hints & tricks in no particular order
17/04
Turned out to be quite easy, as long as you have a firmware <3.55 to start with. It is also recommended that the PS3 doesn't have access to the Internet. Download the original 3.55 firmware from a trusted source Copy it on a USB stick formatted in FAT32 under a folder tree called PS3/UPDATE Start the PS3 with the […]
17/04
Extract audio tracks out of a video DVD appeared to be a one liner in Ubuntu. Command line power! for i in {01..11}; do mplayer -vc null -vo null -ao pcm:fast -ao pcm:file=output$i.wav -chapter $i-$i DVD://01; done The previous example extracts audio from chapters 1 to 11 and store them is wav files called outputXX.wav
02/04
02/04
It looks like Windows engineers forgot that other OS can coexist with the beast. As a result, the SP1 installation can fail (error code 0x800F0A12) if the Windows partition is not marked as active. Here is a soft fix: search Disk Management and run it. Find any partition which has 'system' flag, mark it as active. […]
23/03
12/02
12/02
I got myself a very unexpensive laser printer bundled with a third party toner. The printing industry being quite conservative when it comes to refilling, the printer didn't accept the toner in question. I had to flash a modified firmware so that the printer wouldn't complain anymore. Note that the following procedure […]
22/01
I had no network connection during the installation of XBMC Live, and this is why it was disabled at runtime. It was not very difficult to fix: Edited /etc/network/interfaces and added the ethernet interface -- I do not need the wifi (wlan0) and didn't add it. # Loopback interface auto lo iface lo inet loopback # […]
16/01
XBMC Live is based on Ubuntu and can be installed permanently just the same. In the future, OpenELEC might surpass the official XBMC build, but it is not there yet. It worked just fine; however I ran through a weird issue with HDMI sound output that I wanted to document here. By default, even if HDMI video output is […]
15/01
I went trough the cumbersome exercise of cleaning up my Pictures library, which consists of more than 20 000 images. Needless to say it's completely impossible without a good tool. I usually use fslint under Ubuntu, but there are not so many options. Under Linux, one can do quite powerful tools in a one line bash code. […]
31/12
Nostalgia... I recently got a good old Amstrad CPC+ to play with, unfortunately without monitor. The Amstrad monitors also act as power supplies. I therefore need to find a power supply and a SCART cable. Power supply is easy: the CPC+ only needs 5V and 2400mA (the 12V line was necessary for the first generation of […]
30/11
As of DD-WRT v.24 SP1, it is now possible to set up DD-WRT as an OpenVPN server. Which is a pretty good thing, because I needed to setup one of these beasts! I used Windows as a client, but also to generate the various configuration, certificate and key files. Initial setup First, install OpenVPN for Windows. At the […]
27/11
After the upgrade from 10.04 to 10.10 I noticed the Ubuntu theme was sometimes reverted to the default Gnome one, meaning fonts, icons, toolbars are all reset. I tried a clean reinstall but the same bug raised up again. It seems to be a race condition appearing on higher hardware (combination of SSD + core i7). The […]
27/11
27/11
Shred shred OPTIONS filename Common options: -n N Overwrite a file N times. -u Remove the file after you’ve shredded it. -z After shredding a file with random bits (ones and zeros), overwrite the file with only zeros. So, for example, to shred a file “topsecret.txt” with 26 iterations, and delete it afterwards, and […]
24/11
Fix the MBR: bootrec /FixMbr Fix the partition boot record: bootrec /FixBoot Fix the boot menu: bootrec /RebuildBcd To run the Bootrec.exe tool, you must start Windows RE (recovery console). To do this, follow these steps: Put the installation disc in the disc drive, and then start the computer. Press a key when you […]
22/11
I recently had to setup a simple, straightforward file server. I chose to install the Turnkey File Server Appliance as it had everything I wanted, ready to use. Following a SAMBA tutorial I could set the server so Samba users can have access to shared resources. However, for a public share I wanted to have a completely […]
03/10
I recently got to duplicate / migrate a SQL Server 2008 database. I had trouble with the logins, which were broken after the move. It has to do with mismatching SID for DB users. To fix, one needs to select the database in question then exec sp_change_users_login 'Report' The procedure lists any orphaned users who do […]
25/09
I recently acquired a floppy drive emulator. I can't say I have too much free time to play with such useless things, but I had the strange desire of getting one of these beasts. I did have trouble setting up some virtual images -- as there are not any predefined formats in the tools provided. I ended up with this […]
21/09
I recently got a hand on two "computosaurs". Both are PC compatible, running at respectively 200 and 400 MHz. As I started my digital life with a 4 Mhz processor I'd tend to say 200 MHz PC are not completely obsolete yet... But for a day to day usage it seems they are! Which OS can run on them? Windows is clearly out […]