Random Geekage

I went to see Apocalyptica in Glasgow with some mates last night. Aside from some minor setbacks, the gig was pretty damn good.

My work was annoying enough to not give me the day off work which meant that I got out at 6pm. Doors opened at 7 which was a bit of a pain. The time immediately spent after work was dedicated to eating at a rapid pace and getting ready so I could catch a bus at 7.35.

While I was being driven to the Park and Ride, I discovered I still had my multitool. Not good. Foolishly, I kept it in its pouch instead of leaving it in the car. Got to the Park and Ride to find out the bus was running 15 minutes late. Fantastic. While there, I remembered that my trenchcoat has a huge hole in the pocket which lead to the space between the leather and the lining. I had the idea to conceal the multitool there.

The lining had other ideas.

The multitool had ripped a hole in the lining and hit the tarmac. I hastily retrieved it.

Eventually the bus arrived and I made a better attempt at concealing the multitool. Carefully put it where there wasn’t a hole. This lead to a problem when walking to the gig. It kept smacking me in the legs which would not do, so I pocketed it. This lead to a complication at the doors to the venue.

For once in my life, I got searched. I’m sure if I hadn’t been carrying a bag of clothes I would have escaped. I did notice the guy didn’t search the other pockets of my bag, only the main one. He also never bothered with my belt pouches, so if I had left it where it belonged I would have been ok. I had to surrender it to gain entry. Got a ticket to keep so I could get it back.

After that hassle, I managed to meet up with my mates and we proceeded to the front of the stage. Found a spot with very little folk but the angle was a bit naff. Couldn’t see the drum kit. Not a big deal.

Surprisingly, a band that only has cellos and drums can get pretty loud. If you have never seen metalheads playing cellos and windmilling their hair I suggest you check out the videos I shot.

*setlist forthcoming*

Pretty damn good if you ask me. I highly recommend listening to Apocalyptica if you can.

Oh, I did manage to retrieve my multitool in case you were wondering.

Weblog Apocalyptica, cellos, classcial, gig, metal, music

Last night I had an idea. Might not be any good, lemme know what you think.

Following the line of thought shown by SKTFM in the Patrolling series’, different bags for different tasks, I came up with what I call the Bush Bag.

Basically, it is a bag that contains everything you need to survive in the bush. The idea is to take a small bag, something like a Maxpedition Fatboy Versipack or similar in OD green or camo of your choosing and fill it with stuff you would need in a forest. Good bushcraft knife, plenty of paracord, some tarps for shelter, cooking gear, firelighting stuff and a first aid kit geared towards burns and cuts. The only stuff it would need is food and water, as well as a couple changes of clothes, but that can be in another bag.

Keep it in, strapped to or near your AWOL bag, that way if you need it you always know where it is. The idea is to have a modular system so you have all the kit for a particular task/situation in one place. Plus it theoretically makes packing easier.

I have done some mental calculations and I think all this would fit in my fatboy. Will give it a shot next time I’m going camping.

Weblog bush bag, kit, Patrolling, R4nger5, SKTFM, wog

Just made an initial stab at some arduino software to control the motors of the tank thing. Nothing fancy, just some functions that move forward, back and do turning. I haven’t coded reverse turning yet, didn’t occur to me until now.

The syntax of the code is C style so those who can code in C, C++, Java etc should be able to read and understand this no problem.

There is no real code that does anything at the moment. I plan to add serial communication to the code so it can interface with the python code I wrote a while ago. Lacking an arduino makes development difficult and the kit I want is out of stock.

Robot Army arduino, geek, programming, robot

Warning, this post my be considered very geeky. If you are afraid of circuit boards, this is not for you.

Top case requires removal of 8 screws, phillips head.

Main circuit board:

Click on the photo for notes on the Flickr page

3 pin headers:

• Microphone - 2 pin, red and black for + and -
• Antenna - 2 pin one used
• Camera - 3 pin, red, black and yellow for +, - and signal respectively

Right next to the camera header is a daughterboard with a large shield and an antenna. I believe this is some sort of video processor and transmitter. Possibility for covert video capture and transmission when coupled with an amplifier

Motor control uses 6 wires grouped into 2 sets of 3, each triplet controlling one motor. Circuit board has designations for ground, m1+, m2+, m1- and m2- leading me to believe that the motors are either full forward, full reverse or off. This will make things easier as I do not need to worry about any speed control.

I plan on using an Arduino for this project as it seems like a very capable microcontroller board. It has a range of digital I/O and analogue inputs as well as flexible power supply capabilities (usb, pin header or power socket).

Robot Army geek, reverse engineering, robot

I have installed a polls plugin on this site. Not sure how often I will use it. Edit: this will not work when crossposted to LiveJournal, if you have a burning desire to vote then come to my real site.

I do have a poll up though regarding what computer I should bring to the RantMeet. My main laptop, Resistor is a fair bit of a beast, has everything I need but is a bit bulky and I do have concerns about theft. My EeePC is a lot smaller and lighter but lacks in battery and storage space, not good for entertainment on the plane. The other option is to bring neither and go “primitive” as it were. I would only be relying on my phone’s WiFi (not gonna do roaming except to get in contact with folk).

So internet, what is your suggestion?

[poll id="2"]

Weblog advice, laptops, plugin, poll, RantMeet, test

For a while I have been trying to get used to using the command line for all of my application needs. One of the sticking points for me is email. As far as I can see, the two main text based email clients are Alpine and Mutt.

Mutt seemed to be a pain to configure, I couldn’t find an entry in the config file to put in my details and it brought in a whole bunch of other packages onto my system. Mutt seems to only be able to retrieve mail on its own. Sending requires the extra software which is a downside to me. Extra stuff to update, more possibility of security holes. Alpine on the other hand, has no such problems.

The other main part of email for me is GPG functionality. The default email client in Ubuntu, Evolution, has a really simple way of configuring GPG, just put your key ID into a text field and it does the rest. However, Evolution has a ton of bells and whistles like calendars and address book functionality. Plus I can’t have it backgrounded.

Klaatu did a Hacker Public Radio episode on how to integrate GPG and Alpine but I felt that during the main part he spoke too fast and never went over the proper syntax of the configuration lines, like the need for correct capitalisation. After hunting around a bit more, I found a page that had the correct lines ready for copy and paste (Edit: the symlinks are needed to use the filters properly).

First, open a shell and do the following commands:
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/gpg /usr/bin/encrypt
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/gpg /usr/bin/sign

Then open your .pinerc file and amend the display and sending filters to this:

display-filters=_LEADING("-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE")_ /usr/bin/gpg --decrypt,
_LEADING("-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE")_ /usr/bin/gpg --decrypt

sending-filters=/usr/bin/gpg --encrypt -r _RECIPIENTS_ -a,
/usr/bin/gpg --clearsign

Whack that into your .pinerc file in the right places and so long as you have GPG set up encrypted mail should work.

Weblog Alpine, command line, email, geek, gpg, guis are for the weak, Mutt

I have finally managed to upload the video I made from a presentation at the local Linux User Group. The topic is on the running of a Highlands Wireless ISP.

The quality is not the best. The lighting in the room was messing with the camera a bit and the sound is a bit low so you may want to turn up the volume. I am by no means a video expert, I just dumped the footage, whacked on a title and credits then encoded it twice, once to mpeg and the next to xvid.

Hopefully it will be educational/entertaining. Liscensed under a Creative commons By-Sa 2.5 liscense, you have permission to copy, give to folk and edit it so long as you attribute the source and distribute your versions under the same liscense.

Weblog geek, linux, LUG, video

I have booked the accommodation for the Vancouver trip at new year. I will be staying in at the HI Vancouver Downtown hostel from the 30th of December until the 5th of January. There is apparently free WiFi which I will make much use of while I’m there.

The interesting part is I will be staying in a dorm with possibly 3 other people that I don’t know. Hopefully my social skills have increaced.

Weblog accommodation, hostel, RantMeet, vagabonding, Vancouver

Last night, I got a phone call asking If I wanted to go bowling. I replied positivly an had my tea. Sortly afterward, another which changed the plan to seeing a band in Glasgow. Fair enough, seeing a random band would be ok.

Franny and Stu picked me up and we sped (pretty quickly) off to Glasgow. Little did I know how interesting this night would be.

The first time we got lost was interesting. I think we went round a roubdabout about 5 or 6 times trying to pick an exit. My phone with its gps capabilities was pretty useless. Franny picked an exit and we drove, further getting lost. Eventually we saw a sign for the city center and followed that.

About 500 meters away from the venue (Carling Academy), a dog ran out into the street. Thankfully, the car infront of us slowed down in time so I don’t think it was hit though I could be wrong. Round the corner, we saw a fox (never seen one before, let alone in the middle of a city) doing its thing. Very strange.

We abandoned the car in a private car park, got our tickets and went in to the gig.

Caught the tail end of the support band, I think they were calld Hotleg. Think hair metal with Justin Hawking as the singer. Not bad but the singing was too high pitched.

The main band were a group called Extreme. With a name like that, I thought it would be death metal or some derivative which had me a bit worried, we were in prime mosh pit space. Thankfully, they were less heavy than I thought.

Two phrases that spring to mind when describing the vocalist are “bust a move” and “strike a pose”. The guy was working the entire stage, swinging the mic stand about, climbing on stacked boxes and even riding the bass amps like a horse at one point.

Not sure hoe to describe their music. Good chunky riffs (for the most part) but the singing was a bit naff in my opinion. Eventually after over an hour and a half of playing, they departed the stage for good and we left for the next interesting phase of the trip, getting home.

We got lost. Franny had no idea how to get back to the motorway so we drove about, taking random roads, almost running a red light (again). After 15 mins of random driving, we found the motorway and got on thinking it would take us back to Perth. Oh how wrong we were.

To give you an idea, we crossed the Fourth Road Bridge.

Eventually we got back to Perth, cruised about for a bit and then I crashed at my house leaving the stoners to do what they do at 1am.

Next time we do this, I’m bringing a real sat-nav.

Weblog Extreme, gig, Hotleg, lost, metal, music, random

So I’m sitting in front of my computer and I remembered I was given a guide on how to use the mobile internet functionality of my N95 with an EeePC. I figured I would give it a shot.

I selected PC mode as the usb connection type. Lo’ and behold, NetworkManager picked it right up. Told it I was on the o2 network with a contract, hit apply, disabled the wifi and I was online through my phone.

No terminal, no esoteric config files, just select from a menu and hit a button. Can it really be this easy?!  I was looking forward to something more interesting. Oh well.

(This was done with Ubuntu 8.10, Intrepid Ibex, I doubt it would be this easy with an earlier version)

Weblog cool, geek, internet, linux, mobile, ubuntu n95