I thought it was about time to upgrade my Movable Type software. It’s been so long since I upgraded that Movable Type has gone through two ownership changes! We’re now running version 3.17.
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Author Archives: ian
Linux on PPC
I have an old Apple blue G4 sitting under my bench gathering dust. I played with OS X on it for a while, but as most of my friends would testify, I’m a bit of a Linux nut. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Fedora Project was supporting the PPC architecture in the Core 4 release. I’m playing with Core 4 Test 2 at the moment, and it’s quite stable. There’s a few issues around the macintosh-only areas that I’m still having problems with, such as video drivers, and the apparent lack of support for the on-board PCMCIA slot (designed to hold a WiFi card). Some of the GUI tools don’t work as expected, such as the auto partition option during install, and the GUI for Up2date. Despite these shortcomings (after all, it’s still only test2), I think that a Fedora-based Mac will make a permanent home on my bench.
Astaro and SpamAssassin
We have an Astaro Security Linux firewall (actually two of them, running in High Availability mode) at work. ASL includes SpamAssassin, which is effective in filtering out some spam email from our corporate network. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a way to ‘train’ the bayesian filter. Most SpamAssassin implementations that I’ve seen allow you to set up a spam trap email address where you forward all of your spam messages, and SpamAssassin uses these to train the bayesian filter to recognize spam.
Well, I was playing around at the command prompt, and I found where Astaro keeps the bayes database. It can be found at:
/var/lib/nobody/.spamassassin
I also found that the sa-learn command was installed and working. So, I took a couple of mbox-style files, one with my spam, and one with regular emails, and ran the following commands:
sa-learn --dbpath /var/lib/nobody/.spamassassin/ --spam --inbox --showdots spam
sa-learn --dbpath /var/lib/nobody/.spamassassin/ --ham --inbox --showdots inbox
where ‘spam’ was my spam file, and ‘inbox’ was my non-spam file.
The results so far, after training with about 5000 spam messages and 10000 regular messages seems to be working. Looking at the ASL log files, I see more of the spam messages getting a higher bayes score.
HP 4951A Protocol Analyzer
I just recieved a new piece of hardware from one of my many forays into Ebay. It’s a HP4951A protocol analyzer from Hewlett Packard. It appears to be just the piece of hardware I need for all of the serial communications hacking I do with my antique computers.
However, when I plugged it in, it made a few encouraging beeps, followed by nothing. The screen briefly showed a green dot in the lower center of the screen, but then nothing.
My background is digital, but my instinct told me that this was probably a display problem – maybe in the horizontal sweep? I carefully pulled the unit apart. I’m absolutely amazed at how well this thing is put together. The copper traces on the circuit board are gold plated. Almost all the resistors are precision 1% tolerance. Most of the chips, however, are printed with a house part number, so repair of the digital circuitry may be impossible.
I found a company in Canada that appears to rent service manuals for various equipment, so I’ve put an email in to them asking if they are able to rent me the service manual for this piece of equipment.
I did some searching on the net to see what I could find. I didn’t come across very much at all. One gem I did come across was this usenet posting. There were no responses, but it definitely was the description of my problem. I decided to email the gentleman, and to my surprise I received a response within a couple of hours detailing his problem was in the focus circuit, and identified a 750K resistor that was open. I stripped down my unit, and sure enough my unit had the same problem! unfortunately, it’s Saturday afternoon here, and there’s nowhere open to find a replacement, so I’m going to have to wait until Monday. The fact that I’ve found the very same component that failed is very encouraging.
I posted two images in my moblog showing the board and the component. It’s difficult to see with my cell cam, but the faulty component is located just to the left of the focus pot (it’s removed in this picture). I’ll let you know how I got on once I get a replacement part.
Vegas!
My wife surprised me with a long-weekend trip to Vegas. What a wonderful break. Now, I’m not one for all of the glitz and faux-rennaisance crap that they have here (I grew up in Europe – a fake Eiffel Tower just isn’t the same as the real thing), I must admit that I’m having a great time!
It’s great to have a few days away from work, where I’m too far away to deal with anything even if an emergency came up. We’ve been to see The Blue Man Group (my favourite) and Celine Dion (Cheryl’s favourite).
I managed to sneak in damn-near half a suitcase of technology to bring with me. High speed Internet access in the hotel room is becoming more common, but I was downright shocked to find a Wi-Fi acces point hidden underneath the desk in the room! So I’m blogging from the Zaurus wirelessly!
The one piece of technology that doesn’t work is my brand new camera phone! I’ve got voice service, but no net access, and no ability to blog pictures!
Free Samples
I was doing some research on the Texas Instruments website the other day looking up some specifications on some serial interface chips for a project I’m working on. I happened to stumble upon the fact that the have a free sample program! I was a bit skeptical while I entered my order, but yesterday UPS showed up on my doorstep with a package from TI! I didn’t even have to pay any shipping, and it arrived 2 days after my order. Very impressive.
Moblogging
A few days ago, I acquired a new cell phone from my local provider Telus. It’s the LG 5450 camera phone. Along with a camera phone comes moblogging. It took me a few days, but I’ve got the moblog working (note the pictures on the left of the main page). I’m using TextAmerica.com to host the pictures. They’ve been very helpful. I had an issue with the way that Telus formats their email message containing the image – they were very quick to modify their code to accept Telus postings.
Nerf Gun
Today, we rolled out a new insurance sales module for our in-house POS/CRM system. The company decided to hold a little party for the IT department to celebrate the rollout. The coolest part was we got a Nerf gun! Needless to say, productivity in the department plummeted for the remainder of the day.
Toshiba Magnia SG20
Yet another cool piece of hardware has made its way to my test bench. This time, it’s the Toshiba Magnia SG20. I would hazard a guess that Toshiba made way too many of these things, because everyone and his dog is selling them on Ebay.
What’s inside? Within 15 minutes of it arriving, I had it ripped apart to see what made it tick. Very impressive. This box is ideal for a small all-in-one server application. My original intention was to use it as a captive access point for some public-access Wi-Fi hotspots that a few friends and I want to set up (as an aside, check out the software that we’re thinking of using – NoCatNet). After ripping it apart, I’m thinking that it might work better as a mobile server for my truck.
I’ve tried doing some searching on the net for any links to people hacking this unit (there must be people hacking it – it’s just so… hackable!). All I’ve been able to come up with is a Latvian site with some nice pictures. A bit more digging, and I found a Yahoo group.
I found one tidbit of information somewhere (I can’t find the link at the moment) that mentions that ‘telnetuser’ and the admin password is used to telnet in to the box to get a command prompt. I’ll test that theory as soon as I’ve put it back together!
I Have Seen The Future
and it’s incredible! Sitting in bed surfing tge web with my Sharp Zaurus PDA. Now, ‘ve used other handheld devices for Internet access, including a Blackberry and several cell phones, but there’s always been something missing. Well, not so with the C760. A nearly-usable keyboard, an amazing 640×480 resolution, wireless network access, and a web browser that does surprisingly well on just about any web site I’ve thrown at it!