Since I could only get the Hackintosh on my Laptop half-working (and that’s after a fully failed attempt on the Desktop) I went ahead and pulled the trigger on the real deal:
While this will be filling the role of my “netbook” from this point on, its real purpose is to help me become familiar with OSX. Â I’ve been talking to a lot of friends for application recommendations, along with reading Lifehacker’s recommended apps.
Also, the reason for this purchase is because of some things that have happened to the Netbook, I’ll post more about that later though. Â Until then!
I’m currently trying to get a knowledge base set up at my place of work. Â Initially, I had used 68kb to set it up. Â It was fantastic to work with (especially after installing TinyMCE as a plug in) but it had no access control or authentication, so management asked I look into alternatives with those features. Â I found TWiki and set it up with LDAP / AD (Active Directory) authentication. Â Since the documentation wasn’t helping me, I wrote some of my own in case anyone else needs some help, or if I would need to do it again.
And it will be sent to any device I own with Dropbox installed. Fortunately, that’s a lot of devices. Â I originally saw this on LifeHacker, and when I decided to add it the other day I saw the original author had added password protection. Â So I took his password protection and added it into the existing design at addictivetips. Giving you the result you see now.
The address will always be available in the links section, so get in touch with me for the password and send me some files!
I received my CCENT certificate in the mail today! Â I was so thankful to pass the test, I’m looking forward to studying for the CCNA after New Year’s.
I’m taking my time on getting everything posted, but I recently took a trip to North Carolina where I got to tour Microsoft! Â I have a few neat pictures from there =D Â And I completed the laser I mentioned in this post as well, I’ll post pictures of that as well.
I’m in the process of making my machine dual boot Windows 7 and OSX. I was having some trouble getting the Nawcom Mod CD to do anything other than freeze. Pressing F5 crashes the installer, as does selecting a device to boot from.  This is an issue stemming from the Empire EFI swap CD they’re working from, as several variations were showing the same behavior.
The disc started working normally once I disabled two extra JMicron SATA controllers integrated into my motherboard, as well as my unused IDE controller. I’m guessing that there is a driver missing from the boot CD that makes it unable to handle those JMicron controllers. I haven’t had the chance to cycle through each one to see if a specifc one is causing it, or if it’s just the IDE or just the JMicrons.
In any case, if someone else has this issue hopefully they will stumble across this post. Now to figure out why I’m getting a Kernel Panic before I even see the install screen…
Although I haven’t signed up for a membership yet, I’ve spent quite a bit of time at the Quad Cities Co Lab (https://www.qccolab.com/) and I’m really starting to get the itch to start a project. Tonight I’ll be attending a Microcontroller programming class there, and I have two more ideas I wanted to document. One of them is going to happen, the other may take a bit longer, and may not entirely be my project.
First, the simple one. I have a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-950Q that gets very hot during use. I opened it up, and found the chip responsible for all the heat:
TV Tuner - Case Removed
There isn’t anything too lofty here. I found some heatsinks on Newegg, and they even come with thermal tape to attach to the chip. What I’m really hoping to do is drill holes in the outer casing that the fins / poles on the heatsink will fit through. If I do it right it should look really nice.
The next project has two parts. The first would be to build a laser. There are kits available to make 150mw blue / violet lasers. Here is a video showing how they perform. This is not the kit I would be building. The kit is a lot more bare-bones.
Â
So it’ll be a nice, bright laser and will probably work great for the parlor tricks shown in the video.
Now, I was inspired when I saw this Instructables article on making a wood-etching laser pen. I thought transmitting a laser through fiber optic would be too “lossy” to still etch or cut. But if it can be done through fiber, the process of building a low-power laser cutter becomes a lot more practical. I need a plotter / CNC platform to control it though. And, well… I had this crazy idea, considering the fiber optics are so light…
Yes, I actually propose using an Etch-A-Sketch as the plotter. There are plans available to build a computerized Etch-A-Sketch, I just want to change out the etching head with a laser.
Realistically, we probably won’t use an Etch-A-Sketch. I bought one and (with a friend’s help) took it apart, the insides are a little tight to fit components in. And also, those things are filled with aluminum powder. But the main stopping point is that I’m worried about the parts slipping, making the cutter unreliable. They’re toys, not exactly designed for precision.
My friend Mark has taken some interest in this project. He wants to see a laser cutter built, and is already familiar with programming the Arduino microcontrollers we’d be using. Hopefully we’ll be able to work together and build this thing. I already have some printers I’m going to give him, we’re hoping there are usable stepper motors inside.
Several other people at the Lab have mentioned building a laser cutter, honestly I’d just like to see this thing built. If I’m not involved it’s unfortunate, but I’ll be just as happy to see someone else complete one of these things.
My last project is to learn how to program the Arduino, which will start with tonight’s class. I don’t have any ideas for it yet, but I also don’t really understand what the Arduino can do. I’m thinking once I have a grasp of that, I’ll get some ideas.
Several of the reviews in Palm’s catalog commented on the lack of challenge progress, and that the Spartan images don’t appear correctly. I don’t want to write a review just to comment to those people, so I did the next best thing by posting here.
Spartan images are controlled by Bungie, Halo Stats does not manipulate them in any way. Until Bungie begins updating the images, the changes will not be reflected in Halo Stats. In that same vein, Bungie does not (currently) provide challenge progress information in their API. If it becomes available, it will be implemented.
Other than that, the reviews have been great so far! The other recurring comment is regarding K/D ratios and commendations. The code for that information is being written, and an update should be available soon.
I haven’t had time to post about this, as I’ve been out of town, and otherwise busy. But Halo Stats is now available in the Palm Application Catalog! The latest update for it was pushed out yesterday as well, adding daily / weekly challenges and some extra player information.
Halo Stats has already received 40 reviews (almost all positive) and surpassed Quick Subnets in downloads. The next update will have commendation information and a new interface, some of which is already written into the current version (0.5.4). Also, Win/Loss ratios will be implemented, as it’s one of the top requests in reviews.
Expect the update sometime next week! And thanks everyone who is downloading it!
Note: The example here has been written in VBScript, but the principles should apply to JavaScript as well.
While I was working on the KML generator for work, I wanted a text log to show errors if they came up. The information wasn’t important enough to save to a file, but it needed to be displayed to the user. However, as the HTA would go through data, the speed at which the log file would update would become slower and slower, eventually appearing to lock up. Considering it was dealing with approx. 500kb across three CSV files, this was not acceptable.
Here is a simplified version of the HTA script:
<HEAD>
<TITLE>KML Generator</TITLE>
{Omitted}
</HEAD>
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="VBScript">
Do Until (conditions)
{Code}
realTimeOutput.value = realtimeinfo.value & "Message. " & vbCrLf
Loop
</SCRIPT>
<BODY>
<textarea id="realTimeOutput" readonly>Waiting for data.</textarea>
</BODY>
The code in red is fine for a quick addition, but terrible for fast successive additions to the textarea. The content of the textarea was being copied, the addition appended, then the entire value was being written back in. So, after several searches and attempting other re-workings of that same idea, I found this method of doing it:
In this case everything (except vbCrLf) is carried out via DOM functions, allowing the text to be appended into the textarea without copying everything already in there. The speed difference was very apparent, as what would come to a near-lockup was now instant. It seems unusual to create a new text node just to add text, but it’s the only way to update the textarea via the DOM. In a more memory-sensitive environment, you could assign the node to a variable and null it out as needed. But honestly, at that point I’d ask why VBScript is still being used.
So, here is something to show you, a physical laptop backup restored into a VirtualBox machine:
Laptop running in VM
I’m doing this for work, and while it was a fun “just to do it” project, it also served the purpose of testing the backup, and giving us a place to test fixes and (as shown) attempting upgrades.
Ultimately, the backup was done with Norton Ghost 15.0. I was really hoping to be able to do it with CloneZilla, saving some cash and using Open Source software. However, no matter what options I entered in that software, it could not restore into the VM. At first I thought it was just the difficulties of moving an OS to another machine. But trying fixes from MergeIDE to UBCD4Win’s Fix IDE / Fix HDC to no avail, it was something else.  I was seeing that there was something detected on the drive – no “Operating System Not Found” error - but it clearly wasn’t loading the OS.Â
The fact that this laptop was registering as having 5 partitions, one of which was without a file system, and the other labeled as “DOS” told me that there may be an abnormal MBR structure or partition table in there 😉
When we moved to Ghost, I was seeing the same errors. Fortunately, Ghost has some extra utilities on their live CD, allowing me to save the MBR and Partition Table separately:
Ghost Options
After saving and restoring the MBR and Partition Tables manually, the image booted without issue in the Virtual Machine. What strikes me as strange is that CloneZilla will back up the MBR and partition table automatically. This issue shouldn’t have come up with CloneZilla if it’s working as it is supposed to. I may have to look into that later if I get the time.
If I was looking to do a straight physical to virtual conversion, there are much better options to use. Disk2Vhd would be one of them, as @CC_DKP pointed out on Twitter. But the purpose here was just to test a backup, so I was working from a regular backup, not a VHD file.
One last note about Ghost: While I like 15.0, I can’t recommend it for legacy hardware. The only reason I got it to work with this laptop is because we installed more RAM. Worth it? Completely. But if the laptop couldn’t take the upgrade we would’ve been dead in the water.
