Archive for October, 2006

[html] i am soooo tired right now… this whole clock changing thing just isn't goddamn right. no-one's sleep pattern is meant to get as messed up as this!
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[html] Firefox has had tabs for donkeys years, Opera has too, now MS are jumping on the bandwagon and hoping to market it as an "innovation" on their part. No surprise there. But out of these three "next gen" browsers (FF2, Opera 9, IE7) it really suprised me to notice that as far as usability is concerned Opera 9 and IE7 make it instinctively easy to open a new tab, Firefox 2 however, not so obvious.

For easy reference I've added some screen shots..

The above screenshots are standard, default installs, without any configuration. Yes, I know it's possible to double-click the tab bar in Firefox to open a new tab (but not when it's already full), and yes I know it's possible to customise the toolbar to add a New Tab button like those in IE7 and Opera 9. Or by installing an extension like Tabbrowser Preferences or New Tab Button on Tab Bar, but that's faffing around and most people are not willing to learn about extensions and go hunting for one to do the job that IE7 and Opera 9 do by default.

A lot of newcomers to Firefox will only see the tab bar once… when Firefox launches for the first time after a new install. They see two tabs open and then close the browser without fully realising what tabs mean. If Mozilla and the Firefox devs wants to promote the fact that it pioneered tabbed browsing then I think at the very least a "New Tab" button should be there by default even if it's on the Navigation bar. As a summary, it's my opinion that not having this button visible to the user by default only acts as a barrier to entry for Firefox, and one that's totally avoidable.

Some may think I'm nitpicking but I'm a long-term user of Firefox (since the heady days of it being called Firebird) and I really want to see it become more and more usable to newcomers who've heard good things about it. I've been waiting to see this elusive little button be set to "on" by default ever since Firefox v0.8 was released… it's frustrating for me to see that it still hasn't been enabled. *sigh* here's hoping they enable it by default in Gran Paradiso.
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Well, Vista RC2 was released a few weeks ago, as was XBMC 2. XBMC 2 came out just after Vista RC1 was released and unfortunately the samba implementation in Vista wasn't compatible with XBMC, which as anyone who streams media from their PC using XBMC will tell you, isn't very good news.

However I did figure out a work-around until the XBMC dev team and / or samba is updated to support the new smb3 protocols. Now, unfortunately this work-around involves a little bit of work and… erm, oh yeah, and a spare box / server. If you already have a *nix server set up somewhere in your home network then you're laughing. Basically all it is, is using the *nix server as a relay. We want to run media from a Vista PC, ok, but there's no way to do that direct at the moment. So we connect the nix server to the Vista smb share and then in turn create a share on the nix server which is routed to the smb share on the Vista pc. This is possible because the latest version of smb on nix is capable of negotiating just fine with the NTLMv2 authentication of Vista. All we really need to do is configure fstab and a little credentials script then mount -a it.

So… create the share on Vista, called, say, 'PICTURES'. We want to
[code]mkdir /home/USER/samba[/code]
then
[code]touch /home/USER/sambacred[/code]
and then edit to populate with the following credentials:
[code]# $HOME/sambacred
username = shareusername
password = sharepassword
domain = WORKGROUPorDOMAIN[/code]

Then we need to add the following line to /etc/fstab
[code]//HOSTNAME/PICTURES /home/USER/samba smbfs credentials=/home/USER/sambacred,uid=USER,gid=USERGROUP,dmask=700,fmask=700 0 0[/code]
Where "USER" is the name of the UNIX user and HOSTNAME is the name of the Vista hostname.

Once that's added to the end of fstab save and then do
[code]mount -a
ls /home/USER/samba[/code]
and you should be listed all the files being shared on the Vista box.
Now just set up a samba share on the nix box pointing at the /home/USER/samba directory and configure XBMC to read from that samba share rather than trying (and failing) to read from the Vista box direct.

I know it's not a perfect solution, but editing the XBMC samba code and recompiling it with the XDK or arsing about in a RC operating system isn't really worth it, especially since it'll only be a short wait (hopefully) before the issue is addressed.

Oh yeah, and if you don't have the spare hardware for a relay server, you could always consider installing a virtual machine on your Vista PC (not recommended) or on another PC on the network which can be configured to act as the go between. Disregarding the doubling of network traffic it's not a big price to pay if you use it everyday. Muauhahahah! The beauty of having a gigabit network

Trying to configure access to a linux share from Vista however is a crazy hit-and-miss process. It'll first say the server isn't there, then it'll say there's a network error, then comes the authentication that fails no-matter-what, then there's a significant number of repeats… and then hey prestoo! Access. Ahh, gotta love beta software :/

I just found this on my travels, wanted to post it here for easy referal.

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[html] "Individually, and collectively, we can raise the consciousness of the people of this planet, so that each of us will be viewed as members of the same family, who are here to claim their birthright of unconditional love and oneness. If we don't do it, who will?"

That's the opening line from The Hypnotist – Sisterlove, all in all it's a pretty gosh darn accurate condensation of summary for what needs to happen, and surely enough, slowly but evidently, it's what is really happening right now amongst certain people in this world. There are people in this world right now who have a job to do, and that job is to wake other people up to what's going on right now. They're here to show us what we, humanity as a whole, are capable of, and to show us that right now, we're being imprisoned and conditioned into believing that we are no more capable of creating our reality than we're capable of changing the weather. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have a choice to make, do we want to remain imprisoned? Or do we want to end the cycle of containment and denied our universal right to flourish into that which we are destined to be.

Hello. I am one of those people. And so was the person who wrote that first line of that track.
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[html] The one thing I can say for today, and that is "It wasn't boring". I'll save some time and summarise, the main linux server decided this afternoon that it had had enough and decided to the throw its toys firmy out of the proverbial pram and dropped off the network like a dead bird off a telegraph wire. Previously the linux server had been a good little boy and had behaved itself for the past year without a hitch (despite losing sync occasionally). Unlike the Windows server which recently died a most violent death in the form of a power supply failure and a return-to-base trip. It still hasn't returned from base yet :/ I can't think of "return to base" without thinking "All your base are belong to us". Hmmm.

Annnyway, the linux server had previously been fine, and it's primary (in fact, sole) function is a database server for our EPOS system, it contains the propietary database structure of our EPOS software suppliers so they're naturally a bit careful to whom they give the root password to. Before today, we hadn't had need for the root password as any problem we'd run into before was pretty much run-of-the-mill stuff requiring no root access. However today was a day like no previous. As I say, it dropped off the network, just after lunchtime and there were quite a few miffed people in line at the tills. I immediately try to find out what's happened, which, is still a somewhat odd occurance.

Cut a long story short, I think I impressed pretty much everyone with my knowledge and ability to deal with the problem as it stood. I located the problem, knew how to work around it in the shortest time and get everything back up and running despite it being an unforeseeable incident. Go team me!

Tomorrow I'm on a First Aid course which has been going on for the past week (pretty good actually) so that should be good. It's a pretty good feeling knowing that you can save (or preserve) someone's life and you know exactly how to do it. It goes.. DRACB, Danger, Response, Airway, Circulation, Breathing. Yes, that's right, it's not ABC anymore to all you lay people. It's a matter of what's going to kill you first. Klara and I are doing the training along with a few other colleagues so it's all good, we've been testing each other and stuff. She is great.

Now I must sleep and rest my weary mind for it is fragile. Goodnight!
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It seems that every day now there are more and more people waking up, or people who are awake are speaking out, breaking free from the herd and actually thinking for themselves and not being afraid of what others think. There isn't a day that goes by now that there isn't a [link=http://www.digg.com]digg[/link] story that doesn't have something to do with exposing the NWO for exactly what it is. One such link was posted which was telling people about a film exposing the fraud that is income tax, and how the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England are NOT owned by the people, and they aren't controlled by the government in any way. The Federal Reserve and Bank of England as well as countless other central banks are owned PRIVATELY and have complete control over the governments that they lend money to and ultimately the people.

The truth of the matter is that people are sick of the lives that they have been conditioned to lead, they're sick of being in debt constantly, they're sick of the same scare tactics being used by the corporate media, they're sick of the farce that is promoted as the "civilised" means of government, democracy. The irony being that most "democracies" are [i]not[/i] democracies, they're totalitarian dictatorships for 4 years with the illusion of the people having a choice by a ritualistic "vote" every four years, which do you want? The muppet on the left or the muppet on the right?

One thing that fucking pisses me off like no tomorrow is people saying they "haven't got the time" to watch important documentaries, or do a little research for themselves. They haven't got the time to actually make a difference in this world? They'd rather carry on being fucked in the ass and literally treated like cattle, watching their shit teevee and eastenders in the evening. Really pisses me off. I'm glad that they'll be left behind, i really am.

Anyway, I've pasted the video below, just click play and educate yourself.

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