PphBB 3.0.8 Upgrade

I was two versions behind production and I also wanted to see if I could install RSS & a mobile template Mod.


Upgraded to 3.0.8 which was the normal seamless experience.


Then entered the word of AutoMod.  Which as with most things sent to make life easier totally screwed me.  Firstly the app has a few 'update' file options.  Live, direct FTP or if they fail (because you have good security) then it will download the modified files and let you update at your leisure.


The download (zip, tar.gz or .tar) worked once.  And then all subsequent files appeared to be corrupt.  There are some posts on the forum with no obvious fix.


Tried FTP - #FAIL ! - it totally ignored (or maybe I mis-typed) the FTP path which resulted in the files getting splatted all over the structure.  Chaos, and a broken site.


Its OK, I have a backup - #FAIL #2.  Permissions all wrecked.  


Stop, slow down, think .. All the data is in the DB, which is safe, and I have many backups of.  Install a clean 3.0.8 and point the install to the old db.  Well this did'nt work as I'd expected - it wants to use a new db.  A quick google and just replacing the config.php from the screwed install got me working.  YAY.


Go to bed


Wake up to Bot hell .. I'd assumed (naively) that the .8 anti-bot would have been better, I'd enabled everything. Not the case so I went back and installed the tried and trusted Anti-Bot question mod.  


Again trying (stupidly) with AutoMod - #FAIL *sigh* - going off that very quickly.  


Manually made the changes and all is well.


EDIT : New and improved anti-bot registration installed - Peoplesign (which also required me to update to a 3.0.8 style)


EDIT :  Peoplesign didnt prevent all spam signups, wow they are persistent.  Reverted to the 'ask a question' default phpBB sign up options.  So far so good.

Wisestamp signature code

As Wisestamp currently has no cloud or import export option I'll store the html here ..







<p><span><span style="font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva; color: #333333;"><strong><span style="font-size: medium; color: #000000;">Paul Regan<br /><br /></span></strong><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #3366ff;">t:</span> +44(0)7867 503631</span><strong><br /></strong><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #3366ff;">e:</span> <a style="text-decoration: none; color: #333333;" href="mailto:me@paulregan.co.uk" target="_blank">me@paulregan.co.uk</a><br /></span><a style="text-decoration: none; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva;"><span style="color: #3366ff;">w:</span> http://</span></a><a style="text-decoration: none; color: #333333;" href="http://www.paulregan.co.uk" target="_blank">www.paulregan.co.uk<br />_</a>__________________________________________________________</span></span></p>

Which looks like :

GMail Signature - Wisestamp

The default one is pretty poor and surprisingly has no HTML support !


Stumbled across Wisestamp.com which installs as a Chrome extension.  


Works pretty well. Comes with a heap of default settings you'd normally use, social networking links, IM etc.  One downside is theres no cloud (when did everything become cloud ?) sync so you have to install the extension and setup your signature on each Chrome install.

RS 208-1786 RJ45 to BT

Part, erm, lost count, lets say 8, of operation run cable from lounge to study.   Wanted to plug the BT socket and CAT6 into the same face plate/back box but could only find 4 port RJ45 face plates.  Enter RS 208-1786 - RJ45 to BT conversion.


Pins 4 and 5 on the RJ45 port are the equivalent BT pins 5 and 2 (the ones you want).

Homeplugs are dead, long live .... well, copper wires.

I've finally given up with my Homeplugs, Netgear HD model.  The throughput was never great but it worked for 'most' things.  But since installing the HTPC I really wanted to stream full 1080p which the HP had no chance, in fact when I started to test bandwidth with iPerf I was truly shocked at how bad they were.


Spent some time looking at new 500Mb plugs but the reality was even with the entire house turned off, I mean everything turned off, fridges, chargers, everything.  Even then the homeplugs connected to a simple four block next to the hub and the t/put was still crap.


So the run STP CAT6 plan kicked in.  


Step one purchase Snake Scope !


Just an excuse really, but actually turned out to be pretty useful.  At least in the early stages it meant I could just drill a small(ish) hole and poke around in the ceiling.  Gave me an idea of what I was up against and proved useful working around beams and stuff.


The chosen wall in the front room, in theory dropped down right above the cloak room toilet on the ground floor.  Six holes later I realised I was looking in the wrong place.  Measure twice cut once as my Dad used to say.


Eventually finding the drop from the front room turned out to be pretty easy. Then it was a case of cutting 'working' holes in the ceiling and making my way through beams - using existing cable holes and towards the study.


Where I came across the problem of getting through the metal supports they'd used to build the gypsum walls.  That proved to be a task easy resolved with another purchase.  This time a flexible drill shaft and a step 4-22mm step drill bit.  Took some time, some swearing and some dangerous balancing on a chair, which in turn balanced an old tower PC.  A H&S person would have imploded on the spot.


I bought some faceplates etc to give a nice finish and then patching up required dustless sanding.  googling how I stumbled across a youtube link showing how to smooth the filler with just a rough sponge and warm water, which I tried and worked OK.

MediaTomb library refresh

I'm still searching for the holy grail of distributing all media around the home and still keep coming back to MediaTomb running on my NAS as a music fall back.  But something that always goes wrong is its inability to update the db with changes.  Every time I go through the same hoops of trying to refresh manually, adding/removing directories.  And each time it fails and I check my blog for what I did last time, which I;ve never added ! so here it is


Kill the mediatomb process and delete the .db files, start mediatomb and add the Media directory, wait 4 hours .. Job Done !

855GM Series video driver Windows 7 reverts back to Standard VGA

When installing 855GM Series video driver Windows 7 reverts back to Standard VGA adapter after restart. The problem is that 855GM Series video driver is not native for Windows 7 and it will always choose Standard VGA Adapter as native video driver. A lot of older laptops have this video chipset. Including my Vaio.


Solution - Spend hours looking on google.  Eventually finding a decent blog entry which I am blatantly reproducing here.


So all this is taken from http://www.groundstate.net/855GMWin7.html


The only driver that worked is: Intel(R) Graphics Controller 6.14.10.3722 . The reason why is that Standard VGA Adapter (Windows 7 native) is the same version (6.14.10.3722) but it has newer release date. Newest Intel driver 14.19.50 did NOT work. So get yourself the working video driver below. After Windows 7 install you will see that Standard VGA Adapter is installed and there is an exclamation mark on the "video controller". In order to install the driver we need to get exclamation mark on "video controller (vga compatible)". This spot is occupied by Standard VGA Adapter. Even when you unistall Standard VGA Adapter and install new driver after the reboot Standard VGA Adapter comes back. We need to disrupt Standard VGA Adapter from being installed. My way of disabling the adapter is to edit the driver file for it "c:\windows\system32\drivers\vgapnp.sys". There might be another way for letting Windows stop installing Standard VGA Adapter but I did not find it. 


STEP 1 


Make sure you unistall video drivers that do not work. If you see exclamation marks on your previous drivers in Device Manager, unistall them. Your Device Manager should say that you have Standard VGA Driver installed under Display category and exclamation mark on "video controller". Make sure you restart PC when asked. 


STEP 2


We will need to edit "c:\windows\system32\drivers\vgapnp.sys" file now, but there is a problem. Windows Vista and Windows 7 will NOT allow you to edit system files even when you are the admin. Changing security attributes of that file did not work either. The file is owned by "TrustedInstaller" service. We will need to own the file and give ourselves the full control to edit it.
Click 'Start' and in 'Search' type 'cmd'. The result will show on top. Right-click on 'cmd' and choose "Run as Administrator". If your account does not have admin rights you might be prompted to enter username and password. I used account that already has administrator priviledges. You should have a command prompt with administrator priviledges. 


STEP 3 


Lets say my logged in username is peter


First command you do is: 


takeown /f c:\windows\system32\drivers\vgapnp.sys 


This will give ownship to the current user. You should see a message saying SUCCESS etc.. 


Second command you do is: 


cacls c:\windows\system32\drivers\vgapnp.sys /G peter:F 


There will be a confirmation message so type 'y'. This will change the security attributes to give you ONLY all the permissions for the file. If you are paranoid as me and want original permissions restored, I will show you how to restore the permissions to the previous step later on in this tutorial . If 'cacls' command does not work you can try using 'icacls'. If you cannot edit this file try to boot to "Save Mode" and try it again (Thx to Giuseppe Chill). 


STEP 4 


Open c:\windows\system32\drivers\vgapnp.sys in any text editor. Just add any character to the begining of the text. Let's say we will add character x . So the text should start with xMZ and the rest of stuff. Save the file. This edit will render that file unusable. 


STEP 5 


In Device Manager uninstall Standard VGA Adapter. It will prompt you to restart so do it. After install you will see a message saying that certain devices did NOT installed successfuly, which is GOOD . Go to Device Manager and you should see the exclamation point next to "video controller" and "video controller (vga compatible)". Right-click on "video controller (vga compatible)" and do update driver. Choose "Browse for the Driver" (or something like it  ). Point to the driver directory that you downloaded and extracted (win2000). Click "OK". Wait for the driver to be installed. It might hang for a little (It will say that window is "not responding"). Do not worry as this is still installing the driver. It will prompt you to restart so do it. (If it does not prompt click anywhere and wait for message). After restart it will finish installing the driver. 


Congratulations!!! You should have a working video driver!!!  


STEP 6 


Open c:\windows\system32\drivers\vgapnp.sys in any text editor. Remove the first character you put there which was x. Save the file. Your file will be usuable again . You can stop here if you want, but if you want to restore the permissions for the file to original state go to next step. 


STEP 7 


Right-click on any other file in the c:\windows\system32\drivers. Choose "Properties". Go to "Security" tab. Now compare that security tab with the security tab of c:\windows\system32\drivers\vgapnp.sys. Just make sure the security tabs of those two files look the same (all tabs and advanced options). In order to add "TrustedInstaller" it is not the same as regular usernames because it is a service. 
You will need to type "NT SERVICE\TrustedInstaller" (without quotes) when adding it to own the file and to have all permissions. Once you done editing you can delete your account from c:\windows\system32\drivers\vgapnp.sys, because it was not there from the beginning. We took control over and the previous commands added it by default.

UCS Manager launch error

I've been fighting with JAVA on my PC for a few days. Trying to launch the Cisco UCS manager - JAVA based. Would kick up the error :


JARSigningException: Found unsigned entry in resource: http://{HOST}.{DOMAIN}/ucsm/unpacked/OfficeLnFs_2.7.jar


Nothing on google. Removed the vast collection of JRE versions, reinstalled, blaah blaah blaah. Still fails. Threw my toys out, stomped away in a huff complaining about JAVA failing to live up to its expectations due to inept programmers ..


Then I twigged. I'd been debugging one of our bespoke JAVA apps last week and had disabled the 'Keep temporary files on my computer' JRE setting.


Corrected, problem fixed .. huff gone.

Building a Home Theatre PC (HTPC)

Whilst the PS3 has done a sterling job of being a front room media centre its not perfect and I'd debated building a true HTPC for while.


A certain error whilst watching something on the PS3 kicked started me into investigating alternative options.


Normal requirements. HDMI, decent sound and enough power to run a full 1080p on my TV. I'd had decent success with ITX in the past so quite fancied that route.


After a day of reading I settled on the Zotac ION ATOM N330 Dual Core D-E with 4GB (overkill) of RAM and a Morex Cubid 3688 Silver case.  Ordered and delivered the following day from ITX Warehouse.  Who run a fantastic service.  I already had HDD and cables, no SSD here.


My first intention was just to make use of VLC, web browser, maybe even look at MS Media centre.  But during the day of reading I stumbled across XBMC, something which everyone I spoke to afterwards had heard of and tried.  I must have been under my rock that day.  But the screen shots looked amazing, open source, ie free, live cd, all major OS' supported.  Interesting Mr Bond.


With the hardware assembled, which was the normal breeze I fired up the USB boot key created using instructions from mini-itx.com.  FAIL.  Maybe the keys, or something else but I couldn't get the PC to boot so ended up creating a XBMC liveboot CD and installed using that.  XBMC installed and started to load but bombed out just at the part the GUI launches.  So I suspect video drivers.  Being LINUX I knew this was a bad road to be walking down, and as this was R&D and I already new wireless mice and keyboards where on the horizon, ie more LINUX driver fun, I opted to fall back on tried and 'trusted' (well, trusted is probably the wrong descriptive) Windows 7. Unconsciously I made a 32bit decision - just habit I think.


Windows installed, drivers updated.  Installed XBMC and fired it up.  Oh I like this, allot. Pretty intuitive, adding the SMB media paths from my NAS all just worked and then I found the Library view which showed all the pretty covers, plot summaries etc .. Movies, TV Shows, Music .. all worked seamlessly.  The 'scrapers' went and matched all the TV shows, music and all but two of the films, which I fixed using NFO files.


The IONITX dealt easily with a local 1080p file.  Not so streaming across the LAN - Homeplugs, nor WLAN, which is expected.  That actually had me delving deeper into my homeplug speed only to discover its crap, seriously so.  I have something in the house which is killing the t/put.  I need to investigate that or hope AV2 resolves it.


I'm still experimenting with the look and feel of XBMC but so far its a hit for video 720p and below and music is fine.


I added a plugin for iPlayer - which works, and TVCatchup, which doesn't.  Although it did once, odd. 


So far so good .. Although I have ordered a new 60mm 'silent' fan.  The one with the case is a little noisy.


EDIT : TVCatchup now working again.  Nothing done.  Also found a great iPhone app which uses the HTML interface to control the server.  XBMC Remote.

Routing a Cisco WLC 'service' port.

We have an almost 100% Cisco VoIP Wireless installation (apparently when it was installed the biggest in Europe) with 300 7921 handsets all hooked up to 4400 Wireless LAN controllers and a Wireless Control System.  Installed by TouchBase.


Once tuned this has worked pretty flawlessly and has pretty much been left alone.


We've recently started to implement Zenoss enterprise running out of our North American data centre and wanted to obviously add the WLC appliances.


Problem.  Our enterprise uses an RFC1918 10.0.0.0 subnet which is WAN routable.  The WLC's are configured as per the Cisco doc with the management port using a 172.16.0.0 subnet, not WAN routable.  or not a subnet we want to route.  The 172.16 was only ever intended as the isolated network for the WLC and AP's.

I looked into changing the MGT port IP - got scared as the AP's need to use it for the initial LWAPP b'cast, they then switch to using the AP-Manager port, also on the same subnet.  What about using the service port ?

The APs & Management interface are on 172.16.##.0/24.  The Service port on 10.##.##.0/24.  Reading the documentation the rules are: 'Management' port for in band and 'service' for out of band management.  The Service port is by default not routable.  Which is fine for London as the core switches route 172.16.##.0 and we've historically used that interface.  But not if we wanted to use Zenoss without routing 172 across the WAN and as that subnet was only ever designed to be isolated thats not an option.

I found in the doc that you can add static routes which the service port will use.  I first tried assigning this using WCS, which would only apply the route to one controller.  Claiming the route already existed when you applied to the second - gotta love Cisco managment software, it always does 'most' of what you need, never all.  So I static routes on EACH WLC (ie : not the recommended way).  But this works.  The service ports are now accessible across the WAN and so far work fine.

I've reset a couple of APs and they also seem fine.  Fingers crossed.

YLOD update 2

Acquired said heat gun and followed the videos but to no avail. I even repeated the process twice. FAIL.


Am now the proud owner of a PS3 Slim. And I must say its so much better. At least the contents of the room aren't sucked into the fan when it starts, in fact its almost silent.

Dynamic web page to display Picasa Web Albums

For a while now I've been uploading my vacation photos to the paulregan.co.uk site, in fact that's how it started.  Parents and friends wanting to see the recorded history of our  vacations ..


I've been using JAlbum with the Foto player template.  Which is great and worked really well.  Its slightly laborious to create a new folder but for the 3-4 times a year I needed it worked fine.


I then got hooked on photography and wanted to be able to upload some of my (in my opinion) better shots to the site.  JAlbum was too slow to just throw one or two shots up.  I needed something more dynamic.


I'd been using Picasa & Picasa Web Albums for a while which was a snap to sync between an album on the PC/MAC and the Picasa Web cloud.  Picasa does have a html generating tool with some funky templates but that was more the JAlbum model which I didn't want. 


If only Picasa Web had a pretty embed display, something like the lightbox or zoombox scripts .. before you comment picasa does, your right, it does but its pretty nasty.


I stumbled across www.paulvanroekel.nl ... He writes templates for both Picasa.  And more importantly for Picasa web !  The php code pulls the pictures from all or a designated online album.  Update your album, you site dynamically updates the changes.


Pick the template, download, tweak the config and upload to your site.  Simples.  Almost.


Not sure what causes it, maybe my providers PHP version.  But the template files are all .php.  trying to open them on the web caused :




Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_OBJECT_OPERATOR, expecting ',' or ';' in /home/users/web4831/html/paulregan.co.uk/gallery/index.php on line 97 




Some quick googling had me change the extension from php to php5 - job done


paulregan.co.uk/gallery/index.php5

PS3 YLOD (Yellow light of death)

Waiting for my heat gun to arrive !

To change the blog header link

How to link the header to another page

Goto design

Layout

Expand Widgets

Find the following code


<!--Show the image only-->

      <div id='header-inner'>

        <a expr:href='data:blog.homepageUrl' style='display: block'>

Change the last part to


<a href='your url' style='display: block'>

For example



<a href='www.google.com' target="_blank" style='display: block'>

Movember - Week Four

Canon 'RAW' format thumbnails.

Trying to only shoot RAW pictures and was fed up with no native support thumbnail view in Windows 7 explorer.

Found that Canon supply a RAW codec which fix's the thumbnail.  Unfortunately it doesn't display the EXIF information - which is a pain and means you still need to open the files in an app.

http://software.canon-europe.com/

Movember - Week Three

Week Three

Movember - Week Two

In the name of charity I, and two of my co-workers shall be nurturing top lip facial hair for the month of November.

Please give generously, if not for the good work of the charity then for the sheer fun of me walking around looking like a member of Village People, who are now my inspiration .. 

http://www.paulregan.co.uk/movember

Week 2

BioSignature

Have you come across BioSignature ? - If not its the theory of Charles Poliquin


http://www.charlespoliquin.com/TheBiosignatureMethod.aspx

From years of trial and error with some science mixed in it claims to identify internal body functions & hormone levels from a fat % test.  Theres loads of info to read and its caught my attention.  12 body points measured and  run through a formula to provide results which are then interpreted.

• Chin and Cheek: The first sites to go down during a diet. These sites aren't linked to any particular hormone imbalance but act as indicator sites as to whether or not the plan is working or not.
• Pectoral and Triceps: The androgen sites. High pec readings in men in relation to the triceps can reflect an androgen imbalance which makes it far more difficult to add lean muscle mass.
• Suprailliac and Subscapular: The insulin sites. These sites are related to blood sugar management. High readings here vs. the triceps may reflect poor insulin sensitivity and carb intolerance.
• Mid-axillary: This site is correlated to thyroid hormone levels.
• Umbilical: The infamous cortisol site. It can be high despite low overall body fat. If this site is imbalanced then steady state cardio would create a further imbalance and cause the client to store fat rather than burn it.
• Knee and Medial Calf: These skinfolds are related to growth hormone and act as an indicator in the quality and quantity of sleep a client experiences.
• Quadriceps and Hamstring: High levels here vs. the triceps are correlated to high estrogen levels. This site usually comes up in females. Lactate threshold training works best here.

My first test was 20% bf over all, low carb tolerance, high oestrogen and low t.

After a month of high protein low carb, in fact zero carbs in the week, and high doses of omega I'd gone down a whole 1% !! .. but muscle up 4kg .. which is nice but not whats supposed to happen.  

The second test showed some sites up and some down but mainly oestrogen was up which apparently accounts for the shite bf loss.  After talking over the past months changes its been attributed to dosing on crap fish oil and so actually ingesting more xenoestrogens.  But now my cynical side is starting to kick in.

I'm going to persevere with it, probably with some more attention after Christmas.  The next step has been suggested to get some blood work done to check some minerals (magnesium & zinc) and vit D with blood tests.  I'm actually also thinking of getting hormones tested to confirm or debunk the results, or at least use in conjunction with.  

Not sure how that would work, its hard to ask the biosignature practitioner, who I must add seriously knows his stuff, to examine the hormone results which is actually questioning the validity of the test in the first place.  

I mean does it just give you a number for each which falls in a range .. Actually I can google that ..

Canon D30, Tamron 18-270 & Long Exposures

On vacation in France, a private waterfall at our disposal. A perfect chance to try my recently purchased tripod to see if I can create some of those silky water shots.


Sat there for an hour playing with settings thinking I was great. Checked them later and they where pretty much all blurred.

Two mins googling and a link with disabling image stabilisation on the lens. Bingo. On the Tamron its actually VC (I forget the acronym). Tried a couple of test shots and it appears problem solved.


Back to the waterfall tomorrow afternoon.


I also found that VC doesn't actually work in the timed (10 seconds) shot mode. But it does seem to make a difference when the d30 takes the picture. So turn it off.


Not sure what other lens do this. I'll hopefully find out soon when I buy my bosses 'L's.