Ben's Information Station

Tiny Linux Thin Client

2006-09-21T20:28:00.000-07:00

The ICOP eBox III is an ideal Linux thin client with either a 200 or 800mhz CPU it's about the size of 2 DVD cases stacked ontop of each other. The 3800 is available for only $238 with an 800mhz CPU and 256MB RAM, it can boot from LAN via PXE or you can add an EmbedDisk to the 44pin IDE.

The 3853 is approximately 3 DVDs thick, has dual 10/100 RJ45 LAN plugs, and has space for an internal 2.5" HDD.

The 2600 and 2620 are both 200mhz and are 3 and 2 DVDs thick, with 2 RS232 adapters and 2 RJ45 LAN adapters respectively.

More information available here:

http://www.wdlsystems.com/ebox/ebox.shtml

CFXGA X11 driver

2006-07-26T15:25:00.000-07:00

I just found an X11 driver for the CFXGA. More information is available here:

http://www-static.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/ccg//projects/cfxga/

USB VGA Adapter

2006-06-22T09:23:00.000-07:00

I've been wanting a means to output VGA from a Linux Sharp Zaurus and had been convinced, until recently, that the only option was Compact Flash, CF, cards. I just found that there are a couple of USB2 to VGA adapters that are available. I hope that someone will create some linux drivers, perhaps I need to start working on some:

Sitecom has a similar, perhaps identical, device also.

I'm bot sure what kind of chipset this box has but I'll report back if/when I find out.

Linux DVD Authoring GUIs

2006-02-13T08:51:00.000-08:00

There are a couple of GUI options for authoring DVDs on Linux:

tovid - more information available at http://tovid.berlios.de

'Q' DVD-Author - more information available at http://qdvdauthor.sourceforge.net/

Both of these tools are in the very early stages of development, however, they both show you what command line entries they are using so they act as a pair of stabilisers until you're ready to ride the bike on your own.

AJAX SSH AnyTerm

2005-11-15T12:53:00.000-08:00

AnyTerm is an AJAX, Asynchronous JavaScript And XML, SSH client which works in a web browser without any local SSH client being installed. More information available here:

http://anyterm.org

Javascript Special Effects

2005-10-29T10:46:00.000-07:00

If you want to include Javascript special effects in your web page then moo.fx is what you need, there's a demo available here:

http://moofx.mad4milk.net/tests.html#

The main site is here:

http://moofx.mad4milk.net/

It's an alternative to Script.aculo.us if you don't need as many effects. More information available here:

http://script.aculo.us/

Portable Media

2005-10-12T12:58:00.000-07:00

It's possible to transport your audio and video media between PCs using a USB external Hard Disk Drive, however, if you want to display your media on a TV screen then the MediaGate MG-25 is what you need, available from Amazon here:

The MediaGate MG-25 will allow you to copy audio and video onto its 2.5 inch HDD and then play that audio and/or video on a TV or stereo though S-Video, Component and Composite cables. It also comes with a remote control.

If you need a mobile video display solution then you could use one of the many LCD DVD players which support video in. One example is the Coby TFDVD7100, available from Amazon here:

Alternatively, the iRiver PMP-120 does storage, transportation and display all in one convenient package, reviewed against other options here, and available from Amazon here:

If you'd prefer a 3.5" solution, due to the added capacity of 3.5" drives over 2.5" drives then there are several options, including the Tvisto, available at amazon here

WL-HDD battery

2005-10-04T06:49:00.000-07:00

Tekkeon has a perfect bettery for the WL-HDD available from Amazon and various other retailers, more information available at Tekkeon's website here:

http://www.tekkeon.com/site/products-mypowerall.php

PC Weasel Serial Console

2005-10-03T06:42:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wanted to boot your home server, using a standard motherboard, headless but needed to access the BIOS settings as you would normally do through a serial console on a real server?

If so, then you'll be happy to know that you can do this with the PC Weasel, more details available here:

http://www.realweasel.com

You may wish to use PC Weasel along with ConServer:

http://conserver.com

Or you may want a hardware solution which maps your serial console output to SSH. One such hardware option is the Cyclades Alterpath ACS, more information available here:

http://www.cyclades.com/products/3/alterpath_acs

There's a great informational article at Linux Journal here:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7206

Replacement Laptop Battery

2005-09-09T08:36:00.000-07:00

Global Batteries have a huge range of replacement batteries for laptop computers, more information available here:

http://www.global-batteries.com/index.php/cPath/1

Smart Boot Manager

2005-09-09T07:59:00.000-07:00

I you have an older PC which has a BIOS which only allows A: and C: drive booting you can use Smart Boot Manager if you want to boot from a CD, more information avalable here:

http://btmgr.webframe.org/

Online Faxing

2005-09-06T09:21:00.000-07:00

You can send and receive Faxes online and through your email using Send2Fax, more information available here:

http://www.send2fax.com/

Javascript Playing Audio

2005-07-27T23:39:00.000-07:00

This page is the clearest explanation I have seen for playing audio using Javascript:

http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/mark/audio/play.htm

Playing audio from inside a web page has been an annoyance of mine for years and, until now, I have never been happy with the non-portable solutions.

Do you have any tips for playing audio using Javascript?

Ruby RSS Parser

2005-07-27T19:33:00.000-07:00

Here's some interesting information about parsing RSS with Ruby:

http://www.manicwave.com/blog/archives/000063.html

Do you know of any other useful Ruby RSS resources?

phpDocumentor Documentation

2005-07-27T14:07:00.000-07:00

phpDocumentor is a source code documentation tool that works in a simiar fashion as Java's JavaDoc, .Net's XML code documentation comments, or Mono's

http://phpdoc.org/

This is an interesting tool, however, of all the various documentation tools Doxygen seems to be the most useful.

Do you know of any other useful source code documentation tools?

Presentations with S5

2005-07-27T13:56:00.000-07:00

S5 is an XHTML system for creating presentations, it's available from here:

http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/

After searching for so long for a tool that emulates MS Powerpoint (Crawips, LaTeX Beamer) I think that S5 may be a more elegant solution. The printable view dispenses with all the fluff that you may want in a presentation, so conserving paper, which makes sense to me since presentations are for presenting while a reader needs concise data rather than fancy presentation frames.

Do you agree?

Python RSS parsing

2005-07-26T08:06:00.000-07:00

If you want to parse RSS data with Python then the Universal Feed Parser is the best way to go. It's specifications include the following supported protocols:

"Universal Feed Parser is a Python module for downloading and parsing syndicated feeds. It can handle RSS 0.90, Netscape RSS 0.91, Userland RSS 0.91, RSS 0.92, RSS 0.93, RSS 0.94, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, Atom, and CDF feeds."

Feed Parser is available from here:

http://feedparser.org/

There's a nice page with example code here:

http://wiki.python.org/moin/RssLibraries

Profiling with Valgrind

2005-07-20T08:15:00.000-07:00

Rather than using gprof to profile programming code Valgrind appears to be a more fully featured alternative, it's available here:

http://valgrind.org/

You couple the output from Valgrind with VGprof to produce gprof formatted data, VGprof is available here:

http://www.goop.org/~jeremy/valgrind/vgprof.html

Then take the gprof formatted output and create easy to read HTML reports using PyProfGen, available here:

http://www.cinsk.org/sw/pyprofgen/

Website Monitor with StatCounter.com

2005-07-17T10:17:00.000-07:00

If you want a free, while you have relatively low hits, website monitoring tool StatCounter is the best that I have found, available from here:

http://www.statcounter.com

FOSS Project Management

2005-07-13T07:38:00.000-07:00

There are a couple of very good FOSS project management solutions available. I'm not including Mr Project AKA Gnome Planner as I'm really talking about entire project management suites.

The two main project management suites are dotProject, available from here:

http://www.dotproject.net

And phpCollab, available from here:

http://www.php-collab.org

Repair xBox

2005-07-10T16:37:00.000-07:00

This site has a very useful knowledge system to diagnose xBox problems:

http://www.xboxrepairguide.com

Junxion Box 3G to 802.11 bridge

2005-07-06T09:19:00.000-07:00

If you want a bridge between your 2.5/3G data connection WAN and your 802.11b LAN then you want the Junxion Box:

http://www.junxion.com/

Using this device you can create an 802.11b LAN with wireless uplink connectivity to the internet anywhere where your 2.5/3G cellular telephone has connectivity. Of particular interest would be as a means to integrate 802.11b internet connectivity into your car.

Note that the StompBox is a cheaper DIY alternative, more information available from here:

http://moro.fbrtech.com/~tora/EVDO/

Persistence of Vision Bike Spokes

2005-07-01T20:22:00.000-07:00

Hokey Spokes use strobing LEDs to create a persistence of vision optical illusion. The illusion can be custom programmed to whatever you want. They're pretty cool and available from here:

http://www.hokeyspokes.com

OSS CRM with SugarCRM

2005-06-30T07:38:00.000-07:00

SugarCRM, available through the link below, is an Open Source Customer Relationship Management solution:

http://www.sugarcrm.com

SSH audio with eSounD

2005-06-29T07:53:00.000-07:00

You can forward audio over SSH using eSounD, more information available from here:

http://www.tux.org/~ricdude/EsounD.html

You can also forward audio to your windows box using putty and cygwin, just google for "eSounD cygwin" for more information.

K-Byte Zipit Wireless Linux

2005-06-27T07:16:00.000-07:00

The K-Byte Zipit Wireless is a mobile Instant Message device which works over 802.11b. The device runs Linux natively, however, the version which comes pre-installed serves merely as an embedded OS for the IM features.

There is a yahoo group dedicated to the Zipit device here:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zipitwireless/

Personally I'm not really much interested in installing much more on the Zipit than an SSH client, since that will allow me access to my main PC which runs the various ncurses apps which I'm intersted in:

Calendar, CCAL: http://www.jamiehillman.co.uk/ccal/
Email, Mutt: http://www.mutt.org/
Instant Message, CenterICQ: http://konst.org.ua/centericq/
Web browsing, Links: http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~clock/twibright/links/index.html

The only problems with the Zipit are its lack of local storage and its lack of a backlit screen. I did a search and found a possible solution for locat storage; the ASUS WL-HDD2.5. This is a 2.5" laptop hard drive enclosure which uses linux to enable it as a WiFi access point with associated Samba network file sharing. There's an open source firmware project for the WL-HDD which adds additional linux functionality, there's a picture halfway down this page:

http://www.aibohack.com/zipit/reflash.htm

And here's the site with the open firmware:

http://www.chupa.nl/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=78
http://forum.chupa.nl/forumdisplay.php?f=64

LaTeX embedded in HTML

2005-03-10T12:26:00.000-08:00

I always had trouble in school, many many years ago, printing mathematical equations and graphs in documents. I tried all sorts of equation editors and drawing programs and none were really very good. Finally, years later than my original need, I discovered LaTeX and its ability to typeset content into professional quatity documents that are totally portable between different operating systems.

Today I was reading Wikipedia and noticed how well the mathematical equations were rendered and wondered how they had done it, since I have had so much trouble myself in the past. I discovered that there is a php class called latexrender, primarilly for mathematic equation rendering through LaTeX to generate png files for dynamic inclusion into HTML:

http://www.mayer.dial.pipex.com/tex.htm#latexrender

When modified slightly you can render XHTML compliant code from any TeX source as mentioned here:

http://setiwiki.tammen.net/latexrender

You can even draw diagrams, which would have been really useful in my economics days, using PsTricks:

http://www.tug.org/applications/PSTricks/

IM with BitlBee or CenterICQ

2005-02-04T14:38:00.000-08:00

If you have very limited resources and aren't able to run Gaim then BitlBee may be the solution. It's an IRC daemon that connects to multiple chat servers:

http://www.bitlbee.org

If you want to go console mode only then centerICQ is the way to go:

http://thekonst.net/en/centericq

20Mbps for $199/Month unlimited bandwidth

2004-12-08T18:40:00.000-08:00

I just noticed an inexpensive hosting service, called ServerMatrix, who offer unlimited transfer capacity dedicated server hosting at 20Mbps with an 80GB HDD anf 1GB RAM for only $199 per month:

http://servermatrix.com/unmetered.html

Write GameBoy software with the SGADE

2004-12-07T08:48:00.000-08:00

If you ever wanted to play around with writing software on your old GameBoy that you never use there's a project called SGADE (The Socrates Gameboy Advance Development Engine), available from here:

http://www.suddenpresence.com/sgade/index.htm

Additionally, I just found that if you want to watch DVDs on your GameBoy it's all possible, and more, with this amazing GBA Movie Player cartridge from Lik-Sang:

http://www.lik-sang.com/info.php?category=6&products_id=3983&

Here's a site all about GBA movies:

http://www.gbafilm.com

DV Cameras using Kino

2004-12-02T20:39:00.000-08:00

While LiVES is able to edit video imported from many formats Kino is designed specifically for IEEE1394 (FireWire) DV Camera video manipulation:

http://kino.schirmacher.de/

When Kino is used in combination with a DV Camera, the JVC GR-D200 is available for only $250 for example, then fairly professional results should be within easy reach.

Online Teaching with Moodle

2004-12-02T20:21:00.000-08:00

I just found a tool that fills a niche which I hadn't really considered to be available through Open Source Software. The niche is that of online learning site creation and the tool is called Moodle:

http://moodle.org/

Moodle is an open source CMS (Course Management System), as Moodle describes itself. In other words; it's a web based interface to create web based training sites.

As far as features go; Moodle has everything that would be needed to create a complete web based training site, including quizzes, forums, multimedia, assignment submission/upload, LaTeX mathematics equation support, surveys, and student/user management.

Presentations with Criawips

2004-12-01T08:54:00.000-08:00

There's a strange story behind the name of this tool, and very little information about the tool itself. Basically Criawips is a very very alpha, as of today December 1st 2004, Gnome presentation package:

http://www.nongnu.org/criawips/

and here:

http://gnome-de.org/criawips/

Once you have your presentation in pdf form you could just convert it to a series of images using:

bdash$ convert -density 100 inputfile.pdf outputfile.png

note: A multipage pdf will create images of the form outputfile.png.[0-n]

Here are some useful convert usage tips:

http://www-cryst.bioc.cam.ac.uk/~marko/xray/convert.html

You could then view the images as a slideshow in GQview:

http://gqview.sourceforge.net/

Or embed them in a web page using javascript to manage page reloading.

Presentations with LaTeX Beamer

2004-11-30T05:30:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about open source equivalents to MS Powerpoint recently and came up with a couple of good possibilities not including OpenOffice Impress. MagicPoint was the first that I found, it produces HTML presentations albeit via a unique scripting language. The second, and more promising option is LaTeX plus Beamer:

http://latex-beamer.sourceforge.net/

Beamer produces PDF presentations, although it is within the realms of possibility to convert these to HTML I came to the conclusion that a presentation should have a constant look and feel and so a PDF is more suited to the task than HTML as HTML is subject to the look and feel of the HTML render being used by the browser.

Another option that I just found is called TeXPower, however, this doesn't seem quite as full featured as Beamer:

http://texpower.sourceforge.net/

SVG with Inkscape

2004-11-24T13:06:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking of using SVG for a while now and ran across Inkscape:

http://www.inkscape.org/

Sodipodi has been around for a while, however, Inkscape seems to both be easier to use and to be advancing more rapidly.

XBox MythTV

2004-11-12T19:34:00.000-08:00

I just got an XBox so it's all go now for setting up my MythTV/XBox combo.

The XBox is a v1.1 so I'm going to have no problems modding it, although I may need to replace the fan with a Panaflo 80mm as the stock one's a little noisy for the living room. I'm planning on using the SmartXX mod chip (and very thin single strand Kynar wire) since it seems to have very good support for Gentoox, and I have become very fond of the Gentoo way of doing things.

The first stage will be to purchase a Hauppauge PVR 250 to put in my Linux server. This will act as the MythTV backend where all the TV recording will be done. The MythTV frontend which simply displays the MythTV GUI on the TV screen will be provided by the XBox, which is stage 2. The instructions for stage 1 are here:

http://home.comcast.net/~alf_park/mythtv.html

or here:

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Setup_MythTV

As I stated above; stage 2 is to set up the XBox as the MythTV frontend, this will require the DVD remote control in order to make remote control of the device possible. I'll tie the remote control of the XBox into the rest of the stereo components with the Radio Shack 8 in 1 model 15-2116 universal remote, there are online instructions how to set it up. If I really wanted to get fancy I could even allow the remote to power the XBox on and off using the XIR mod which is compatible with the SmartXX mod chip. Even more fancy would be to add an LCD screen, but I think that that would be an overkill.

Although, I'm not really interested in playing XBox native games it is worth noting that if I ever did feel the desire to I could play online for free, not using XBox Live but rather XLink Kai instead as Kai has a Linux version of their tunnel allowing you to connect LAN players together through the Kai internet proxy/tunnel/thingamajig. If I ever did want to play XBox native games, online or otherwise, I would probably want to get a wireless RF controller since I'd prefer to be able to sit on the couch rather than the floor and the couch is beyond the reach of the standard controller cable. Maybe even get a wireless headset, but I very much doubt that I'd get that serious.

PHP DB access with ADOdb

2004-10-28T21:03:00.000-07:00

PHP is great, however, if you build a site that uses mySQL and later decide to switch to postgreSQL you need to alter your DB access function calls, which is time consuming.

Instead of hard coding to a specific database use ADOdb, a PHP DB adstraction layer available from here:
http://adodb.sourceforge.net/

Get published with Lulu

2004-10-16T20:30:00.000-07:00

If you've ever wanted to write a book but didn't want the hassle of trying to figure out how to go about begging someone to actually publish it for you just self publish with Lulu here:

http://www.lulu.com/static/on-demand-books1.php

Asterisk PBX

2004-10-13T06:47:00.000-07:00

If you want to create your own internal PBX then your best bet is to use Asterisk, available here:

http://www.asterisk.org/

Here's a comment on Slashdot with an idea how to merge VOIP and POTS into an Asterisk system in order to solve the 911 and power outage problems inherant in VOIP:

http://slashdot.org (abbreviated URL for aesthetics)

Free Teleconferencing

2004-10-13T06:45:00.000-07:00

Last night the issue of teleconferencing was brought up. I looked into it and found that this company offers free teleconferencing facilities:

http://www.freeconference.com

Database Administration with phpMyAdmin and phpPgAdmin

2004-10-11T07:03:00.000-07:00

I have always been disappointed with the GUI related bugs in MySqlCC, consequently when I decided to use Postgresql I decided to use phpPgAdmin since it's a web based admin tool that maintains the same GUI interface across different operating systems.

phpPgAdmin is available here:

http://phppgadmin.sourceforge.net/

phpMyAdmin is available here:

http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/

1-900 with paypercall.com

2004-10-05T13:03:00.000-07:00

I've wondered for years how someone would go about setting up a 1-900, charged per minute, phone number. I finally looked into it today and I found that these services are provided by the long distance carriers; MCI, Sprint and, until recently, AT & T. AT & T has dropped out of the market due to excessive "charge back" costs which are inherant in the 1-900 business model.

A "charge back" occurs when a customer denies that they were responsible for initiating the 1-900 number call so forcing the 1-900 provider to refund the fees. This problem caused At & T to drop out of the 1-900 market and also helped to promote a similar alternative, namely 1-800 number services which require credit or debit card authorisation prior to connection.

In general it seems that most of the bureaus that provide prepackaged, turnkey, 1-900 services charge very similar rates. One with a reasonably professional looking website is:

http://www.paypercall.com

Dia2Code and AutoDia

2004-09-30T13:47:00.000-07:00

I mentioned at tool that converts Dia diagrams to SQL last month, tedia2sql, and I'm not sure why I neglected to also mention Dia2Code and AutoDia also.

Dia2Code will convert a Dia diagram to any of a variety of languages including C, C++, Java, PHP, Python, Shapefile, SQL, and hopefully C# as soon as version 0.9 becomes available. It's available from here:

http://dia2code.sourceforge.net/

AutoDia will convert code in a variety of languages to either a Dia diagram or Graphwiz (for generation of other image files such as png), dot, vcg, xvcg (for Postscript), or HTML etc. if you write your own template (which supposedly only takes 20 minutes). AutoDia will handle source files in several languages including Perl, Python, PHP, C++, Java, Torque, DBI, and SQL. It's available from here:

http://droogs.org/autodia/

Video Effects with SDL and EffecTV

2004-09-30T08:39:00.000-07:00

I was pondering whether it would be possible to create a MythTv/Freevo like application using Mono and it seems that it may actually be possible by using GTK# and SDL.

SDL stands for Simple DirectMedia Layer and it provides some interesting features for 2D and 3D screen manipulation as specified by its homepage blurb:

"Simple DirectMedia Layer is a cross-platform multimedia library designed to provide low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, 3D hardware via OpenGL, and 2D video framebuffer. It is used by MPEG playback software, emulators, and many popular games, including the award winning Linux port of "Civilization: Call To Power."

SDL is available from here:

http://www.libsdl.org/index.php

SDL has a .Net port, available from here:

http://cs-sdl.sourceforge.net/

Here's an example use for SDL as a realtime video special effects processor called EffecTV, available from here:

http://effectv.sourceforge.net/index.html

Text to Speech with Festival

2004-09-29T06:41:00.001-07:00

Since I mentioned Sphinx2 for Voice Recognition I thought that I should also mention Festival for the reverse, i.e. voice generation from text, AKA Text to Speech.

Festival is available from here:

http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/

Interestingly Carnegie Mellon University is involved with both Festival, in the form of Festvox, and Sphinx through the CMU Speech Software site here:

http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/hephaestus.html

Voice Recognition with Sphinx2

2004-09-29T06:41:00.000-07:00

I was reading about Sphinx4 and how fantastic it is the other day. Sphinx4 is writtin in Java however. Since I'm striving for an Opne Source only PC at home Java, although available though Gentoo, is really not an option. Which leads me to Sphinx2, it's written in C, and it's available from here:

http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/html/cmusphinx.php

SSL in C# with Mentalis

2004-09-27T14:56:00.000-07:00

Surprisingly .Net doesn't seem to have support for SSL in any form other than HTTPS. Consequently, Mentalis has filled the void with their Free Open Source library available from here:

http://www.mentalis.org/index2.qpx

I'm not 100% sure if it's compatible with Mono on Linux yet though.

Update... It seems that .Net and C# do support SSL albeit without an equivalent of the Java SSLSocket class as documented in "Professional .NET Network Programming" available from Amazon.com here:

Professional .NET Network Programming from Amazon with really long URL

Update 2... Note that Mono actually already has SSL functionality built in:

http://pages.infinit.net/ctech/20041129-0607.html

Printers with Gentoo

2004-09-21T13:47:00.000-07:00

One problem that I've been having with Gentoo, well... disappointment really... is that RedHat 9 was able to print in colour, with my Epson C82, while Gentoo wasn't. Note that I use the word "was" rather than "is", since this has now been resolved...

It turns out that there are several steps that need to be taken to fix this, namely:

install gnome-cups-manager
install gnome-system-tools (not really required but is fun to play with)
install gimp-print (it has the Epson C82 driver)
install foomatic (it creates the cups PDD file from the driver)

Here is an explanation of the various steps:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/printing-howto.xml

I haven't tried it all yet, but it looks like it may work...

Labels with gLabels

2004-09-21T07:31:00.000-07:00

If you want to create address labels or business cards gLables works well, available here:

http://glabels.sourceforge.net

The best thing about this app is that it is preprogrammed to support many of the standard avery paper stock formats.

Star gaze with Stellarium

2004-09-20T13:56:00.000-07:00

Forget buying an expensive telescope, star gaze with Stellarium instead, available from here:

http://stellarium.free.fr

Stellarium lets you gaze at the stars with semi realistic atmospheric effects including fog and sun haze on the horizon. It seems to need some degree of 3D hardware acceleration, but I was able to zoom in on Saturn and see some rings.

Synergy2 desktop sharing

2004-09-02T08:20:00.000-07:00

I just saw an article on Slashdot where someone was asking about a software KVM, or rather a software KM, i.e. they wanted to still use 2 screens.

It looks like x2x is an option, however, Synergy2 seems to be more impressive as it not only allows you to control more than just 2 native screens with a single keyboard and mouse but you can actually cut and paste between screens also. Synergy2 works between muti OS clients as does VNC.

VNC has its place, namely to control remote desktops whose screens are not within your field of view. However, if you have multiple physical screens available to you you can share the keyboard and mouse seamlessly using Synergy2.

It's available from here:

http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/index.html

Linux Video Editing with LiVES

2004-09-01T13:38:00.000-07:00

I few days ago I was looking into the various Linux Video editing solutions available and decided that LIVES was the best bet.

LIVES is available here:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~salsaman/lives/

Blender 3D Modelling

2004-09-01T13:32:00.000-07:00

I've been looking for a program to use for 3D CAD and I just found that Blender will export to AutoCAD DXF files which kills multiple birds with one stone.

Blender is available here:

http://www.blender3d.org/

You can also render your Blender model with POVRay after exporting it, POVRay is available here:

http://www.povray.org/

Gentoo Catalyst LiveCD Builder

2004-08-31T22:40:00.000-07:00

I just found a means to create your own Gentoo LiveCDs. Since I'm finally getting around to building my router, and retiring the pentium 133 that has served us so well these past 4 years, I thought that the replacement should have zero moving parts.

Consequently I've spec'd the system with an 866Mhz Pentium III CPU, although I was torn between the Intel PIII and the Via C3 Nehemiah 1Ghz, 256 MB PC133 ECC RAM, a fanless Zalman CNPS6000-Cu, see below, and a Compact Flash to IDE adapter for a 128MB CF read only file system.

I'm really impressed with the great maintainability inherent in Gentoo, and so I was planning on using Gentoo as a base for the router OS.

Catalyst is the tool that you'd use to build a Gentoo LiveCD, which is what my CF filesystem will be effectively, the info about Catalyst is here:

http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/releng/catalyst/catalyst-howto.xml

Here's a more in depth howto covering the entire process:

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Small_Footprint_Gentoo_on_USB

Distributed Site Hosting via Coral

2004-08-29T09:10:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting project which facilitated web site hosting distributed amongst several servers in a P2P system, it's called Coral:

http://www.scs.cs.nyu.edu/coral

As an example, here's slashdot hosted via Coral:

http://slashdot.org.nyud.net:8090/

You can inject any web site into the Coral network simply by prepending the URL "nyud.net:8090/" with the DNS that you want to inject, as I did above for Slashdot. You can also append a fully qualified URI to the end of the new DNS addressin order to host individual resources. Note that the standard anchors on the new hosted pages are rewritten so that they are directed to "*.nyud.net:8090/" also.

The DNS resolver will be automagically redirected to a Coral node which is geographically close to the client, so nyud.net will not actually cause a bottleneck.

$30 USB HD Enclosure

2004-08-28T16:36:00.000-07:00

Here's a place that sells nice USB HD enclusures for just $30:

http://www.xpcgear.com/enclosures.html

SciTE

2004-08-27T12:39:00.000-07:00

Today's useful tool is a multi language syntax highlighting editor called SciTE, which written to showcase SCIntilla , available from here:

http://scintilla.sourceforge.net/SciTE.html

Doxygen

2004-08-26T15:36:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to remember the name of the very useful code documentor which produces JavaDoc-esq documentation plus UML diagrams for C++ code.

It's called Doxygen and it's available from here:

http://www.stack.nl/~dimitri/doxygen/index.html

VNC2SWF

2004-08-25T11:56:00.000-07:00

I was looking for a free open source Shockwave Flash
demo generator and ran across VNC2SWF that "does
exactly what it says on the tin", it converts VNC
sessions to SWF videos. It's available from here:

http://www.unixuser.org/~euske/vnc2swf/

Dia to SQL

2004-08-25T11:51:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to remember the name of the tool that
I'd found to convert Dia diagrams to SQL, and vice
versa.

I finally remembered a couple of minutes ago. It's
called tedia2sql and it's available from here:

http://tedia2sql.tigris.org

Phew!

Finally, I've gone and got a blog

2004-08-25T11:35:00.000-07:00

Well, I finally went and got a blog.

I have decided that I have had enough. No more solving problems or arriving at ideas only to realise six months later that I have forgotten the solutions or what the ideas were.

Which leads me smoothly into my first solution; the means to host my own blog:

EasyMobblog at http://www.easymoblog.org

Hopefully I'll actually keep up with this... we'll see...