techie

Uniclad Roofing Services

Posted Fri, 05/26/2006 - 21:05 by garan

I've built a new site for Uniclad Roofing Services.

Drupal 4.7.0

Posted Sat, 05/20/2006 - 07:55 by garan

I've upgraded this site from a CVS version of Drupal to the new 4.7.0 stable release.

UMPC's

Posted Sat, 05/20/2006 - 07:38 by garan

Over the last few years I've been looking for a small portable device that I can use in place of a laptop. My wish list is along the lines of:

  1. Portable
  2. Good battery life
  3. Strong! Needs to be robust
  4. Landscape screen layout
  5. QWERTY keyboard that has a pipe key
  6. Serial connector for use with a terminal emulator
  7. Connects to my mobile for internet access

So far the Psion Series 5 has been the closest to fulfilling the wishlist. It didn't have a pipe key though which was really annoying as I need to type commands in unix. The PDA's that I've had/used just haven't been up to it - no landscape screen layout and no keyboard. But the batteries haven't lasted or they haven't been strong enough to survive my 'usage habits'. Things are to be used not to look nice :)

I've been keeping an eye on the Ultra Mobile PC's that are coming out. HandTops.com is a good resource; listing the available devices that are smaller than laptops, bigger than PDAs and running XP out of the box (they can run Linux).

The new Sony VGN UX20 whilst not having an elegant name, looks promising. There's more info at Dynanism's website.

Still hanging on though... :)

ADSL woes

Posted Thu, 04/27/2006 - 12:02 by garan

My ADSL was down for 24 hours yesterday. Not really sure why as Freedom2Surf's support ain't exactly great. I've decided to move to Andrews and Arnold (aka the techie geek's ISP!). I ordered my connection this morning and the order is already with BT (notified by SMS). Should have it within 5 days. Rather than apply for a migration code from my existing ISP I've requested that the service be activated on my second BT line. It'll mean that the services overlap, costing me a bit more, but I won't go without my connection for days on end.

Rate My Network Diagram

Posted Thu, 04/27/2006 - 12:00 by garan

Whilst I can profess to having a network diagram for the setup in my house, I haven't gone this far:

http://www.ratemynetworkdiagram.com/

AlienBBCWales

Posted Tue, 03/28/2006 - 10:20 by garan

The AlienAddons change on AlienBBC isn't working for me. Not quite sure why. I've hacked BBC Wales into the plugin.pm for the time being until I've got time to go through the code.

Got to be able to listen to Chris ;)

AlienBBC

Posted Mon, 03/27/2006 - 23:06 by garan

Been getting AlienBBC working again on my Slimserver.

  1. Install slimserver. I used the debian.slimdevices.com build but had to download the complete package to get the build-perl-modules.pl script. The .deb builds into /usr/share/slimserver rather than /usr/local/slimserver as per the instructions
  2. Install AlienBBC from http://www.x2systems.com/AlienBBC/ into /usr/share/slimserver. Don't forget the Bin/mplayer.sh script
  3. Install mplayer
  4. Install the mplayer essential codecs in /usr/lib/win32 (got the location from watching /var/log/slimserver/slimserver.log whilst trying to start a stream)

The final bit (which wasn't obvious!) was that I needed to install libstdc++5 package and a c++ compiler. Found that by running:
mplayer rtsp://rmlivev8.bbc.net.uk/farm/*/ev7/live24/radio1/live/r1_dsat_g2.ra

meta theme

Posted Wed, 03/01/2006 - 02:46 by garan

Found this theme on http://www.metaskills.net/meta-theme-for-drupal/

Does groovy stuff with links http://www.metaskills.net/meta-theme-for-drupal/

See the difference in the little icons at the end?

sites

Posted Sun, 02/26/2006 - 21:31 by garan

Been working on Mark's website this weekend. I'm trying to make it do things that were completely out of scope of the original project.

It's ramming home that a requirements spec is important even when it's a 'quick site for a mate'.

Oh and it's also ramming home that there's no such things as a 'quick site for a mate'.

The original website was a couple of pages with a login facility that users could access to download files. It's a long way from that now..

I went for Windows

Posted Tue, 02/21/2006 - 01:49 by garan

After fiddling around with Linux I decided to keep things simple and went for a complete XP based build. I've got a spare hard drive in the box and I'm planning to put a Linux partition on there so that I can play around without destroying my work environment.

I've discovered that Linux is improving, but, at the moment, Windows is still a nose ahead when it comes to putting together a complex web of hardware and software requirements for desktop use.

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