I have updated ldir (1.7.7), nothing major though it's just an update to the URL where it checks for the latest version number. It's now stored in a central place where other software I have developed checks it's version.

Over the christmas period, I am planning on finalising the Helpdesk system Wonderful Help 2 and releasing it for public use; as well as looking at the ldir code to see how it can be improved as it's a long time since it has had any major work developed for it.

The media library program is developing slowly with more features being planned. There are some optimisation issues at the moment but these will be addressed prior to release.

Read more about ldir here.

also it's a good idea to grab winetricks while you're at it, the newest version off the site should work. Just follow the instructions.

It currently only displays my movies and integrates minimally with Couch Potato but TV support is coming soon and also download support (if the detected IP is internal).

It scrapes info from IMDB, TMDB and TVDB. It also caches a local copy of the poster/cover. It's going to be developed more over the next few months.

Also I thought this was interesting

Today, unfortunately, the very pillars on which Wikipedia has been built - neutrality, freedom, and verifiability of its contents - are likely to be heavily compromised by paragraph 29 of a law proposal, also known as "DDL intercettazioni" (Wiretapping Act).

This proposal, which the Italian Parliament is currently debating, provides, among other things, a requirement to all websites to publish, within 48 hours of the request and without any comment, a correction of any content that the applicant deems detrimental to his/her image.

Unfortunately, the law does not require an evaluation of the claim by an impartial third judge - the opinion of the person allegedly injured is all that is required, in order to impose such correction to any website.
Hence, anyone who feels offended by any content published on a blog, an online newspaper and, most likely, even on Wikipedia can directly request the removal of such contents and its permanent replacement with a "corrected" version, aimed to contradict and disprove the allegedly harmful contents, regardless of the truthfulness of the information deemed as offensive, and its sources

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Comunicato_4_ottobre_2011/en

which probably ends up being nothing but a bit worrying.

There hasn't been any ldir developments either.

Thats all, I'll attempt topost on here developments with my MSc Project/Dissertation

I found some bugs listed #629239 and #639207 which was the same issue as mine and not the normal "missing emerald" crap.

So after much searching and playing about I decided to downgrade my Metacity to 2.30.1-3 from Metacity 2.34.1-1 which solved my problem!

so Notes to self:

Obviously change 9386 to amd64 for a true 64bit system!

Also rember to have compiz --replace ccp in your gnome startup!

I've mainly been working on gg-sim.co.uk making the layout closer in looks to giffgaffs (and be XHTML1.1 Valid). We also ran a competition because we've reached 100 users! The competition was pretty successful too bringing in another 18 users ontop of what we had and we're still growing!

I've not done much work on ldir recently apart from editing some code in a modified version for gg-sim but that version isn't available for public use. don't forget you can happily modify ldir to suit your needs as it's licensed under the GPL.

Enjoy the rest of the summer!

• 1.7.0 - Allow _GET parameters to be passed to the links generated.
• 1.8.0 - Pass-Thru download action, to allow access to non web dirs.

Current version: 1.7.6
So the next major update will include a download pass-thru.
I also have a couple of optimisations to write in.

I've had fun writing ldir and hope to continue to support it after version 1.8.0 but I do not personally see anything past this version.

In other news, I have

• Updated gg-sim.co.uk's download system.
• progressed with whelp v2
• and finally, kept up my average of 75% on my MSc with just my final project left.

I have also re-coded the current website theme (lightword) to be xhtml 1.1 compliant instead of xhtml 1.0 trans. I am looking at migrating to a different theme but not until I have properly tested it and made it compliant with W3C.
Why can't these theme developers create the themes as W3C Valid in the first place? ARGH!

New features are:

• Icons are now hosted on dropbox as it's faster loading and I can add support to allow others to add icons.
• Rewrote the PHP4 scandir support so its a bit faster
• Edited the file/folder checking routine so it's less resource hungry.
• Added support to modify where the icons are hosted.

Grab a copy over at the ldir page!

Wonderful Help2 (Whelp2) has not got a simple XML GET API for users and tickets, viewing tickets, deleting tickets and its replies and a simple control section.

There will be more development soon so keep checking back.

I have also made headway on the development of whelp2.

whelp or WonderfulHelp is my helpdesk system that I wrote for Uni, well I'm now re-developing it to be more robust and useful.

This will then become part of my dissertation system nAdmin; the development of whelp will be recorded as part of my dissertation project.

Just a short and sweet post and dont forget to checkout ldir.

There are no more available IP's in the IPv4 spec which means everything needs to slowly migrate to IPv6.

but this post was just to say, this site is IPv6 ready!

It works perfectly with my Samsung TV which has DLNA to view videos over the network but I stuggled to get it working with the Xbox.

I followed all the guides which said to change the following

presentation_url=http://192.168.0.20:80/
to
presentation_url=http://192.168.0.20:8200/

but I has changed my Serial Number and Model Number from the defaults.

This was the issue! The Serial and Model numbers NEED to be numbers and not text and not include any spaces.

Once these are set you have the xbox360 and MiniDLNA working perfectly!

I highly suggest using MiniDLNA if you require DLNA software, its small, simple and works perfect.

Grab it here: Subnet Calc.xlsx (19Kb)

I hope this simple Spreadsheet can help others as much as it's helped me.

For those that don't already know, I was contacted by a member of the giffgaff community to help out with a new project. The idea being that gg-sim.co.uk will be URL shortener for the giffgaff affiliate link, which is does really well but the community required a 'feature' of being able to track the number of clicks.

I created a simple database that logs the username, number of clicks and month/year. I was then asked to expand this to include the microgaff service (micro.gg-sim.co.uk)and so the database grew.

Within a a few weeks gg-sim has grew and now has 45 users. In which prompted another new feature; The Community Resources.

This is a place where all the content creators in the giffgaff community can get thir creations hosted for download instead of sites like rapidshare and mediahost etc etc. It also means that anyone looking for content can visit the download section and find stuff to download much easier than trawling through the forums. The community resources is still developing but it utilises a customised version of ldir and some of the customisations made it into the latest release.

The next stage for the community resources is the tracking of the number of downloads a particular file gets which will be developed.

So any members of giffgaff why not try gg-sim.co.uk! And if you're not part of giffgaff then order a sim today!

What have I been doing this last week?

• Uni - Network Management Assignment
• Uni - Java Assignment
• Web - Create and Develop gg-sim, a new giffgaff community website.
• Friends - Help with their Java
• Friends - Burn off a few discs
• Myself - Start a re-installation of windows on my pc
• Myself - Apply for a PCDL
• MySelf - apply for a few jobs
• giffgaff - Submit "How to giffgaff a blackberry" guide

gg-sim.co.uk & giffgaff

If you're a member of giffgaff then this site will be of particular use and if you're not a member, then why not? Order a SIM now! (Order a giffgaff SIM with a bonus £5 credit!)

This site (gg-sim) is a cool idea conceived by the community member samlowe which I contacted about helping develop the idea more. It is a shorter URL for all giffgaff affiliate links! A whole 17 characters shorter, well yeah, I know its not a lot but it's a link which is descriptive enough, pretty enough to not confuse people and also memorable.

I join and developed basic click tracking stats through the aid of PHP and MySQL, which in turn allowed me to develop a useful and simple stats site. The stats site, checks to see if your link is available, gives you your gg-sim personal link and also a generated QR-Code to use on posters and such.

The site not only tracks standard referral SIMs, if the user is signed up to the scheme, it will also shorten your MicroSIM link and generate a QR-Code for that (although there are less checks on this system).

I am aiming to develop it further throughout this week, with a community resources page in the works, a place for members of the giffgaff community to host their files.

giffgaff is awesome, and really cheap, if you order your SIM via the link on my site, you will gain an extra £5 when you top-up!
Did I mention they are cheap?
They have unlimited Internet and Texts and 250mins all for £10/month (one month type contract) but it's also Pay as you go with competitive rates! Oh and free 0800 numbers!

Uni Assignments

I now only have 2 left of the semester! Woo hoo but I also have 2 practial tests on Cisco CCNA type problems.

The bug doesn't effect PHP5 installations but it effects all PHP4 installations.

I unknowingly used the function strripos() and stripos() which were only introduced in PHP5. The bug got past because I was using a personally modded PHP4 install.

I will be patching the current code to include a check for the functions, like I did with scandir() function. I will also be issuing a patch file which you will have to require_once() before ldir which will contain the patch for any previous version.

Sorry for any inconvenience and this bug fix is top priority.

Edit:

Bug fix (1.7.3-1 0.0.3) is online and ldir is now fixed.

Changelog entry 1.7.3-1 logs this bug, found in version 1.7.3 bug 1.

And FYI 0.0.3 is version 0.0.3 of the fix, yes it took 3 attempts!

I have now improved the extremely simplistic anti-injection checks to be a bit more thorough, as it was actually stopping access to any .folders which meant it was stopping the ability to traverse up directories that you shouldn't be able to but it was also restricting access to legitimate folders.

Initially I was going to just edit the way it handled folders but after I did this, you could still inject so I changed the improved code. The new folder handling means that the URL doesn't have to have an prepending (is this a real word, if not is would be! I'm just not sure as firefox's spell check spazzes out with it) / so it looks much nicer.

The new improved anti-injection also allowed for some minor changes so people can display double dot files and folders i.e. ..folder/ which would be odd but highly possible. Inadvertently, it also allows ./ to be used in the variable f GET but this should be fine.

I'm not sure if it was my permissions or a bug in the PHP filesize() function as when ldir was inside a doubledot folder, it was giving an e_Warning that it couldn't stat the file size, so due to this, I have suppressed an warning from it. I will follow this up when I get time but I think that is is a filesize() bug.

Anyway, visit the ldir page for the latest code and changelog.

• 1.6.5 - Better file extension handling
• 1.6.7 - Hide dot files by default or specific hidden file name i.e. .?
• 1.6.5 - Proposed alteration of the version checking code to make it more versatile.
• 1.7.0 - Allow _GET parameters to be passed to the links generated
• 1.8.0 - Pass-Thru download action, to allow access to non web dirs.

I can't guarantee any dates for these versions but this is how it should play unless there are any bug fixes and editions to screw up the major-minor version number.

A little about my version numbering...

Version: 1.2.3

1. The Major version, this only changes is a complete change to the method/function
2. Only changed if the method of calling up the function changes or the output method. i.e. a new parameter added etc
3. This is changed when there is a bug fix and minor developments which doesn't effect any outside code.

Hope it helps a little.

Night.

Edit: Version 1.6.7 was rolled out a few hours after this post.

• Added version checking

Visit the ldir page for the code

I have compiled this guide from setting up a blackberry and deciphering badly written guides from other sites and help from members of the giffgaff forum.
It is aimed at BB OS 5 users.

What?! I have to do things myself!

Unfortunately RIM, the makers of blackberry decided tight security was more important than usability and so they created something called a BIS. A BIS, is a server that resides in the magical land of the mobile phone network and so, costs the mobile operator to run a whole independant server purely for blackberry services. That is why to use a blackberry on O2 and other network you need the Blackberry bolt-on/package.
As giffgaff is relatively new in the mobile network market and also cheap this mean they currently do not have a BIS and so functionality for a Blackberry is limited to calls and Texts and possibly internet via Opera; that is unless you are willing to do some work.
This guide assumes you know how to install software via the Blackberry Desktop Manager; if you don't then please read through the help provided with the program.

What wont work at all?

Windows Live Messenger / MSN Messenger
gTalk / Google Talk
Blackberry Messenger
Push Emails (The blackberry emails that's built in)
Possibly alot more things as the BIS is highly integrated

What does this BIS do?

Simply, it encrypts all data between your phone and the mobile network so it can't be snooped at via the mobile airwaves.

giffgaff APN (TCP/IP Settings)

Lets setup the internet access.

1. Press the BB menu button
2. Open Options
3. TCP/IP
4. Check APN Enabled,
5. Input "giffgaff.com" into the APN box
6. Check APM Auth. enabled
7. Input "giffgaff" into the username box
8. Input "password" into the password box

Internet via Opera

Opera should give you internet access without any other fafing on. It's a great browser but it isn't as deeply integrated into the phone as the Blackberry Browser but if all you need it simpe surfing this is for you.

1. Goto http://www.opera.com/mobile/download/blackberry/#active on your computer
2. Download the correct version for your Blackberry
3. Install it via the Blackberry Desktop Manager
4. Job done. Get yaself a cuppa!

But I want proper blacberry facebook!

Hold on... This is a long winded process and this will be the end result.

Install a 'legacy servicebook

I don't know exactly what a service book is, but its something to do with telling what programs how they can access other resources i.e. the internet!

1. Download the Legacy Service book from (http://data.aboutcher.co.uk/giffgaff-bb/Blackberry%20-%20Legacy%20ServiceBook%20ALL.zip)
2. Press the BB menu button
3. Open Options
4. Click Advanced Options
5. Click Service Book
6. Hold ALT and Type "SBEB" (Blackberry 71xx and 81xx devices should hold ALT and type "SSBEB"
7. AYou should see "Legacy Service Books Enabled" Onscreen
8. Plug you blackberry into your computer
9. Install the service book that you downloaded in step 1. (If you are unsure, please check with the program.)
10. Restart your blackberry (Just to force the new settings).

How to get the default browser working

1. Press the BB menu button
2. Open Options
3. Click Advanced Options
4. Click Browser
5. Under "Default Browser Config" set it to "Brower

Remove any existing Facebook apps

1. Press the BB menu button
2. Open Options
3. Click Applications
4. Choose "Add-ons"
5. Click Facebook
6. Then Remove Facebook
7. Restart your Blackberry (I had to remove my battery for this to work properly)

Install a older super awesome Facebook!

There is only one version of facebook that is guranteed to work with BB OS5 without a BIS.

1. Download the Facebook app from (http://data.aboutcher.co.uk/giffgaff-bb/Blackberry%20-%20Facebook%201.6.0.22.zip)
2. Make sure you have followed the "Remove Facebook" instructions above.
3. Plus your BB into your PC
4. Install the Facebook app you just downloaded
5. Login to Facebook
6. Enjoy poking your friends with you giffgaffed blackberry

Google Maps not working?

Try downloading the latest version

1. With your newly working Blackberry Browser visit m.google.com/maps
2. Install it

Need Gmail?

1. With your newly working Blackberry Browser visit m.google.com/mail
2. Install it

Confirmed working programs:

Facebook 1.6.0.22
Opera 6
Blackberry Browser
Google Maps 4.5.1
Gmail App

I hope this guide is easy for blackberry users to follow.

This guide was taken from many sources that haven't been credited; this is not the case for the final version being supplied to giffgaff; this guide will be updated to credit those whose work this is. This guide just pulls other guides together in one simple(ish) to understand place.

Edit:
Opened up comments for a short time on this post only, this is so members of the giffgaff community can comment and help make this guide perfect before submission to giffgaff.

Edit 2:
The guide for giffgaff is now online here.

Some alternatives:
Trillian - (Paid-for) MSN, Google Talk, AIM, Facebook Chat etc - Not Guaranteed Working.
LiveProfile - (Free) Twitter and Facebook plus more - Not Guaranteed Working.
Nimbuzz - (Free) MSN, Google Talk, AIM, Facebook Chat etc - Reported Working
WhatsApp - (Free) Messenger for cross-platform chat between Android, iPhone etc - Reported Working

Change Log:

• Now generated HTML5 Valid code, this includes XHTML 1.1 and 1.0!

Check it out over at ldir's page.

Check it out over here.

There is still a lot of development for this function and things still to come eventually:

• Version checking
• File pass-thru
• Better file control

I hope whoever uses it, finds it as useful as I have.

Screen shot of tty-clock

Try it out, its pretty sexy in a geeky way.

You can have it in 24h/12h, there's a choice of colours, centred, bouncing or left align.

Install it with these commands...

job done!

I have spent a few hours tweaking the wordpress template (yes it's common!) as it wasn't quite doing what I wanted and the code wasn't W3C Valid; it is now!

Try and Validate me!

PHP File Lister

I have been slowly working on this file lister and will re-release it once its in a state I'm happy to release it, when I do, I will remove previous versions as this one will contain a lot of fixes and be better coded. More news to come soon about that.

A fork in the code!

I have also forked this code off from v1.4.2 (unreleased) to start work on a proper PHP file manager but this is going slowly.

Check back soon for more developments!

This version is slightly different from the one previously posted on the site, as it can just be plopped onto a site and work. It will pull the file icons and CSS from my server and you will have a pretty little file lister. I have an example over here, its slightly modified from the standard code but not much.

Changelog from v1.0 to v1.4:

• Added PHP4 Support
• Hidden filenames/types are checked more efficiently
• index.php and robots.txt are now hidden by default
• CaSe SenSitiVity errors fixed
• Filetype icon case corrected
• Copyright and Linkback re-added (was missed out in v1.0)
• External icons, CSS and Favicon host are linked to
• Some redundant code removed

either download the code or copy & paste it from this post.

Download:

Download: ldir-1.4.0.phps (6kb)

I have improved the subnet calculator a bit (Original Post), it now gives you the wild card for the subnet mask which is used for EIGRP and ACLs etc.

It has helped me with VLSM and subnetting other than class C but it is primarily for Class C addresses.

Download: Subnet Calc.xlsx (18.7kb)

It's very very simple and if it doesn't work then tough, it suited me.

Download: Subnet Calc.xlsx (18.7kb)

With this in mind, I have created a Debain Virtual Machine for people use use, so they don't need to learn Linux to install it. With it being a VM, it means that, as long as you have VMware installed, it will work on any machine.

System: Debian 6 "Squeeze" i686
User: root
Password: ns123456
Memory: 512mb (Changeable)
HDD: 3GB, of which 1.7GB is used.
Download: Debain NS2.rar (527mb)
Download: VMwarePlayer3.exe (104mb)

Have fun.

P.S. For VMwarePlayer for Linux and OSx, have a look on the VMware site.