Blog | frasergo.orghttps://www.frasergo.org/blog/2015-04-19T16:22:25+00:00BlogBirthdays, logic and honesty2015-04-19T16:22:25+00:00david/blog/author/david/https://www.frasergo.org/blog/2015/04/birthdays-logic-and-honesty/<p>A friend recently sent me the fun <a href="https://www.facebook.com/4sasmo">Singapore maths olympiad</a> <a href="http://bgr.com/2015/04/15/math-olympiad-singapore-cheryl-birthday-viral/" title="Hint: use logic">problem in which Albert and Bernard attempt to discover Cheryl's birthday</a>. As well as being full of mathematical knowledge, this implies some philosophical assumptions about knowledge and truthfulness. Here's a slightly expanded version I made up, incorporating the question of honesty:</p>
<p>Albert and Bernard just became friends with Cheryl, and they want to know when her birthday is. Cheryl gives them a list of 10 possible dates:</p>
<ul>
<li>April 3, April 29, April 30,</li>
<li>August 10, August 11, August 12</li>
<li>September 3, September 29</li>
<li>December 3, December 10, December 12</li>
</ul>
<p>Cheryl then tells Albert and Bernard separately the month and day of her birthday respectively.</p>
<ul>
<li>Albert: I don't know when Cheryl's birthday is, but I know that Bernard does not know too.</li>
<li>Bernard: At first I didn't know when Cheryl's birthday is, but I know now.</li>
<li>Albert: Then I also know when Cheryl's birthday is.</li>
</ul>
<p>(pause)</p>
<ul>
<li>Bernard: Actually, I was bluffing when I said "I know now". It wasn't true.</li>
<li>Albert: Well now that Bernard's admitted that, to be honest, I was lying in the first place when I said that I knew that Bernard didn't know too... I didn't know that.</li>
<li>Bernard: Outrageous! Well, at least we both know when it is now (assuming we've been perfectly honest since the pause)</li>
<li>Cheryl: I can see I was wise not to tell you my birthday in the first place, you dishonest scoundrels. But to be perfectly honest, I don't know when my birthday is, and this was all a test...</li>
</ul>HarmoniHue - coloring musical notes2013-11-06T09:45:59+00:00david/blog/author/david/https://www.frasergo.org/blog/2013/11/harmonihue-coloring-musical-notes/<p>At <a href="http://za.pycon.org/" title="a conference for the Python programming language in South Africa">PyConZA 2013</a>, one of the speakers couldn't come due to a visa issue, so I volunteered to do <a href="http://za.pycon.org/talks/31/" title="my talk on harmonies and hues">a talk</a> at the last minute. I was already on <a href="http://za.pycon.org/talks/27/" title="panel discussion on effective software team practices">a panel discussion</a> earlier, and wanted to listen to <a href="http://za.pycon.org/talks/13/" title="including interesting lessons we've learnt at St James Software">Matt's talk on caching</a>, so I ended with only three-quarters of an hour preparing the talk! But it ended up being a great opportunity as I decided to talk on a fun project I've been pottering away at in my spare time over the last few years: an experiment in music maths and colours that I've called <a href="http://frasergo.org/projects/harmonihue/" title="HarmoniHue project homepage">HarmoniHue</a>.</p>
<p>The basic idea is to try and associate colours with musical notes in such a way that there's a correspondence between which notes sound similar to / harmonious with each other, and how similar the colours look to each other.</p>
<p>Having a mathematical bent, I've ended up investigating things about colour perception theory along the way and coming up with a simple model of harmonic relations - the project will have some updates to the colour model before I'm happy that it's finished, but since I gave the talk on it I thought I would post my musings on the subject on the web for other people to peruse. Here's a few images from the project:</p>
<table border="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p><img alt="Hues and Rotations on Circle of Fifths" height="400" src="/static/media/uploads/galleries/harmonihue/hue-rotation-circle.png" width="400"><br><i>Hues and Rotations on Circle of Fifths</i></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><img alt="Musical Tones mapped onto a Torus" height="400" src="/static/media/uploads/galleries/harmonihue/torus-tones.png" width="400"><br><i>Musical Tones mapped onto a Torus</i></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>This is then applied to musical scores as follows (excuse the misplacement of accidentals):</p>
<p><img height="60" src="/static/media/uploads/galleries/harmonihue/chromatic-score.png" width="731"></p>
<p><a href="http://frasergo.org/projects/harmonihue/" title="HarmoniHue project homepage">More information on HarmoniHue</a> including my musings and some sample scores etc...</p>frasergo website relaunched2013-11-04T09:25:26+00:00david/blog/author/david/https://www.frasergo.org/blog/2013/11/frasergo-website-relaunched/<p>In the <a href="http://frasergo.org/blog/2013/11/frasergo-website-relaunched/" title="(this one)">most self-referential of blog posts</a>, I've redesigned and relaunched <a href="/" title="(the one on which this post originally appeared)">this website</a> using <a href="http://mezzanine.jupo.org/">Mezzanine</a>, a <a href="https://www.djangoproject.com/">Django</a>-(and therefore <a href="http://www.python.org/" title="(my happiest programming language)">Python</a>)-based CMS.</p>
<p>I originally implemented it <a href="http://frasergo.org/blog/2006/08/setting-up-drupal/">seven years ago in Drupal</a>... then four years ago was <a href="http://frasergo.org/blog/2010/09/time-in-nagoya/" title="(after getting lots of spam)">heard regretting that</a>...</p>
<p>I've migrated almost <a href="http://frasergo.org/blog/category/old-drupal-blog/">all the original content</a> as well as <a href="http://frasergo.org/blog/category/old-invention-blog/" title="Blogs around software localization mostly">another old nanoblogger blog</a> I had into the new system.</p>A happy charging laptop2009-09-10T10:06:53+00:00david/blog/author/david/https://www.frasergo.org/blog/2009/09/a-happy-charging-laptop/<p>In a slight break from our normal family news...</p>
<p>Charis experimented with inserting a mini audio jack into the power connector that plugs into my (David's) work Dell laptop.<br />
It produced no auditory success, but bent the pin inside the power connector. I managed to straighten it, but it subsequently came off inside the laptop power socket.</p>
<p>This pin seems to communicate that it is a valid Dell Power supply, and without it being connected properly the battery will not charge. My battery ran so low that I couldn't use suspend when moving the laptop around because I had so little battery power left... (see <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-desktops/2009-August/003186.html">my plea for help</a> if you want the gory details)</p>
<p>I got a new power supply, but still needed to work out how to extract the pin from the laptop (it was not sticking out at all, and there was no way to grab it with tweezers/pliers etc). I was too nervous of breaking the new power supply or something inside the laptop to try and connect the new power supply.</p>
<p>I tried soldering onto the pin so I could then pull out the solder but all I achieved was melting some of the plastic on the outside. I had various suggestions ranging from superglue on a needle to magnets, nitric acid, and drilling it out. I asked my friend Ian who said he'd have a look... he simply pushed the new power cable in, as he said there's usually space behind the pin. Voila. I couldn't believe it was that simple.</p>
<br class="clear" />Facebook Chat through Pidgin (and disabling it in the web UI)2008-09-04T09:39:28+00:00david/blog/author/david/https://www.frasergo.org/blog/2008/09/facebook-chat-through-pidgin-and-disabling-it-in-the-web-ui/<p>So, Facebook added their Chat application but still haven't added the <a href="http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=110">promised Jabber support</a> so that you can use it through a standard instant messaging client. (If you haven't ever used one I recommend <a href="http://pidgin.im/">Pidgin</a> - you can use it to do messaging over Jabber, Google Talk (which uses Jabber), MSN, Yahoo IM, etc, etc, in a unified way without having to install hundreds of programs. There's also a Mac-specific version called <a href="http://www.adiumx.com">Adium</a>.)</p>
<p>Fortunately, <b>Eion Robb</b> (who did the <a href="http://code.google.com/p/skype4pidgin/">Skype Pidgin plugin</a>) has come to our rescue with his <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pidgin-facebookchat/">Facebook Chat for Pidgin</a>. Install it and not only can you do chatting through Pidgin, but all your Facebook notifications and friend requests can be managed there too. (<a href="http://www.jabber.org">Jabber</a> support would be even better because then you could chat between different systems, just like you can email between them, but this'll do for now.)</p>
<p>The one slight drawback is that if you have a Facebook page open at the same time, the chats still open there - you can't simply set your status offline there as then it conflicts with the Pidgin plugin. So what I've done (and at this point it becomes technical) is block the URLs that Facebook uses for the chat, so it still appears online, but only Pidgin gets the messages.</p>
<p>For this I've used <a href="http://foxyproxy.mozdev.org/">FoxyProxy</a>, a great Firefox plugin that lets you customise which <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy Server">proxy server</a> to use for different web addresses. (Incidentally, this is sometimes useful in South Africa to get around Telkom/SAIX's transparent caching servers that send you to the same web page from different apparent client IP addresses, thus preventing login cookies from working on various sites - <a href="http://sourceforge.net">Sourceforge</a> for one...)</p>
<p>I added a Proxy entitled <b>Block URLs</b> (<i>Add URLs in here to prevent them loading</i>) at the top of the list of proxies (giving it highest priority), as a <tt>Manual Proxy Connection</tt> to Host <tt>0.0.0.0</tt> Port <tt>0</tt> (which won't work) and set it to match the following URLs (each one as a <i>Whitelist</i> with <i>Wildcards</i>):</p>
<ul>
<li><tt>http://www.new.facebook.com/ajax/presence/*</tt></li>
<li><tt>http://www.new.facebook.com/ajax/chat/*</tt></li>
<li><tt>http://*.channel*.facebook.com/iframe/*</tt></li>
</ul>
<p>If you also want to make the Chat bar disappear, you can use the <a href="http://adblockplus.org/">Addblock Plus</a> Firefox extension (which is just fantastic for getting rid of ads and things you don't want to see on the net - I use it with the EasyList USA subscription) and add this filter rule:</p>
<ul>
<li><tt>facebook.com#DIV(id=presence_ui)</tt></li>
</ul>
<p>Other references for disabling the Web UI (that don't take into account still using it through Pidgin):</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://sg.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080422165341AAS8Yrh">disabling facebook chat</a> (includes AdBlock Plus approach)</li>
<li><a href="http://fundiva.wordpress.com/2008/04/23/donotwantfacebookchat/">Do Not Want Facebook Chat</a> (how to do it with a <a href="http://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748">Greasemonkey</a> <a href="http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25453">Facebook Chat Killer script</a>)</li>
</ul><br class="clear" />Japanese Maps in Romaji2007-07-30T13:47:02+00:00david/blog/author/david/https://www.frasergo.org/blog/2007/07/japanese-maps-in-romaji/<p>Just discovered <a href="http://diddlefinger.com/">DiddleFinger</a> which lets you use Google Maps without having to understand Kanji, etc...</p>
<p>For example, <a href="http://diddlefinger.com/?ll=35.159879,136.918266&z=17&t=m">a certain building</a> in Tsurumai...</p>
<br class="clear" />Uploading photos2007-07-18T04:17:50+00:00david/blog/author/david/https://www.frasergo.org/blog/2007/07/uploading-photos/<p>We've added a <a href="/photos/">Photo Gallery</a> section (using <a href="http://www.gallery2.org/">Gallery 2</a>) and started uploading photos - so far just <a href="/photos/2007-05-leaving-cape-town/">Leaving Cape Town</a> and <a href="/photos/2007-05-joburg-stopover/">Stopping over in Joburg</a> but more will be added soon!</p>
<p>Using <a href="http://digikam.org/">DigiKam</a> to manage our photos - shame it doesn't run on Windows yet - so we can tag them and the tags and comments get uploaded directly into gallery and are searchable which is nice.</p>
<br class="clear" />Plugging Skype and Pidgin together2007-05-17T12:22:04+00:00david/blog/author/david/https://www.frasergo.org/blog/2007/05/plugging-skype-and-pidgin-together/<p>After thinking about <a href="/blog/de-nuct-ifying-the-world/">de-nuctifying the world</a> I've started to investigate creating a <a href="http://pidgin.im">Pidgin</a> (formerly <a href="http://gaim.sourceforge.net/">Gaim</a>) plugin to control <a href="http://www.skype.com">Skype</a>. This means you're still using a closed network, but from an open program, which makes migrating easier (and allows people to try multiple networks from the same interface).</p>
<p>The <a href="https://developer.skype.com/Docs/ApiDoc/src">Skype API docs</a> are pretty good and it looks like the API can support at least controlling status, sending and receiving text messages, and making and receiving phone calls. So in principle a Skype plugin for Pidgin is a possibility.</p>
<p>There are a few docs on writing libpurple plugins for Pidgin but less comprehensively - the <a href="http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/siege">author</a> of the Sametime plugin or the guy working on a <a href="http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/MySpaceIM">MySpaceIM plugin</a> probably know exactly how it works (the MySpaceIM plugin is a Google Summer of Code project that fits in with my idea very nicely). There is a C Plugin HOWTO in the source code which should get things started. Some ideas in the <a href="http://trac.adiumx.com/ticket/247">Adium Skype plugin bug</a> as well.</p>
<p>On the way I read <a href="http://www.secdev.org/conf/skype_BHEU06.handout.pdf">Silver Needle in the Skype</a> which is an article on reverse-engineering Skype and using it - very interesting tech reading... but a shame they haven't made the code available</p>
<p>Well since it's 8 days till we leave Cape Town and head to Japan I'm not planning to actually <i>do</i> anything about this, but thought I'd write it up so I don't lose the links...</p>
<p><b>Update</b> (<tt>2008-03-06</tt>): There is now an excellent implementation of a <a href="http://myjobspace.co.nz/images/pidgin/">Skype Plugin for Pidgin</a> (Adium and other lib-purple apps too) developed by Eion Robb. Development at<a href="http://code.google.com/p/skype4pidgin/">skype4pidgin</a> on Google code.</p>PyToddler - just right2007-05-17T11:53:16+00:00david/blog/author/david/https://www.frasergo.org/blog/2007/05/pytoddler-just-right/<p>I found <a href="http://www.ekips.org/cgi-bin/aaron.cgi/2006/02/12">PyToddler</a> recently and had James having lots of fun moving crayons round the screen and trying to make a mouse eat some cheese and say "Yum yum yum yum yum" - great watching him say "Go over there mouse!" and trying to encourage him to move the actual mouse (as in the computer-type one, not the rodent-type one). Just the kind of thing I wanted to write... the annoying thing in teaching James letters is that it's easier to learn lower-case letters but computer keyboards are all usually decorated with upper-case ones. Once we get to Japan we'll have plenty else to worry about :-)</p>
<p>You can download it from <a href="http://www.ekips.org/comp/prog/pygame/">here</a> although its a bit awkward - separate downloads for Python and PyGame and then you have to unzip PyToddler.zip - but worth it for the fun :-)</p>
<br class="clear" />De-nuct-ifying the world2007-05-14T22:25:54+00:00david/blog/author/david/https://www.frasergo.org/blog/2007/05/de-nuct-ifying-the-world/<p>I've had a strange experience over the past year, and it's getting more common. As a developer, I used to be the one recommending software/tech things to my friends. Now all my non-technical friends have started recommending things to me that they have discovered on the intar-web. The trouble is, they're almost all closed systems - apparently free, but under the control of one group.</p>
<p>It started with <a href="http://www.skype.com">Skype</a>. Then <a href="http://www.xanga.com/">xanga</a>. And most recently it's been <a href="http://www.facebook.com/">facebook</a>. The speed with which facebook has spread amongst various of our friends is impressive. Some things about it are really good too - they're beginning to understand the sorts of things you can do with the Web.</p>
<p>But it's hard to explain that these sorts of things are the point of the Web as a Whole, rather than being a neat idea that can only work on a particular site. No-one understands the negative effects of a closed network. Or even more, the potential positive effects they're missing. Part of the problem is vocabulary - if you don't even have words to encapsulate the concepts to communicate, it's hard to argue for something. Open and closed networks are clear concepts to me but it's nice to embellish them somewhat.</p>
<p>So here's my attempt: A closed network utility under the control of one group that doesn't let you federate is called a <b>nuct</b> (a <b>N</b>etwork <b>U</b>tility <b>C</b>ontrol <b>T</b>rap - don't let them innuct you into it). If you encounter one, you need a way of interacting with it that doesn't suck you in. The point of closed systems is of course, to prevent this.</p>
<p>But no-one seems to be doing the work required to break these things open. We need a <i>nuct-cracker suite</i> (drum roll)</p>
<ul>
<li>open APIs to access data locked up in closed networks
<ul>
<li>a suite for different kinds of apps</li>
<li>social networks - same API to different ones</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>plugins to open source open standards programs to interoperate with those network
<ul>
<li>e.g. plugin to Gaim to control Skype</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>open source servers with open APIs to replace the closed networks</li>
<li>deploy and let the network effect take place</li>
</ul>
<p>The trouble with tech pseudo-values: they're not the <a href="http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/TopicIndex/10/1217_God_Is_the_Gospel/">gospel</a>. So on the one hand there comes a limit to avoiding things that would help good friendships because I think they could be done better. But more simply, I don't have enough time to actually create the online world the way I want it to be...</p>
<p>Is anyone doing something like this?</p>Caolan McNamara vs the Sun Global Special Store2006-10-12T17:11:00+00:00david/blog/author/david/https://www.frasergo.org/blog/2006/10/caolan-mcnamara-vs-the-sun-global-special-store/<a href="http://jroller.com/page/erAck">Eike Rathke</a> points out the new
<a href="http://globalspecials.sun.com/servlet/ControllerServlet?Action=DisplayPage&Locale=en_US&id=ProductDetailsPage&SiteID=sunstor&productID=50984800">Sun Weblog Publisher</a>
you can buy for $9.95 for blogging from within OpenOffice.org Writer
(or StarOffice, not that I know anyone who has that :-)).<br/>
Sounds <a href="http://blogs.linux.ie/caolan/2005/10/06/ooo-blogger/">remarkably</a>
<a href="http://blogs.linux.ie/caolan/2005/10/11/metaweblog-support/">familiar</a>.
I wonder if <a href="http://blogs.linux.ie/caolan/">Caolan</a> has thought of
trying to sell <a href="http://people.redhat.com/caolanm/oooblogger/">oooblogger</a>...Finding projects using Pootle with Google code search2006-10-05T21:58:00+00:00david/blog/author/david/https://www.frasergo.org/blog/2006/10/finding-projects-using-pootle-with-google-code-search/Well seeing as Google has release a <a href="http://www.google.com/codesearch">Code Search</a> on open source code, I
thought I would put it to good use: searching for
<a href="http://www.google.com/codesearch?as_q=pootle&as_filename=.po$">pootle</a>
in filenames ending with .po helps you to quickly find some projects that are
using Pootle to edit their PO files, and you can even see which version :-)<br/>
Another nice way of showing how <a href="http://pootle.wordforge.org/">Pootle</a> is gaining traction...Setting up Drupal2006-08-16T11:42:44+00:00david/blog/author/david/https://www.frasergo.org/blog/2006/08/setting-up-drupal/<p>Have been setting up Drupal for this new site (frasergo.org)<br />
Works reasonably nicely, just such a shame it's written in PHP :-)</p>
<br class="clear" />Pootle and Translate Toolkit Development 2006-06-132006-06-13T09:49:00+00:00david/blog/author/david/https://www.frasergo.org/blog/2006/06/pootle-and-translate-toolkit-development-2006-06-13/There's been lots of discussion recently about Pootle on the debian lists, the
direction it should take, whether to use a database to store translations,
etc... It may be a nice idea to add a database as one of the backend options
but keeping with handling the complexity of translation files has been
important. Seems like a good consensus to this effect is emerging; it's nice
to have more interest in the project.<br/>
I've tried to keep coding rather than get too drawn into the discussion, and
this is what I've been up to the last week:<br/>
<b>Pootle:</b>
Mostly ongoing architecture work, feels like we're heading towards a good
structure...
<ul>
<li>Wrote up discussion on
<a href="http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/pootle/metadata">putting metadata into a relational database</a>
</li>
<li>Base class migration work on the Pootle-locking-branch: made pootleunit and
pootlefile encapsulate a pounit and pofile respectively rather than
inheriting from them. This will make it possible to use other storage classes
(although there is still more cleaning up needed where we use PO-specific
methods).</li>
<li>Participated (minimally) in the debian discussions on direction of Pootle
and using databases</li>
<li>Fixing some minor bugs in the webserver etc</li>
</ul><br/>
<b>Translate Toolkit:</b>
Focused on escaping being correct and using the base classes
<ul>
<li>Sorted out escaping in dtds - it doesn't exist. So we will no longer support
\' or \n having a special meaning in dtd files, being translated to \n in a
PO file etc</li>
<li>Fixed various failing tests for 0.9 (including fixing some modifications we
were doing to the minidom XML library)</li>
<li>Added some tests for dtd quoting to HEAD - currently we allow opening a
quote again after it is shut (<!ENTITY name "first part""second part">)
which is invalid according to the spec - just for correctness, haven't hit any
errors here</li>
<li>Making properties to PO conversion use base class API more, sorting out
escaping there</li>
<li>Discussion with Axel from Mozilla - for 0.9 the Mozilla .properties
files will be output in proper UTF-8, not with \uNNNN escaping (although
that will still be understood as input. See
<a href="http://bugs.wordforge.org/show_bug.cgi?id==114">bug 114</a></li>
<li>Made dtd classes inherit from base classes - could be made cleaner, but at
least the API is implemented now</li>
</ul>Stardust Nasty Macro Application for OpenOffice.org2006-06-02T09:18:00+00:00david/blog/author/david/https://www.frasergo.org/blog/2006/06/stardust-nasty-macro-application-for-openofficeorg/<a href="http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/01/1419216">Slashdot
reported</a> <a href="http://www.viruslist.com/en/weblog?weblogid=187738337">Kaspersky labs discovering</a>
the <a href="http://www.viruslist.com/en/viruses/encyclopedia?virusid=123066">Stardust "nasty macro application"</a>
for StarOffice/OpenOffice.org<br/>
This is not really a virus, it is a nasty macro application. If you are foolish
enough to agree to run it without checking what it does, you will suffer the
consequences...<br/>
Not many technical details in the above links, but
<a href="http://stuff.techwhack.com/archives/2006/05/31/stardust/">TechWack</a>
says the following:<br/>
<blockquote>Antivirus firm Kaspersky is calling the virus "Stardust". This virus is
basically contained in a StarOffice document that uses macros and then infects
a global template, which is used by the application to generate new documents.
If a victim opens the file carrying this virus, Stardust copies it into the
global template and all contained in a StarOffice document that uses macros
and then infects a global template gets infected by it used by that copy of
the software.</blockquote><br/>
Of course (as paveljanik pointed out I hadn't said in the original version of
this entry), <b>this is all nothing to be afraid of</b>. I only linked the
above information because there are no actual details about this perceived
problem, but I'm not saying it's actually a serious problem!Data Entry in OpenOffice.org Calc2006-05-23T20:00:00+00:00david/blog/author/david/https://www.frasergo.org/blog/2006/05/data-entry-in-openofficeorg-calc/Pierre-André Galmes has a
<a href="http://devadventure.blogspot.com/2006/05/openofficeorg-calc-tip-typing-data.html">great
tip on typing data</a> in OpenOffice.org calc. Basically select an area and use tab to switch between cells.<br/>
The only problem - I can't see how to get it to work nicely with the AutoComplete
that happens when you start typing the same text as an entry above.
Pressing Enter or arrow key all lose the selection, and pressing Tab gives a beep.
Any ideas?<br/>
(I would have left a comment on his blog, but you have to start your own
Blogger blog to do that...)Forwarding a wireless network connection from Windows2006-05-15T14:14:00+00:00david/blog/author/david/https://www.frasergo.org/blog/2006/05/forwarding-a-wireless-network-connection-from-windows/Trying to proxy network traffic through my wireless network on my
laptop which is unfortunately running Windows... (oh, the irony)...
these are handy hinters:<br/>
First, use ssh -D to create a SOCKS proxy. That's fairly easy. Use
<a href="http://tsocks.sourceforge.net/">tsocks</a> to make any application
use the proxy. (Or, try and battle with why GAIM isn't listening to the Gnome
network preferences, then get fed up and run it through tsocksify).<br/>
Next, its helpful to have a caching DNS server. I finally found a good one for
Windows that actually works natively (via cygwin) and doesn't crash:
<a href="http://posadis.sourceforge.net/">Posadis</a>. Simply start it up and
it functions as a DNS cache. They also include some basic DNS querying tools
that are missing from the Windows command line.<br/>
I also tried using <a href="http://dproxy.sourceforge.net/">dproxy</a> which is
much lighter but although it compiles in cygwin fine it produces various
errors (misformed packets sent in response to queries etc).<br/>
Finally you need to let the Windows machine know to use the wireless network
as its default route rather than the LAN. To do this follow
<a href="http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/columns/cableguy/cg0903.mspx">this article</a>'s
recommendations to adjust the Automatic metric under Advanced TCP/IP settings
for each network connection (lower is higher priority) otherwise Windows XP
will always select the LAN as the default network. (You can check which is
default by saying 'route print' and seeing what the default gateway is).Partnership?2006-05-11T15:12:00+00:00david/blog/author/david/https://www.frasergo.org/blog/2006/05/partnership/<a href="http://www.apdip.net/news/fossdoc">The Code Breakers</a> looks like
an interesting documentary on open source software around the world...<br/>
But the description contains an hilarious quote: According to Jonathan Murray
of Microsoft "The Open Source community stimulates innovation in software,
it's something that frankly we feel very good about and it's something that we
absolutely see as being a partnership with Microsoft."<br/>
Very kind of them to include us as their partners voluntarily, I must say...Jingle a better VoIP standard than SIP2006-05-10T12:52:00+00:00david/blog/author/david/https://www.frasergo.org/blog/2006/05/jingle-a-better-voip-standard-than-sip/<p><a href="http://www.gerv.net">Gervase Markham</a> has a nice <a href="http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/gerv/archives/2006/05/voip_rant.html">rant</a> on how complicated SIP is.<br> Jingle on Jabber is a much nicer solution if you're not a telecommunications person yourself. It's an open standard that's much simpler than SIP which makes it easier to implement, and there are open source libraries available that provide support, and it is Jabberish which is sensible and makes all the confederation work nicely. It addresses some of the technical issues that make people seem to like Skype (getting through firewalls etc) without having some of its headaches (proxying other people's phone calls through your computer, a totally mad idea).<br> The main issue is that the only current final-release program available with support is Google Talk; it's not open source and its only available on Windows.<br> I'm currently recommending <a href="http://talk.google.com/">Google Talk</a> to Windows-using friends in the hope that the best solution will win.<br> There are also a few emerging services for doing Jingle-to-Phone calling: <a href="http://www.gtalk2voip.com/">gtalk2voip</a> seems to work well, I've also seen <a href="http://www.jabphone.com/">jabphone</a>. gtalk2voip apparently now also support <a href="http://www.gtalk2voip.com/gtalk_service_tosip.html">SIP interoperability</a> (which is only described as currently free of charge).<br> And it seems like <a href="http://www.networkingpipeline.com/blog/archives/2006/04/asterisk_server.html">Asterisk Jingle support</a> is on the way too...<br> In terms of open source support, Patches / Branches are available for <a href="http://psi-im.org/wiki/Jingle_branch">Psi</a>, <a href="http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=Kopete+Jabber+Jingle">Kopete</a> and Gaim (although that one's a bit more tricky to get working). See my blog on <a href="/blog/jingle-builds-of-psi-and-kopete-for-fedora-core-4/">building Psi and Kopete on Fedora Core 4</a>. Neither were too complex, and that was a few months ago.<br> Unfortunately all of these patches/branches are languishing in we'll-finish-that-at-an-undetermined-date mode, as the projects are busy doing other things and so on. Yet they all seemed to work reasonably well, a lot of the remaining work is cleanup and merging to the main branch etc. (The one most likely to emerge in the official version is Kopete as its in 0.12, which is in Beta. But I'm not sure whether it'll be included in official builds on various distros...)<br> There are a number of proposals out there to do more work as part of <a href="http://code.google.com/soc/">Summer of Code</a>, and I think it would be great if people signed up for these:<br> <a href="http://wiki.jabber.org/index.php/Summer_of_Code_2006#Jingle_Audio">Jingle Audio</a> <a href="http://wiki.jabber.org/index.php/Summer_of_Code_2006#Jingle_Video">Jingle Video</a> <a href="http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=KDE%20Google%20SoC%202006%20ideas#id530479">Kopete Jingle Support</a></p>How to do Credit Card Fraud in South Africa2006-05-09T13:22:00+00:00david/blog/author/david/https://www.frasergo.org/blog/2006/05/how-to-do-credit-card-fraud-in-south-africa/Just phoned <a href="http://www.debonairs.co.za/">Debonairs</a> to order some
Pizza. The conversation went something like this:<br/>
<b>Them:</b> Hi<br />
<b>Me:</b> Hi, I'd like to order some pizza<br />
<b>Them:</b> Hold the line please...<br />
(a 30 second pause)<br />
<b>Them:</b> Sorry about that, what's your phone number?<br />
<b>Me:</b> 000 0000 <i>(Gives phone number)</i><br />
<b>Them:</b>Great, is that David?<br />
<b>Me:</b> Yes<br />
<b>Them:</b> OK, would you like to order?<br />
<b>Me:</b> Three Large Pizzas, one vegetarian, one four seasons, and one sweet
and sour chicken<br />
<b>Them:</b> Great, are you paying by cash or credit card?<br />
<b>Me:</b> Credit Card<br />
<b>Them:</b> Is your credit card number 0000 0000 0000 0000? <i>(Reads out my
real credit card number</i><br />
<b>Me:</b> Yes <i>(pretending not to be surprised)</i><br />
<b>Them:</b> Expiry Date 01/06? <br />
<b>Me:</b> No, it's changed, it's 00/00<br />
<b>Them:</b> CVC number 000? <i>(Gives out my previous CVC number)</i> <br />
<b>Me:</b> No, that's changed too, it's 000<br />
<b>Them:</b> Great, your order will be with you in thirty to forty
minutes<br /><br/>
Hmmmm.....