Luke Sheldrick's Blog

Using Google-Authenticator for free two-factor ssh authentication

Luke Sheldrick — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 04:52:10 +0000

I’d consider myself a pretty security conscious person, so most of my stuff is either firewalled off, can only be access via a VPN, or requires a key of some sort (ssh keys), except for one box. That one box, is the weak kink in the chain, but is there out of convenience. I have a box out there I can jump to, connect in with a password, and then get to everything else. However I hate having the weak kink. The only reason I have it, is if I am not somewhere where I have access to say my laptop, I can still jump on a shared machine say, and connect back to my kit.

Last week I was on a course, and couldn’t use my laptop, so was using one of the training centre’s computers. Throughout the course, I’d check my emails, irc, etc etc. Just using their standard installed putty, connecting back to my server via ssh. However how do I know what they have installed on their hotdesk computer? for all I know, they could have a keylogger sitting there happily recording my password. (Noted: a bit paranoid). On the way home from the course, I really wasn’t happy with that risk, so when I got home, I naturally changed the password, checked logs, no access seen, so happy for now. However needed to find a way to fix this.

Googled about for a bit, then stumbled on Google-Authenticator, now I had read about this being released for google accounts, so two-factor auth to check your GMail..etc however what I hadn’t realised is they had released a PAM (Pluggable Authentication Module) to work with their authenticator. Neat! I span up a VM in my lab, and had a play, and was very very easy to get the module installed, and working with SSH.

After compiling the PAM module, installing, updating the PAM config, and SSHd’s, you’re pretty much ready to go. Users on the server have to enroll using the google-authenticator binary, which asks them a series of question, then presents URL,which displays a QR code. Crank up the authenticator app on your favourite smart phone, and it should add the OTP config, and start generating OTPs. Depending on if you chose time based or generated OTPs, you’ll see a countdown clock (until the next code) or a button to request a new code.

There are some really good guides on setting this up so I won’t duplicate. I’ve got it running on my Ubuntu jump box, and a few CentOS servers in my lab. Seems perfectly stable so far. What I do like about this OTP solution vs some others such as RSA, is it doesn’t need to ‘call home’, so if for some reason the server is isolated from the internet, I can still authenticate using the OTP, as it’s based on RFC 4226 so is time based.

I have read a few places that GA and SSH keys cannot be used together, and you should disable KeyAuthentication. Both can work alongside each other, however OpenSSH sees them as separate things. So if I try to authenticate using my private key, it will accept that, and ask for no further authentication. However what I think what people are saying here, is that if you want to still be challenged for your OTP when using your key, this wont fit your requirements. For me, if I have my key, that is enough for me.

One thing I did put in place, which stops a bit of a chicken and egg situation, is that if you have’t enrolled with google-authenticator on the jump box yet, you can still authenticate just using your password. I’ve given some people access to the jump box for various reasons, and not all use keys, so once I had implemented the dual-auth, some of them couldn’t connect, to be able to setup google-auth, ops. To get this to work you need to add nullok to your PAM config line. I also added a string to print the code as you’re typing.

Your PAM config (eg /etc/pam.d/common-auth) should have a line like for this to work.
auth required pam_google_authenticator.so nullok echo_verification_code

You can get the modules over at google code. All in all, a pretty neat solution to my issue, whatever machine I log in now, sure you can steal my password, but unless you also have my unlocked phone, to generate you a new OTP, you won’t be able to get in. The weak link is now a bit stronger

366! A photography project

Luke Sheldrick — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 19:18:49 +0000

I figured I’d give a 365 project a shot this year, as I’ve mostly forgotten about taking photos recently, and I quite like having a record of the year.

I started in Janurary, however stopped midway through. Id not renewed my flickr PRO account, due to me not using it much in the tail end of 2011, and used a free alternative. I found Blipfoto, however quickly became frustrated with it. Quite often I would take a photo on the day, and then sometimes postprocess/upload the following day, however their site was far too intrusive with EXIF headers, and upload date. So from the offset, I had photos listed as completely the wrong day, and then not being able to upload a photo for that day, as yesterdays was recorded for it. Argh. So I gave up.

However, I’m not the type of person to be defeated, so will be starting again from 01-02-2012. As this year is a leap year, it will be a 366, to get me around until the end of Jan-2013.

I think it’s going to be a bit of a challenge, as some days, when working from home, I don’t even get out of my PJs, let alone go out and take an interesting photo.

I think from my short test run, I may look at having a theme for a month, not sure on the categories yet, but sure will work something out.

Have upgraded my flickr account, as will be uploading them there, and then will set something up to present them in a decent format. I have the flickr-addon for wordpress setup, but it hasn’t been maintained for a few years, so has a few ‘features’ that I need to look into fixing, as the maintainer looks to have given up.

2012, lets do it!

[UN]Postmen

Luke Sheldrick — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 12:41:18 +0000

I started a new job a few weeks back, which means, I am now home based. Which is working out pretty well so far. When I worked in an office all day, I’d always get things delivered to the office, and never really had any issues with the post. I’d occasionally get a ‘we tried to call’ redslip at home, but just assumed these were all genuine.

However, now I work at home, I’m in during the day. However now I get my post delivered home, I’ve noticed something, which well, really isn’t on – I’m still getting those slips. Not once, but every delivery this week, has failed, with “We tried to call, but no one was in” “The item was too big for the letterbox” type excuse.

This has happened with RoyalFail, DPD, HDNL, all of them pretty much. Most of the things I’ve ordered from Amazon, with Amazon Prime (which gives next day delivery). However when I’ve picked this up with them, they say the next day isn’t guaranteed if there are any issues with their courier.

I really don’t get that, I have a contract with Amazon, for them to deliver the next day. They then outsource the delivery to a courier company, yet if there is an issue with that contract, then it’s me, that paid for the Prime service – yet don’t get the item.

My theory here, is that most delivery drivers/postmen who deliver to home addresses, know that 99% of the people won’t be in during day, so rather than carrying around a big postbag, just pre-fill out the redslips.

Grrr.

GlobalSAN Fail

Luke Sheldrick — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 19:02:15 +0000

I bought a MacMini the other day to replace my old nettop at home. Until I get the new storage for it, I figured I’d quickly setup a LUN on my NAS for it. It seems OS X, even Lion, still doesn’t include an iSCSI initiator (wtf, really?). Anyway the typical freebie that you’d use on Leopard/Snow Leopard was GlobalSAN’s free initiator. However seems that as of version 5, it’s not a freebie.

I gave it a try, and went through their process (read giving them my details twice – once to download, then again to get a trial key)… tried it out, and didn’t rate it. So using their provided uninstall script I see the below:

WTF is that all about? Their uninstaller is trying to delet / . .. /sbin ..etc, someone really hasn’t QA’ed their code.

Have emailed them to see what they say about it. Poor show.

KVM + KSM = Big Bag of Win

Luke Sheldrick — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 20:45:09 +0000

I bought a HP Microserver a few months ago, to expand my media storage at home. HP had a promotion where you’d buy the server, and they’d give you £100 cash back. Not bad considering you can pick them up online for around £220. £29 for 8GB of DDR3 for it, and it’s quite an ample home server. I bought four 3TB disks, and have them in Raid-5 for the main storage, and I also have an E-Sata disk shelf with four more 2TB disks, also in Raid-5. The main storage array gives me around 8TB of usable storage, and the other around 5.5TB, so I have quite a bit at home to be getting on with.

A colleague at work today pointed out that HP had extended the offer until the end of September, so I thought I would pick up another one. My reasoning is they’re bloody cheap for what they are, and it’ll make HA testing in my lab a lot easier, with two identical machines.

However I decided to see actually how loaded the server was with what I run on it. The tasks that usually run on it backups of my various colos, streaming to the AppleTVs at home, transcoding up to 8 channels via the DVB cards, and downloading various media online. Well, basically, it isn’t breaking a sweat.

It’s currently running Ubuntu Server 11.04, which has pretty good support for KVM, so decided to spin up a few VMs to see how it handled it. I wasn’t overly optimistic, as AMD Turion™ II processor, which is basically designed for netbooks. However after spinning up a another Ubuntu Server instance, the server seemed to have no issue with this at all.

At that point I decided to clone the VM a couple of times, and then spin them all up to load test. 4 clones later, they all booted fine, and the box carried on with no real issues. I showed another colleague at work, and he’d asked how it would cope with Windows guests. The reason he was interested is he has just completed his MSITP qualification, and had quite a bit of difficulty running all the required server instances using his laptop and VMWare Workstation.

This evening I installed a base install of XP, and cloned that 4 times. Again, no real issues, so I decided to give every host 1G of memory (the server only has 8GB total), and see how KSM got on with the VMs. At the moment, it’s still scanning through memory pages, however it’s been running for around 20 minutes, and it’s already reclaimed 2.5GB of memory. No doubt given it some more time, it’s going to reclaim even more.

To say I am impressed by the Microserver, and KVM + KSM would be an understatement.Think I’ll setup a HA cluster when I get the other server, and see how that compares the likes of ESX.

Below just the quick setup I was playing with this evening.

The Kindle and I

Luke Sheldrick — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 20:30:53 +0000

I’m well late for this party, but having recently got an Amazon Kindle, and I have to say, I am very, very impressed with it.

Sure, it doesn’t play movies, it has a laughable web browser, and the audio play back is awful. However for what it was designed for, reading books, it is simply the best device I have used.

I’d previously tried to read paper books, using iBooks no the iPad, Android Tables, Phones, and my iPhone, nothing really felt right. I went on a long weekend to Tenerife a few weeks back, and wanted to try out a few books I’d been recommended. Previously I hand’t really been a ‘bookworm’, sure I read tons every day, but usually they’re technical books, RSS, Blogs… that kind of thing, but not novels or that kind of thing; even rarer to read it from cover to cover.

So I picked up a wifi Kindle, for £90, ordered a few books on the store, charged the thing up, and shoved it in my bag. Whilst sitting by the pool, I started to read ‘A Million Little Pieces’ a book a good friend had recommended. The first thing I noted was the eInk screen, and how easy it was to read in the bright sunlight – something no other device I have can be said about. The second was how comfortable it was to read with it. The buttons are exactly where they need to be on both sides, and the Kinda is very light, lighter than most books, so holding it for any length of time isn’t an issue.

The things that are clearly awesome about it:

The price – It’s really rather cheap in comparison to my normal gadgets.
Ease of use – It’s so simple, even Mother can get on with it.
Ease of buying – The system Amazon has built around buying eBooks is so simple. I can request a sample of a book, read the first chapter, and if I like it, at the end of the first chapter, I have a buy button; that’s it, I then have the book.
Screen – The eInk display is really rather impressive. The only downfall to it is the lack of backlight, so as soon as it’s not overly light where you are, you can’t see the thing. They do have a case with integrated night light. This also works quite well, as it uses the power from the device for power.
Weight/Shape/Controls – They are all very well designed.
Battery – Two weeks of use, and I still haven’t charged it.

The things that aren’t so awesome:

Screensavers – They’re awful. I had to jailbreak the device, to get rid of them.
Cases – To get a backlight, I bought the official case – they’re not cheap.
VAT – not an Amazon or a Kindle issue – but in the UK, you still get charged VAT (20%) for eBooks. So eBooks are more expensive than paper books – CRAZY!

One thing I really wish I had done now in reflection is to buy the 3G model. The only reason I’d want that is the page sync. I’ve found that the Kindle app for Android is surprisingly very good. I use it on my ZTE Blade, which has an AMOLED screen. Putting the background to black and text to white, doesn’t use a lot of battery at all on the Blade, and being able to turn page by using the volume switch, makes it quite a good device to use when I don’t have my kindle on me. The only issue with this is, I need to remember to turn the kindle wi-fi on and sync the pages back to Amazon – if I’d bought the 3G model, this would just do it for me.

I’ve tried the Kindle app on the iPad, and whilst it’s all there, I just don’t find the iPad that great for reading for any length of time, the lack of a ‘turn page button’ and it’s slightly too heavy. It is however neat to have a synced copy of all my books on all the devices… just in case.

No Phone…

Luke Sheldrick — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 10:39:03 +0000

So, it seems, on Friday I accidentally left my personal mobile phone in a taxi, and that $nicetaxidriver decided to remove my sim/switch the phone off when I called it, rather than return it.

As such, currently my personal phone number isn’t routable. This happens when a new sim is ordered on a line, and is unrouteable until the new sim is assinged. Three seem to be having some issues actually getting me a new sim, so if you try and call me at the moment, you’ll get a number not recongised type alert. Annoying!

As soon as the new sim is assigned, I’ll forward the calls to my temporary number, so I can at least get voicecalls.

As for getting a replacement iPhone, seems I need a 101 documents, for the insurance claim, which will take some time to gather up.

If you need to get hold of me before then, drop me a mail, and I’ll get back to you.

Argh!

Update 14/06/2011: New SIM has been assigned, but still cannot divert calls from my personal number to temporary number. Getting docs for insurance is a Royal PITA.

Update 15/06/2011: After numerous calls to Three, I finally have a working sim, and can take calls again. Now onto the saga that is getting the documents needed for the insurance claim.

Unsecured Call?

Luke Sheldrick — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 15:04:10 +0000

“The Cellular network you are using is not encrypted. This call can be intercepted by unauthorized listeners”

Running the first iOS 5 beta on my iPhone 4. Got this come up when I received a call this afternoon.

Apple looking to put in end-to-end encryption of calls?

Motorola Xoom

Luke Sheldrick — Sun, 08 May 2011 19:12:38 +0000

Last week, a colleague at work bought a Motorola Xoom, I had a quick play in the office and was very impressed.

I’d previously owned the original iPad, however had grown quite bored of it’s lack of customisation ability. I found my self using it less and less, and eventually sold it, luckily just before the iPad2 was announced. I’ve been an advocate of Apple kit for quite some time, having owned every iPhone since they have come out, however last week whilst I was waiting for my number to port over to Three UK, I was using my ZTE Blade (running Cyanogen 7), and was really surprised how much it had come on from when I had last properly played.

So when I had a quick go on the Xoom, I was quite impressed. Being the impulsive gadget lover, I went after work to buy one. At the moment they’re only available on the high street from Carphone Warehouse, on a 24 month data contract. Unfortunately I managed to get a parking ticket as I was being slightly optimistic that I would only be in the shop for two minutes, however it was more like forty.

The only tablet I have used before is the original iPad, running iOS 4.3, so my opinion and comparisons are limited. I’ve used the Galaxy Tab, but not in any great detail.

The Xoom is the first tablet to be released to the mass market running Google’s Android operating system, 3.0 aka Honeycomb. The Xoom has all the usual features you would expect from the tablets on the market today, these include front and rear cameras, 3G, wifi, bluetooth, HDMI output, 1G DDR2 and based on the Nvidia Tegra 2, which is a 1GHz dual core processor.

The first impressions of Honeycomb are very impressive. It’s been well designed for use on the tablet platform and feels very smooth. However after a bit more use, my opinion has changed somewhat.

What I like

Honeycomb is a big improvement over v2.x of Android, on a tablet.
In comparison to iOS, the ability to customise Android is far superior. Widgets, shortcuts, themes, application integration, all are much superior.
The inbuilt browser is very fast, and well presented. Has all the features I would expect.
The aspect ratio at 1280×800 (wide-screen) works really well, and the screen is almost as responsive as Apple’s multi touch sensor.

What I didn’t like

The device has the Tegra 2 chipset. A dual-core processor, which supports up to 720p. However no video player is included in the OS. Many of the ones I tried from the market, either didn’t work, or didn’t fully utilise the GPU, so getting the full 720p didn’t work.
Honeycomb crashes quite a bit, having to force apps to close and settings windows quite often.
The device has a micro-usb port for connectivity, however doesn’t charge from this. Instead they use a proprietary connector to their custom power brick. This in my opinion sucks. I have a Micro, a Mini and an Apple charger, by my bed, in my bag, on my various desks, and by the couch. Having one of these chargers just is a big draw back for me.
The speakers are on the back of the device. That’s a bit of a design flaw to start with, however even worse, is they’re right where I hold the device, so even worse.
The device seems heavy in the hand. The original iPad was 1.6lbs for the 3G model, which is the same as the Xoom. However in comparison the the iPad2, which is 1.33lbs, so seems much heavier.
At launch flash wasn’t supported. Something iOS has come under fire for, and something the Android lovers have always commented on. This should have been there at release.
The Micro-SD card isn’t supported as yet. I’m not quite sure how you can release a product without full support of the hardware provided.
The Micro-SD card is on the same adapter and slot as the SIM card, so when it is supported, to swap the card over, you’ll also need to power down, as the SIM isn’t hot-swappable.
There are very few apps designed for honeycomb and even less for the tegra2. This is to be expected, as they’re both only just out.
Accessories for the device are very limited. When the iPad came out, this was exactly the same, however I very much doubt they’ll be quite as much choice.

There is one more annoyance, but that is neither to do with the device or the OS. Why mobile providers feel the need to sit proxies in front of their customers, which resample images to almost unviewable versions is beyond me. Sure you may save a few KBs, but really? The device is supposed to be use as a consumer device, however if I look at flickr I want to see a decent quality version of the photo, not some re-sampled crap version.

Overall, it’s an ok device, but it isn’t amazing. Honeycomb I expect will be really very good once it has some more time to mature. The overall experience of the device is it just hasn’t had the thought and attention into how it will be used. A few small changes could have really changed this. Honeycomb feels like an initial beta release. In my opinion it’s not quite there, in both stability and support (of other apps). Given time, I honestly thing I would prefer Honeycomb to iOS on the tablet, it just needs to mature somewhat.

I’ll be exercising my 14 day cancellation period tomorrow, and taking the device back.

Eye-Fi Pro X2

Luke Sheldrick — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 17:29:33 +0000

Last year I bought an Eye-Fi Pro X2, as a neat addition to my photography kit. It boasts a 8GB Class6 SD card, with integrated geolocation and a wifi uploading. Quite neat I thought.

I went for the Pro model as it supported RAW uploading, but was quickly disappointed by the limits of the card.

Geolocation – I’m not sure why I was expecting more, but this is only using so-called ‘wifi-location’. This is fine in the city, but quite often the reason I want to geotag my photos is because I am in the middle of no where, this wont work there.
Geolocation – To get your photos geotagged they have to be first uploaded to their servers. I can kind of understand this, as card it’s self doesn’t have enough grunt to process the current wifi macs it can see, and properly geotag them. However these seen macs are stored in the image, so when it is uploaded to the eye-fi servers, they can do the lookup to the database, and assign the correct geotags. Why their app cannot do this, is beyond me. It seems completely stupid to upload 8GB of images, to have them tagged, to download them again, to process. 16GB of transfer, for what would probably be <1Mb if they did this the logical way.
RAW – Whilst the RAWs will be uploaded, they wont be geotagged. When I contacted eye-fi, they state that there is no standard for the EXIF location tags for RAW. This certainly wasn’t mentioned on the box/site/anywhere.
Upload to open and public networks – The X2 range come with this service for free for a year. This seemed perfectly fine to me, a lifetime of free uploads would be good, but probably not sustainable. However, it didn’t actually include the access to public networks, i.e. BTOpenzone, The Cloud..etc this only enabled the card to join these networks once you had setup your card with one of the premium accounts that you’d need to pay for separately. Again, this certainly wasn’t mentioned beforehand.

This was all a bit annoying, but not the end of the world. I still used the card, paired it to my MiFi from three. As I have 15GB allowance, uploading wasn’t an issue. I had setup selective sync, so it would only upload photos I ‘protected’. This worked quite well, often when I was at expos, I could be uploading the photos to eye-fi, then using their mobile optimised website, select where I wanted to share the photos too. Giving an almost instant upload to the web, throughout the day. When I got home, the eye-fi agent had downloaded all the files, so I could process them further if I wanted. All quite neat.

I then had a card corrupt totally, not readable in a number of machines (running Windows, Linux or OSX), and none of my cameras. Their RMA process was awful to be honest. Weeks to get a response via email, then a huge delay when thye had received my card back. It seemed they only stated to respond timely when I mentioned them on twitter.

Since then, on my D3o0s, I have set it up to put the jpgs to the eye-fi card, and raws to the CF card. As I don’t use raw on the eye-fi, this works well for me. I in effect have a raid-1 setup, so if a card corrupts, I have the images on the other card.

The other day I saw that eye-fi had launched a new product, the Mobile X2, which allowed direct uploading directly to an iOS or Android device. This is something the hacker community have had for a while, but finally supported by eye-fi is cool. They said they would be upgrading the firmware on the current X2 range to implement this feature.

Today I opened the eye-fi manager on my mac, and it indeed said it had an update. It then listed direct mode as a feature for my card, but that required a firmware upgrade too, great. Or not, it listed the firmware it needed as being the current firmware, so failed every time. Looking on their forums a few people here and here. It seems their PR department had been working overtime, and all marketing shouldn’t have gone out yet. Oh dear.

Anyways, reading further into it, I could upgrade my card manually upgrade the firmware by unregistering it and registering it again, losing my settings. Not something I’m overly fussed about. So once I had done that, I downloaded the iOS application, to find out, the new one isn’t on the store yet. I guess this might be what they’re waiting for.

The android app had been, so I grabbed my ZTE Blade, and installed. The card now shows it’s self a wireless access point, so the app connects the phone to that AP, and that’s then how the card uploads to the phone. Took a few snaps and indeed, they were uploaded to the phone.

However, now the phone is connected to the eye-fi, it itself now cannot get to the outside world. On Android, if you have a wireless connection, it drops it’s connection over the cellular. Naturally the eye-fi card doesn’t have an internet connection, so now both devices are isolated. Also an interesting thing, you can edit the setting on the card, from the phone, but only if you have an internet connection, which naturally now is broken.

As far as I can see, I cannot change this behaviour in android, so looks totally broken.

It’s such a shame when companies hype a product so much, but when it comes to the crunch, it really doesn’t live up to the promises.

10.6.7 + Aperture 3 + Final Cut Express 3 = fail

Luke Sheldrick — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 09:35:07 +0000

Yesterday, my flatmate looked like he was going to pull all of his hair out. He was on the phone to Apple, who kept fobbing him off. So I thought I’d be nice and help out.

Problem

He had bought Aperture 3 from the Mac AppStore, and was working fine. The 10.6.7 update came out, and he’d updated to that too. Still all fine. He’d then bought and installed Final Cut Express 3. After this Aperture panic’s when it opens with something like
Library not loaded: /Library/Frameworks/PluginManager.framework/Versions/B/PluginManager Referenced from: /Applications/Aperture.app/Contents/MacOS/Aperture Reason: no suitable image found. Did find: /Library/Frameworks/PluginManager.framework/Versions/B/PluginManager: no matching architecture in universal wrapper

Attempted fixes

He’d tried un-installing and re-installing both Final Cut Express, and Aperture in all sorts of combinations. Nothing was working. He then called Apple who pointed him towards this article. However that was for 10.6.6, and he was now on 10.6.7, so couldn’t apply that update.

I took a look, and indeed with any combinations of re-installing, and even re-applying the 10.6.7 update didn’t fix the issue.

Looking at various forums, such as the Apple discussion forums, there were plenty of people having the issue. Reading those, and various blog entries, there were a number of suggestions, from applying the 10.6.6 update, to re-installing OSX (yeah, sure that would probably fix it, but not the best approach), there was even a suggestion to run Aperture in 32bit mode. Nothing worked.

My Fix

So I decided to give up on the forums and t’internets, and try my own method of tracking down the issue. I got my MacBookAir, and took a manual backup with TimeMachine (which backs up to my Solaris SAN). This meant I had a clean backup, if anything went wrong. I am also at patch level 10.6.7. I had a look in /Library/Frameworks and I had the folder PluginManager.framework.

I installed Aperture 3, and all worked. Folder was still there. I then proceeded to install Final Cut Express, and when the installer had finished the folder had been deleted. Wasn’t in the trash or anything. Interesting.

This naturally broke Aperture, as it did on my flatmate’s MBP. Just to see if I could resolve this, in a more methodical fashion, I un-installed Aperture and Final Cut, and then re-applied the 10.6.7 update. Still PluginManager.framework was missing.

I had a good copy of PluginManager.framework so decided to install Aperture and Final Cut, then copy PluginManager.framework back to /Library/Frameworks. After this everything worked as expected.

My flatemate doesn’t have any backups, so I scp’ed my PluginManager.framework folder to his MBP, and indeed, all worked.

Solution

So ignore the forums, they’re just going to have you running around in circles.

Restore PluginManager.framework from your backups, after installing Aperture and Final Cut Express.

If you’ve not installed Final Cut Express yet, make sure you take a copy of PluginManager.framework.

If you’ve already installed, and don’t take backups. Then well, that’s just silly. If you want a copy of my PluginManager.framework folder, leave a comment, and I’ll get a copy over to you. In my tests, going from a MBA, to a MBP, it all worked fine. Not 100% sure if it will work on say a MacPro or iMac, but I would have thought it would, OSX isn’t _that_ much different between machines, except for drivers.

Hope this helps someone else out there.

More PayFail

Luke Sheldrick — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 22:29:03 +0000

So I am greeted today with even more PayPal fail (they’ll now be known to me as payfail).

A few months back, I had a letter from Natwest, who informed me they were charging me £25 a day for being over my overdraft limit. Interesting, I don’t have an overdraft, nor have I used that account since I worked for them quite some years ago.

Checking my online banking with them, and noticed ~£450 worth of PayPal direct debits. Interesting, these transactions were not listed on my PayPal account. Sent them a few emails explaining this, and they then said I had to call to discuss further. When I called they had no knowledge of the email correspondence, so I had to go through it all again. They basically said that they could not help as the transactions were not listed on my account, and they could only talk to me about MY account. They advised I talk to my bank.

Called up the bank, and explained the situation, then got put through to fraud, explained, then put through to another department, who said as I had given my bank details to PayPal years back (to deposit, not debit), it wasn’t fraud, and it was something I’d need to take up with PayFail. Back to step 1.

I then explained they can’t help, and it’s up to the bank to resolve. The only thing they could do was advise me to go into a branch, and fill out a direct debit indemnity form, as these were direct debits, and they could return them that way.

Off to the branch I went, to then be told, that form is for modifying a direct debit, I.e. you’re paying £50 a month to sky, but should only be paying £45. It wasn’t for historic transactions. They suggest I talk to PayFail. Awesome! nobody wants to take ownership.

I then asked to talk to a manager, who apparently was busy for the afternoon. I advised I probably wouldn’t be leaving the branch until I spoke to he/she, so I’ll happily wait. I had the paper, my iPad and my Macbook, so I had plenty to keep me busy. Within 10 minutes, that very busy manager was then available.

She was very helpful, and talk to the fraud team, who had earlier said they couldn’t help. They agreed to take on my case, and would give me a call by 16:00 (it was 14:00 at the time) to confirm the refunds were in place.

At around 17:00 I thought, hey, where is my call? I gave the fraud team a call, and the person I spoke to had advised the chap who was dealing with my account had gone home. I then proceeded to ask for a manager, as I had been given the royal run around. Spoke to a very nice lady who was the supervisor who advised the handling team had rejected the case, as I had at some point given my details to PayFail.

As you can imagine, not the best of responses to give to an already peeved customer. She was pretty good, and said that department was now closed, but she was in at 09:00 the next morning, and would personally go talk to the manager of that department. She advised I check my account in the morning, and if there weren’t refunds on the account by 10:00 to give her a call directly.

The refunds were on there. Awesome. Later that afternoon, I started to get emails from people on eBay I had previously purchased things from. PayFail in their infinite wisdom, had not just looked at the amounts I had contested, they had rejected all payments I had made, all the genuine transactions. I can only imagine they couldn’t find the actual transactions that had been posted to my current account, so made up the funds from the genuine transactions. So lots of irate (and rightly so) people from eBay. I explained the situation, and most of them were fine. They just had to give PayFail some docs to prove they were g transactions, and a copy of my email.

I thought that was all done and dusted. Until someone sent me some money today, I had totally forgot they had an annual auto payment to my account. The money has been accepted, and now cannot be returned. So I have funds in my PayFail account, and oh, I can’t get hold of them.

See above, my account has been ‘limited’, funny, as it was them that had made all the errors, but they feel the need to limit my account. Interesting.

The only way I can get my account working again, is to confirm my details. One of the things I need to do, is confirm 2 transactions to my bank account. They put two transactions through up to £1, and I need to tell them how much they were for. Except, my bank have blocked all transactions from PayFail, and I do not particularly want to give them the details of my actual current account, just in case they go on a frenzy again.

Arse!

The value of feedback

Luke Sheldrick — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 20:47:34 +0000

I do sometimes question the value of review sites. Yesterday I bought a little 125cc Scooter to run around town on, and wanted to get the insurance setup, so when I picked it up, I could drive straight away.

I was looking at a few comparison sites, and one particular insurer came out cheaper than the others. Tried a few more comparison sites, all gave similar results. I went with one particular insurer, called them up, went through the paticulars, gave over my payment details. Job done. The chap seemed like a bit of a lad, but polite enough, said the paper work would take a couple of days to email through, as this time of the year is the busiest time for them. No problem.

I then thought I’d have a look about the company, just out of mild boredom. Found a review site, which was full of bad reviews on their setup process, mostly regarding docs that had been sent through wrong..etc couldn’t really comment further as hadn’t received my docs.

When checking my mail this morning, docs were in my inbox, all appear correct. So my experience didn’t seem to match everyone else’s. However would I go and give a good review? would anyone? I’d say not.

People usually only give feedback, when it’s negative. This is a somewhat over generalisation, however for the most part, true.

So what is the value of feedback sites? With the freedom of the Internet, everyone has a voice. Be it on a on a feedback/review site, forum, blog, twitter or the like. If people have a bee in their bonnet regarding a certain company, they’ll go and write paragraphs on how angry they feel, and how terrible the company is. Would they do the same for a positive? I’m not sure.

However, bring in new social media services, I’m thinking foursquare here. The idea is you ‘check in’ at place, and can leave reviews for others looking at that venue. I often give good reviews here, something short and sweet. The reason? because it’s so quick. Takes maybe an extra 2/3 seconds per check-in. I don’t need to write a lengthy review, with 10 options for different ratings, from decor to service.

As you can see my tips range from very positive updates, to beware of this place.

I use services like foursquare, over most review sites. Why? as I said above, mostly, people only (in my opinion) only write lengthy reviews, or go to proper review sites, if they’re pissed off.

Or am I completely wrong here? What do you trust?

Hack the Government!

Luke Sheldrick — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 13:49:49 +0000

So I’ve been pretty busy for the last month or so, and was actually looking forward to doing nothing at all. However a friend had mentioned the ‘National Hack the Government Day’ hosted by Rewired State, so I thought why the hell not.

Basically, they get a bunch of dev types, a bunch of data, and let them do what they want with it. I was entrigued, and said I’d pop along, take some photos and do a bit of networking. However when I got there, I thought I may as well try and hack something up, I could simply not put it forward for presentation if I majorly failed.

I’m by far a coder by trade, but can usually get from A to B, sometimes via X, Y and Z. I wont go into the detail about what I hacked up, you can see my presentation here.

There were some really awesome projects hacked up, especially considering the limited time everyone had. The presentations were all very good. Lots were still coding right up until they were on stage.

After the presentations, and awards given out it was off to the pub to celebrate Rewired State’s second birthday. There was even an amazing Gin and Tonic cake. Was a really good day, and met quite a lot of people I know online, from different parts of the industry.

Below are some of the photos I took, there are loads more here.

Apple TV 2 & XBMC

Luke Sheldrick — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 23:55:18 +0000

I was browsing around the Covent Garden Apple store the other day, as I needed to get a new SuperDrive for my MacBook Air (MBA), as I’d cleverly managed to throw my other one out when I was having a clear out the other day.

I’d always been interested in the new Apple TV (ATV) , but never got one, as I have XBMC setup at home. On a nettop in the bedroom connected to my LCD, and actually on an original Xbox in the front room, so didn’t see the need. A few friends have total Apple houses (iMacs, Macbooks, iPads, iPhones, TVs, you name it, they have it)… they’re all very nice and all, but I never really felt the need to have the ATV.

Until, in the pub the other evening, a friend at work mentioned he’d bought one, odd I thought as he’s not the usual Apple fanboy. He explained that he’d bought one, jailbroken it, and installed XBMC.

I’d been battling with the Nvidia ION drivers on my nettop, so HD content wasn’t perfect. So when I was shopping, the impulse in me took over, and one was bought.

Jailbreaking was fun. Seas0nPass doesn’t work if you have FileVault turned on, which I do. Creating a new user on the MBA, and making the IPSW on that user (without FileVault enabled). Then the way the ATV is constructed makes it somewhat difficult to plug the HDMI and MicroUSB cable in at the same time. On reflection, I think this is on purpose, as you don’t really need to. I was then getting 1602 errors in iTunes when restoring the custom IPSW, later turns out, you can’t have the power and USB connected. Restoring with just the USB cable connected did the trick. Seas0npass is currently tethered only, so anytime I power off the ATV, I have to connect to the Mac. Not a huge issue, as don’t plan on turning off too often, and have set it not to power off.

Once jailbroken with seas0npass, installing XBMC was easy, and setup in a few minutes. Have it playing full HD content from my NAS. The remote, optical out, and HDMI resolution alll work flawlessly.

The other nice feature is AirPlay, so I can stream the media from my MBA or iPhone 4. I would have been able to from my iPad too, but I sold that as hadn’t used it a single time since getting the MBA.

Overall am really impressed with the ATV2, for the price of it, it’s a stunning piece of kit.

RARR!

Luke Sheldrick — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 18:28:40 +0000

So today, I am mostly furious. This is due to a number of things. I’ve had a pretty crap week, and was really looking forward to having a nice long weekend to relax and enjoy myself. I adore spending time with my friends, and they’re a very important part of my life. However…

Yesterday I was in Slough for work, and was planning to go out in Vauxhall in the evening to an event I knew a friends would be at. I txt/IMed a few people earlyish in the day, but didn’t hear anything back. Assuming they weren’t going, on my way back to London, I took the route that would take me straight home, and then settled in for the eve. I then get messages later on to say they were there, at this point I was in no mood to travel back across London. Also spoke to another friend later in the eve, who wasn’t going to go, but knew I wanted to, who turns out to have gone. Would have been nice to let me know? but hey, guess not.

Today I wanted to go around the Tottenham Court Road computer fairs, I’d mentioned it to a friend to see if he wanted to go along, and he was going to let me know if he could make it. Nothing heard back this morning. I was then meant to meet another friend for lunch in the afternoon. She said she was going to finish work at 13:00, and give me a shout, to look to meet around 13:30/14:00. I’d come home back to East London where I live, and she works in anticipation of hearing from her. At 14:30, I was a bit worried as hadn’t heard back from her, so gave her a shout, to be told she now wasn’t coming.

Seriously WTF, do people not have any concept of general courtsey? If I arrange to do something, and I can’t make it, even if I just don’t fancy it, I’ll certainly let the other people know as soon as know. I certainly wouldn’t expect them to have to chase me after the arranged time to see if I could be bothered. My day has been mostly trashed, and my time wasted. All could have been averted if others had just had some forthought. These are by no way isolated incidents, this happens far too often for my liking.

Same goes with people being late, sure shit happens that makes being bang on time difficult. However we all have mobiles today, it’s not like you cant send a call/txt. Nobody is perfect, however people who are prepetually late, really get my back up. I make every effort to be on time for everything, and if I’m not, crikey at least I’ll make sure you know before hand. Being on the tube is no excuse either, I’ll always ensure I send a message before going down to the tube/losing signal.

RARRR!!

P.S: if you read this and think this is about you, I don’t mean this to be directed at or moaning about you, just about today’s society in general. I don’t hold grudges, but maybe just think about someone other than yourself next time?

MythTV – Stuck Queue

Luke Sheldrick — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 22:06:07 +0000

I use DHCP at home, as most do, for convenience. Last week I changed the router at home to one compatible with DD-WRT as I was setting IPv6 up at home (something I should blog about later). When I set it up, until I migrated the old DHCP config over, everything on the LAN that had static DHCP allocations went a bit crazy. Once that was resolved everything went back to normal… or so I thought.

However I’d noticed that MythTV wasn’t recording anything. When looking through it had listed all of it’s encoders as remote and “currently not connected”, interesting I thought. It looked like somewhere along the line that box had got 192.168.5.6 instead of 192.168.5.5. So it didn’t think it was, well it’s self. Changing the DHCP assignments quickly resolved this.

A week later I noticed whilst programs had been recording, they were all sitting queued in Job Queue. Restarting the backend process nor did restarting the box. So I had a quick look on it’s DB and noticed the recordings were showing as remote, not local as they should be. Delving a bit further I noticed that it was listing the recordings as being recorded on “sidekick.oob.an0key.net” instead of “sidekick”. I’d set the domain on the router, and it was happily distributing via DHCP.

So to resolve my issue, I changed the hostname manually, back to sidekick.

To do this on ubuntu is pretty simple, edit
/etc/hostname
with the desired hostname and then
/etc/init.d/hostname.sh restart
However I was now stuck, with all the recordings showing as being recorded on the ‘remote’ host. The only way to fix this would be to edit the database manually. This is where it the less adventurous may want to stop.

So log on to your MySQL instance, it’ll prompt for MySQL’s root password.
sidekick:~# mysql -p -u root
Use mythtv’s database named mythconverg in my setup.
use mythconverg;
Then print the structure and contents of the jobqueue table.
select * from jobqueue;
This is what I was presented with.
mysql> select * from jobqueue; +-----+--------+---------------------+---------------------+------+------+-------+--------+---------------------+-------------------------+------+-------------------------+---------------------+ | id | chanid | starttime | inserttime | type | cmds | flags | status | statustime | hostname | args | comment | schedruntime | +-----+--------+---------------------+---------------------+------+------+-------+--------+---------------------+-------------------------+------+-------------------------+---------------------+ | 284 | 1001 | 2011-02-03 17:11:00 | 2011-02-03 17:15:01 | 256 | 0 | 0 | 272 | 2011-02-03 17:15:53 | sidekick | | Successfully Completed. | 2011-02-03 17:15:01 | | 283 | 1004 | 2011-02-02 22:00:00 | 2011-02-02 23:05:00 | 256 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2011-02-03 17:25:24 | sidekick.oob.an0key.net | | | 2011-02-02 23:05:00 | | 282 | 1001 | 2011-02-02 21:00:00 | 2011-02-02 22:00:01 | 256 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2011-02-03 17:25:24 | sidekick.oob.an0key.net | | | 2011-02-02 22:00:01 | | 279 | 1007 | 2011-02-01 21:00:00 | 2011-02-01 22:00:01 | 256 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2011-02-03 17:25:24 | sidekick.oob.an0key.net | | | 2011-02-01 22:00:01 |
So I can see the that the job ran fine that came in after I changed the hostname. So what I decided to try is to update the hostname, and also the scheduledtime too as it was in the past.
mysql> update jobqueue set -> status=1,hostname="sidekick",comment="",schedruntime="2011-02-03 17:30:01" where status=1;
So this will update the hostname and schedruntime for anything with status 1 (which means queued). I ran that and restarted mythtv-backend, and all the queue was then worked though.

Job done. Hopefully this may help someone else in a sticky position.

Amoxoi-tastic

Luke Sheldrick — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 19:15:43 +0000

Usually, I’d shrug off being ill, with the occasional rant about the seasonal flu. However January really has taken the biscuit.

The week before Christmas, I had an awful cold (I won’t compensate and call it flu). Luckily I was then fine for a few days over the Christmas break. To then come down with the worst case of flu I think I’ve ever had the week after. Literally a week in bed, was very grim. I suspect that was swine flu.

Have then been fine for a week or so, to then come down with another cold, again with a weasey chest. The cold has now pretty much gone, but I still sound like a burst hoover every time I breath in and out.

So I checked in at the local doctors this morning, to be greeted with a really caring, genuinely nice doctor. I told her what the history, and she had a listen to my chest, and concurred something was not right.

She prescribed me 500mg Amoxicillin, as she believes I’ve had a secondary infection in my chest. This may be causing a bit of a loop. Chest gets better (but weakens immune system) > Influenza takes hold due to weaken immune system > Chest… etc

I’ve never really been a fan of anti-biotics, you read about the super bacteria, that are cropping up all over the place. Some believe these are ‘evolving’ due to the over use of anti-biotics. I’m also not a huge fan of popping a pill at every opportunity. However, not taken any anti-biotics for the first 25 years of my life, I’m sure one dose wont bring on the resident evil stylie zombies… or will it?

I really don’t travel light…

Luke Sheldrick — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 22:24:56 +0000

So last weekend I went to visit some friends for the day, and packed a usual day trip bag. I’ve always been aware I don’t really travel light, however when I got everything out to take a “Whats in your bag” photo, I was quite shocked, on just how much stuff I carry around usually.

Below is the outcome of emptying my bag… quite a lot of stuff in there… maybe I should think about scaling down?

At least I can safely say, I’ll never be bored if I get stuck anywhere.

Goodnight, Irene, Goodnight

Luke Sheldrick — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 13:40:21 +0000

Yesterday, we said goodbye to my amazing Nanna, Irene Alice Sheldrick. Born 7th October 1913, and taken from us 2nd December 2010, aged 97.

I started off my blog with a dedication to her, some three years ago. She was an amazing woman, she was a grandmother to me and my three cousins, a great grandmother to five, and a great great grandmother to Theo. I’ve never met someone with such strength and dedication. Living through the both World Wars, bringing up my Father, and my Aunt, always being there for everyone, she will be dearly missed.

Words can’t really do justice to say how much she’ll be missed. I like to think she is still with us, and still getting her own way. The funeral director on the day of the service, had to tell us that he had unfortunately forgot to bring the CDs for the service. One of the songs was Goodnight Irene by Nat King Cole. We all firmly believe that this was Nan’s doing, she didn’t want us to say goodbye. I was very lucky to see her the day before she was taken from us, and tell her how much we all loved her. I’ll always have very fond memories of visiting her in my summer holidays, and her doing her morning excercises in her kitchen door way, even at the age of 80.

Rest in piece Nan, say hello to Purple for me.

Movember – Update

Luke Sheldrick — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 14:36:32 +0000

So, I’ve been growing my Tache, in aid of Movember since 1st November, and well, it’s horrid. My beard, if you can call it that, grows multicoloured, from white, to mousey brown, to ginger, not to mention it looks like someone has just put a load of pubes on my face.

Never the less, I’ve carried it on, and as you can see from the above, am following all the rules. I had to remove my Soul Patch, as this was against the rules. I’ve had a soul patch for quite some years now, and it’s a bit of a running joke, that I’ve missed a bit when shaving.

The interesting thing I did find out yesterday, was that a few places are giving freebies away for anyone partaking in Movember, such as Byron, between 15:00 and 19:00 will give you a free burger, and wahaca Monday to Tuesdays, are giving a free burrito, amazing stuff!

So seeing as I had lunch on the Mo today, I thought I’d give a quick update, then go on the pester for more donations. Think a bit of facebook spamming, and emailing the likely lot at work is well in order.

If you’d like to donate (comeon, you know you want to) please visit my MOSPACE, and donate on there? A few pounds would be awesome. It’s going to a great cause (Prostate Cancer Charity) and I’ll keep growing the mo (looking like a pillock) kthxbi

Movember

Luke Sheldrick — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 22:32:22 +0000

So, in the name of charity, this November I am participating in Movember. Movember is an annual month-long event involving the growing of moustaches during the month of November.

I rarely participate in charity events myself, but often donate to worthy causes, so decided this is a pretty good thing to do. There are a load of my friends and chaps in my office doing it, so humiliation is shared around.

To be honest, when I try and grow a beard or any sort of facial growth, it just looks like adolescent multicoloured bum fluff, as you can see above. Any small donation to the charity will make this all very much worthwhile.

The proceeds go to the Prostate Cancer Charity and Everyman, which are two charities I regularly donate to myself, so see these as awesome causes.

Currently I am sitting bottom of the donation league, so really need to start pleading with you all for some of your coppers…. please dig deep, any donation, big or small will be most welcome…

To donate please go to my mo-space over at movember.

Why BT are a bag-of-fail

Luke Sheldrick — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 13:43:23 +0000

So BT, arguably the UKs biggest ISP/telco, in my opinion are a complete bag of fail. Now I guess writing this means, that I’ll probably never work for them, but hey, who would want to?

I’ve dealt with BT whilst working at $dayjob-1, and the incompetence I saw there, was shocking to say the least. That I can deal with, I got paid to deal with it, but when it’s in my time it’s a different story.

BT or rather BTOpenzone serve a huge amount of establishments with their Wifi ‘Cloud’ offering. Most places like Starbucks, if you have a registered account with them, will happily let you use it for free.

However before you can do this, you need to go through the authentication process with BT. This basically hijacks any DNS request you send, and redirects you to a the auth page. That’s kind of ok, for most users.

However most times when I use it, it’s a complete failure.

They use port 8443 for SSL, instead of the standard 443. This can play havock with local firewalls.
The certificate they use for www.btopenzone.com is not valid for that domain, so most browsers will flag a massive security warning.
Their DNS often is broken.
If it is working, the webserver you try to connect to, isn’t running (connection refused).

The last two are especially annoying, like today, in Starbucks (Whitechappel Road). I switch the macbook on, join their wifi, get an IP and DGW, then any page I go to, should redirect me to their auth page. However seems it is slightly broken, as normal.

So this is telling me that Safari cannot connect to the server. This can be a bit vague, so you need to dig a bit deeper. Open up your terminal and try to simulate what the browser is doing.

So you telnet to www.btopenzone.com on port 8443. You get a connection refused. This means that from my macbook, I got over their network, right to the end server, which is saying ‘Hey, that port is open, but I don’t have anything running on it’.

I’ve no idea what is on the backend of btopenzone.com however looking at the DNS resolution:
Luke-Sheldricks-Mac-4:~ luke$ dig www.btopenzone.com ; DiG 9.6.0-APPLE-P2 <<>> www.btopenzone.com ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 15147 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;www.btopenzone.com. IN A ;; ANSWER SECTION: www.btopenzone.com. 17378 IN A 217.41.225.106

It’s only returning a single IP, which could be the IP of a load balancer, and then a number of servers behind that IP. However I wouldn’t expect all of them to fail.

With the helpful tool nmap, we can see:

PORT STATE SERVICE VERSION 80/tcp open http SunONE WebServer 6.1 442/tcp open ssl/http SunONE WebServer 6.1 443/tcp open ssl/http SunONE WebServer 6.1 8443/tcp open ssl/http Apache Tomcat/Coyote JSP engine 1.1

So using an old Solaris 8 server (the current version is 10) to run their authentication services. Can’t say for sure, but I wouldn’t be surpised if there is only one server back there. The amount of times I’ve seen this, really does go to show how under speced their ‘solution is’. I look after massive solutions in $dayjob, and this kind of thing would never happen, and if it did, certainly wouldn’t for long.

To sum up: BT you suck.

My ‘cloud’ IM setup

Luke Sheldrick — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 23:00:19 +0000

For a long time now, I’ve had a number of different applications I use to connect to various different IM (instant messaging) mediums, such as Irssi for IRC, Pidgin for Jabber/MSN/etc on my desktops/laptops and usually BeeJive on my iPhone when I’m out and about.

This has all ‘kinda’ worked, it hasn’t been the most elegant of solutions, but it did do what I need it to. Until you add something like the iPad to the mix.

The problem I had, was I’d be signed on to say MSN on my MacBook, and then decide I’ve worked enough for the day, so sign off. Then whilst watching TV in the evening, want to send a message to someone, who only uses MSN, so grab my iPad and sign on via BeeJive. Well that kind of works, except, if I forget to sign off BeeJive, it keeps me online on their ‘cloud’, so I can connect back at any time via the iPad, only the iPad though.

If someone was to send me a message when the client is closed on the iPad, sure it sends a push message to it, but no other device. If I go out, and I know someone has sent me a message, I can’t connect to it via BeeJive on the iPhone, as it doesn’t keep them in sync. Same as if I wanted to log in with the MacBook, I can’t see what that message was.

So I decided this doesn’t work how I want and need it to. So I set about designing my own solution. The aim was to set something up running on my infrastructure, at little or no cost (not always easy when you add any iOS devices in the mix), and reliable.

What I came up with, works really well for me, so thought I’d document what I put together.

The server components run on a machine that is always on, the is the core of the solution. The underlying OS I used is a Fedora 14 box (so Fedora rawhide – the development branch). The packages I’ve used are widely available on pretty much every Linux distribution, ports (OS X, *BSD), so the OS here, really doesn’t make much of a difference.

Server side:
Irssi – a cross platform IRC client.
ZNC – a cross platform IRC bouncer.
BitlBee – a cross platform IM gateway for IRC.

Client side:
Colloquy Mobile – iOS IRC client – use this on the iPad and iPhone.
Adium (Beta) – OS X IM client – use the beta version as it supports IRC.
Pidgin – a cross platform IM client – use this on any Windows or Linux machines i happen to be on.

Again the client side really doesn’t matter, just as long as you have something you can connect to an IRC server with, it should be all good.

The setup uses BitlBee to connect to MSN, G-Talk, Jabber, Facebook chat, and pretty much any other IM network you’d want to connect into. BitlBee presents it’s self as a IRC server, and you contact list is all shown as a room. When you chat to someone you do so as you would traditionally. That part worked a treat.

At first I just had Irssi running with the proxy module enabled, this allows you to reconnect into your Irssi session, with a local client, and ‘pose’ as remote session. This worked well, so I just left Irssi running in a remote screen session, then when I wanted to connect in and chat, I would just open say Pidgin locally, and it would connect to all the rooms the Irssi session had.

This was fine, however, Irssi on it’s own doesn’t support playback. What I mean here is, if someone had sent me a DM, Irssi would have it, but when I logged in with Pidgin, Irssi wouldn’t send me a copy of that message, it only forwards new messages. For these kind of features, I’d need to employ a bouncer, not the thuggish type that stand outside nightclubs, but an IRC bouncer.

I tried a few, but settled with ZNC. I should point out here, that when using ZNC, there isn’t really any need to use Irssi in the equation any more, I just kept it as have a few custom scripts, and all my historic logs are there, so decided to keep it.

ZNC will connect to all your favourite IRC networks, keep you online, and when you connect to it with your client, it will replay all the conversations and DMs you missed since you last connected in. this was exactly the functionality I was looking for.

There are also a host of other cool things you can do with ZNC, so I have mine configured to set me away everywhere 5 minutes after my client disconnects. Also if you team colloquy mobile up with ZNC, you can have it push message your iPhone or iPad if you’re mentioned in a chat, or if someone sends you a DM, I have mine set to only do this if there are no other clients connected, else when I’m at computer having a conversation, both my iPhone and iPad have a bit of a push message spasm. This push message function was exactly what I was looking for to replace BeeJive, except this pushes it to all my devices, not just the one that has my account singed in.. neat I thought.

This my no means is the simplest way to set up your MSN, but for if you want all the prerequisites I did, it really works.

The server topology may be a bit complex so have (for my sins) put together a diagram of how it’s set out, along with a few screenshots.

Any questions, please feel free to ask.

Web interface and more from your Huawei E5830 (Three MiFi)

Luke Sheldrick — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 22:02:04 +0000

Last year I bought a Three MiFi aka the Huawei E5830. The small box of magic has a 3G sim and a battery. It’s basically a wireless router. What this allows you to do is to ‘share’ the 3G connection to 5 wireless devices, as well as an additional one via usb.

So when I’m out, it’s great. If I need to use my netbook, laptop, iPod Touch, or my iPhone or Blackberry if their connection is poor, I can just switch on my MiFi, and as long as there is a decent Three data signal, I’m good to go. It’s a lot more flexible than just having a 3G dongle or using the inbuilt 3G modem on my laptop and netbooks, as I can share it with a number of devices at once, effortlessly.

The problem with it, is it comes with some poorly written software which is windows only app to configure the device, which can only be used when the MiFi is connected via USB. Not ideal? Well no not really. Quite often I’ll let someone I’m with leach off it, and want to set the password to something easy to share, and turn mac filtering off. This is often when I’m out and about, and I only have one windows machine, which is my work laptop, which I’m not in the habit of keeping with me. Also the interface gives no stats as to how much data I’ve used, or any logging.

So I was looking around the interwebs the other night, as I thought there must be a way around this. The previous wireless router (albeit not battery powered but still made by huawei) I had, did have a web interface at least. Turns out there are a number of different firmwares available if you’re a bit brave, which unlock the good stuff.

First of all have a read of the flashing guide here. The process is pretty straight forward if you follow the instructions. There are two versions of the firmware available out there, one by another network, which brands with their branding, which I wasn’t a fan of. There is also the official firmware (not from three though) which is what I used, and so far am quite happy with. You can get that from here.

Make sure you follow the flashing guide, and if like mine if you flash b0rks half way through and your device then doesn’t turn on, not all is lost. Follow the guide again, and keep trying. For best results use XP. However if you’re going to use Vista/7, then ensure you run the exe as administrator, else it will get half way through the flash, then b0rk, leaving you with a MiFi that wont boot.

Once you’ve updated the firmware it should reboot, and the come back as normal. I noticed that it seemed to turn on a lot faster Also turning on 3G/Data and Wireless seems a lot quicker too. The standard Three utility will still work as before, just connect via USB. However now you’ll have web access to the Mifi, with all the goodies unlocked. So go to 192.168.x.1 where x is the subnet you set, default is 1 (so 192.168.1.1). You’ll get a login screen, the username is admin, as is the password.Then you can go in to all the advanced features. You also get a bandwidth usage which is really nice to have if you’re always running out.

You can also change the config quite a bit, which is awesome. Two things that used to annoy me, that I had to turn it on, then turn wifi on, and then 3G, it should just do it all when I turn it on. Now I can set this… WIN.

Also noticed that it has a mobile (well looks iPod/iPhone friendly) gui too. Point safari to the same IP and you get

So a lot more usable, and I can say goodbye to being stuck to Windows for it. Good luck, let me know how you got on.

A walk down memory lane

Luke Sheldrick — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 23:49:45 +0000

I’ve been at Mum’s over Christmas, and is always a bit weird coming back to the area.
I moved away to Southend-on-Sea (Essex) when I was 14, and lived in Essex until very recently.

I was meeting Mum from work today, to go on to visit my Brother for the afternoon. As I’m one of those people who are usually early, and I had a few hours to kill so thought I’d go for a wander.

There was always an area near to where I used to live, that was totally different to the surrounding area, and always somewhere I’d love to escape to. I always dreamt of living in one of the houses, and today was a bit of a shock, to realise, well actually I could if wanted to. At that point, I realised, I’m getting old. It’s like I always wished I’d work in IT, with a nice car…blah blah when I was older, and now I actually do it’s a bit like, well what do I do now? Well I know next time I have to move, which I hope isn’t anytime soon, that I’ll be looking in SE16.

Anyways back to the houses, they’re all in a small bit of Bermandsey, by the Thames, and Greenland Docks, but they have the most picturesque surroundings. Most overlook their own water features or ponds (like the above), and I just find them amazing.

Throughout my visit, I was followed by the Cygnet above… maybe he was trying to butter me up, so if I moved into the area, I’d keep him in stock of moulding Hovis.

Amazingly, the car above, I’m sure has been in that same parking space, since I left, when I was 13 (so a few years). Still has up to date TAX, but never looks as though it’s moved. Amazing.

A new view

Luke Sheldrick — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:29:34 +0000

So I’ve been really quite lax on updating here, for a number of reasons really or more excuses if I am honest.

There has been a lot of change since I last wrote an entry. I finally bit the bullet and moved back to Central London. I’d been living in Southend-on-Sea since I was 14, but for a number of years worked back in the city, and the commute was just too much in the end.

So I am now living in E1, with my new flatmate Andrew, just up the road from where the above was taken. The best thing is, it’s only about a mile walk into the office, so I don’t have to depend on public transport or worry about traffic anymore, which is great. I was cycling for the first month or so, but it seems I had forgotten about crime in London, and someone kindly pinched my bike whilst it was chained up outside the flat, so won’t be cycling for a while.

Living in the city has been great so far, lots of places to go, people to see, and am quite enjoying it so far. Still feel like the new guy in town, as don’t hardly know anyone locally, but that’s just a time thing, so I’m not overly worried. However if you do read this, and are in the area, am free for coffee, beers and bar mitzvahs.

I foresee lots more changes over the next few months, especially at work, however can’t really go into much as there haven’t been many announcements as yet.

Have a heap of stuff I could rabble on about, but I’ll save it for another time. I do hope to keep the blog more regularly updated however I don’t seem to get the same urges anymore since twitter has kicked off. If you wanted a more frequent update, check out www.twitter.com/an0key

Windows 7 RC1, Boot Camp & VMware Fusion – No Networking

Luke Sheldrick — Thu, 07 May 2009 18:29:11 +0000

Last week when I was at a festival, my macbook unfortunately ran totally out of space, and there wasn’t much I could delete. With almost 20 gigs of SD cards, the only thing that could really take the chop was my XP boot camp partition.

Cut a long story short, I’ve now got a much bigger drive (500 GB) for my macbook. Along with the release of Windows 7 RC1 being released I thought I’d give it a try with boot camp.

Installing is pretty easy, burn the Microsoft ISO to a DVD, and follow the normal guide. I detest the fact that I need to burn another CD, or use my OS X Install DVD (which I can never find) to get the boot camp drivers. If like me you’d like to download them, I’ve given a link below to where you may find them. I just put them on a usb stick.

Once installed, pretty much everything works under boot camp, the only thing I found that didn’t play was the ‘Reboot into OS X’ I get an error. This isn’t a huge problem, as you can just hold the alt key on boot up to select OS X or Windows.

Once I got all that working, I then wanted to get the same build / partition under VMware fusion. Reading a few guides, the best way is to follow the normal guide for XP, but change it so the guest is set to Windows 2008 Server. Again, all working pretty well once you install VMware Tools.

The only problem that I did have, is there was no networking for the guest. The NIC just showed as Ethernet Controller. Nothing seemed to get this NIC working, tried manually installing the drivers from the VMWare tools cd, copying from another Windows 7 guest.

The only thing that seemed to fix it, was to shutdown the guest, and add a second NIC, and boot back up. Windows 7 RC1, installs this NIC with no problems at all, and all is working. Intererstingly, it still wont play with the original one. None the less, it’s all working through it’s second, new NIC, so I am happy with that.

Useful links

Panorama & HDR Processing – My first attempt

Luke Sheldrick — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 04:18:02 +0000

As you may have gathered I’ve been spending some time with my D60. I must say of all my hobbies it’s probably the most rewarding.

I’ve been looking at loads of pictures on flickr, and there are some stupidly amazing shots. However to get that extra edge a lot oh photographers use a technique called HDR, or High dynamic range imaging. I’ve been itching to have a play, but also watched to play with panoramic stitching.

So before I set off on the trip to work tonight, I quickly nipped pass Southend Seafront, and took a few snaps.

So first I played with the stitching together, it wasn’t as straight forward as the tutorials had made out, the main difficulty I had was filling in the sky. Got over that and this is what I came up with

Then I had a play with HDRs. In my case mine was a psyudo-hdr, the difference being that I did all my editing from a single RAW image, rather than different RAWs, with different exposures. This is what I came up with

I really quite like how it came out, especially for my first attampt.

Synergy

Luke Sheldrick — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 02:41:49 +0000

A friend told me of a magical cross platform application, which I’ve been using for a while, thought I’d share. Synergy;

“Synergy lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware. It’s intended for users with multiple computers on their desk since each system uses its own monitor(s). ”

The picture above shows my very small desk, sporting 2x 22 Samsungs, and my Dell D420. Under the desk is an old HP desktop powering the two monitors (and soon to be 9′ touch screen above them, when I get the drivers setup). I rarely use the D420 these days, as I use my MacBook or Advent 4213 notebook when out and about, so didn’t mind giving it up to the desk.

I can use the keyboard and mouse on the laptop, to control both it, and the bigger screens. The neat thing is, with the config setup correctly, I can just move the mouse upwards and the pointer magically moves to the other screen, and the keyboard then controls that computer too. A few other neat options are to have a shared clipboard, and to activate the screensaver/lock screen across all computers with each other.

So on my tiny desk, I can fit in quite a lot of screen real estate. As for using the laptop as a primary keyboard, I started to do this at work when the hotdesk keyboards started to freak me out, and using the laptop keyboard is actually quite nice to use.

Have tested Synergy with os x, and all worked pretty flawlessly there too. Not had a chance to test under windows just yet, as rarely use it these days, but from what I’ve read it all works fine.

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