Yesterday’s Woot-Off

The madness started Thursday morning with the Woot-Off themed podcast, quickly followed by my every-30-seconds refreshing of the Woot.com home page. Sadly, I was not able to score any Bondolier of Carrots like I had hoped for. Oh well, better luck next time is all I can tell myself… Read the rest of this entry »

Super Nintendo Controller Parallel Port Mod

This is basically exactly what the title claims it is – a modification of a SNES controller to work as a computer joystick. I figured that since I used to enjoy Super Mario All-Stars on my SNES, I could make the emulation experience a little more realistic.

Unfortunately, I’m sure I did something wrong along the way of this project – because the controller no longer works. Heh, at least I can turn it into a groovy retro belt buckle. When I was trying to get the driver working, I got to the point where it recognizes “8-buttoned SNES pad”, but when I run the calibration utility, none of the buttons register input. I’m fairly certain the controller stopped working after being covered and dust and squashed under a ton of other crap in my closet. Read the rest of this entry »

Expanding Your Router’s Capabilities with Linux

Linux is a wonderful operating system. From desktops to severs, handhelds to game consoles – Linux runs on just about everything. Recently, I found out about a great new use for Linux: my home router. Tomato is a slimmed down distribution of Linux specially designed to take advantage of the hardware present on the very common Linksys WRT54 routers. It offers many more features than the default firmware, such as QoS (packet prioritizing), bandwidth monitoring, wireless client modes, custom access restrictions, and best of all – the ability to shell into the device and run your own custom scripts.

There are also other embedded Linux distributions for routers, such as the advanced OpenWRT project (great for customizing your own system), and the feature-rich DD-WRT firmware. Because of the ability to customize Linux to suite your own needs, the possibilities of what you can do with your router are now pretty much endless.

The PSitx (Thinclient in a Playstation)

This is my third and final Mini-ITX project. Basically, I shoved an EPIA 5000AG Mini-ITX motherboard (pretty much the same specs as my last project) into the legacy Sony Playstation 1 console. The only change is that a 1GB CompactFlash card was substituted for the hard drive. It was pretty fun, and served as a way for me to get my hands a little dirty in the world of embedded Linux-based thin-clients (this one uses VNC). And since pictures are worth a thousand words – here’s a montage of the assembly… Read the rest of this entry »

Revenge of the Mini-ITX

Reasoning

I have no “logical” reasoning for building this computer. It is merely to serve a proof-of-concept to me about what I am capable of doing. That, plus I think that embedded computers are really cool.

The final size of the system is 7x7x2 inches. Not as small as a Mac Mini, but this silent machine has TV-out – think of the possibilities!

Note: I did this project a while ago, this is just a blog entry of my original writeup.

Read the rest of this entry »

Building My First Mini-ITX Computer

I wanted to build a computer. It had to be small, not too loud, cool looking, and powerful enough to do web and some graphic design. Size is very important, but the smaller things get, the more expensive they are (ex: nano-ITX and those damned flip-phones). The problem is that I’m a student and I don’t have that much money to throw around (trust me, if I could, I would have a much better computer than this). I decided that I needed something more like the computers featured on mini-itx.com. After reading a lot about mini-ITX, I was originally going for a fan-less board with an EDEN processor. The problem was that their processors were 200-300Mhz slower than the C3 ones.. I figured a fan that small can’t make too much noise – can it? I wound up going for the EPIA M10000 because it was fast and was one of VIA’s mid-to-high end boards.

Note: I did this project a while ago, this is just a blog entry of my original writeup.

Read the rest of this entry »

Suggestions of Great Open-Source Software Replacements

You know that nag screen you get every time you open up a piece of shareware? Well now you don’t have to deal with it anymore. I have compiled a list of common Open-Source replacements of commonly used desktop software.

1. 7-Zip is a file archiver program for Windows (similar to WinZip) that supports 7z, ZIP, CAB, RAR, ARJ, GZIP, BZIP2, Z, TAR, CPIO, ISO, RPM, and DEB file formats. 7-Zip is free and open source and the command-line version can be ran under Linux with Wine. http://www.7zip.org
2. Firefox is a free and open-source web browser by the Mozilla group. Firefox features tabbed browsing, popup blocking, integrated spell checking, and live bookmarks, just to name a few. Firefox is supposed to be faster and more secure than Internet Explorer. Firefox also runs on other platforms such as Linux and Mac OS X.
3. Gaim is a multi-platform open-source instant messaging client similar to Trillian. It supports many protocols such as AIM, Y!, and MSN. It also displays all your “buddy lists” in only one window. Adium is a program similar to Gaim for Mac OS X (based on libgaim, actually.) http://gaim.sourceforge.net http://www.adiumx.com
4. The GNU Image Manipulation Program is a powerful image editor similar to Photoshop. GIMP is free and open-source and runs on many different platforms including Mac OS X and Linux. http://www.gimp.org
5. The Nullsoft Scriptable Install System (NSIS) is a free, open-source, scriptable install system made by the people who wrote WinAmp. It allows you to create your own custom one-file installers. NSIS is widely used and very powerful. NSIS can be configured to self-extract ZIP files or to look like the popular InstallShield system with the “Modern UI” extension. http://nsis.sourceforge.net
6. OpenOffice.org is is a free and open-source productivity suite similar to Microsoft Office and compatible with most major document format (including PDF). OpenOffice.org uses parts of Java and runs on many platforms including Mac OS X and Linux. http://www.openoffice.org
7. FileZilla is a very good graphical Windows FTP client (and server). http://filezilla.sourceforge.net
8. While not open-source, I thought FoxIt Reader deserves a spot here since it is an extremely fast freeware PDF reader. http://www.foxitsoftware.com

Windows Vista Mini-Review

Meant to post this a week ago….but hey, I was busy.

Well, I finally got my Windows Vista Business and MS Office 2007 DVDs from the ActionPack Subscription (“for development purposes only”), so I decided to load them up on my MacBook Pro (how ironic)…

It runs great on my MBP (the 2.33GHz model), and I’d expect it to run well on any modern computer. It is a little RAM-hungry though – after boot, around 600MB of the 2GB memory is in use.

Before you yell at me for daring to install Windows, I will say that I need to use it for two software development programs, plus I need to test websites in MSIE. Let’s just put it this way – I wouldn’t have installed Vista if I had to pay retail price for it. Read the rest of this entry »

The Flapper

“The Flapper” is a paper airplane that flaps its wings when it flies. All you need is a piece of typing paper, a penny, and an inch of tape. It was created in 1988 by Keith Greenstein. Very cool! You can download instructions on how to make one.

Nifty Extension-Switching Script

I needed a way to change the extension on a ton of files on a server from .php5 to .php. Instead of wasting time doing this by hand, I found it was much easier to whip up this Bash script to do it for me.

Here is the script (rename.sh):

#!/bin/bash
echo "Renaming old file $1 ..."
name2=`basename $1 .php5`
mv $1 ${name2}.php

Now this will only change a single file, so you have to couple it with the ‘find’ utility to recurse subdirectories. The whole command looks like this:

find ./htdocs -exec ./rename.sh '{}' \; > ./results

This will send all the output to a file called ‘results’, which you can analyze for any errors.

Nifty!