2006

I’ve been wanting to make a script in PHP that handles downloads for a while. Last night I was bored, so I made one.

DISCLAIMER:
This is a very basic example, but if you have any use for this, I’m sure that you can figure out how to use it. If not, I’ll probably work more with it in the future anyways.

This system works with two PHP files.

If you just want to see the script work, go Here.

I’ll try to make this as simple as possible.

I’m going to assume that you’re using Linux (and that you are not a complete noob at it) for this tutorial. I will assume that you’re using a Sony Clie.

Here’s an overview of what we’re going to do:

1. Rip dvd using DVD:Rip
2. Convert ripped movie into a clie compatible format
3. Download and install TCPMP (free media player)
4. (optional) Install Memory Stick Pro fix
5. Copy Movie to the Memory Stick

Step 1: Download and Install Files
apt-get install dvdrip
apt-get install pilot-link
Download TCMP (for palm)
Download all attachments

Recently, my Dad purchased the Linksys WRT54G. If you follow tech news, you probably know that more or less, the device (as well as at least one other Linksys device) was hacked.

All that I have so far is a couple of links, here they are:

Seattle Wireless
Shaneo
I-hacked article (good)
Openwrt
Hyperwrt
Wifi-Box
Ewrt
Sveasoft

The last one looks the most promising.

I’ll be working on this over spring break (next week), so keep an eye out for a little ‘howto’ on this.

Okay, let’s pretend that this isn’t the first time that I’ve posted in about a month. School really has been crazy. I haven’t really even had time to do anything new or cool lately. Tonight though, I’m putting school aside.

I’ve been having some problems with one of the daemons on one of my server’s randomly dying on me, and it got to the point that I couldn’t bear it anymore, I had to find a solution.

I’ve tried and tried to build my own custom kernel over the past year or so, usually only to stop in frustration because of some small part of the process not working.

This is all different now.

I found out that using the took make-kpkg makes things way easier. In fact I configured, compiled, and installed kernel 2.6.15 in about 30 minutes including the time that it took me to build it.

I love the word uber, but before today I didn’t know how cool the word really is.

From wikipedia:

The word

This semester is going to be crazy.

I just got done with my first morning class in more than a half of a year and I thought that I was going to die. I didn’t really care about the fact that it was a morning class, it was more about the class itself.

My 9:30 class on Mondays and Wednesdays is Intro to Logic. The class seemed like it would be a good choice (plus it was required for my degree), but I didn’t think that it would be as boring as it was today.

I’ve been messing around with iptables a bit more than usual the past week or so. Through this process, I decided that it wasn’t worth it for me to keep creating / tweaking all of my rules by hand. So.. I found an Excellent (with a capital ‘E’) frontend to iptables.

For me the frontend had to meet some strict requirements.

1. It must have a curses graphical user interface
2. It must be easy to use

Something called Jay’s Iptables Fits these requirements perfectly.

I found a few cool things this morning.

The first being a way to install a rpm file in Debian. You do this using the alien command (apt-get install alien).

To convert a package from an rpm to a deb run the following command:
alias --to-deb

To just install a rpm use the following command:
alias -i

It's that easy.

Also, I was looking at some stories on the front page of Digg, and found a Great New Library for use with Google Maps. It has the features of the one that I was messing around with earlier (I forgot the name of it). It even includes the features that I had to add inot the other library.

If you’ve got more than one computer running Debian that packages are downloaded through apt, then apt-cacher should help you a lot.

Apt-cacher is actually a cgi script that is run by apache. Using apt-cacher is very easy, and installing it is even easier.

Step 1: Install apt-cacher.
(Run this on the proxy computer)

apt-get install apt-cacher

Enter the webpage : http://localhost/apt-cacher
to see that the proxy is running.

Step 2: Backup and Convert Clients sources.list.
(Do this on the computers that you want to access the cache.)