Monthly Archive for June, 2005

Test Exhibit

Published
by
Zz85
on June 27, 2005
in Bloggin, Technology, Uncategorized and WP-Plugins
. 0 Comments

Failed inserting and displaying. Although Managment is not bad (upload,delete, rotate, thumb)… asy version had a bad error so i used 1.1d. Seems the error is with the database.

Now trying PhotoPress…

pict0516pict0516
Not bad..

Lazybrowser… Nothing

IImage Browser…
Onclick not working, images not showing

Pic Glue..
TOo much trouble

What I need.
1) Batch Uploads
2) Thumbnails (small/mid)
3) Batch insert into post.
What I can do
a) found a plugin which does that… failed
b) modify plugins - i) modify photopress ii)modify fckeditors plugin
c) write plugin

Accessing my PC anywhere in the world.

Published
by
Zz85
on June 25, 2005
in Technology and linux
. 3 Comments

For sometime I havent been away from home, so when I finally away from home, I realised how much stuff I have in my personal pc at home and the need to use and access them.

So some configuration has to be done. On my server machine,
1) apache running - theortically this should be enough for receiving and storing files.
2) ftp running - huge files would be more of a convience
3) ssh - then when I wanted more control I installed ssh. its almost like a full control of your linux machine just through this protocol.

One of the hippy thing in the nerd community could be the NX server.
It works through a special ssh account, supports the X protocol with some special compression that makes it fast through slow links. If you run their nx client, you will notice that it will support rdp or remote deskop for windows machine (which is how much current network is configured, server and windows machine behind the router).

Check out this link on instalation of FreeNX on debain machines.

With this setup, it seems I had almost everything I needed… but not yet… most of my personal files is on my windows machine which… is not turned on 24/7. Time to use the

wake-on-lan feature. Enable power on by wakeonlan in the bios.

On my debian server, apt-get install wakeonlan. Running the command “wakeonlan ma:c :ad:dr” would turn on my pc. Read this related article,

So this is how my current situation is. I do recall the days where we use other methods to do the same thing.

i)protocol spoofing
I ran a vnc server, but because the firewall in my campus was very restrictive, the port to listen on I changed to 443, spoofing it as a ssl protocol. 21, 8080 worked too those days. Another trick I had was setting up a IM account and commands send thru it could trigger commands to be ran at home.

ii)compression, encrpytion, tunneling
Next I went on experimenting tunnelling or relaying ports, packets and such. One successful implementaton I did was using zebedee tunnel. Just opening a port, I had multiple channels which were relayed from other ports allowing me to access more services (ftp, vnc, vnc-http, http,telnet,proxy)

iii)reverse proxy/ tunneling
Those methods require to have my pc turned on everytime there is an expectation of the usage of my home pc. Now one step further is to allow resource in school to be used when I reached home. 1st successful method a) reverse vnc, connecting a machine to home. b)then creating a reverse zbd tunnel. c)creating a service which “calls homes” to try estiblish connections at scheduled periods

iv)vpns
As restrictions was got around, vpns was the next stuff to tried and was quite successful during those times. 1 was Tinc, and another is OpenVPN. when the link was estiblished, 2 remote networks seems to be merged.

commerial softwares: remoteanywhere, gotomypc,pcanywhere

Serious Photo Stitching - Surgery?

Published
by
Zz85
on June 22, 2005
in Photos, Technology, Uncategorized and linux
. 2 Comments

We standed in a circle around the camera and hand-held shots were snapped quickly at Cameron. It would be a great panoramic photo but lets see how we would create it.

1. Cannon PhotoStitch.
You are likely to come across it if you have cannon product as it usually bundled together. Assuming you used the panoramic feature on your cannon camera carefully, this program would be really simple to use. Arrange your photos, out come the pararoma stitched. However, without enough overlapping parts, PhotoStich wouldn’t work for me in this case.

2. Hugin.
The Free/Open source, Cross-plateform GUI tools would give you lots of options and features to play around with. Using Autopano would detect Control Points and auto autooptimise, Calculate FOV (Field of View) , Optimal size and get your stitch. Really powerful and all sorts switches you can change so go ahead to ??, read the tutorials, try out and have fun. Too bad for me again, some photos could not stitch at all because there werent any overlapping parts. Sometimes all the control points were on the scenery, distorting the faces. Have to try something else.

3. Adobe PhotoShop.
Photoshop would be all you need if you know how to use and want all the control. I seem to read Photoshop CS can do merging of photos automatically but without CS installed I cant try out. There is lots of articles but this link seems to does what I need - in short- adjusting, adding mask, brushing, crop and get your stitch. Since all other methods failed, this would have to work for me. Tata, something is out after sometime.

4. Showcasing the paranoia.
The best way would be to place it online, and let java, flash, or javascript technologies do the job. For me to test out quickly, I uploaded to Gallery 2 beta, with its panoramic module- we now can enjoy the scene with its java applet. If you are using dhtml, dun forget to try this link.

Pararomics is old field of photography that fascinates me even though I have 0 experience. Those all around views from the photos NASA take from MARS by the rover “Spirit”, MOON is so nice. I will forget about stereography and videography for now…

In memory of 6 Bicycles

Published
by
Zz85
on June 21, 2005
in Biking and Technology
. 0 Comments

#6 My Momoki bike (aka flying saucer)
was stolen during 11.30am to 1pm at SAFRA Yishun Bicycle Bay. I was playing tennis and parked my bike outside tennis court when 2 security guards asked to place it at the bicycle bay which I did. When I came down, the bicycle was gone. The lock was on my bicycle but I didnt bring my key. Its really sad but the fault lies with me not locking the bike so really too bad. This time you can say 2 bikes are stolen in 1 week (see bike #5).

This bike was bought in 2002 around April after I saved enough money after a few months working. The shop I went to was near the "drive-thru" macdonals near chongpang owned by a old chinese man and his son. The reason I orginally bought it was for my brother after losing his bike (see bike #3). It is a hardtail, zoom suspension, GT-like aluminum body, 21 speed, v-brakes. After riding the Aloeca bike, this bike usually feels like a fly saucer (like when takumi uses the Subraru WRZ). This bike has seen many areas of singapore including the north (woodlands), west (boonlay), east (eastcoast) and many other places. Its sad to see it part so soon.

#5 Aloeca Bike (aka my86 or the20)
About 3 years old while I bought it 2nd hand 3 years ago at the price of about $20 (orginal price when bought was about $700 ), it went thru modifications, adaptations, stress testing and proved to be the most convient and best companion for endurance training. This bike was bought in Bukit Panjang, after someone wanted to sell it on togoparts.com. It serves its purpose well ferrying me (and others) to and fro the mrt station, and other nearby destinations.

#4 Colourful Full-suspension Mountain bike.
This bike was also one of the cheapest deal I ever got. I paid about $150 for this full suspension bike but was stolen in less than 3 months at the Yishun MRT even though it was locked.

#3 Italian designed Rigid Bicycle
This bike was bought by my brother and delivered from Carrefour in the year 2000. In secondary 2 I cycled it to my friend’s house in woodlands. Parked and locked to the staircase outside his house, it was stolen when I wanted to return home.

#2 ??? Mountain Bike
The grey colour mountain bike with a bottle and passanger stand was my sister’s birthday present. I however use it to cycle to my school everyday. Walking then took 15mins, and cycling took me 10mins. I never parked it in school because of sabotage but rather outside under the hdb flats nearby. The route I took to school was up the hill, then down the hill jumping over a small ramp on the way down. On many days, the ground is wet due to rain or dew but I seem to enjoy the splash of water and mud on the way down. Some days I would mend the “ramp” giving me more air time on the way down. One one day I tried to make a really high jump, I went into an endo, the bike hit its front wheel rather hard, both me and the bike went summersault and tumbling down the hill. After my stars cleared from my head, I found up that the bicycle’s front fork is badly bent and dented that it had to be thrown away.

#1 Kiddy BMX Was my brother’s 4 wheel kid’s bike. Modified for us to learn 2 wheels, and then abused by me to learn stunts. The pedal broken while I attempt to do a wheelie one. Time to say bye-bye to it.

Asides
Utunbu CDs I ordered was delivered to me from the Netherlands. I already gave out couple of them.

Miranda IM 0.4.0.1 released.

Latest Lilypond for Windows is 2.5.31

Latest downloadable lilytool version - 0.2.8

Switches

Published
by
Zz85
on June 20, 2005
in Interesting Stuff, Technology and linux
. 0 Comments

When asking my sister to “switch” the tv channels, it came to my mind that the word had different meanings i know even solely in the technological field.

The most frequent usage means to swap or exchange something around.

Then switches commonly found in most houses control electrical devices, example the lights.

In (non-business) networking, a switch is a layer 2 device - the switch would forward packets based on hardware (mac) address, dividing or eliminating the collisions domains. Having a switch between a network of pcs means the bandwidth wouldn’t be shared like with a hub but the bandwidth has the capability of the medium being switched around to amount different network devices.

Interestingly, reading about PCI-Express, mentioned a switched controller to provide more speed compared to a shared bus.

Lastly, the switch is a keyword found in various programming languages, and 1 would be java.
switch (a){
}
It has the usage of multiple if-else conditions or a select-case like in Basic.

You can read more about switch - http://www.answers.com/switch&r=67

Okay a puzzle on switches I heard. Assuming there are 3 switches in a room connected to 3 light bulbs in another room wired in no particular order. Lets say you cannot see the lights from the room you operate the switches and you do not know which switch is connect to with bulb. What can you in the room of switches so that you only need to go over to the room of bulbs once to know which switch links to which bulb?

Answer

Asides (Feather server stuff)

So I tuned in to mostly-classical.com online shoutcast radio station on saturday night. Sadly since some time ago, 128kbps was removed and the highest now is 96kbps. Anyway I installed streamripper and tested it to (apt-get install streamripper). Was really simple to use, I use it as a relay for me to listen while it saves a copy to the harddisk (streamripper http://site:8080/blabla/ -r), then tunned in my xmms to http://localhost:8080. It could be an issue of ethics using it, but i think this is much ethical than stationripper. I left music playing and stream saving for about 2-3 days, and check my df (diskfree space) before and after, it took about 2GB. So not a bad idea if you want to filled your server space, which I don’t want to. Anyway its also a great way to start a collection to put on your portable player (save those 56 bitrates stream, there are actually encoded in mpeg ii layer iii so its listen-able)

Another apt-get installation was squid. The proxy, caching server plus many more features I haven’t bother to use. Anyway editing /etc/squid/squid.conf could allow me to set up my server as a relay for others to visit webpages are filtered by their cooperation. Another method was setting up nph cgi proxy. Anyway I was playing with my router, (could be due to faulty firmware) my connection was lost and reconnected (in a very long time).