Tony Blews

It disappears down into the bottomless pit…

Back in 1990, that could have summed up my computing degree, but it was the response you got when dropping items into the sacrificial pit on AberMUD.

AberMUD was a Multi User Dungeon written (mainly) by Alan Cox, long before he started doing bits with Linux.

If you don’t remember AberMUD, then you won’t want to bother reading any further. But if you do recall it, then prepare to rejoice.

I’ve located a copy of the sources that will compile under Linux, and got it running.

If you want to play it, SSH or TELNET to bl83.homelinux.net and login with the username mud and password mud

I’ve had to take Telnet access off, so now you’ll need some form of SSH client such as Putty, or use the web-based ConsoleFish.

(bl83 was the name of the machine it ran on briefly at Staffordshire University)

How do you turn a £20 quid satnav, bought from the local Steptoe and Son, into a pocket media player? Well, I’ll show you.

The aforementioned ViaMichelin X-950 runs Windows CE 4.2 Core as its base OS, with the GPS and mapping software running on top of that.

What we need is to stop it running the the mapping software automatically, but leave it on there with an option to run it.

To do this you’ll need the driver disk that can with the unit. ActiveSync alone won’t suffice here, and anyway it has to be ActiveSync 3.8 as later versions won’t work correctly (especially with WinXP SP3).

So install the software, fire up ActiveSync and connect the unit with a USB cable.

Next you’ll need to download the file at http://www.gpspassion.com/download/custVM_GpsPasSion_buddy.zip and extract it somewhere (to your desktop will do).

Run the custVM_GpsPasSion_buddy.exe program and follow the onscreen prompts. Answer Next/Yes/OK until its done.

Now unplug the satnav from the USB and reset it using the button on the back.

Click the OK box on the screen twice to install both software items, and then wait for the thing to reset itself. It should now look like this:

Next you’ll want to download http://hautil.free.fr/bm/ScreenRotate.zip, and copy the files in it to \Program Files\ScreenRotate. Running that program will, surprisingly, rotate the screen through 90 degrees.

Using Windows Explorer, find the file \Program Files\ScreenRotate\ScreenRotate.exe and create a Destktop short cut (File -> Send to -> Desktop as Shortcut).

Next you’ll need to run \My Documents\CustoVM\RegEdit.exe and change some settings.

Change the value of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ System \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ Power \ Timeouts \ BattSuspendTimeOut to be 2700 (which is 45 minutes).

By now you’ll be wondering where the WinCE control bar is, and how to input data. Well if you tap the very bottom edge of the screen near the plastic, the control bar will appear, and from here you can enable the on screen keyboard.

So far you should have a machine that boots into Win CE and has a video player (CORE) installed, and the mapping system still available (as an icon on the desktop called MapSonic.

You’ll be wanting an image viewer too, so download the file http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA003011/gqe/gq151hpce.zip and extract it somewhere on your PC. The copy the files from the ARM directory to \Program Files\GQ and create a desktop shortcut.

And there you have it. Copy some sound files, JPGs and videos onto the thing and away you go.

You want a demo? Oh go on.

(The song “Happy Birthday Tony” is (c) Crackerwax 2008)

This info was gleaned from http://www.gpspassion.com/forumsen/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=57135 but that is in French, and this isn’t.

Another month brings another Gadget purchase. This time its the Huawei E5830 Mifi thingummy, a combined 3g mobile broadband modem and portable wifi hotspot. Once again it is on the 3 network.

The reasons for buy it are twofold. Firstly the internal GPRS modem in my Ubisurfer has gone down, rendering it useless without another means of connectivity (at least until Datawind’s tech support sort me out a replacement or fix); and secondly, my trust Huawei E220 USB broadband modem is being pressed into service as a permanet net connection for my Linux box running a game server (until Virgin can final get around to installing proper broadband for me).

That’s enough of me justifying the purchase, let’s have a look at the thing.

Ooh, shiny. So, pop in the sim card and battery, plug it in to the charger and wait for twelve hours. Thumb the power button for two seconds and on come the five lights.

Ah, you’re thinking, there are four lights! Well, the fifth light (in the middle, not shown) only comes on when you first power up the device or if you feel an irresistable pull to a a foreign land (roaming).

If you’re really insteresting in what the four status lights mean, I’m sure you can find out elsewhere.

Thumb the wifi button for two seconds, then the Saturn button (only my name for it, as it has a little picture of a ringed planet on it) for two seconds and if all is well you’ll be able to connect to the internet through the thing.

Assuming all it well, that is. Sometimes it isn’t. Even though i’m a bit of a 3 fanboy (nine phones and two modems over the years), I still have issues with them. Firstly 3 is a crap name for a company, Whampoa would have sounded cooler; and secondly the coverage where I currently live is ropey at times.

The darker shade represents indoor/outdoor coverage, whilst the lighter shade shows outdoor coverage only. The pointer shows where I live. Not shown is a 3g modem gaffa taped to my window in order to get a good signal.

Besides the device itself, the box contains a short USB lead and a charger. The charger is, obviously, for charging the thing, and the USB cable is for three things.

1. using it as a storage device if a microSD card (not supplied) is inserted into it
2. using it as a USB modem
3. using the configuration program.

The configuation program (which installs straight from the device itself – nice) allows you to do all the usual wifi router based things: DHCP config, port forwarding, changing the SSID to something rude, changing the password to something you’ll actually remember.

Connecting to the thing is easy with any most wifi devices. So far I’ve managed to get two laptops (WinXP and Linux), the Ubisurfer and a borrowed iPod Touch running concurrently. I know the iPhone works ok (slightly faster that the phone’s built in 3g modem), and I’m sure the iPad will work. (Does anyone want to lend me one to test?)

Sadly, I could not get a laptop running Hexxeh’s Flow build of Chromium OS. But I put this down to Flow failing to recognised the Dell’s WiFi hardware.

Its a great little device. Go and buy one now. £49 from Three on their PAYG plan.

So, all that remains for me to do now are the customary speed test, using www.speedtest.net, as ever.

Firstly using the old E220 USB Modem:

And now using the E5830 Mifi:

I clearly have a winner here, but your mileage may vary.

Finally, here are the frankly deplorable results taken recently from my sister’s Orange Home Broadband link recently:

Want to wipe your soiled rectum on an England flag? How about this:

Yes, you can now buy a roll of St. George flags for anus wiping.

Who the shitting Science* thought this would be a good idea?

Anyway, get them from play.com, if you really want to.

(The play.com domain name is registered from the island of Jersey. The Admin contact is UK based, but the Tech contact is in France.)

*oh go find the South Park episode.

Daleks are great. I’ve wanted one for years. The idea of having a Dalek to order about appeals to me. I could have it make tea for me and then exterminate my enemies/co-workers.

Daleks instill fear in the weak and feeble. For example:

My sister recently acquired a defunct radio control Dalek on a car boot sale and figured that I might be able to find something to do with it.

But first we need to see exactly what we’re dealing with.

What we appear to have is a Doctor Who – 12″ Radio Control Black Dalek, missing its eyestalk and the relevant control unit.

Someone once said that once you break something to see how it works, you have left the path of wisdom. It might have been Merlin, or possibly Mr. Miyagi. In this case, the damn thing is broken and i left the path of wisdom years ago anyway.

So, off with the bottom!

Here we see three things:

• the base unit – which contains the RC receiver, speaker, battery unit and motors
• the superstructure – which is what makes it look like a Dalek
• some turkey mince – which would have been my supper, but was so far out of date that it was in danger of crawling away by itself.

Stripping off the burnt out RC receiver (and letting the mince run free) gives us a closer look at the base unit:

An even closer look shows us the nubbin that connects to the drive shaft that rotates the head unit:

Peering up the skirt of the Dalek shows us where the shaft connects to the nubbin, along with some wires that connect to the circuitry in the head:

Just concentrating on the bottom we have:

• a base unit with working motors that run off 6v
• some duff circuitry which will be ignored
• a piezo speaker which might come in handy later
• nothing for my supper
• a blog post which, having re-read the text, will probably rank quite highly in the results of porn searches.