BPI inside

Author: admin

  • Broadband arrived

    Yeah, finally. Last Thursday my broadband order was delivered.

    Set it up using the ADSL-modem which was delivered three days earlier with some slight problems. The problems arised because I don’t like to start those "wizard" setup tools which are bundled with every providers connection and install crap all over the system. So I had to manually set up some things but the modem refused to work because it had no templates(?) installed. Had to fire up the providers setup-tool but canceled execution after it had the missing templates transfered. Strange stuff.

    Well nevertheless. Yesterday I purchased a Netgear DG834G ADSL modem and wireless router and installed it instead of the providers modem. Worked completely flawlessly and I was online with the new hardware within minutes.

    Later in the evening I upgraded the firmware on the router from version 2.10.22 to 3.01.25, which I found on Netgears DG834v2 Support Download Page.

    And since it runs embedded Linux and the source is availabe I’m looking forward to hack the crap out of it.

  • Nice afternoon snapshot

    Last Saturday I was doing something in my room when my view catched the red glow outside the house. Normally I just go to the window and let the sunset impress me some time but this time I had the camera lying near and decided to capture it.

    Now it serves as quite a nice desktop wallpaper.


  • TiddlyWiki as SVG editor

    During the weekend an idea jumped into my mind:

    Since SVG is a standard for graphics on the web and TiddlyWiki is an self-contained micro-wiki, what about integrating an live-SVG-editor into TiddlyWiki.

    I’m thinking of something similar like a small MS Paint. Something like that is already existing, the ASCIIsvg Editor, but that is currently better suited for mathematical drawings and will very likely have to be modified a bit for inline and convient SVG editing. It’s based on ASCIIsvg.js. This "library" has already been used to create a SVG-enhanced version of TiddlyWiki for math-equations. See the ASciencePad for this.

    I wonder if anyone before me had the idea (and wrote it down) of an inline SVG painting tool…

  • TOR in the news

    Since TOR had a bit of press coverage with the Anonym.OS Release and the EFF statement about Google’s resistance to government subpoena I think the prime time for TOR is slowly approaching.

    TOR is an application which enables the user to anonymize the IP traffic to and from his computer. This is done by providing an SOCKS proxy on the clients side which receives the IP packets, encrypts them and sends them to several TOR servers on the internet via HTTPS. Those servers then exchange the requests a few time until one finally decrypts the packet and sends it into the internet. It also receives the internet-reply, encodes it again and delivers the result back to the client again using the TOR servers.

    This way everything which can be seen going in and out at a client are some encryptet HTTPS connections to a handful of servers in the internet.

    The advantage of using HTTPS is that it’s widely used for secure websites and so the traffic is more difficult to recognize for an outside attacker or surveyor. It also allows to bypass certain restrictions for example if a company or state blocks specific websites for its employees or inhabitants.

  • Macabre missing-sign text

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  • Joking time, blonde joke

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  • Sent out the order

    As said last friday I sent the order form for the broadband ADSL connection to Inode.

    I’m curious how long it’ll take until the connection is up. I’m already looking out for an ADSL modem which has built-in WLAN support so that we can take andvantage of our wireless freedom of our laptops. Perhaps I’ll even set up one computer as some always-on thing for continuous connection and service providing. Dunno yet, there are some obstacles to drive around with something like that.

  • Acquiring broadband?

    The last few days I’ve been thinking about boosting my internet connection at home again. I thought about that already about a year ago but did not find anything suitable at that time.

    Of course I was looking for something all the time but only recently something changed. Somewhere around Christmas Inode enhanced their ADSL reselling products by two optional upgrades:

    • 7 GB Transfer Upgrade & Fair Use
    • 20 GB Transfer Upgrade & Fair Use

    With these upgrades I finally found a product which enables me for low-cost massive broadband. "Fair Use" in these options means that the transfer volume can be transgressed to 110%, without that there is no limit but I have to pay for every excess MB.

    I chose to buy the smallest available ADSL package (384/128 – 500MB) and enable the 7 GB option for it. I don’t really need a faster line and I doubt that decent online gaming (except fast FPSs) is affected by it.

    Well, including the option the price for the whole package lies below 30×80, very fine for me 🙂

    The order form is lying on my desk and I plan to send it over to Inode today. Better to do so because after the 15th I’ll have to pay extra installation fee.

  • Linux shell scripting – testing for numeric argument

    I’ve been tinkering on the problem of checking if an argument is numeric or not inside shell scripts for quite a time already. I searched the internet for a way to test if a variable in a bash script is consisting only of digits but haven’t found a clear solution yet. Either that or I’m unable to bring up the right search terms. The main problem is that it has to be cross-Unix-compatible (Linux, Solaris, AIX).

    A few weeks ago I completed an in-corporate eLearning course about Unix Shell Scripting. This course also contained lessons about basic Unix commands like sed and awk.

    Today this tiny problem struck at me again and I tried to bring in my new knowledge from the course. What I came up with is:

    #!/bin/bash

# check first argument
number=$1

# test if argument present, then compare original string to the string without non-digit characters
# if string is the same, it only consist of digits
if [ ! -z "$number" -a "$number" = "$(echo $number | sed 's/[^[:digit:]]//g')" ]
then
 echo "Argument is full numeric"
else
 echo "Argument is not full numeric"
fi

    I tested it and it seems to work on all the platforms I need it. I don’t like the inline call of sed but for the sake of compatibility I’ll settle with that.

    Perhaps I’ll find an easier solution in the future but now that’s not a priority anymore…

  • Using webbrowsers as a supercomputing platform

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