion – No Networking

Luke Sheldrick — Thu, 07 May 2009 18:29:11 +0000

Last week when I was at a festival, my macbook unfortunately ran totally out of space, and there wasn’t much I could delete. With almost 20 gigs of SD cards, the only thing that could really take the chop was my XP boot camp partition.

Cut a long story short, I’ve now got a much bigger drive (500 GB) for my macbook. Along with the release of Windows 7 RC1 being released I thought I’d give it a try with boot camp.

Installing is pretty easy, burn the Microsoft ISO to a DVD, and follow the normal guide. I detest the fact that I need to burn another CD, or use my OS X Install DVD (which I can never find) to get the boot camp drivers. If like me you’d like to download them, I’ve given a link below to where you may find them. I just put them on a usb stick.

Once installed, pretty much everything works under boot camp, the only thing I found that didn’t play was the ‘Reboot into OS X’ I get an error. This isn’t a huge problem, as you can just hold the alt key on boot up to select OS X or Windows.

Once I got all that working, I then wanted to get the same build / partition under VMware fusion. Reading a few guides, the best way is to follow the normal guide for XP, but change it so the guest is set to Windows 2008 Server. Again, all working pretty well once you install VMware Tools.

The only problem that I did have, is there was no networking for the guest. The NIC just showed as Ethernet Controller. Nothing seemed to get this NIC working, tried manually installing the drivers from the VMWare tools cd, copying from another Windows 7 guest.

The only thing that seemed to fix it, was to shutdown the guest, and add a second NIC, and boot back up. Windows 7 RC1, installs this NIC with no problems at all, and all is working. Intererstingly, it still wont play with the original one. None the less, it’s all working through it’s second, new NIC, so I am happy with that.

Useful links

Panorama & HDR Processing – My first attempt

Luke Sheldrick — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 04:18:02 +0000

As you may have gathered I’ve been spending some time with my D60. I must say of all my hobbies it’s probably the most rewarding.

I’ve been looking at loads of pictures on flickr, and there are some stupidly amazing shots. However to get that extra edge a lot oh photographers use a technique called HDR, or High dynamic range imaging. I’ve been itching to have a play, but also watched to play with panoramic stitching.

So before I set off on the trip to work tonight, I quickly nipped pass Southend Seafront, and took a few snaps.

So first I played with the stitching together, it wasn’t as straight forward as the tutorials had made out, the main difficulty I had was filling in the sky. Got over that and this is what I came up with

Then I had a play with HDRs. In my case mine was a psyudo-hdr, the difference being that I did all my editing from a single RAW image, rather than different RAWs, with different exposures. This is what I came up with

I really quite like how it came out, especially for my first attampt.

Synergy

Luke Sheldrick — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 02:41:49 +0000

A friend told me of a magical cross platform application, which I’ve been using for a while, thought I’d share. Synergy;

“Synergy lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware. It’s intended for users with multiple computers on their desk since each system uses its own monitor(s). ”

The picture above shows my very small desk, sporting 2x 22 Samsungs, and my Dell D420. Under the desk is an old HP desktop powering the two monitors (and soon to be 9′ touch screen above them, when I get the drivers setup). I rarely use the D420 these days, as I use my MacBook or Advent 4213 notebook when out and about, so didn’t mind giving it up to the desk.

I can use the keyboard and mouse on the laptop, to control both it, and the bigger screens. The neat thing is, with the config setup correctly, I can just move the mouse upwards and the pointer magically moves to the other screen, and the keyboard then controls that computer too. A few other neat options are to have a shared clipboard, and to activate the screensaver/lock screen across all computers with each other.

So on my tiny desk, I can fit in quite a lot of screen real estate. As for using the laptop as a primary keyboard, I started to do this at work when the hotdesk keyboards started to freak me out, and using the laptop keyboard is actually quite nice to use.

Have tested Synergy with os x, and all worked pretty flawlessly there too. Not had a chance to test under windows just yet, as rarely use it these days, but from what I’ve read it all works fine.

Another toy for the dSLR

Luke Sheldrick — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:16:45 +0000

So my new years resolution has been a bag full of fail, I am a hopeless gadget lover, a magpie of technology.

I really want to get a fish-eye, a wide angle and a macro lens for my D60, but each of these are quite expensive, especially for what should have been a small hobby. (Famous last words). So I was looking on eBay (my favourite night shift pass time) and saw this;

I was dubious, as to whether or not it would produce any quality pictures, due to the relativly cheap price. Alas I clicked the buy button anyways.

I was pleasntly supprised on how much fun it is. It screws onto my 52mm lens, via an adapter, and you then use all the functions on the camera, i.e. focus, shutter, aperature..etc

It’s a bit of a jack of all trades, but doesn’t do it half bad. To use the macro feature, you unscrew the main lens, which can be a bit fiddily vs swapping the Nikon lens. Then to use the ‘fish-eye’ setting you have your lens on the closest mm, and then to use the wide angle you slightly zoom out, to use the whole iris.

As I say, of course it doesn’t perform as well as each of the single lens would, but for £35, you can’t really complain.

Below are a few shots I took over the weekend, using it in ‘fish-eye’ mode. Even though it doesn’t really distort the edges like the pro lens would, I think the photo’s still have a ‘fun’ effect.

I’d recommend the lens for anyone wanting to take some fun shots. It’ll never deliver the high quality macro, wide angled, or fish-eye pictures, but you can still have a lot of fun with it.

“Another new toy” album, has a few more from the weekend.

Vodafun

Luke Sheldrick — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 13:31:26 +0000

So I am meeting a friend for coffee and lunch today, unfortunately she’s running a bit late, so decided to grab a frappacino and be one of those geeks in Starbucks with their laptop/netbooks out.

I’m in the process of swapping out the wireless card in my netbook (for osx86) so don’t have any drivers or modules setup in the OS’s at the moment.

Luckily though, I do have a vodafone data sim, and the 4213 has an inbuilt 3G modem.

Here comes the fun part, the data tariff is on Vodafone business, so you would think they’d be slightly reliable… erm nope.

Every month, without fail, they mess up the billing. Apparently my Direct Debit fails, it doesn’t. A few ways I know, is it’s gone through a couple of times, so we know that it’s got the correct details. The other being when a DD does bounce, my Bank arse rape me on charges. Third being, there is always funds to cover all my DD’s.

Now vodafail, are funny people, because you know how I said it’s a data card, well how do they try to contact you… by txt message. That’s a big clever idea.

I can sort of see the idea, in that their app for windows, does have a sms function, but I would at least have thought an email may be a better option? or even both. However, I don’t use windows, instead my netbook is running Fedora 10, and NetworkManager doesn’t support sms… FAIL

The best one is when I do look at the missed call txt’s, from their sales drones. WTF? do they talk binary? no, well don’t call a datacard then!

Bah, alas, I phone them up, and go through the usual crap of, could we take your mobile number (No, I don’t know it, I never have, and have no intention of, it’s a datacard.) Can I have the account number, it’s on your bill (No, it’s a datacard, I use it when I am out and about, I don’t carry a copy of all my bills with me)… so we eventually get there, and they say to switch my PHONE off and on… FAIL.

Alas I am mobile again, thanks to the friendly folk at vodafail.

Hmm, the contract runs out next month, who should I move to?

How to break as much as possible with just one stone

Luke Sheldrick — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 02:08:20 +0000

This is an admittance of failure, by one party, me. Today was working on a load of issues at work, and lost access to my home IM server. This usually means network manager on my laptop has dropped the VPN, and just need to redial.

However today, slightly different, in that my VPN GW had fallen over. Luckily this is a virtual machine on one of my servers in London, so just have to reset the guest via VMWare. Unfortunately, this is on one my older servers, still running VMWare Server 1.x, and also for added fun, I can only access the Host via the VPN, seeing the problem here?

Well I do have a ‘backdoor’. Anyways I digress, whilst I was resetting the guest, I thought I’d take a look at what snapshots I had for it.

After clicking the second button, I quickly remembered, VMWare Server 1.x, only has one snapshot. Oh dear, within a blink it was restoring to the previous snapshot, with no way to stop it.

Checking further, this snap shot was old, very old, about 3 months old. So it booted back up. Here comes the second fail. The server in question, happens to be the master, of my MySQL servers, so decided to quickly replicate it’s self, wiping all the new data from the other nodes. Is also my primary NS, so replicated those too. It also does a shit load of other things, that I wont go into, but that broke lots too.

Alas, shouldn’t be a problem though, as I have a four hourly rsync of the configs taken, and replicated off site. Here comes the third and forth fail. 3) the MySQL dumps, appear to have stopped working, looks like there was a regression in one of the scripts. 4) I’d been working on the offsite nas a few months back, and didn’t want the rotation of backups to occur whilst I was doing the work. You guessed it, I forgot to switch it back on. Fuck!

These are all my own fault, I have no way to deny. I spend most of my working day fixing other people’s silly mistakes like this, and setting up systems / procedures so this doesn’t EVER happen, you’d think I’d actually tick a few things off my personal to do list, huh?

Nevermind, managed to fix it all in the end, well mostly… fail fail fail fail fail

A few snaps

Luke Sheldrick — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 00:54:57 +0000

So it’s been a while since I’ve blogged. Has been quite high on my to do list, but been a tad busy lately.

Have been playing with my D60 quite a lot recently, whilst it’s one of the more beginner dSLRs on the market, it still is a lot of fun. Trying to work out what settings will be the best for each shot, and not cheat with the auto mode.

Bought a new lense, a 55-200mm the other day, which is pretty cool for all those zoomed shots. Would really like a 10-22mm or a fisheye lens, but they’re quite a bit out of my hobby budget at the moment. Also bought a Jessops speedlight. I did want to get a SB-600, but again slightly pricy. I went for the 360AFD, which seems to have a bucket load of features to get me started. I especially like the automatic slave mode.

Went for a midnight drive around the embankment in London last night, a few snaps are below. Was playing with longer shutter speeds, until my tripod fell apart. Am going to read up on HDR processing later, as have seen some amazing photos.

Still a very much work in progress, still lots of fun. More can be seen on my flickr page, or my blog gallery (links from flickr)

Windows Update – Hang on Reboot?

Luke Sheldrick — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 22:46:52 +0000

Do your server(s) hang when they reboot after windows updates are applied? A lot of mine seem to, and usually it’s becuase one process gets stuck when it receives the kill signal… usually the windows update process.. If the server is in a remote location, can be a complete arse. There is a quick and dirty way to get around this.

Rather than rebooting as normal, or pressing the reboot now button on windows update, open up a command prompt (Windows > Start > Run > type cmd) and type the following:

shutdown -r -f -t 1

As shown below;

The syntax is as follows;
shutdown == runs the shutdown process / app
-r == reboot
-f == force apps to close (so the process that gets stuck, gets forced to close)
-t 1 == time to delay before rebooting, in seconds. I choose 1, as I don’t want to wait around, pick whatever suits you.

Happy patching.

Using MSN via Pidgin / Adium / Finch?

Luke Sheldrick — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:15:32 +0000

You may have noticed that you cannot connect today. This appears to be because Microsoft are blocking the protocol that libpurple uses. This has been blogged on the Adium Blog, however no fix other than using another client is spoken about.

I personally use Finch, which is a curses version of the widely used Pidgin. There is another method of getting both of these to connect to the MSN network, by using MSN-Pecan. This will fix the problem for now, and get you back online. They provide a deb, or exe for Debian or Windows users, but there doesn’t seem to be an RPM for Redhat / Fedora users, and at the time of checking wasn’t in the repositories. There is however source code available.

For Windows users; install using the exe.

For Debian / Ubuntu users; either install using the deb, or ‘apt-get install msn-pecan’

For Fedora / Redhat users; you’re going to need to install from source. If you’re not sure how try the below;

wget http://msn-pecan.googlecode.com/files/msn-pecan-0.0.17.tar.bz2
tar xvf msn-pecan-0.0.17.tar.bz2
cd msn-pecan-0.0.17/
make
sudo make install

Once you’ve completed the install steps, you need to change your account details in Pidgin or Finch. You need to edit your MSN account from using the MSN protocol to use WLM (WLM has now been added, because you installed MSN-Pecan). See screenshots below.

Originally;

Changed to use WLM;

Should keep ya’ll chatting until Microsoft stop being wankers, or libpurple is updated.

New year & a new toy

Luke Sheldrick — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 06:33:31 +0000

Tuesday, 6th Jan, saw me breaking my third new years resolution, to watch what I spend my money on. For a while I’ve been thinking about getting into the world of DSLR’s, so after much thinking about it, I ventured to the sales, and got myself a Nikon D60.

I’d read lots of reviews, and actually thought about buying it, rather than on a whim, which is usually the route I would take. Managed to get a reasonably good deal, and so far been having quiet a lot of fun reading up on the world photography. I went for the D60, as it has many of the features seen on the more expensive DSLR, but aimed at the entry level photographer, me.

I’ve taken a few pics, and will eventually upload to flickr, just take even longer now, as they’re much high res, and my home upload speed is terrible at best. Also need to master some photo editing wares, not sure what one I prefer yet.

I was however interested to see, how my new shiny camera would compare to my compact. Whilst I was out strolling around the other day, I took the same picture of the coast, with the two cameras.

Nikon D60:

Olympus FE330:

The thumbnails can be quite deciving, but the bigger photo’s on flickr reveal all. Both pictures were taken at the same point, faceing roughly the same point, and using the fully auto function on both.

I also had my iPhone and TyTN on me, so thought I’d take a photo with those too.

Apple iPhone:

HTC TyTN:

Surprisingly here, the iPhone, with it’s lower Mega Pixel lens, actually took a better photo. The colours on the TyTN were terrible. Out of all four, the D60 showed the closest match, the other three, make the day look quite dark, where it was actually quite a light day.

I need to see if I can get my iPhone to properly GPS log, have been using instamapper, but can’t seem to get HoulahGeo to geotag the photos using the files, but once that’s all working, will be able to geotag the photos too, which will be rather useful Then a few more lens, filters… oh dear this could all be expensive, very expensive.

No doubt I’ll snap some more in the coming future. Below are a few of snaps from the “Playing with my D60″ album, from when I’d just got the camera out the box:

Happy New Year

Luke Sheldrick — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 23:55:36 +0000

Wishing you a very Happy New year, hopefully you’ll have a great 2009

I was actually planning to do nothing this NYE, as every other had just been an expensive, messy night, that everyone regrets the next day. However my plans were changed at the last minutes, when I was invited to a gig in London. My arm was twisted when I found out Micachu were on the line up, a very small band*. Below the boys; Sandy, Steve (Birthday Boy too), Tom, Soo.

Was a great night had by all. Except Steve who had a bit of a nasty taxi bill, as he and Sandy missed their last train. The venue was called the Macbeth, in Hoxton near Shorditch, London. Was quite funny when they blew an Amp, and the band on at the time, went instrumental. I don’t think many people even noticed to be honest. I am a bit bumbed though, as I have just tried to upload my photos to flickr, and only a couple survived… looks like the memory card has corrupted, which blows as I had taken about 200 photos, mostly of the bands and scenery… GRRR!!! So I’ve got a load of photos, all of 2 or 3 lines

I’ve been trying to work out why my new years resolutions should be. A few things have been on my mind recently so what better time to implement them, huh;

Get back into the gym. Now this must be one of the most over used resolution, but needs to be mine.
Get back on track with my studying, I’ve slowed down a bit over the last couple of months.
Sort my spending out. Years are ticking by and I need to get on the property ladder myself, so no more spending £££ on gadgets, IT equipment, and many nights out. All in moderation still, but these can’t be the priority for 2009.

So all rather boring on that front, but at least that’s out the way. Just gotta’ stick to them now… hmm

Below a few pics from last night, or click here for the few surviving photos. There was a professional photographer there, his pics can be seen here

*not sure if you’d call it a Band. Micachu is the singer / writer, and she has a backup ‘The Shapes’

Christmas 2008

Luke Sheldrick — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 14:45:15 +0000

Christmas 2008, is all but over now, just NYE to go, which reminds me I still haven’t planned anything. This year I joined the extended family in Norfolk. My brother (Paul), Sister-in-law (to be / Sally) and Sally’s folks (Carole and Roy) stayed in a wood lodge in the woods, which was pretty nice. Well once we’d worked out the heating. The rest all stayed else where, but usually visited in the evenings. The lodge below reminded me of something from a horror film.

The view however was pretty nice to wake up to;

The drive up there and back wasn’t too bad, I did have my iPhone tracking it, just for the hell of it, but haven’t found a way to show the route on here yet. This was where we were staying however;

Interestingly the tracker had a spazm when I first set it up, but still registers I go everywhere at 14658 mph… if only.

Christmas day we had lunch at the local restaurant, which was nice… still can’t ever beat a home cooked roast though, and I really missed the Turkey sandwiches for days after
The place was near to Cromer, where a lot of the extended family live. Didn’t actually get to see much of the scenery, but am sure will go back soon enough.

Had to come home on Saturday, as first day back in the office on Sunday, which was rather difficult. Having almost 6 weeks off, then coming back to work…ekk! The worst was yesterday, having to get up at 5am again… yuck. Still only one more day shift in the week (Friday) then back on night shifts… which are usually quiet.

Finally got my flickr account slightly more up to date. I was trying to do it whilst I was away, but my 3G card had no signal, along with my iPhone (actually nobody had any signal), there was no wifi around. With the exception of the local pub where it was £6 an hour, and ran at silly speeds, still didn’t stop my brother and I paying for our occasional fix.

The eee 701 being my laptop I take everywhere, the HP my brothers. Essential Diet Cokes

Also found a cool plugin from tantannoodles which integrates my flickr account with my blog. Had to hack most of the css, so it sort of looks like the rest of the blog.

Some of the Christmas photo’s can be seen below, or the album here.

Specs on the A127

Luke Sheldrick — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 14:51:41 +0000

I was horrified when driving home the other night, to see that spec‘s cameras had been put up on the A127. The A127 being one of the core roads to and from Southend, in Essex.

For anyone that doesn’t know, spec’s cameras, are average speed cameras, so they take a photo of your number plate when you join the road zone, throughout the zone, and a final camera when you leave or the zone, then they work out your average speed. A few pics below (taken from the link at the bottom).

This are, a double edged sword really, as they are very effective at stopping speeding, which is the idea, but then you can’t cheat by just slowing down at the cameras.

The problem with them putting these up, are people are idiots. The A127, is a dual carriage way, with traffic devided by a central reservation, with National Speed limits. So the speed limit is 70mph. However the idiots, see these camera’s and hit the breaks down to about 40mph or sometimes 50mph. This is by far more dangerious than going 75mph or something terrible like that.

If these idiots, had bothered to check [1] The highway code, they’d know it’s 70mph [2] The road signs, i.e. there aren’t any saying the camera’s are live [3] Google to see if they are live [4] a lot more sites, including the council’s.

Further reading & pictures: http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/a127-specs-speed-cameras.php

Where am I?

Luke Sheldrick — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 01:56:40 +0000

Have been playing with my iPhone this evening, looking at what’s new, and I must say am really quiet impressed with some of the software coming out. VLC Remote, is especially well welcomed, simple but effective.

I was thinking of getting a GPS plotter / tracker, as carrying a PDA + Bluetooth Receiver, is slightly annoying. Cue, iPhone, which does more for me everyday.

There is a cool app called InstaMapper which will plot / track where you are, and even though I have a first gen iPhone, does very well considering, it doesn’t have GPS. Then using their API’s can add it to facebook / here should I wish. Example below…

Also found (via jailbroken / cydia) an app called Backgrounder, so you can run processes, in standby, which the nice folk at Apple don’t like. Very impressed.

Native VNC Server – VMWare Server

Luke Sheldrick — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 11:55:45 +0000

Randomly discovered a nice feature of VMWare products, the in-built VNC Server. I quick look at their KB reveals http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&externalId=1246 as being listed for GSX server, however happily works for me on VMWare Server 2.0 (Haven’t tried on 1.0, just yet, but will do later).

Quite simple really, edit the Guest’s VMX file in question and add the following [changing to suite your needs] to the bottom of the file.

RemoteDisplay.vnc.enabled = “TRUE”

The below are optional, but recommended.
RemoteDisplay.vnc.port = “5900″
RemoteDisplay.vnc.password = “vncpassword”

With the 5900, change the 00, to whatever you please, if you have multiple guests running for example. The 00, will become vnc screen ’0′ and 01, would become ’1′….etc

Quite a nice feature, so I don’t have to [1] Use a vnc server on each of the guests + firewall rules for them [2] I don’t have to run fusion on my mac, to boot an XP guest, just becuase there isn’t a plugin for OSX + VMWare Console [for 2.0 :@ not that I know of anyways, please shout if you know of one though]

/bin/bash^M: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

Luke Sheldrick — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 05:13:11 +0000

If you’re getting the above errors, when you try to run a .sh or similar [I've seen it with perl scripts too] this is will be due to the file being in dos [windows] format, and probably written in notepad or similar.

If you need to get this into unix format, it can be pretty painless, just run the command

dos2unix filename

dos2unix should be available under most releases of linux. Happy coding.

iPhone firmware 2.2 jailbroken

Luke Sheldrick — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 19:05:23 +0000

Didn’t take the dev team long to update their pwnagetool for use with 2.2. It’s always a pleasure to re-install all your apps, and set your phone up how you like it

Although this time, I was quite looking forward to it, as my phone had got a serious bloated gut from all the apps, so time to start a fresh

No network unlock for the 3G iPhone as yet, although they do tease that it’s coming very soon

http://blog.iphone-dev.org/post/61060174/the-man-from-delmonte-he-say-yes

Jabberishious

Luke Sheldrick — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 08:21:00 +0000

It’s been something that is on my every growing to do / look at list, and finally got around to setting it up, my own shinny jabber server. I already use jabber in a number of ways [work IM, gtalk, to name a few] but wanted to set one up on my own domain. The only drawback I could see is that the jabber protocol will use the A record of the domain/sub domain, so had to tweak my dns slightly.

I opted for OpenFire, as of all the servers I looked at, it seemed the best one for me. Relatively easy setup via rpm, then a bit of config, to get it to play with my domain, rather than the domain / rDNS of the server it’s hosted on. Then had a bit of a snafu with the firewall I use on the particular server [apf], but just by coincidence it cropped up at that time.

So the server is all up and running now, at least for chatting, I am currently playing with a few perl scripts to integrate with a few systems I am playing with. I’ve just got it to play with Nagios, so I get alerts via Jabber too, which is quiet cool.

Feel free to add / message luke[@]sheldrick.co.uk without the []

Page2RSS – Create an RSS feed for any web page

Luke Sheldrick — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 05:28:49 +0000

Just found this little gem. For sites that don’t publish RSS feeds, but you want to keep an eye on, Page2RSS, will add the page to their database, and scan it regularly for you. When any changes are detected, it’ll publish it to a unique rss feed.

Page2RSS – Create an RSS feed for any web page.

This coupled with something like notify.me if you’re watching a page for something you want to know about by the minute, i.e. if amazon have a stock of wii’s or sometime similar. notify.me will notify you via IM [jabber, msn..etc] email, or sms, both very useful.

Vlan trunking on VMWare Server (1.x 2.x)… Continued

Luke Sheldrick — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:09:16 +0000

Thought I’d write a quick update, as I had received a comment to my previous post regarding vlan trunking on VMWare Server.

The comment “Hi, Luke
How it does works in VMWare Server 2.0. on the Web Admin interface it doesn’t appear on network list, only physical NICs ”

Well to be honest off hand I couldn’t remember, I always downgrade / use 1.x, as I can’t stand the web interface. However re-installed it back in the lab. At first glance, you can’t add interfaces to the host via the web gui, which blows.

Anyways, running “Managed Virtual Networks”, gives you back the original interface:

Then adding in the interfaces, including the BAS #* (For broadcom individual interfaces / vlans).

Then a quick network refresh in the gui, and all the NIC’s, including the virtual vlan nics, show in the gui

Now back to 1.0.7

VMware Server 2.0 installation error – boche.net – VMware Virtualization Evangelist

Luke Sheldrick — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 19:19:57 +0000

Just tried to re-install VMWare Server 2.0 on one of my lab machines, and keep getting “The System Administrator has set policies to prevent this installation“. The below blog shows how to correct, on a non domain server.

VMware Server 2.0 installation error – boche.net – VMware Virtualization Evangelist.

For a server on a domain, you’ll need to do this on the DC, naturally.

So you’re from … you must know …?

Luke Sheldrick — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 17:11:41 +0000

You know the way sometimes someone will say to you, oh you’re from London [or whereever else] you must know xyz. Even if the place, i.e. London is huge, and you’d never even 1% of the people.

Amusingly facebook, has taken this approach now

Intelligence Fail

Luke Sheldrick — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:31:46 +0000

I am starting to think, a big box of money under my bed may be a better idea than using Bank’s. Now I used to work at a Bank for a number of years, and saw my fair share of fu-bars, but some other Bank’s just take the piss.

I’ve always been a fan of not keeping all your eggs in one basket, so I have my emergency account & savings with a different bank to my usual current account. The emergency account happens to be IF or Intelligent Finance. Opening the account was a nightmare, but that was largely due to muppets at Halifax. All that set aside they’re not too terrible.

Apart from their online service, which is the only way you can manage your account. I must say I only ever check ever couple of months, and I need to at the moment, so I log on, and because I rarely use it, I have all the details recorded. What a supprise:

It seems everytime I log on, I’ve been locked out. No doubt due to one of those nice chinese hacker folk. So I duely phone up the number provided, and get an IVR, pop in my details, then get connected to an operator, who I have to go through all this again… the joy. The chump then informs me that, the only way I can unlock my account is to be sent an unlock code, which is sent by second class post. Being Friday, it’ll be quite a few days then.

I asked why it had been locked out, and due to excessive log on attempts, which backs up what their site says. No I know it’s not me who has tried to log in, baring this once, so there isn’t really much I can do here.

So there we have it, everytime I want to check my IF account, I’ll have a weekish delay.

Vlan trunking on VMWare Server (1.x 2.x)

Luke Sheldrick — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 10:22:52 +0000

Someone was telling me the other day how they’d setup vlan trunking on the linux server, using the 802.1q kernel module, and then binding the ‘virtual’ interfaces to the vmnet’s. This wasn’t something I’d thought about before, as I’d gone a different route (sticking a few 4 port nics) in my servers, which also meant I didn’t have the bandwidth limitation. However this was all on a linux server, so is pretty straight forward.

I was rather bored on the grave yard shift last night, and needed an extra vlan on my lab vmhost at home, so set off to see how easy it is to do under Windows 2003, which my vmhost is currently built as. My lab server in question is a HP xw6000, so comes with the Broadcom NetXtreme chipset. Looking around they have a suite you can install, BACS (Broadcom Advance Control Suite). This allows you to setup virtual interfaces, which the OS (and VMWare) just see as being an additional nic.

So all I needed to do is setup the switch port as a trunk, on my Cisco C2948 in the lab, add the vlans I wanted to BACS, and then assign the new nics to a vmnet. All is working quiet well.

Also tried it on a Intel PRO nic, with equally pleasing results. A few pic’s below:

Water Painting

Luke Sheldrick — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:13:36 +0000

This is vvv cool

Kim Komando’s Video of the Day » Blog Archive » Water Painting.

Got google’d

Luke Sheldrick — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:05:38 +0000

Not in the habbit of google’ing myself, but worrying, 21,100 names match my rather uncommon name…. eek!

“Results 1 – 10 of about 21,100 for luke sheldrick. 0.29 seconds

luke sheldrick – Google Search.”

This’ll probably make it 21,101

Luke Sheldrick's Blog

My ‘cloud’ IM setup

Related Posts (auto generated)

Web interface and more from your Huawei E5830 (Three MiFi)

Related Posts (auto generated)

A walk down memory lane

Related Posts (auto generated)

A new view

Related Posts (auto generated)

Windows 7 RC1, Boot Camp & VMware Fusion – No Networking

Useful links

Related Posts (auto generated)

Panorama & HDR Processing – My first attempt

Related Posts (auto generated)

Synergy

Related Posts (auto generated)

Another toy for the dSLR

Related Posts (auto generated)

Vodafun

Related Posts (auto generated)

How to break as much as possible with just one stone

Related Posts (auto generated)

A few snaps

Related Posts (auto generated)

Windows Update – Hang on Reboot?

Related Posts (auto generated)

Using MSN via Pidgin / Adium / Finch?

Related Posts (auto generated)

New year & a new toy

Related Posts (auto generated)

Happy New Year

Related Posts (auto generated)

Christmas 2008

Related Posts (auto generated)

Specs on the A127

Related Posts (auto generated)

Where am I?

Related Posts (auto generated)

Native VNC Server – VMWare Server

Related Posts (auto generated)

/bin/bash^M: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

Related Posts (auto generated)

iPhone firmware 2.2 jailbroken

Related Posts (auto generated)

Jabberishious

Related Posts (auto generated)

Page2RSS – Create an RSS feed for any web page

Related Posts (auto generated)

Vlan trunking on VMWare Server (1.x 2.x)… Continued

Related Posts (auto generated)

VMware Server 2.0 installation error – boche.net – VMware Virtualization Evangelist

Related Posts (auto generated)

So you’re from … you must know …?

Related Posts (auto generated)

Intelligence Fail

Related Posts (auto generated)

Vlan trunking on VMWare Server (1.x 2.x)

Related Posts (auto generated)

Water Painting

Related Posts (auto generated)

Got google’d

Related Posts (auto generated)