Monthly Archives: October 2004

Let’s flood VirginMega !

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Ok, while looking for the latest Placebo Bonus CD on the net, (I saw it at my local retailler but i just want to buy the Bonus CD, not ‘Best of’ that come w/) I decide to go on http://www.virginmega.fr/. And I get this:

'We only support Windows platform 98/SE and upper ..' 
(I translated because it display this in french)

So dear hackers, geekies, script kiddies, mac-users, open source newbies, ipod-ers, Clie-users, PlamOS-geekies … please flood with your favorite OS ! For windows-losers please hijack your OS identity.

I just want to see the face of the webmaster, just saying : We have an issue, we support only 70% of the current OS .. I know this will never happen in fact

Music industry are loosers, I hope to see lot of bands distribute their music directly on the net, without this merde !

Gtk-Womitor 0.2

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Ok the name, is funny .. But I decided to write a little app to monitor my wifi signal level.

/static/gtk-womitor.png

The code is too ugly right now, I need to add noise, signal .. and a better OO API. Anyway, it tooks me 2 hours to write this, and that’s why I like Python.

Update

I spend a little time tonight to clean the code and add this to the SVN. So you can find this program at here

I switched to another card, as I’m usually working w/ a broadcom and ndiswrapper which don’t provide noise, and level information. This graph is done with a NetGear (prism54g based card). I’m still wondering why the noise has a so strange graph ??

Suspend to disc with Dell Latitude D400 on Linux

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I now have a Dell Latitude D400 for 1 month. This little (really small) computer is pretty nice to use, but it right now, it’s really hard to have suspend working on this kind of stuff. The main reason: it only support ACPI (no APM), and ACPI isn’t well supported by the Linux kernel.

I have tested several way to fix this issue. The only that’s working fine right now, is to use swsup. So to make it work:

  • install the latest 2.6.9 kernel (the 2.6.8 has a issue w/ agpart and drm)
  • in kernel select ‘ACPI -> sleep state’
  • and ‘ACPI -> swsup’
  • build the kernel
  • create a swap partition if you don’t have one (i resized a ntfs w/ qparted)
  • mkswap /dev/hda4 (for example)
  • add ‘resume=/dev/hda4′ in your boot prompt (in grub for example)

Now your system is ready. Reboot :) ..To put the the system in standby and dump the current state in the swap: echo 4 > /proc/acpi/sleep.

Next step simply bind the power button on this action. This is done w/ the acpid.

#!/bin/sh
# /etc/acpi/powerbtn.sh

# put the box in swsup mode
echo 4 > /proc/acpi/sleep

Beside the S2/S3 ACPI doesn’t work right now, swsup permit to have suspend to disk without too much trouble.

Bush and Kerry in a boat ?

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The fight just began to be serious. I mean everybody, is looking at this with aingst or fear. Ian just post today, that he doesn’t really enjoy Kerry, because it isn’t perfect for the country.

Here, I don’t really understand all stuffs. Every day there is a flash on TV about US, and something is clear. For me right now, US people don’t come from this planet, human ? really ?

I know this will be a big FUD, again .. but let me explain:

First we saw a report about a country where every man need to bring a gun. (I mean, in the law, they write: ‘Men should have a gun’).

Yesterday, the report is about TV ads for election. I saw ads, that’s say Kerry smoke drugs while army .. or others worst. I ‘m wondering where they left their dignity ? This really piss me off, I fully understand why young people don’t vote. This looks like a election at SouthPark’s school, with wrong arguments, with wrong weapons. In France, we don’t have this kind of shit on TV, and that’s fine. TV isn’t politic, I mean, they don’t support one or other candidate. Fox and CBS, please keep OUT!

And today, the current report is: Bush and Religion. And this is the worst.. frigthening … I don’t know how to write this, here: Some people on my TV set (americans) say that the US governement doesn’t try to end the war between Israel and Palestin, because the ‘old testament’ say that God will be back on earth on the Israel country..

So, yes I understand why some people want to vote for Bush, and others for Kerry. But I really think they both loose, I don’t know the words in english but this country looks (i don’t mean is.. just look) like a sick boat (ala française). So vote for the ‘not so worst’ ? Sade news today.

I want to finish this post with a picture of Mickael Moore, because I’m a big fan of this guy. Yes I know, he is an extremist, but I really think this kind of people is usefull for a democratie, because he try too explain politics for a large number of people, and even if his vision isn’t always the truth. 20 years ago, we have a lot of humorist like him in France, but most of them die…

/static/moore16.jpg

Before you send me some chirugical weapons, please keep in mind, that my vision is false mainly because I live in France. I only see pictures that french TV want me to see. And my english isn’t good enought to fully explain myself.

Update: While reading this again, I really don’t want to offense anybody. This post isn’t about people but more general.

Maxtor Diamond Star Boot Error on ST62K

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I just received my new hard-drive, a Maxtor Diamonstar 90 – 8M (read 80Go and 8M of cache). So I decided to fdisk + cp -a my old distros to the new drive. Everything is ok .. I have something like this:

/dev/hda1  Win (I don't install this but leave a blank fat32 .. if)
/dev/hda2  Linux (my current debian)
/dev/hda3  BSD (NetBSD I think)
/dev/hda4  Data (10Go for what you wants)

After I finish my cp -a /dev/hda2 /dev/hdc2, I just chroot to this and run grub-install. Ok .. that’s fine (no error message), it’s time to reboot.

Ouch! My new system doesn’t want to boot, I get a ‘SYSTEM BOOT FAILURE, INSERT BOOT DISK …’ hum .. that’s sucks! Ok .. boot from a rescue CD (which I really love after a day of issue on this HD), just chroot to my new drive install Lilo instead of grub .. => Crash .. oh god .. I tried it a several times and have random crash. After 2 hours, I discover that the HD have some issues with the Prefetch Read/Write, so I disable it.. Ok, no more random crash. Now I need to fix the boot error issue. I tested several things, and took me a lot of time and i discover something. In my bios (I even made a new bios install), the default option is ‘auto detect’ from the kind of HD: Large / LBA / CHS.. And this fucking HD is detected as a CHS, so I forced it to LBA, and now it works. In fact the OS doesn’t bios so it can read/write on the HD, but Lilo or Grub use the bios directly.

To resume Maxtor DiamonStar:

  • Doesn’t support Read / Write prefetch
  • Do some bad thing w/ bios detection (I never seen this before ooo)
  • Are really quiet
  • Perform quite well: 56Mbs/sec in hdparm -t (far from my 110Mbs/ SCSI HD but..)
  • Are damn hot (really really hot !!)

I destroy 2 Maxtor HD in a previous life, I hope this one will work a bit longer. Anyway, this is really the last time I buy this shit.

Wifi Antenna TRENDNet TEW-IA040

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I just receive my new wifi antenna :) I fact, I’m currently using my NetGear WG311 as a AP, this works pretty fine, but the signal is a bit low in some part of my home. I decided to buy a small antenna to have better signal.

http://www.larsen-b.com/static/tew-ia040.gif

This one is a omni antenna, with 4dBi, with a SMA connector, and a 1 meter cable.

Beside, this one isn’t really a big antenna.. it works really greater than the default antenna (shipped w/ the WG card)

Obscufated email ?

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Little hack to make a bit harder for spammers to parse email address on the web.

def cryptEmailAddress(addr):
r = []
for l in addr:
r.append('&#%d;' % ord(l))
return string.join(r,'')

>>>cryptEmailAddress('jkx@larsen-b.com')
'jkx@larse....'

And simply put this in a href mailto: and enjoy :) Check the article’s pages on this website for a example.