f-logjust another web log


2 Apr 2002 19:13 -- 
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So it was BBDay only I did not get home until after midnight and when I tried my always on connection, it was not on at all :(

The lights on the cable modem (Motorola SB3100) were flashing in sequence.

Power Flash

Power Off

Power Flash

Power On, Receive Flash

Power On, Receive On, Send Flash

Power On, Receive On, Send On Online Flash

All off and repeat infinitely :(

So I ring tech support, thinking the phone lines would be dead at 12am, wrong!

Busier than ever, 40mins later I chat to this guy who seems to know what he is doing but has never come across the issue b4.

After trying numerous things including trying to connect to its internal http server, he decided I needed an engineer BUT (and its a big but), the engineer booking service is down because of the nightly back up "Please call back in the morning", it was now well after 1am.

So get a few hours sleep and ring at 7:30, get through straight away AND they book an engineer for Saturday afternoon, sorted!

But, I get home that night and find a "We missed you, please call" card on the door step.

I ring up and they tell me the engineer WAS booked for Friday, and after much arguing agree to ring me back.

I get call, and they say the engineering system was changed just as my call was booked and subsequentialy got lost :(

But they WOULD get someone out on Saturday :)

Saturday comes and apart from being really ill all is well, except the no sleep thing and the cable modem is STILL flashing all lights.

They try a couple of things there end, to no avail and send out and engineer he swaps the modem for a SB4100 and its sorted !!

So here I am playing Return to Castle Wolfenstien over the always on internet !! WOOHOO!!

Now I just need to set up the Linux machine with the second network car and route away!!

I also just received "Linux Socket Programming by Example", cool :)

Only problem now is this laptop has no way to  connect to the win98 system :(

So no links today, but i will make it up to you tomorrow !!

** Quick note: this post was created on the 20th of March 2002, see next post for details **


20 Mar 2002 20:22 -- 
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     36,704


I noticed that TechnoSphere 
http://www.technosphere.org.uk   
keep sending me updates about the (cough) few hundred creatures I created, the seem to be very few left but most have had offspring.

Maybe one day they will dominate the virtual world :)

Virtual Rob now has all the niceties it deserves and I have put in some very basic directory blockers.

http://www.jumpstation.co.uk/misc/virtual_rob/virtual_rob_launcher.html 

http://www.jumpstation.co.uk/misc/virtual_rob/ 

http://www.jumpstation.co.uk/misc/virtual_rob/images/ 

http://www.jumpstation.co.uk/misc/ Is still missing one though.

They all need to be a bit different and the title needs to be the directory they are in.

BBDay tomorrow, must prepare ....!


http://www.apostrophe.fsnet.co.uk/


19 Mar 2002 20:42 -- 
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     36,541


I will need two network cards to run my Linux system as a firewall, but as you will remember I have another NIC, not sure when I will install it though.

Virtual Rob is still unofficially released, the fortune and pizza boards are on hold and I have a though for an interesting project.

(or two), one; write in C a time daemon that my laptop can use to calibrate the time from the big Linux system and an obsifacated programming language that uses images as source files.

I still have not tried DreamKey3 yet :( it would be nice to just try the website to see if its Dreamcast enabled code actually works !!!

everyone should play with Lego more, it would make the world a better place
http://members.aol.com/Klaupacius/Lego/Falcon.html


18 Mar 2002 20:24 -- 
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1139
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Finally got DreamKey3 for the Dreamcast, it obviously pays to hassle SEGA ;)

BB man is coming next Thursday, BBDAY :)

I can now telnet into the Linux machine from my dodgy laptop (its losing time again) 

I have tiny personal firewall running on the win98 system (search on google) and it is scary how many odd programs want to connect to the internet, winamp just tried it on ! (I guess it was looking for updates). 

I have had all sorts try it on, especial stuff I can not find running or being run >:(

In the new Starwars EPII trailer "Clone Wars" "ep2_clone_war_p640.mpeg" I
noticed that when 
Ben K is talking about the bounty hunter creating the clones and then say
"wait" and a fight scene starts that it is not correct.
The first instance is Ben K huddled having trouble with the weather and next
he is calmly standing to attention with no sign of wind or rain.
The question is, is it a complete screw up from ILM (unlikely) or is the
sound track in sync with the first (huddled) Ben K or the second
(unperturbed) Ben K ?
I digress, either way this looks to be one hell of a film !!
http://www.astrogator.se/~gunnar/Humor/


17 Mar 2002 21:41 -- 
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     36,126


I still have not got Linux to let me out of X, I think it is an option in xdm, but there are quite few options in xdm.



So I find that I need natsemi.c to build the driver for my Netgear FA311 card

No problem whipped over to http://www.scyld.com/network/ethercard.html downloaded it and swapped floppies.

Will not compile though, I was using the info at http://www.scyld.com/expert/modules.html 

I head back over and find http://www.scyld.com/network/updates.html which tells me (in tiny grey on white font) to add -I/usr/src/linux/include -include /usr/src/linux/include/linux/modversions.h to the compile string gcc -DMODULE -D__KERNEL__ -O6 -c natsemi.c, only thats no good either.

If you check out some older flog you will see I accidently installed a number of older kernel sources, soooooo

My compile command is gcc -DMODULE -D__KERNEL__ -O6 -c natsemi.c -I/usr/src/kernel-headers-2.2.18pre21/include -include /usr/src/kernel-headers-2.2.18pre21/include/linux/modversions.h and lo and behold it complies !!

Then a quick gcc -DMODULE -D__KERNEL__ -O6 -c pci-scan.c -I/usr/src/kernel-headers-2.2.18pre21/include -include /usr/src/kernel-headers-2.2.18pre21/include/linux/modversions.h followed by 
insmod pci-scan.o

insmod natsemi.o

No errors so installed the mod with install -m 644 pci-scan.o driver.o /lib/modules/2.2.18pre21/net/, still no errors, time for a reboot (shutdown -r now)

hmm, the modules are not there on a reboot, still I can 

insmod pci-scan

insmod natsemi(it knows where to find them)

and a quick 
ifconfig eth0 XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX netmask 255.255.0.0 up(XXX.XX etc is the ip address i want the machine to use)

No errors and I can ping and be ping-ed !!!!

Of course I still have no sound :(

I tried to find out how to curtail xdm from launching X before I logged in but it has so many options and not one to just not run, so I did what I did with the old lap top moved the executable from /etc/init.d/ to my home directory :), hey, it worked !!

Virtual rob is a live and well at http://www.jumpstation.co.uk/misc/virtual_rob/virtual_rob_launcher.html it still needs tidying up before I add it to links on the home page etc, everyone at work thought it was funny !!

Talking about work and the whole redundancy thing ..... hmmmm maybe not, things are becoming VERY strange at the mo.

http://brickfilms.topcities.com/ 

http://www.bullnet.co.uk/shops/test/contents.htm 

http://www.cammunity.com/templates/cammunity.cfm 

http://www.thispagecannotbedisplayed.com/


12 Mar 2002 20:17 -- 
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1131
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Broadband is a bust :( Sarah was out when he called so will they be able to fit us in again with in a month!?

Redundancy is official, before it was officially unofficial, so I need to start job hunting.

As no BB, I can try and get the Netgear NIC working in Linux, while pulling the machine apart for that info I noticed I have got an AWE32 but it is ISA, so that might need some work .... !

The machine has been on all day waiting patently for BB all day and DNET was up to 670 units, pity next to none of them will be excepted, still it will be cool when it can constantly upload data via the always on connection.

I might be able to set Linux up as DNET server :) 

oh, http://www.distributed.net is DNET

So, we missed BB, well it did not stop them turning off the narrow band access !!!!

Now http://slashdot.org has got ads on the articles your only hope is 
http://www.bbspot.com/toys/slashtitle/index.html


11 Mar 2002 20:38 -- 
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Broadband man comes tomorrow, woohoo!

I could not get the NIC to work in Linux so I unplugged everything and ripped the little sucker out to get some chip numbers for identification.

Was not a problem I even used the webcam to take some pics in case I needed to refer to it at a later stage.

Some nice soul gave me an old 3Com ISA NIC, which was handy, but then while trying to ID the 3Com NIC on the web I stumbled across the fact the the NETGEAR FA311 is not actually that rare and that a number of Linux drivers exist that should support it (I also noted that there was some less than pleasant comments about the reliability for the NETGEAR NIC).

But as Broad Band man is coming tomorrow I had decided to make his life a bit easier by only have one machine, but I want the test the FA311 ASAP.

I have another job to do they BB man wants access to OS install CDs.......

And, of course it is always handy to have a spare NIC, I wonder if I can plug the BB connection directly into the hub !?

Now I know I am Dreamcast mad but I am currently downloading
 http://sashipa.ben.free.fr/sc68/download.html 

Dream68 which plays old Atari/Amiga songs, maybe its because it has Amiga in the title and I am a die hard fan.

I had two A500s plus loads of external drives, extra memory, hand scanner and CDROM drive, not to mention I spray painted one solid black and the other camoflague.

Real link of the day is ... 
http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=www.jumpstation.co.uk


10 Mar 2002 18:33 -- 
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I had some fun last night building virtual rob, it works but it is full of debug info at the mo.

Just need to tidy it up and think about how I am going to initiate it.

I do need to add an image loading script as aposed to waiting for browser to load them when they are used (which might not be for a while).

virtual rob works by priortising three types of images, so that the level one images get seen most often the level 2 not so often and the level 3 rarely

http://www.jumpstation.co.uk/misc/fx7/ something I did for a laugh

http://www.pimpernel.com/mahjongg/ I found a great mahjongg included with Debian running in X.


9 Mar 2002 20:54 -- 
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1125
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So forgetting the fact I have missed a few days (I get busy u no!) the Debian system still has no sound, or does it !?

After finding /dev/dsp did not exist I figured I had not installed everything needed, documentation kept suggesting I recompile the kernel, but the whole point about post 2.2.x kernels is that they support loadable modules.

Hmmm, I had loaded the sound module and the AWE32 module but what I really needed was the soundblaster module, NOT!

For some easily not explained reason I need the OPL3 module, of course I now have the OPL3 module AND the sb module on top of the sound and AWE32 modules.

So I must have sound working now? yes and no, I now had a /dev/dsp and can cat an .au file into /dev/audio and it plays but esd (enlightenment sound daemon) will not start.

After my initial sound problems I installed everything and anything I could that might help including all the old kernels (doh!) and something called ALSA (advance Linux Sound A(thing)) which according to definition should make any sound stuff in Linux really easy.

No, every time I run esd (to enable sound in X) I get loads of ASLA tried ..... sound card with .... and failed.

Run the alsa-config program and set the io irq etc and no errors.

Problem is, where do I go from here ???

And I can not get the nic to work either, which is a pain otherwise I could see this machine and the other and copy files.

I noted the other day some of the projects referred to from the home page were on hiatus, well expect virtual rob to pop up soon :)

http://www.jumpstation.co.uk/binaryclock check out the time (and date) in binary!! as always full source freely available.


7 Mar 2002 220:1 -- 
seti total : 
1119
 -- dnet : 
na


After that long post here is a short one.

Sarah past her bike test WaHOOOoo

I really should be promoting my own web sites, but here is a colleagues 
http://www.machinate.demon.co.uk/the.plant/home.htm 

Oh, just a quick note, the pizza topping selector and the fortune board are hold while I find employment.


6 Mar 2002 21:40 -- 
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Got nero, took a while to find a server on there end that was working :(

Ended up with trial version 5578 (download was about 50mins, which is not bad for an 11mb file on a 56k modem :)     ) a few mins after clicking the install it was reboot time, Linux rules !

Uploaded my CV to some online agencies and within 3 hours had a two calls on my mobile wanting to know more. (more on that later).

OK, machine rebooted and ran the Nero speed checker, detected the compatible speeds ok and then mapped out response times in a disk (rather than drive) test.

Note: still no burning yet :(

While it was happily running those test I installed every single thing I could find to do with the kernel, including every binary kernel ever and various old headers/patches and source files, hmmmmm, will this be the straw that breaks the camels back ??

I have to note the results from nero's test, although encouraging were indecyperable :(

Nero failed to burn anything, and then the drive would not recognize a new blank CD........

Dselect is install all the dev package at a cost of only 1gig :)

Re-enabled the hated Auto insert notification (another reboot) and tried burning at 4x ....

Just over 20mins later the burn completed OK, but Debian is still unpacking ......

Doh, spoke to soon the data verification failed, but that might be the long file names.

As I suspected a quick check of the CD and it is OK, now to try a higher speed.

Debian is still at it, ALERT <swear> ahhh its installing all there old kernel versions one by one !!!!!

At least I will have all the files to recompile the new one (i hope)...

Less than 6 mins later and the burn is completed verification with the same error, but again actually works fine, now can I afford to waste another CD to see is easy CD creator 5 now works ??

Seems ok, and Debian has still not finished, it gave me a note about installing the kernel I already had, but nothing else.

Easy CD has chocked :( looks like nero all the way ....

u no who is still going ...

See more tomorrow 

Visit http://slashdot.org before they start charging for ad free access :(

x


5 Mar 2002 21:39 -- 
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I have just killed vi as I wrote this and I do not want to write it all again so here are the highlights.

PC in bits all last night to fit CDRW, tried a write test using Easy CD Creator 5 and it killed the machine, had to reboot to recover.

Tried 4x speed (the slowest, still faster than my old 2x drive) with one file and it tested OK.

Tested OK as did 8x, lets try 12x, of course it will now not recognize a blank CD , retry, retry, retry, retry, hmm it worked, try for 16x, only difference is I am using disk at once as opposed to track at once.

Why, it tested OK, lets do what I had originally. 620mb of mp3s at 16x..... drat failed, buffer under runs, even though this drive is supposed to be protected against those !!!

Try again at 12x, nope under runs again. Tiring 8x retry, retry, retry, nope, erm 4 speed ?

Crapped out as well, the error suggests trying alternate media.... and a reboot.

Of course I have not written anything to disk yet, its all testing maybe its time to get Nero ....

It said it worked, so lets try a burn!! remember I have only changed disks, and rebooted.

Buffer under run again, time for nero.

See details tomorrow .....


3 Mar 2002 17:57 -- 
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     33,525


Major news flash, much more important than my job, I completed Shenmue II !!!

Wow, what a game, only now I am desperate for Shenmue III, which I have heard nothing about.

But if Shenmue II is a hit on the XBox then Shenmue III has to be coming out sometime, definitely worth buying another console for.

On completion you can goto Shenmue Collection and see the original unreleased Shenmue I + II on the Saturn !!

Disk four really changes the whole game and I am very glad I kept at it ...

Although it does go a bit tomb Raider'y on you ..

My linux session looks sweet now, in fact I do not think I need Gnome anymore as enlightenment is all powerful.

Just need to get my nic and sound setup and I will be live ....

These guys flash skills rivals all others on the planet, have fun at 
http://www.sodaplay.com/zoo/index.htm


2 Mar 2002 21:19 -- 
seti total : 
1108
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na


I HAVE been playing Shenmue II all day long, I can not get over how amazing this game is in every area.

After beating the fat gang leader you are off to a completely different place, where you get to chat with a girl as you walk along a mountain path (not as boring as you may think) and you get to meet Shenmue :)

Only bad thing is no save points on the 4th disk , yet.

Squid rule !!  
http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/OCEAN_PLANET/HTML/squid_opening.html


2 Mar 2002 10:58 -- 
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Could it be I have missed another one ? - nah, well maybe

Note to self http://www.iomega.com zip drive Par 100 on win98 needs the 8mb plus drivers the old win95 guest95 etc can not find the drive on any BIOS settings.

not much else to say, just i am very busy with everything and the poor old Dreamcast has not been on for a while now, and i do want to complete Shenmue II.

Talking about Dreamcast Still have not received DreamKey3, although most ppl on the dc news group have, must chase Sega!!!

No uk photos, but still impressive 
http://terraserver.microsoft.com/

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