kennywest

Vinyl records have been there for ages. My dad still has a couple of old records but he has no turntable anymore to play them. This is because _I_ claimed his turntable a long time ago, which he thought had become old fashioned. I started buying vinyl records about 12 years ago. I remember saving all my pocket money and buying the latest records with it, instead of visiting pubs with friends. I remember everyone thinking vinyl records belonged to the past and MP3's and CD's were taking over. In fact, this was not true. DJ's playing at parties and clubs never stopped buying records and from my experience, about 80% of their music came from plain old vinyl and a tiny 20% from other media like CD's or MP3's. The reasoning behind this is simple, if you wanted something new, something not popular (yet), you bought it on vinyl. If it became popular, some record company would probably be so kind to put it on some CD and sell it. But then again, ages, if not decades ( :) )

NVIDIA has had the best drivers for Linux users for several years. Since early releases of KDE 4, however, some nasty artifacts appeared when running some Gnome based applications (like Open Office and Thunderbird) on systems with NVIDIA cards. These bugs have been reported to NVIDIA but haven't been addressed until now. According to this very long thread, the latest beta drivers from NVIDIA (180.x) the nasty artifacts should have disappeared. I compiled and installed this latest driver and indeed, the panel corruption when, for example, composing a new mail in Thunderbird does no longer appear. Finally, people running KDE 4 with NVIDIA cards are no longer nvidia-victims :)

In an earlier post I was talking about how I've been using mondo as preferred backup solution for quite some time. However, I have never used it to restore stuff, since I've never broken any install before and hardware hasn't failed on me yet. Since I wanted to replace the smaller 10GB hard drive, I've installed in the Wyse, with a bigger 500GB one, this would be an ideal case to try and restore everything with mondo . So I created a backup of the 10GB drive with mondo to an NFS share on another PC (using the script posted earlier). Next, burned the resulting ISO to a CD and finally booted from the CD and interactively restored my data. mondo has 2 main restore modes; interactive and nuke. Since my new drive was bigger than the original drive, mondo suggested to drop to interactive mode, which allowed me to create a whole new partition scheme (which is nice). The only thing that failed was grub installing itself on the master boot record. I'm not sure why, maybe

Ubuntu has been a fantastic operating system for my desktop and has been my preferred Desktop OS for more than 3 years now. The cool thing about Ubuntu is it's Debian based. So you install once and dist-upgrade to every new release without ever having to reinstall the whole thing. The downside is a dist-upgrade in Ubuntu sometimes fails leaving you with a very b0rken system. That's why I stick with LTS releases for now, because I have little spare time to reinstall my desktop every few months or so. Nevertheless there are brave people out there always keeping track of the latest, more or less stable, version and don't mind the dist-upgrade problems. Anyway if your install is broken after a dist-upgrade (or any upgrade) it's always nice to have a backup at hand. In search of the ideal, most flexible, backup tool out there I found mondo . So, people, stop asking for a backup tool for Linux on forums, this one will suite your needs. Unlike some other tools, mondo creates

I like to have my users, that will be logging in on different types of machines on the network, stored in a central place. The ideal solution for this is an LDAP repository and configuring Samba to talk to this repository and configure it as a Primary Domain Controller. This solution will enable users running Linux to authenticate using pam_ldap and users running Windows (NT and up) authenticate against a Samba Domain Controller. Linux users can also join their machines on the Samba domain, and create shares accessible to other users known by the Domain Controller. This setup caused me a second headache, since the Samba server running on Ubuntu Hardy could not join the Samba Domain Controller running on Etch. This is because there is a compatibility issue between Samba 3.0.28a (Hardy) and Samba 3.0.24a (Etch). I had to fetch some more recent source packages here and compile and build them on Etch. This is not a procedure for the faint of heart, so if you haven't upgraded to Lenny

If you're still following these series of posts and installed Debian Etch on your firewall, please go back and install Lenny instead. The problem with Etch is that it has a lot of old, outdated, software packages, containing bugs that _will_ cause you headaches. While configuring cups should be a breeze, there are a number of bugs requiring you to do some manual interventions on the server side. First there is a compatibility issue which causes cups to hang when configuring printers using Firefox 3. Due to export regulations, Debian does not ship Open SSL by default, causing cups to hang while generating SSL keys. The new admin interface now requires HTTPS, so you will need to install Open SSL by hand. The default configuration for cups, generated bu Debian's package management, also contains a few flaws. All the above things are probably resolved in Lenny, so you might want to consider upgrading to Lenny. I chose to stick with Etch and here are the things I did to get cups up

The Wyse will be used as my gateway to the internet. There are a lot of out of the box Linux (and BSD) firewall distributions out there. Some of them run from a bootable CD, others can even run from a single floppy. The problem with these distributions is they don't have all the necessary software I need. Next to the firewall software, I will need the following additional services: samba: to use as server for potential windows machines on the network LDAP: to serve as central storage for user accounts and their metadata cups: to use as centralized printing server for all kinds of machines on the network other services I might have forgotten (like subversion, squid, dansguardian, ....) I have to admit, though, that Endian comes close to what I need, but I just like to do stuff all myself :) My old Etch firewall was running some custom firewall script I created by hand, but this time, I wanted to use a tool called fwbuilder to create the script. fwbuilder is a GUI available for mo

In a previous post I showed how to install a Domain Name Relay Daemon to serve as a caching DNS server. Since the firewall will get its address from the DHCP server from your ISP, there's one small configuration we still need to do. In /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf we need to uncomment (or add, if its not there) the following line: prepend domain-name-servers 192.168.1.254; This will make sure the firewall itself will query the name server on the firewall to resolve host names on the local network and the Internet. The firewall should also run a DHCP server for the internal network. The internal network addresses range from 192.168.1.1/255.255.255.0 to 192.168.1.253/255.255.255.0 . So, first we need to install a DHCP server: # apt-get install dhcp3-server Next, use the following configuration for /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf : allow bootp; ddns-update-style none; subnet 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 { default-lease-time 600; max-lease-time 7200; option subnet-mas

The new Wyse machine should serve as a caching DNS for the internal network. This will enable us to resolve host names on the internet (e.g. www.google.com) and local hostnames (e.g. localhostname.earth). My old router used dnrd to accomplish this, so I will use dnrd again. You could use a full blown DNS server, such as bind but bind has always suffered some security issues and is harder to configure (but not impossible). So, first we need to download and extract dnrd: # wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/dnrd/dnrd-2.20.3.tar.gz # tar xvfz dnrd-2.20.3.tar.gz Next, install a compiler: # apt-get install gcc # apt-get install g++ # apt-get install make Next, configure the package: # ./configure Compile and install the package: # make # make install Create a startup script ( /etc/init.d/dnrd ) #! /bin/sh set -e PATH= /usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin DESC= "Domain Name Relay Daemon" NAME= dnrd DAEMON= /usr/local/sbin/ $NAME PIDFILE= /var/run/ $N

As already mentioned in an earlier post , I have bought a small Wyse thin client. The picture above shows the Transcend flash card with 40-pin IDE that comes with the Wyse terminal. The card can only store 512MB data and I am not sure how a flash card reacts on a live operating system writing log files to it every now and then. A flash card ages and has a limited number of write / delete operations. Since the Wyse has plenty of room, I decided to mount a normal 10 GB hard drive, recovered from an older PC. I also installed an extra network card, since this device will be used as firewall / router / proxy for my network. Most Wyse terminals' BIOS are protected with a password. The default password is Fireport (I had to look it up on the internet). You'll need this password and enter the BIOS to change the device's boot order. By default, it searches the network for a boot image ... which will take some time if you don't have a TFTP boot server running. The picture below

Before I start telling about my new pet project, I must congratulate my 3 colleagues that joined me at the Ubuntu booth on this weekends Dipro fair. We managed to gather around €80 of donations from people collecting an Ubuntu (or Kubuntu) installation medium. Compared to an earlier fair I did, with roughly the same people, this amount of money is enormous. If everything goes well, this money will be transfered to the Belgium Ubuntu loco team for supporting their actions. Anyway, like any other Dipor fair, there were a lot of people trying to sell old computers and laptops for unreasonable prices, the most hideous cases, do-it-yourself-ink-cartridge-refill kits and mini keyboards only my kids can type on :) While strolling through the fair, however, a colleague showed me an interesting Wyse Thin Client. These terminals are normally used as a very lightweigt computer, accessing terminal services provided by some server running Windows or Unix. This particular device (a 9455XL ) was run

Oh yes. I received another mail from a different girl, I mean woman, asking me for something totally different than love. Please read ... it's funny. Dear Friend, My name is Elena, I have 31 year and I live in Russian province. I work in library and after my work I allowed to use computer when it possible. I finded your address in internet and I decided to write you this letter. I have 7-year daughter Angelina, her father abandoned us and we live with my mother. Recently my mother lost job and our situation became very difficult. The price for heating our home is very high and we cannot afford it anymore. The winter is coming and weather is colder each day. We worry if the temperature will become cold in our home, we don't know how to survive. For heating our home we need portable stove which give heat from burning wood. We have many wood in our region, but we cannot buy the stove in local market because it cost equivalent of 193 Euro and very expensive for us. If you have any

... I guess not. Today I received the following mail on my very old Hotmail account. Dear User, We are sorry to inform you that we care currently working on securing our server. During this process, an account that is not manually verified by us will be deleted, Please confirm that you have an account and submit your information for manual verification by one of our customer care representatives Information that is be to provided is below: User Name: UserID: Password: Date Of Birth: Country (At Signup): Upon confirmation of the information from you, we will manually verify your yahoo account and, thereby, prevent it from being deleted, We are sorry for any inconvenience this might cause. Account owner "who" refuses to update his/her account after two weeks of receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently. __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Copyright © 2008 Yahoo. All

A few years ago I bought an orange fluorescent rod, which, mounted behind my television cabinet, gives an orange ambient light. The other weekend, it broke down :( Unfortunately, the original manufacturer ( WOFI ) stopped selling these a while ago. Makro where I originally bought the rod doesn't sell them anymore either. So I had a problem. Velleman however has these rods in its products list, so I rushed to a local dealer, finding that he only had these in green and white (WTF?). So I still had a problem. There's no way to open these rods, since the black ends are glued to the orange rod at both sides. So normally, there's no way to open these rods without breaking something. Fortunately the black end with the power cord on the rod I own came loose a while ago. So I decided to take it apart to see if there was a way to fix it. Inside, there is a normal fluorescent tube of 56W (about 1.5 meters in length) powered by an electronic ballast. Normally, fluorescent lamps you f

A while ago there was a series on the BBC on Heston Blumenthal's search of perfection. In the series, Heston tries to "perfect" 8 traditional dishes. About a year ago, a friend of mine brought these series to my attention, but in fact, I've never watched them. That's why I bought the books (in the meantime there have been 2 series) and yesterday, I tried to make Heston's version of Spaghetti Bolognese . I will not go into detail on how to make the sauce, it is a lengthy process that takes about 8 hours. Instead, I will talk about some of the modifications I've done to Heston's recipe. There were some ingredients I couldn't find: The star anise: According to Heston, this is the most important ingredient for the sauce, because combined with the onions, it enhances the flavor of the meat. Boned oxtail The coriander seeds The Thai fish sauce The sherry vinegar Apparently the star anise has a concentrated anise flavor, so I replaced it with 3 tablespo

As all of you probably know, I have kids. 2 of them are currently able to crawl/walk around and unfortunately they don't have the correct understanding of the word no yet. Another problem is they seem to be very fond of technology, music, and they just love to fiddle with my ancient Kenwood KR-2200 receiver and peripherals. They also love to play with my regular sized speakers, I bought a long time ago for a cheap price at Aldi (Medion). Although these speakers were cheap, they sound great and I don't want the kids to break or damage these. So I removed the speakers and replaced them with very small sized speakers that are attached to my old portable radio cassette player (rx-ct800). As much as I used to love my rx-ct800, the little speakers sounded like crap attached to the KR-2200, so I needed a solution. I was thinking on buying some cheap JB Systems speakers, since I already own a set of cheap JB Systems TSX speakers. Unfortunately, these sound like crap too. So I decided

Just to let you know, that yours truly and some other Ubuntu enthusiasts will be hosting a booth at the Dipro fair on November 23rd in Ghent on behalf of the Ubuntu Community. I will bring candy :) Please visit the dipro website if you're not sure how to get there.

A few days ago I upgraded my Adium Instant Messenger client on Mac OS X to the latest version. While I was working yesterday, I was being pestered by girls who really wanted me to visit _their_ webcam the whole day :( I guess I am naive and thought only authorized buddies could sent messages to me. Apparently not. If you want the spam messages to stop, all you have to do is go to the Privacy Settings... in the Adium menu and select Allow only contacts on my contact list .

A few weeks ago, I received a mail with the following subject: Likely, you will be now surprised. Below is the complete content of this mail: Hi, how are you? Likely, you will be now surprised. I long thought before writing you the letter. This morning, I have received love the Internet dispatch, from the unknown person to me the addressee. In the given letter, it was spoken about love relations between people. In the list e-mail addressees, I have seen your address. I long thought before writing to you. I think, what you as search for serious relations? I consider, that the given chance for me unique, therefore I have decided to write to you. I wish to find the present love! I would like to begin our acquaintance, with the small story about me. My name is Anahit. Friends me name simply Anahit. To me of 28 years. I the quiet, young, purposeful girl. Friends say to me, that I cheerful. I love dialogue. I consider, that dialogue very important component in our life. I, as well as all wom

Just a quick update on the Tuxdroid / Java story. I followed the wiki page describing the installation for the 2.0 beta software and launched the new control center (which is entirely written in java). The screenshot above shows this UI and it looks and works awesome. It has a lot more possibilities then the Python based 1.x UI and the attitunes stuff now really works. Attitunes are some kind of scenario's you can _play_, instructing the droid to do and say stuff. If you take a closer look to the screenshot, you can see the "Computer Alert 1 Nl" attitune highlighted. Pressing the play button executes the attitune and makes the droid speak and move. Using the UI you can also download, install and execute attitunes contributed by other people from the Tux Is Alive website. Anyway, I've checked out the code and I'm going to take a closer look at it.

Earlier this year I was visiting FOSDEM and together with a colleague I attended a talk about how to design a Linux robot companion. Although I studied electronics a long time ago, resistors, transistors and other electronic components have never really been my cup of tea. That's why I started to work as a Software Engineer, rather then a chip designer, but that's a whole different story. Anyway, the talk was not that difficult to follow, given my background. Even for people without a hardware background, I think, the talk was not that "nerdy". In the talk David presented a few Tuxdroids and told the story on how they designed it. The presentation was crystal clear for everyone, so the only question that popped from the audience was "Where the hell can we buy this thing?" (laughter all over the place). ThinkGeek was of course the place to be. At that time, we, Europeans, could buy stuff rather cheap on ThinkGeek, so a friend of mine decided to place a m

Just a quick post to tell the small amount of people tracking this blog that Ubuntu 8.10 is coming. The first beta's are already released. Gentlemen (or women), start playing :)

Whilst reinstalling my desktop and all the applications I wanted, these were the problems/issues I encountered. VMware does not work I use VMware to test drive upcoming Ubuntu releases and for running Windows XP. I still need XP for my GPS software on my PDA. I tried to install VMware 1.x and it failed when compiling the netwokr modules. This link solved my problems and I managed to compile the modules. When trying to run VMware, another problem appeared: /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware: /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_3.4' not found (required by /usr/lib/libcairo.so.2) /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware: /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libpng12.so.0/libpng12.so.0: no version information available (required by /usr/lib/libcairo.so.2) /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware: /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_3.4' not found (required by /usr/lib/libcairo.so.2) /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware: /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libpng12.so.0/libpng12.so.0: no version information

Almost 3 years ago, I decided do ditch my old PII Celeron and buy a new HP Pavilion Pentium 4. The Pavilion had Windows XP preloaded and it lasted about a week. Since that week, it has been running Ubuntu and I never re-installed it. I have been dist-upgrading the machine from Breezy (ah, those were the days) to Dapper. Since I like having a stable machine, instead of feature rich, "running latest versions of everything" machine, I've been using Dapper until yesterday. Since the early days of Linux having a "desktop environment", I have always been a big fan of Gnome. It looked right and has always served my needs. As a java developer, I use Gnome as the preferred desktop environment at work too. Using Gnome, or any desktop environment, hours and hours in a row, enables you to discover the less pleasant parts of it. So, after a year of developing on a Gnome desktop, I have come to dislike it. A few months ago, youtube was flooded with short demos on the new, upc

Voor de mensen van mijn leeftijd (of ietsje ouder) die de rotzooi die ze de kinderen vandaag voeren op televisie maar niets vinden, deze link . Hier kan je alles lezen over series gaande van "Merlina" tot "Tik Tak". De site heb ik toevallig via google gevonden en wou ik jullie niet onthouden. Eigenlijk was ik op zoek naar (en gevonden :) ) Blake's 7 .

This is just a short post to give you the latest news on my Serving XML transformer for Mule. I have updated the pom , so now the project builds properly with maven. Hopefully this will improve my build statistics on MuleForge's bamboo :) I have also included a small unit test, taken from the samples included with the ServingXML distribution, that shows how you can use the transformer _without_ Mule. I will provide working samples, integrated with Mule, later. People that are familiar with Mule and how to configure transformers should be able to use this transformer in their setup. Good luck ...

I realize it has been a long time since I last blogged on this site. I am very sorry for this, but I have been very busy. First I started a project on MuleForge ( ServingXML Transformer ) that should help people using Mule to easily wrap all the power of ServingXML into one single transformer. There is already some code in the svn repository, but it doesn't build yet with maven. The problem is that ServingXML does not have any jars available in the main ibiblio repositories, so I will need to host these jars somewhere else. For the brave out there, just checkout the code, download ServingXML , put the jars in your local maven repository and issue a mvn clean install . This should get you up and running, if not, just wait for me to fix the build. The reason why I created this project is that people where asking me off-list for new code and documentation. Unfortunately I didn't have those, so the project should solve this, I hope :) I also got involved with uface . This small pro