Technology Addiction of WannaBeGeek!

VOIP Skype system replacment....?

2010-03-26T07:48:00.010-04:00

For those of you who may find building your own VOIP/Skype system a bit overwhelming.... I may have just the thing for you.

Ooma! is a nice little VOIP box that the company claims has a one time fee and your set for life. (unless your doing international calling)

I have not had a chance myself to review the box, but would jump at the chance if it came up.

There have been a lot of rave reviews on line, and heck; even Cali Lewis gave it a good review!

From what I can tell the international prices are just as good as Skypes. For me the price of calling family in Russia is the same as Skype.

As much as I would love to jump on the Ooma bandwagon, I just cant justify the cost at the moment. It would take me about five to six years to make my money back using Ooma. Thats not saying Ooma is bad, its just I pay about "$110 a year" for Skype with international calling, and a backup service if Skype should fail. To top that I would loose all my cool siptosis/Skype features.

If anyone out there is using Ooma, please drop me a line and let me know what you think. Maybe one day I will jump on the Ooma bandwagon.

Need More Power!

2009-12-15T17:50:00.000-05:00

So a few posts ago I was writing about how I installed a light in my shed. Well this time I'm gonna tell you about what I did with the other two batteries from that post, and how I now have power in my shed.

So to start I basically did the same thing for the wiring, and a copper tie.

The big difference here is I had to connect the two batteries in series to get 24V. (Nice little document here) Why do I need 24V you ask....? So we can connect it to a Smart UPS 1500.

I have seen the Smart UPS 1500 on ebay between $45-$60 without the battery, and that's exactly how I want it seeing how I have my own.

Battery Set UP
So once again.... I cut some copper pipe to the length I needed, hammered the heck out of both ends, made 90 degree angles (on both ends), and drilled the ends of the pipe to connect to the battery terminals. Once this was all done, I used the tie (Notice it is one in this case) to connect one set of terminals on the batteries. One Positive (+) on one battery and one negative (-) on the other battery to connect them in series.

We want the battery in series so they need to be connected Positive, negative (+ -), Positive, negative (+ -).

So I placed the copper tie I made on one + of one battery and - to the other battery. On the other end I placed the copper of the romex directly to the battery terminal (White +, black -). The romex runs from the battery to a light switch.

Smart UPS Setup
I drilled a hole in the top of the UPS case to slip the romex wire in and connect it to the UPS. I had to cut the connector on the UPS and use wire nuts to secure the connection from the UPS to the romex. Once that was completed, I ran the romex to the light switch.

The light switch is wired the same way as in my previous post. The reasoning behind the switch is so I can kill all power going to the UPS system when not in use. (The UPS its self uses some power)

Now whenever I need Power, I just flip the switch and hold the power button in on the USP for about 5 seconds, and BAM!!! I have power.

Now the big downer with this system is two things.

1.) When you run the UPS to power something, it alarms. That is easily remedied with a pare of pliers by removing the alarm.
2.) Charging is a bit of a pain. Every time I go to charge the batteries I have to brake down the connections so I can charge each 12V battery separately.

In theory you can use the charger on the UPS to charge the batteries. From what I understand it wold take me days to charge these due to the size of the batteries.

So far I have used this system to run a small stereo in my shed. In theory I could also use it for more lighting if need be, or a small shop vac. I'm still in the process of deciding if I want to use all four batteries for this system and get one small 12V for my light. If I use all four for this system I would be able to increase my usage by quite a bit.

Perhaps one day I will get a solar charger, but that will be some other project to write about.

So has anyone else done something like this?

Call All Network Security Geeks! PacketProtector is here to help!

2009-12-07T13:44:00.000-05:00

So I thought I would tell you about a fairly new router firmware. This is not going to be an uber geek post, just a quick overview and my thoughts.

I like to play with new firmwares on my router. I have played with most stock firmwares, DDWRT, Tomato, and a few others. However; one day while looking for Vlan support on my Linksys WRTSL54GS I came across PacketProtector. I was intrigued, and thought I'd give it a go.

The folks that run the forum were very supportive and helpful when I ran into some Vlan problem and helped me as much as they could. Unfortunately no matter what I did or tried I could not get Vlan to work. However that was about a year ago, and here we are today!

PacketProtector is built on top of OpenWRT and aims for and easy and intuitive network security OS for a few different types of routers. PacketProtector is still in its infancy and has only been around for a few years with only a hand full of developers.

Considering the lack of users and developers that the packetprotector community has, the project has not slowed down one bit. They continue to push the security bar and have continued bug fixes, development, enhancements, and releases with loyal dedication some larger projects wish they had.

Installation is easy as you can tell by their documentation.

On my WRTSL54GS it was as simple as uploading the Packetprotector .bin file to the administrative "Upgrade Firmware" interface on tomato.

Side Note:
Before I installed PP, I did a backup of my routers config so if need be I could revert back to my original settings.
I eventual went back to Tomato just to test a few things out. (Just to see how easy it would be to revert back to tomato)

To get to back Tomato all I did was go to "system-Upgrade" in PP and uploaded the tomato.trx file. Once that was complete I uploaded tomato for the WRTSL54GS .

Now once I did that, I noticed something funny. All my original configurations were still there...nothing was lost or changed. This in theory could cause problems. It may be a good idea to do a system rest or clear the NVRAM on the router before installing PP.

Packetprotector by default is set with security in mind and automatically has https enabled at install, and has wireless disabled.

Once you log onto the Packet Protector Webif you will be greeted with a message stating "Default password hash Found!" With a link to change the password. However you should install the USB drive before you do anything.

So per the documentation we add the files from the USB tarball to the root of the drive. (Drive needs to be formatted Fat16, or ext3). So in the root of the drive you should have a "packetetprotector" directory and a "packetetprotector_home" directory.) From there we "turn off" the router and install the USB Drive. Once that is complete turn the router back on and wait for it to boot.

As you can see Packet Protector aims for a user friendly webif but falls short here for any noob. However if its power and control you seek its all right there under the hood! Packet protector allows you to install new packages (need to be connected online for that) and uses Opendns by default.

As you can see from the description from the main site this is not an average firmware.

a stateful firewall (iptables)
WPA/WPA2 Enterprise wireless (802.1X and PEAP with FreeRADIUS)
intrusion prevention (Snort-inline)
remote access VPN (OpenVPN)
content filtering/parental controls (DansGuardian)
web antivirus (DG + ClamAV)
a local certificate authority (OpenSSL)
secure management interfaces (SSH and HTTPS)
advanced firewall scripts for blocking IM and P2P apps
IP spoofing prevention (Linux rp_filter)
basic protocol anomaly detection (ipt_unclean)
anti-phishing (OpenDNS)
automatic signature/rule updates

Each of these services is automatically bootstrapped and configured with sensible defaults. A secure web interface makes common configuration tasks as simple as a point and click.

Not too bad ha....? Packet Protector has lots to offer for any security geek out there. However I would say noob's may want to hold off on this one for a while.

As with all things good there are a few downers. As I mentioned before the web interface needs a lot of work and may confuse or be difficult for a noob. There are also some things I'd like to see added to the Webif such as an easy way of turning the router into a secure proxy, add-blocking with a black and white list, an option for DNSOmatic in the dynDNS tab, as well as multiple DHCP servers for Vlans.

As of writing this there is currently a discussion going on about the Webif being updated. Feel free to join in!

In closing Packetprotector has major potential to be a major player in the 3rd party router firmware world. They could be a big hitter among security geeks everywhere, but could user a bigger developer and user base to get there. I look forward to being part of that community and hope you will join me.

How is this in X-tremegeek???

2009-12-01T16:05:00.000-05:00

So the other day I was looking through the x-tremegeek catalog that was sent to my house and came across an item called PoopFreeze. I was shocked?? How is this geek.

Trying to make sense of this all I could think of was....

"Think of the hours of fun you can have with poopfreeze...You and you friends can freeze fresh poop and save it for latter experiments, or you can freeze it and smash it with a hammer into thousand of little poop pieces. How cool is that boys and girls?"

Yeah...so no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't make any sense of it.

Love the description...
"Even law-abiding dog owners think twice when the, ahem, product is particular warm and gooey. Poop Freeze to the rescue! Just aim and squirt to chill animal waste to -62°F, creating an outer "crust" that makes the unpleasant "grab and bag" a little more tolerable. Effective on all kinds of waste, including dog poop, cat poop, bird poop, lizard poop and more!"

Wow..., Just Wow....Could you imaging if this were an infomercial?
Oh the fun you could have....While we are on the subject of poop....whats this?
Love the description on this too...

"Kobayashi Toilet Deodorizer Plain and simple... this stuff works! We don't know how, but it works. Just put one tiny drop of this amazing deodorizer in the toilet before you sit and take, uh... care of business, and it miraculously prevents offensive odors from reaching deadly levels. It's a clear colorless liquid with just a slight hint of fragrance that doesn't cover up" or "do battle" with odors like those flowery overpowering sprays. It's as if offensive odors simply can't escape the toilet! It's amazing!"

Seems these two items are popular as they are out of stock at the moment of writing this. Well...If anything else I guess it make a good X-Mas Gift for that SPECIAL someone.

Ok.... no more toilet humor. I shall now return to geekhood!

The Ultimate Tool

2009-11-27T15:36:00.001-05:00

In my past few posts I mentioned a few times that I had done some remodeling the past few months on an apartment. In the process I collected a few tools to help me do the work. One of them being my neighbor. (Little joke there)

So one day, my neighbor and I were at the Home Depot. There was a crowed around a table with a tool that buzzed. The moment I saw the tool, I knew exactly what it was. My neighbor asked me "What is that?"

I told him I know exactly what it is and told him a short story about when I was little.

I told him that when I was a kid and had to have a cast removed from my arm. The Dr. pulled out this tool that buzzed and scared the hell out of me. I told him I remember how he showed me how it cut material but not skin.

Long story short you can now buy that same tool at Home Depot under the name of Dremel Multi-Max

Now I'm not looking to give a plug, but I have to say....This tool saved my butt quite a few times.

If your ever gonna get a single tool, I would have to say this is the tool to get. Check out some of the videos on the site, or check out the review below. I bet you'll be saying "That is awesome!"

How to Use Oscillating Tool

This tool has payed for its self (for me) in a very short time! This would make an excellent X-Mas gift for all the Dads out there!

I Need Power...Well More like Light.

2009-11-24T22:25:00.000-05:00

I have a shed (As lots of folks do) and my shed lacks light and power. This has been a big pain for me for quite some time now. So I have been looking for cheap and easy ways to get a bit of light and power in there for obvious reasons. (You know....like light is good when its dark out....and power is good to listen to tunes while you work.)

So as I briefly mention in my last post I was re-modeling an apartment (Oh how I love to get new tools!) I had some extra light switches, romex and extra copper pipe. I thought...hey what a good start to get a little juice in the shed.

So....one of the first things I did was ask around for some batteries. I was lucky enough to land 4 AGM UPS batteries. (BIG!!!)

Note: There are many different ways of getting batteries for free.
If you live near a golf course, you can ask whoever does maintenance on the carts to give you a call, when they replace the batteries.
If you work near an industrial area, you could contact someone who does maintenance on the backup power system.
Do you live near a school??? Ask about the Bus maintenance.
Most places will replace the batteries before they fail...especially critical backup power supplies, so in theory the batteries should still have some life in them.

So at this point I was thinking...ok...now what. The answer...Ebay!

I bought a 12 V 18" florescent light with surface mount. I'm sure I could have done something else, but with what little research I did...it works!

My next step was figuring out how I wanted to use the 4 batteries.

What I decided on was to take two of the batteries and tie them in parallel.

All I did for that was take a little bit of left over copper and cut it to the length I needed. Once I had the correct length, I flatten the ends by beating it with a hammer. (It may not look pretty, but it works.) Once I had the copper pipes flattened, I bent the ends 90 degrees using pliers. From there I just marked the copper where I would need to drill holes to line up with the battery terminals.

Test Tie

Once the ties were made I connect the two batteries in parallel using the ties keeping it a 12V system. Once the batteries were connected I put it on a car charger to charge them up. (I Placed the chargers connectors in the middle of the copper (where I placed the screws) to charge both batteries at the same time.

Next I had to find a way to connect all this to a switch. (I know nothing about electricity, so this was fun. Maybe someone out there can give me a better idea on how to go about this.) I ran some romex from where I wanted the switch to be, to the light. I then ran romex from the length of where the switch would be, to the batteries. I then mounted my light fixture and connected the romex to the wires to the light fixture using wire nuts.

Once I had that all set up, I quickly learned how not to connect a light switch and battery.

So as I quickly learned from my melt down, I did a quick google and replaced the switch following this page here.

So basically what I did was connected the two black wires to the light switch and tied the two white wires together using a wire nut. I went with white being + and black being -

To connect the romex to the bank, I placed one little screw in the center of each copper tie. I then looped the copper from the romex around the screw and tightened it down.

For safety I placed some insulation over the copper terminals. Hey what do ya know...I know have a light in my shed. (As you can see in the first photo)

I know this post is nothing compared to the other things I have posted. This one is a bit on the easy side of things...perhaps a little lame. Well stay tuned...If you thought this was lame, wait until my next post...its a step up from this, but along the same lines.

My next post I will tell you what I did with the other two batteries, and how I obtained power in my shed. Once again...A fairly cheap solution.

BTW: This project cost me about $40 for everything including copper, light, switch, and romex. The batteries were free. :)

I'm still around! (Just have a lack of Time)

2009-11-15T15:40:00.004-05:00

Well its been a long, long, while since my last post.

I just thought I'd make a quick post letting everyone know my ventures are still alive, and I still have a few projects going on.

I'm sure everyone has noticed my lack of posting!

Well I had a lot of stuff going on at the home front. (re-modeling an apartment is a long and painful job.) But hey...now I'm back, and trying to get a few things going.

As I get a bit more time I'll start posting a thing here and there.

One of the things I will be posting about shortly is my shed. Yes you read that right....my shed!

I hacked up a few things that some may get a kick out of and might find somewhat useful.

Well until then.....enjoy this little smiley face :)

SiptheeSkype Now SipToSis

2009-05-02T12:00:00.004-04:00

Well my phone system had a little crash and I had to set my machine and ATA up once again. In the process I thought I'd take a look and see what updates SitptheeSkype had......

Well I found out the name changed again and is now called SipToSis. The name change is not that big of a deal, what is a big deal is how easy SipToSis is to set up.

NOTE: SipToSis now has a GNU GPL: $2.50 distribution fee. Believe me its worth it...and more.

Now just because it had a distribution fee does not say you couldn't distribute it yourself...after all it is under the GPL.

I actually wish I could have placed an additional $15 or so to the basket at check out to give a little gratitude for all the work that has gone into this!

So lets get with it!

Well you need the normal files....Java 1.5 JRE or higher, Skype, and SipToSis.

Basically; once you have java and Skype installed all you do is extract SipToSis files to a location and execute the SipToSis_win.bat file. From there allow jave to interact with skype by going to Tools-Options-Advance and click Manage other programs access to Skype (On the bottom). From there click allow.

The full process is well documented here, and gives you plenty of possibilities!

As for the dial plan....You may want to take a look over here.... and here... Once you have your dialplan in place take a look at the section over here that says "A word about the dialplan". Thats how I have mine set up, and it works nice!

If you have any questions...feel free to drop me a line.

MV2120 and 5150 ssh user update

2009-04-28T08:57:00.004-04:00

So I had to reboot my MV and found it was a bit of a pain to re-establish the ssh users. So the quick way to fix the problem after a reboot is as follows.

When you go to edit the /etc/passwd you will see something like this
joeuser:x:502:502:Linux User,,,:/:/bin/nologin

You will need to edit it so it looks more like this.
joeuser:x:502:502:Linux User,,,/:/share/1000/joeuser:/bin/sh

Not like in the original post over here. (Original joeuser:x:502:502:Linux User,,,:/share/1000/joeuser:/bin/sh) notice the extra / in User,,,/:/share

I have updated the original post as of 4/27/09 to fix the problem.

Once you have done that you will need to set the password for the user using the following command.

passwd username (username being the users password you want to set.)

Sorry for the mess up.

More On Drigg.....

2009-04-19T07:47:00.003-04:00

Well Ive tried to post several times now on the drigg forum with no luck. It seems I can only make new posts. So all the updates I have tried to post have failed. Whatever work I do, I'll just post here.

One of the thing I wanted to share was this tidbit here.

It has some very good info!

Its basically to edit properties of block and gives a bit more insight on how things work.

Anyway..... just this short blerp for now.

Drigg Theme Re-Visited. Continued

2009-04-05T08:45:00.012-04:00

Ok so if you have read Drigg Theme Re-Visited you'll see I left you hanging at the #header_search form input.form-submit { section to figure out.

I'll give a quick overview of the two sections I left for you to figure out.

So let's take a look at the #header_search form input.form-submit { section first.

#header_search form input.form-submit {
border: 0;
padding: 0;
background-image: url("../img/header_searchbtn.gif");
width: 30px;
height: 20px;
overflow: hidden;
text-indent: -1000em;
word-spacing: 10em;

Border:0; this section here will put a border around your search image. The default search image for drigg is the magnifying glass "header_searchbtn.gif."

I'm sure you can guess what this next part is...
background-image: url("../img/header_searchbtn.gif");

Now if you wanted you could change the default image; you would need to take a few things into thought.

You would need to possibly re-size the image you use.
Rename the image or change the code to match the image name (header_searchbtn.gif)
Set the size of the image in sections. width: 30px; height: 20px;
If the image is larger than the default, you will need to adjust the size of the search box.

Now let's take a look at text-indent: -1000em;
If we change that to 0em; you'll see part of the word "search" show up on the header_searchbtn.gif icon. The full word does not show because the header_searchbtn.gif size is set too small. If we were to increase the size in the width: 30px; section, we could get the full word to show.

Now lets look at
/* Header login and submit buttons */
#header_categories a.drigg-login,
#header_categories a.drigg-submit {
float: right;
margin-left: 10px;
display: block;
border: 1px solid #fff;
border-top: 0;
border-bottom: 0;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-position: top left;
height: 30px;
text-indent: -1000em;
overflow: hidden;
text-decoration: none;
outline: none;
}

This section lets us modify the "submit a story" icon and the "Login/Register" icon.
I'm not going to discuss this section as its the same as what we have been discussing above.

So let's move on...
#header_categories a.drigg-login { is the icon on the right side of the site when not logged in

#header_categories a.drigg-login {
width: 117px;
background-image: url("../img/header_loginbtn.gif");

Once again you can use your own image just make sure you adjust the pixel width
(width: 117px;)

#header_categories a.drigg-submit { Same idea as above.

#header_categories a.drigg-submit {
width: 115px;
background-image: url("../img/header_submitbtn.gif");

Moving on to #header_categories {
#header_categories {
height: 30px;
padding: 0 20px;
background: url("../img/header_categoriesbg.gif") repeat-x top left;
background-color:gray;
}

So to give an example how to mod this section I'm going to convert and use an image using paint.net from the Dreamy theme. The image I will be using is the bg-menu.png. (Take note of the pixel size)

So here is a before shot:

So once the image has been modded, I re-namded the image to header_categoriesbg.gif and placed it in the image directory with read permissions.

Now that that is done, we will slightly modify the code, but first......
The size of bg-menu.png is 700x35 so all we need is the 35.

#header_categories {
height: 35px;
padding: 0 20px;
background: url("../img/header_categoriesbg.gif") repeat-x top left;
background-color:gray;
}

That's it. All we needed to do was change height: 30px; to height: 35px; Easy ha?

Here is the after:

Yes it was a very simple and a small change, but it does what we need.

These next few sections will change the attributes of the categories. For example: If you look at the above image where it says "All", "Hydro", "Solar", and "Wind". These sections will let you modify those areas. Such as the white box around "all", the color of the words, the color of the box, and the size of all the above.

#header_categories ul {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
list-style: none;
height: 30px;
line-height: 30px;
}
#header_categories ul li { display: inline; }
#header_categories ul li a {
float: left;
display: block;
padding: 0 0.5em;
color: #fff;
text-shadow: 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.3);
}
#header_categories ul li a.active {
margin-top: 3px;
line-height: 27px;
background: #fff;
color: #666;
text-shadow: none;
}

I'll let you play with that one.

The sections #header_subcategories { does the same as above, but for subcategories.

Lets move on to breadcrumbs

/* Header breadcrumb */
#header_breadcrumb {
clear: left;
height: 30px;
line-height: 30px;
padding: 0 20px;
font-size: 8pt;
color: #666;
border-bottom: 1px solid #e5e5e5;
}
What this section does is control this area here
I'm sure you can figure out what to do at this point.

I'm going to start telling you less on how to modify things, and start tell you what the sections do. I think at this point we should have an idea of what is needed to be done.

The section below lets you control aspects of the user menu.

/* -- Content layout ------------------------------------------------------ */
#content { padding: 20px 220px; }
#content .column {
position: relative;
float: left;
}
#content_center { width: 100%; }
#content_left {
width: 180px;
padding: 0 20px;
margin-left: -100%;
left: 220px;
}
#content > #content_left {
left: -220px;
margin-left: expression(document.all.content_center.offsetWidth * -1);
}
#content_right {
width: 180px;
padding: 0 20px;
margin-right: -220px;

Lets move on to Content styles
This area lets you control the area pictured below. (Not including the Published scoops)

/* Control bar */
#content_center div.controlbar h1 {
float: left;
line-height: 1.2em;
margin-right: 20px;
margin-bottom: 0;
}
#content_center div.controlbar ul {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
list-style: none;
}
#content_center div.controlbar ul li { display: inline; }
#content_center div.controlbar ul.drigg-viewtype {
float: right;
font-size: 11pt;
line-height: 20pt;
}
#content_center div.controlbar ul.drigg-viewtype li a {
display: block;
float: left;
margin-left: 10px;
padding: 0px 5px 5px 5px;
}
#content_center div.controlbar ul.drigg-viewtype li.active a {
background-color: #f3f9fc;
color: #00446b;
}

#content_center div.controlbar ul.drigg-order {
background-color: #f3f9fc;
padding: 0.5em;
clear: both;
}
#content_center div.controlbar ul.drigg-order li a {
padding: 0.2em 0.5em;
margin-right: 0.5em;
}
#content_center div.controlbar ul.drigg-order li.active a {
background-color: #1b81ca;
color: #fff;
}

Well thats it for now....

Drigg Theme Re-Visited.

2009-04-04T09:11:00.031-04:00

Well, I decided to revisit the modding of the drigg theme due to the last one not being so clear. That and every time I go to post a follow up on the drigg forum, it never shows up.
I decided I'll be working on the base.css located in /sites/all/themes/drigg_theme/css.

A Couple good links:
CSS Cheat sheet
Cheat Sheets

Note: The above links were found after I made these posts and have cleared things up a lot for me. I suggest taking a look at the CSS Cheat sheet.

I think I'll put my findings in a series or articles, as to do all of it at once could be overwhelming.

Unfortunately I have to use a windows computer to do some of the work. I'll be using paint.net to mod some art and get art info. I also downloaded and installed some plugins. (check out buttons..kinda cool!)

So one of the first things I did was set some of my configurations per this write up here.
The next thing I did was install ColorZilla firefox addon to help me with art color.

ColorZilla

I've been using ColorZilla to pull colors from web sites I like. It's very easy to use and provides all the needed info.

Here is an example:
Say I go to google.com and I like the green that is being used in the l

I click the small eyedropper in the lower left corner of firefox

Select Google and hover my mouse over the green l

Now if you look at the eyedropper, it will give you all the info you need.

I usually make note of the Hex value (#007D08) for use when I'm ready.

So....let's see what we can do with the base.css
Here is what the default Default drigg looks like.

Now let's change it.

Open base.css located in /sites/all/themes/drigg_theme/css with a good text editor. (For windows folks, I suggest Notepad++)

The first line we see is this:
/* -- Base ---------------------------------------------------------------- */
body {
margin: 0;
background-color: #fff;
font: 9pt/1.5em Arial, Tahoma, Verdana, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif;
color: #333;
}

So if we mod the background-color: It will change the background color of the site.
For example we will use the green we pulled from google.
So lets change background-color: #fff; to background-color: #007D08;

/* -- Base ---------------------------------------------------------------- */
body {
margin: 0;
background-color: #007D08;
font: 9pt/1.5em Arial, Tahoma, Verdana, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif;
color: #333;
}

This is what we get.

Note: All changes in each example will be marked in bold. Once each example is complete, I will manually restore the default settings. For example...The example above will be changed back to background-color: #fff;

Ok now lets change something else, like the the font size and color.
/* -- Base ---------------------------------------------------------------- */
body {
margin: 0;
background-color: #fff;
font: 15pt/1.5em Arial, Tahoma, Verdana, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif;
color: #007D08;
}

Next line we see in the base.css is
#container {
margin: 0 auto;
min-width: 760px;
max-width: 1260px;
}
I have no idea what it is, or what it does so lets move on....shall we.

The Links area will modify most links, I'm just going to change color, and text decoration.
/* Links */
a {
color: #007D08;
text-decoration: underline; }
a:hover { text-decoration: underline; }

As you can see, it placed an underline under My Account, Users by karma, Create content, blah, blah, blah and turned them green as well as a few other things.

The next few sections I'm going to skip because once again I do not know what they do. So let's move on the the Header section and play with paint.net.

Let's add our own header art.

Note: The header section is a bit difficult to explain, but I will try my best.

One of the things I had to do was delete the header_logo.gif located in the img directory to get rid of the drig logo. You can just change the name of it if you want.

For this next part I used the sun.jpg image from the grassland theme. (pixel size 670X146)

I converted the image file from a .jpg to a .gif using paint.net. (I'll let you figure that one out. For more info look at the quick paint.net lesson below.) Take note of the pixel size of your image located in the bottom right corner.
Next I added the image to the img directory and renamed it to header_titlebg.gif
I then had to edit the Header section until I was happy with the end result.

Note: If the image does not show on your site when you place it in the img directory, make sure it has the right extension and the read permissions.

Here is a screen shot before changing the "height: 100px;" in the header section.

Now the change:
/* -- Header -------------------------------------------------------------- */
#header_title {
background: url("../img/header_titlebg.gif") repeat-x top left;
height: 146px;
padding: 0 20px;
}

Here it is with the change:

Next thing you'll notice is if you put your mouse in the top of the left corner, there is a link where your site name should be. The site name will not show even if you enable it in the themes settings. I'll get to this in a moment.

Before we go into this a bit more, please go into Administrator-Site Building-Themes
Click on configure for the drigg theme. Ensure Site name, and Site slogan are enabled. Save.

Now lets jump to this section in the base.css and look at the bold part.
#header_title h1 a {
display: block;
width: 220px;
height: 100px;
background: url("../img/header_logo.gif") no-repeat top left;
text-indent: -1000em;
overflow: hidden;
text-decoration: none;
outline: none;
}

Change text-indent: -1000em; to text-indent: 0em;
Your site name should now show up.

The problems I currently have with the site name is I don't have any idea how to move it down from the top, change the font, or change the color. Any ideas??

Note: This next section defines the box size for you site in the top left corner.

Ok...so now let's look at that section a bit more
#header_title h1 a {
display: block;
width: 220px; height: 100px;
background: url("../img/header_logo.gif") no-repeat top left;
text-indent: -1000em;
overflow: hidden;
text-decoration: none;
outline: none;
}

The two spots marked in bold control the size of the box the site name will be in. If it is too small it will cut parts of the site name. I changed mine to
width: 125px;
height: 30px;

Lets look at #header_title h1 now.
#header_title h1 {
margin: 0;
width: 220px;
height: 100px;
}
From what I can tell, if you modify the height: 100px; it will move you slogan up or down.

So on with paint.net
A quick lesson with paint.net. I'm going to mod the header_titlebg.gif, mainly because I will be deleting it to use something else when we get to that point.
I should have took screen shots of the header_categoriesbg.gif being modded but I already took the screen-shots of the header_title.gif....yeah, I messed up. So if you are following this, I would use the header_categoriesbg.gif in place of the header_titlebg.gif. (The header_categoriesbg.gif is the deep blue color where your categories area)

Start paint.net and open header_titlebg.gif located in /sites/all/themes/drigg_theme/img (in windows (\sites\all\themes\drigg_theme\img)
Once you have the file open, you will see a box in the bottom left corner that says color and has a button on it that say "More"

Click on "More".

You will notice there is an area for a hex number. I'm going to use the green we pulled from google. Once thats added the primary color will change to green. Now click on the bucket so the image can be filled. Once the bucket is clicked, dump the color on the image by clicking on the image.

Now let's save it. Make sure the dithering level and Transparency threshold is set to 0 when saving.

Lesson done.....lets move on.

Using the directions above I modified the header_categoriesbg.gif and placed it into the img directory.
I also did the same to the header_submitbtn.gif, header_searchbtn.gif, and header_loginbtn.gif.

I'm gonna skip over most of the /* Drupal Primary Links Menu */ section but give you an idea of whats going on there.

Primary links are located in the top right corner of the site. The section posted below will change the link color.
If you want to remove the underlines just replace text-decoration:underline; with text-decoration:none;

ul.primary-links li a, ul.primary-links li a:link, ul.primary-links li a:visited {
display: block;
margin: 0 1em;
padding: .4em 0 0;
color: #00446b;
text-decoration:underline;

On to Search!

All there is to this section is moving the search box up or down, (If it is enabled in Administrator-Site Building-Themes) All you need to do that is change the "top: 30px;" value.

If you need to move it to the left of the screen change the value "float" example: float: left;

#header_search {
clear: right;
position: relative;
top: 5px;
float: right;
}

Now lets look at #header_search form input.form-text { section.

#header_search form input.form-text {
border: 0;
background-color: #fff;
height: 17px;
width: 139px;
margin-right: 1px;
padding: 1px 0 0 1px;
border: 1px solid #66a6c8;
color: #333;
outline: none;
}

This area lets you modify a lot of things on the search box.

background-color: #fff; If you change this it will change the color inside the search box

The height and width section lets you control the size of the search box its self.
height: 17px;
width: 139px;

border: 1px solid #66a6c8; hmm how to explain this....well there is a 1pixel box that is wrapped around the search box. You can increase the size of that box and change the color of it.

color: #333; lets you change the color of the text being entered into the search.

Lets look at #header_search p { a moment

#header_search p {
clear: left;
margin: 0;
text-align: right; If you modify this section, the text will aligned to the left or right inside the search box.
font-size: 8pt;
}

The following two sections below are a lot like the #header_title h1 a { section posted above, so I'm not going to spend any time on this.

The #header_search form input.form-submit { controls the submit button for search.
#header_search form input.form-submit {
border: 0;
padding: 0;
background-image: url("../img/header_searchbtn.gif");
width: 30px;
height: 20px;
overflow: hidden;
text-indent: -1000em;
word-spacing: 10em;
}

/* Header login and submit buttons */
#header_categories a.drigg-login,
#header_categories a.drigg-submit {
float: right;
margin-left: 10px;
display: block;
border: 1px solid #fff;
border-top: 0;
border-bottom: 0;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-position: top left;
height: 30px;
text-indent: -1000em;
overflow: hidden;
text-decoration: none;
outline: none;
}

Once you play around with this stuff a while, you start to see a pattern and have a good idea what each section will do just by looking at it.

I'm gonna stop here and I'll return in a day or two with some more stuff. If you have questions, feel free to ask. I don't know how much help I'll be, but I have no problem trying to help you.

Drigg Themes

2009-03-23T13:49:00.019-04:00

So I have been playing around with drigg and need a new theme for the site I'm messing with. A few things I have noticed - the forums are very, very slow; so help is limited from there. The other thing is there is no real direction on how to port, or modify themes. I found this little tidbit over here but makes absolutely no sense to me. I also found this here that helped a bit, but not everything I was looking for.

So what I have been doing is taking the default drigg theme and modding it.
Note: All these mods will effect the front page attributes.
One of the first problems I had was the art. I tried to use the gimp but could not achieve what I wanted. Unfortunately I had to use a windows machine (it hurt a lot) and install paint.net.
Because I know nothing about art, I needed something brain dead easy....seems paint.net did it.

So to start, I played around a little by changing the header_titlebg.gif with a different image. Well, needless to say it took me a while to realize I had to change the format of the image to a gif. Once I did that, all went well.

Once I uploaded the new header_titlebg.gif, I noticed I couldn't get rid of the drigg logo. I tried to uncheck the logo box from Admin/site build/themes on the drigg theme, and under the global settings, but it wouldn't go away. So I decided to just delete the header_logo.gif....that seemed to work.

My next problem was the new header_titlebg.gif wasnt being shown correctly. A lot of the image was being covered by the header_categoriesbg.gif.
I solved that problem by editing the base.css file in the bold section below.
Note: In order to correctly see this, you need to know the hight pixel size of the image you are using.

/* -- Header -------------------------------------------------------------- */
#header_title {
background: url("../img/header_titlebg.gif") repeat-x top left;
height: 145px;
padding: 0 20px;
}

Next thing I wanted to do was move the Search box a little.
NOTE: The search box will only be available if you have enabled the search module, and enabled search in the themes section as well.

Once again I had to edited the base.css in the section that is bold.
Note: this section will just move the search box up or down, if you need to move it left of the screen change the value "float" example: float: left;

#header_search {
clear: right;
position: relative;
top: 5px;
float: right;
}

If you need to move the slogan up or down edit the section (You would think height would be the height of the slogan)
#header_title h1 {
margin: 0;
width: 220px;
height: 100px;
}

If you are uploading a new logo, edit the width and height to match you logos pixel size.
#header_title h1 a {
display: block;
width: 220px;
height: 100px;
background: url("../img/header_logo.gif") no-repeat top left;
text-indent: -1000em;
overflow: hidden;
text-decoration: none;
outline: none;

One other thing I waned to change was to remove the drigg icon in the left bottom corner. I ended up deleting it from the img directory. Once thats done I notice a link that says "Drigg" in that same spot.
If you want to modify that you can edit the page.tpl.php in the footer section below

<div id="footer">
<?php print $footer_message; ?>
<a href="http://www.drigg-code.org"><img src="<?php print path_to_theme()?>/img/drigg_80_15.gif" alt="Drigg" /></a>
</div> 

Color Changing

These are some areas in the base.css file that can be changed to set colors for different parts of the page.
NOTE: If you need a tool for your color in hex look here

Background color of the site
/* -- Base ---------------------------------------------------------------- */
body {
margin: 0;
background-color: #fff;

Font Color of story summary on front page, notice you can change the font size (font:9pt) as well
/* -- Base ---------------------------------------------------------------- */
body {
margin: 0;
background-color: #fff;
font: 9pt/1.5em Arial, Tahoma, Verdana, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif;
color: #333;
}

Menu links such as "My Account", "Users by karma", "Create Content", "Log Out"

/* Links */
a {
color: #CBE50A;
text-decoration: none;

With the code below you can set the size and the color of the fine line that runs under "Home>>Scoops" that is below the header_categoriesbg.gif

/* Header breadcrumb */
#header_breadcrumb {
clear: left;
height: 30px;
line-height: 30px;
padding: 0 20px;
font-size: 8pt;
color: #666;
border-bottom: 1px solid #1b81ca;
}

Now onto the blocks.css
To change the attributes of the users name that is in the left corner of the screen just above "My Account"

we would change the settings listed below.
.block { margin-bottom: 2.5em; }
.block h2 {
font-size: 12pt;
color: #00446b;
letter-spacing: -1px;
margin-top: 0.4em;
}

To change the attributes of the lines that are under the "My Account", "Users by karma", "Create Content", "Log Out"

we would change
.block ul li, .block ol li {
border-bottom: 1px solid #e5e5e5;
padding: 0.2em 0;
}

nodes.css
To change the attributes of the user information that sits below the story the user submitted, (Created by User 3 weeks 4 days ago – Made popular 3 weeks 4 days ago
Category: Tech Tags install itechtalk.com Windows 7 Solar you would edit.)
Note: Your will look a little different.

You would edit:
/* -- Base node ----------------------------------------------------------- */
.node {
clear: both;
padding: 15px 0;
margin: 0.5em 0 0.3em 0;
}
.node h2.title { margin: 0; }

/* Content */
.node .content { margin: 1.5em 0; }

/* Story data */
.node .storydata {
font-size: 8pt;
color: #888;
}
#content_center .node .storydata a { color: #666; }

To change attributes of the "Add New Comment" and the Vote edit:

/* Links */
.node div.links {
clear: left;
font-size: 8pt;
}

To change the font color of the link next to the submitted story (The link that is directly under the Title of the submitted story, and next to the image of the number of votes)

/* Karma box, offset box and story */
.node.ntype-drigg .karma_3_big,
.node.ntype-drigg .karma_4_big { float: left; }
.node.ntype-drigg .offset { margin-left: 60px; }
.node.ntype-drigg h2 { margin: 0; }
.node.ntype-drigg a { color: #005a8e; }
.node.ntype-drigg a:visited { color: #7facc6; }
.node.ntype-drigg .story * { display: inline; }
.node.ntype-drigg .story small a { color: #666; }
.node.ntype-drigg .story p { margin: 0; }

That's all I have figured out so far, so if anyone has anything they want to add, please post it to the drigg theming forum.

Calling All Drupal Lovers....

2009-03-20T10:42:00.003-04:00

So I started to play with Drupal by building the Naturestechnology site. I have a lot of ideas I'd like to implement on the site, so the process is slow because I'm learning as I'm doing.

One of the things I'd like to implement is a social site. After looking around for a while it came down to Pligg and Drigg. I decided to go with Drigg, as it would allow me to use my existing database.

NOTE: This post is not about Drigg as much as its about theming.

One of the problems I have is theming.....I have no Idea how to do the art. So I set off to see if there were any assistance programs out there. That is when I found Artisteer. I decided to see if anyone in the Drupal community has used it and that is when I found this thread.

It looks as if the program is not perfect and has a few problem, so I decided to write Artisteer and ask them about the thread posted above.

This was the reply:

"Hello,

Thank you for your interest in Artisteer.

Yes, our product creates universal Drupal themes that work with both Drupal 5 and Drupal 6.

We've only resolved an issue with Drupal 6.10 (not 6.1 or any other version) and we do work with our customers to resolve any specific problems that they report to us.

A patch will also be available within 1-2 weeks for any issues reported directly to us."

Sounds promising, however if you visit Artisteers drupal forum you'll see support is a bit slow. However once again to their credit....not many posts are in there.

So I decide to download and play with the software. It seems to be straightforward and fairly easy. Within minutes I created a basic new theme.
It's a bummer, its only made for Windows and not Linux :(
I plan on playing with it a bit more to see how well it will work with Naturestechnology.

As you tell Naturestechnology themes are stock and not very original. Currently I don't have the time to learn how to theme and would like something with my own touch. If Artisteer can provide me with that, then maybe Artisteer is just what I'm looking for.

Has anyone out there used it, and what's your thoughts?

If there is anyone out there who would like to help me Develop/Maintain/design Naturestechnology, drop me a line.

I'm Still Around....I'm not dead yet.....

2009-03-19T10:26:00.011-04:00

It's been a little while since my last post. This is just a quick update to let you all know I'm still around. I just have a lot going on lately.

I have a few projects that I have been working on that I will post about in a few days. Might not be as exciting as the phone and MediaVault, however I still think this project will be of interest to some people.

Seeing how Google has just released google voice, I may have to re-visit my phone project and see if I still need skype.....In theory, I may not need the pico to run siptheeskype....We'll see.

Just to give a small hint of what I have been playing with on and off .....I have secretly been working on a Drupal site (Naturestechnology)....but don't tell anyone.

There are a few things I've found that I'll post about for all the Drupal lovers out there, but it will take a couple of days.

Well until then.....have fun!!

Drupal: Build a Multiple site on a local Ubuntu Machine

2009-02-11T21:35:00.020-05:00

When I first started to play around drupal, I was going nuts trying to understand how to get things to work. It took me a long time to get the multi-site one code base to work, just to find out using multiple sites would be better for me. Now that I have a clue of how to do a Multiple site with a shared database, I thought I would write a quick "how-to" so others could give it a go.

Now remember..these are just the basic settings to get you up and running.

Starting fresh on a Unbuntu 8.10 system

So here we go.....First thing you need is a LAMP server.
Go to synaptic, click on edit and click on "Mark Package by Task". Select "LAMP Server" click ok.
Once LAMP is selected, do a search for phpmyadmin (NOT USING "Mark Package by Task") Once those two things are selected, click apply.

During the install you will be asked for a couple of things.
You will be asked to create a password for mysql (make sure you remember it, it will be for the root user)
You will also be asked what web-server to configure. Choose "Apache2"

Now go over here http://www.webmin.com/download.html and download webmin. The download should be under this "Debian package suitable for Debian, Ubuntu or other derived Linux"

Once you have it downloaded, install it by clicking on it....nothing special..

Download drupal http://drupal.org/ and extract the contents. Place the directory you just extract into /var/www (you may want to rename the directory to something else, whatever you need. (My example will be site, site1, site2, etc.)( Name the directory the sites name)

NOTE: I extracted the contents to my desktop, and renamed it to site. Once it was renamed I placed it into /var/www/
I then went back to my desktop and renamed that same directory site1 and copied that into /var/www
I then went back to my desktop and renamed the directory to site2 and copied that into /var/www
So all I did was make multiple copies of the directory, but gave each one a different name.

So the directory structure in /var/www hold
site
site1
site2
on so on.

Hint: If you have problem placing the directory or editing files try this....
In a terminal
sudo Nautilus

Nautilus should open once you enter your password in the terminal from the above command. That Nautilus session is now in sudo, so you should be able to move things around and edit files without too many problems.

Now that that is done, a couple link you need to know about....

To access phpmyadmin http://localhost/phpmyadmin
phpmyadmin is a web interface to administer your databases

To access webmin https://localhost:10000/
Webmin is a web interface to help you administer you machine. We will be using it to configure Apache.

So let's start!

We will be using site.com, and site1.com, etc. as the url's. We will now need to edit our host file.

Edit the host file.
sudo gedit /etc/hosts

Add this line just below the 127.0.0.1 addresses in the host file

127.0.0.1 site.com
127.0.0.1 site1.com
127.0.0.1 site2.com
127.0.0.1 site3.com
and so on...

Save and exit

Now for drupal

You should have the drupal directory you extracted and renamed from the step above in /var/www/

Next "copy" the "default.settings.php" located in /var/www/site/sites/default to a temporary place. Once you have it copied it to a temporary place, rename it to "settings.php"

copy that settings.php into each sites sites/default

example:
/var/www/site/sites/default/settings.php
/var/www/site/sites1/default/settings.php
/var/www/site/sites2/default/settings.php
/var/www/site/sites3/default/settings.php

Now go into phpmyadmin http://localhost/phpmyadmin and create a new database called site, site1, site2, site3 and shared_tables

Log on to phpmyadmin

Where it says "Create new database", enter "site" and click "Create"

Once the database is created, click the home icon (the house icon on the top left)

Now create a second database called "site1" using the same process as above.

continue for each site you need

The last database should be shared_tables

Now lets configure Apache

Go into Webmin https://localhost:10000/ (you will need yo enter your user name and password, not root)

Click on "Servers"

Click "Apache Webserver"

Click on "Configure Apache Moudules"

In the right column click "rewrite", and "vhost_alias"

On the bottom of the page click "Enable Selected Modules"

Now on to Virtual Hots.

Create your virtual host as normal.
So go into Webmin-servers-Apache Webserver. Click on Create virtual host.
Click on "Specific Address" and enter 127.0.0.1
Port click on the third radio/radial button (whatever its called) enter 80 for the value
Document root: Browse to where the site folder is. /var/www/site
Server Name click the second radio/radial button and enter the sites name. site.com
Click "Create Now"

Once created and applied go into /etc/apache2/sites-available
You will see a files with the names for you virtual hosts.

Example: site.com.conf

Now if needed open the file and change the line

DocumentRoot /var/www/site
to
DocumentRoot "/var/www/site"

While your in there do this also:

Under DocumentRoot "/var/www/site"
add this
AllowOverride All

Example of what it should look like:

DocumentRoot "/var/www/site"
AllowOverride All
allow from all
Options +Indexes
< /Directory >
ServerName site.com
< /VirtualHost >

Seems google filters the first line VirtualHost 127.0.0.1:80 with the <>

That should take care of Clean URLs

Save the file

Do the above for each site

Restart Apache.

Back to Drupal.

Now open your browser and enter http://site.com for the URL
You can now run the installer for your main site.
When at the screen asking for the database, enter "site"
Enter "root" for the user name, and the password you created during the install. The rest should be easy.

Once that is complete go to http://site1.com, run the installer for the second site.

Once that is complete you will have multiple sites running. Now we want to share a few tables between them.

Log onto phpmyadmin
Export these tables from your main site.

authmap
profile_fields
profile_values
role
sessions
users
vocabulary
vocabulary_node_types
term_data
term_hierarchy
term_node
term_relation
term_synonym

All of the tables may not be in the database. Export the ones that are.
Note: If you need to know how to export read below.

Once they have been exported, import them into the shared_tables database

Once the tables have been imported, you will need to drop the listed tables from the other databases. (site, site1, site2)
authmap
profile_fields
profile_values
role
sessions
users
vocabulary
vocabulary_node_types
term_data
term_hierarchy
term_node
term_relation
term_synonym

Once the tables have been dropped, add the following to each sites settings.php just below

$db_url = 'mysqli://root:password@localhost/site';
changing password for your password, and site for each database name.

$db_prefix = array(
'default' => '',
'authmap' => 'shared_tables.',
'profile_fields' => 'shared_tables.',
'profile_values' => 'shared_tables.',
'role' => 'shared_tables.',
'sessions' => 'shared_tables.',
'users' => 'shared_tables.',
'vocabulary' => 'shared_tables.',
'vocabulary_node_types' => 'shared_tables.',
'term_data' => 'shared_tables.',
'term_hierarchy' => 'shared_tables.',
'term_node' => 'shared_tables.',
'term_relation' => 'shared_tables.',
'term_synonym' => 'shared_tables.',
);

Save each file.
If your databases have different user names and passwords try replacing
$db_url = 'mysqli://root:password@localhost/site';
with something like this
$db_url['default'] = 'mysql://root:password

@localhost/site';
$db_url['site1db'] = 'mysql://user:password@localhost/site1db';

If all went well, you will now be sharing user and Taxonomy information across sites.

Database info.
A couple things good to know.
Once your is site set up the way you want, you may want to export your databases. The reason for this is there are people who will tweak and brake things. So if you export your database you can simply just re-import it and get you site back up in moments.
To export look here http://drupal.org/node/81993

To import look here http://drupal.org/node/81995 (be for you try to import, read below)
Now when you try to importing the database you will run into a few errors. To overcome these you will need to edit /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini
Look for: "memory_limit = 16M"
Change the 16M limit to 64M or 128M
Also uncomment "upload_tmp_dir" and save. Re-start Apache (sudo apache2ctl restart) You should now be able to import with out any problems.

To give you the "simple" run down on how to import the database, do this.
logon to phpmyadmin. Click on the database name you want to import (left side) (or if you want to import to a new database, create the new database, the click the database name on the left.
Once you have clicked on the database name click "import" (top middle of screen)
Click browse and browse to where your backup file is (ends with .sql if you did the export for the how to above)
click "Go"...thats it, its imported.

This is my first rev for this. I will be improving it as I go along. One other thing I'd like to be able to do, but don't know how yet, is share primary and secondary links.

New Idea....

2009-01-07T09:07:00.008-05:00

So I have been thinking about my new addiction and have a few ideas.

One thing I was thinking is reviewing some projects out there, constructing them, documenting them, and posting my findings on a new blog. (I figure this is for the most part a tech blog, so until I find a way to merge them, I think I should keep them separate.)

One other thing I'd like to do is to have something community based. Now when I say "community based" that can be for the most part anything. What I was thinking was...... Most people know about digg.com. Well...my thought is to create a site model after digg and devote it to Alternative energy.

The site could be broken down as following:

Alternative energy articles
Green ideas
How to's
Reviews
Design
And anything else that would contribute to the community (possibly even a forum.)

People would vote for the best content, and that would make it to the front page. I wouldn't want it to be a popularity contest as much as I want it to be based more on content. The more good content there is, the easier it will be to get the word out!

So, there ya go! That's my idea. So what's everyone's thoughts on this? Do I have any volunteers that would would like to help/contribute to these ideas? Anyone out there who might want to run with this idea himself? I could see a good possible revenue stream in something like this.

Excited about Green Power Science!

2009-01-05T10:05:00.010-05:00

So Now What?

Not to long ago I went on a preparedness spree. Due to the economy I thought..."Well maybe I should get some supplies just to be on the safe side."
Needless to say I went nuts. Most folks I spoke to thought I was nuts for buying everything I did....heck...even my wife questioned it. However its like I told all of them...."I would much rather have it and not need it, than need it and not have it!"

So a couple weeks ago there was a nice little ice storm in my area (new england area)that took out the electricity for oh...a little over a week. Oh....but not to worry...myself and my family were very well prepared!

So What Happen?

So when everything came down during the ice storm we did very well. Better than most! And for the folks that thought I was nuts..... Well lets just say they were happy I was around. (To be honest everyone brought something to the table, it was a community effort.)

To be honest I had a good time during that outage, and the best part is I learned where I could improve.

So What did you Learn?

Well to keep us warm we were using a kerosene heater. The only downer is there is only one local place that sells kerosene. Now I know most people would think...well big deal....
The problem with this is that most gas stations during the outage were also down. We were lucky that this one wasn't. So here is weak point #1

For electric we used the typical generator. (Weak spot again.) Even though we had a generator we didn't have any running water.. We used sump pump water for our toilets, and lots of Purell for hand washing. So another point to improve on.

Ok..So Now What?

I started to look into solar hot air collectors again (I have been wanting to build one for a long time now) and other alternatives... That is when I found this dude doing some crazy stuff.(Dan Rojas of Green Power Science) He reminded me of myself as a kid with a Magnifying glass melting my lego city's.

He was using a Fresnel lens to boil water, melt glass, melt steal, and all sorts of cool stuff....It wasn't until I saw the video of him in a swamp scooping up some water saying he'd end up drinking that water by the end of the video. I was thinking two things....First...that's sick, second...the dude is AWESOME!! So from there I looked at his videos and became more intrigued.

This guy got me so excited about alternative energy. It seems to be my new addiction!

No lie....I have been driving my wife nuts, and doing research to about 2 AM every night for the past week. If I could spend a week with this guy to learn and geek-out with... I'd be in geek glory!

The very cool thing about Dan Rojas of Green Power Science is he shows you how you can make most of these things with everyday items for the average Joe. He shows and explains everything from creating a boiler, Making a perfect circle on a table saw , making a Parabolic mirror, and much, much more. All very cool stuff I promise!!

He reminds me of Mr. Wizards world only for alternative energy. Fun to learn, and giving a little bit of inspiration at the same time. (This guy needs his own cable show!)

So Now What Ya Gonna Do?

Well watch more of Dan's videos, study, ask lots of questions.

I now have a lot of projects I want to do. One being the solar hot air collector, (Designs, engineering, and more designs) a windmill or two, and maybe a few solar cells. I also have a few other side projects that will be more for fun/educational purposes. (build a Tesla Turbine, and a sterling engine (Once again something Dan is doing)

So when ya gonna start?

Well I am gonna use my shed as a pilot. So I started to get it ready, but wont be able to do much until spring. (no real room). My first project will be a hot air collector, (need to find high Temp materials, don't want any construction fatigue). From there I think I will move onto a wind mill.

Well that's it for now. I will keep you posted on my test subjects, but in the in the meantime why don't you stop over at Green Power Science and tell Dan Hitechgeek says hi! He's an awesome resource, and I highly suggest checking him out!

Lots of Info for Geeks and Technician (ESI)

2008-11-30T08:37:00.005-05:00

Well it's been a while since my last post and I thought I'd post some info I found a few years ago that could be helpful to many out there.

A few years ago I was looking for some schematic diagrams for something (dont ask....I dont remember what.) and after going through a few hundred web sites I came upon this place.

It looks like someone took a lot of time to help/provide technical information to anyone who might need it.

Some may know about it, but I'm sure there are a lot that do not.

So Whats There?
Well for starters there is a forum with tons of info. If you need a hand with something why don't you stop by, I'm sure the folks in there would help ya out!

So What Else?
Well all types of info on equipment ranging from "tv's ( plasma, tft-lcd, widescreen, hdtv ), dvd, vcr, car audio,gsm,digital camera, computer monitors (tft-lcd panels or conventional crt), test equipment, power supplies and many more digital and analogue electronic devices."

Datasheets
There's also datasheets about "integrated circuits diagrams, diodes, transistors, operational amplifiers, pic, pcb design etc."

But Wait theres More!!
Software
There is also "programs, eprom, eeprom, bin files used in equipment repair."

"Most files are pdf and djvu formats, zip or rar compressed."
Pay attention when downloading, many are broken into multiple zip/rar files.

One other nice thing about the site is all users can add their files essentially helping the site/community.

Well thats all I have right now.......However I am thinking of playing with some solar stuff.....but we'll save that for some other time!

Add SSH Users To The HP MV2120/5150

2008-10-21T21:42:00.005-04:00

In my last post I wrote how to make the MV2 a secure proxy/gateway. The one thing I didn't like about it was I had to use the root account. I wanted to give other uses the ability to ssh into the vault and use it as a proxy/gateway. (I think it will also work very nice with WinSCP)

So after a lot of playing around, and a lot of emails I got it working.
Users of the Vault can now start an SSH session using their own name and it'll drop them into their own share.

So...should I tell you how I did it? Ok..lets start!

Add Users to SSH

First install a few packages

ipkg install coreutils adduser diffutils nano bash

edit /etc/passwd

nano /etc/passwd

For each user that you want to have ssh access, change the line that looks something like this:
joeuser:x:502:502:Linux User,,,:/:/bin/nologin

to something that looks like below
joeuser:x:502:502:Linux User,,,/:/share/1000/joeuser:/bin/sh

For more information on the format of the passwd file look here

Note: the joeuser in /share/1000/joeuser:/bin/sh is a share name that will become the home directory for that user.

create the script below and name it restore-etc-files
place it in /share/1000/

#!/bin/sh

save_to=/share/ 1000/Documents/ saved-etc
mkdir -p ${save_to}
cp -pf /etc/passwd ${save_to}
cp -pf /etc/group ${save_to}

Make the restore-etc-files executable
chmod +x /share/1000/restore-etc-files

Create a file called "shells" and place the following two lines in it.

/bin/sh
/opt/bin/bash

Save shells in /etc

edit the /etc/init.d/rcS and add to the bottom before the exit 0

saved_etc=/share/ 1000/Documents/ saved-etc
[ -e ${saved_etc} /passwd ] && cp -f
${saved_etc} /passwd /etc/
[ -e ${saved_etc} /group ] && cp -f
${saved_etc} /group /etc/

Once all is set, ssh onto the MV2 and re-set the passwords for the users you want to have SSH access.
passwd username

Once you do this, log out and try to ssh in to your MV2 with the username you just set the password to.

I would like to thank the folks over at http://nslu2-linux.org/ for maintaining all the software that makes hacking the MV2 so fun and easy. I would also especially like to thank Brian Zhou for creating the scripts/code (and for the most part this how to) and most of all helping me through countless emails getting all this to work!

Use The MV2120/5150 as a proxy......well more like a Secure Gateway

2008-10-20T19:17:00.004-04:00

Have you ever had problem of not being able to access one of your favorite websites when your on public Wifi?
Have you ever needed to access something personal on public Wifi but didnt trust passing your personal information through it?

If you said yes....well I'v got some good news for you.

If you have remote access to your MediaVault you can tunnel all your web browsing through ssh.

A few Needed Things
ssh (Should be on most Linux Distros) For windows go here
If you use the windows version of ssh you only need to install the client. If ssh should fail check your firewall.

A proxy addon for Firefox called FoxyProxy

Install
If you install ssh on a windows machine, you will only need the client.
Install FoxyProxy with Firefox

If you already ssh into you vault remotely this will be cake! I will explain how to do this with Firefox.

So lets begin!

Configure Firefox
Once FoxyProxy is installed, do the following:

Open FoxyProxy in Firefox. Tools-FoxyProxy-Options

Click on the "Proxies" tab.
Highlight the Default proxy that is listed and click the "EditSelection" button

Click on the "Manual Proxy Configuration"
In the "Host Name" field enter "localhost" with out the ""
Set the port to "8080"
Place a check box in the "SOCKS proxy?"

Click "ok"
Click on the "Global Settings" Tab
Under "Miscellaneous" click on "Use SOCKS proxy for DNS lookups"

Click "Close"

Run SSH
I will be using the default ports for the proxy and ssh in this example
(To start ssh on a windows machine open a cmd and type the command below)
(If you have problems, you may need to be in the path of ssh and then execute the command below)
"cd C:\Program Files\OpenSSH\bin"

ssh -D 8080 -p 22 root@IP or URL

Note: ip is the external IP address of your router. URL would be for services like dyndns.

What the above command does is:
ssh runs ssh
-D is to set the local port (So we are setting the local port to 8080 in this example.)
-p 22 is telling ssh what port to use on the remote machine. (22 is the default port for ssh.)

If you have port forwarding on your router, you could set it to 2200 and have the router forward all traffic on that port to the vault on 22. That would make it a little more secure....kinda. With this set up your command would look like this ssh -D 8080 -p 2200 root@ip or url

Once your logged in the ssh session minimise the ssh window.

Lets test it out!
To enable your new HP MV proxy right click on "FoxyProxy" in the tray of firefox and select "Use proxy "Default" for all URLs"
To dissable the proxy right click on "FoxyProxy" in the tray of firefox and select "Completlely disable FoxyProxy"

Ubuntu 8.04 Hardware acceleration on a PICO-ITX (Drives for chipset CX700M/VX700)

2008-10-07T10:31:00.001-04:00

To enable Hardware acceleration on a PICO-ITX using Ubuntu you need to download a couple files and do a little compiling.
NOTE:As of 05OCT08 the kernel version is 2.6.24-19, and this how to is based off of that. If using a different kernel the steps are the same except where noted.

Download and install the beta driver from here.

Install the driver:
1. Extract the package
2. Open a terminal and and goto the directory you just extracted
3. sudo vinstall
4. Restart X Ctrl+Alt+backspace (or just reboot)

Note: To uninstall the driver (If needed)
1.Open a terminal and and goto the directory where the installer is
2. sudo vuninstall
3. Restart X Ctrl+Alt+backspace (or just reboot)

Install the Patch.
1. Open the terminal
2. mkdir F00 (create the directory F00 in your home folder.)
3. sudo apt-get update (update package list)
4. sudo apt-get install patch build-essential libncurses5-dev linux-source-2.6.24 (install the packages patch, build-essential, libncurses5-dev, linux-source-2.6.24)
5. cd F00/ (change dirrectory to F00)
6. cp /usr/src/linux-source-2.6.24.tar.bz2 . (copy the source package to the current working directory)(include the . at the end)
7. tar -jxvf linux-source-2.6.24.tar.bz2 (extract the linux-source-2.6.24.bz2)
8. Download the unichrome-patch to the F00 directory
9. tar -zxvf VIA-unichrome-patch-for-Ubuntu+804LTS.tar.gz (extract the package)
10. tar -zxvf VIA-unichrome-patch-for-Ubuntu\ 804LTS/VIA-unichrome-DRM-patch-for-Ubuntu\ 804LTS/via-unichome-drm-patch-2.6.24.tar.gz (extract the patch)
11. cp via-unichome-drm-patch-2.6.24/via-unichrome-drm.patch-2.6.24 /home/YOURUSERNAME/F00/linux-source-2.6.24 (Enter the username you loged onto ubuntu with where it says YOURUSERNAME)
12. cd linux-source-2.6.24/
13. patch -p0 < via-unichrome-drm.patch-2.6.24
14. NOTE: USER YOUR KERNEL NUMBER if your kernel is different from 2.6.24-19. cp /boot/config-2.6.24-19-generic .config
15. gedit Makefile (edit the line EXTRAVERSION = .3 to your kernel) (The kernel thats being used for this how to is 2.6.24-19, so we will edit the line EXTRAVERSION = .3 to EXTRAVERSION = -19-generic. Save and exit
16. make oldconfig (This command sets the default answers to all kernel configuration questions according to the settings of our .config file.)
17. cp /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.24-19-generic/Module.symvers Module.symvers
18. make prepare scripts
19. make menuconfig

20. Use the down arrows to get to "Device Drives" and press the space bar to select it.
Use the down arrows to get to "Graphics suppor" and press the space bar to select it.
Use the down arrows to get to "Direct Rendering Manager" and press enter to select it.
Use the down arrows to get to "Via unichrome video cards" and press M to select it.
Make sure your config has the follow items set:
Device Drivers --->
Graphics support --->
Direct Rendering Manager (XFree86 4.1.0 and higher DRI support) -->
Via unichrome video cards

To exit: Press tab to select exit and press enter. Keep doing this untill you get "Do you wish to save your new kernel configuration?"
Yes should be highlighted. Press enter.

21. make modules M=drivers/char/drm
22. There will be via.ko in the directory: ./drivers/char/drm.
Copy via.ko into the directory: /lib/modules/2.6.24-19-generic/kernel/drivers/char/drm.
Note: If you have a different kernel place it in that kernel directory. /lib/modules/2.6.24-XX-generic/kernel/drivers/char/drm
Then the via drm module will be loaded each time when system boot up.
23. Restart X Ctrl+Alt+backspace (or just reboot)

To test if Hardware acceleration is working type the folowing in a terminial.
glxinfo | grep direct

If you get an out put that says:
direct rendering: Yes
Your good to go!

HP Media Vault MV2120, MV5150 IPKG

2008-10-05T10:54:00.004-04:00

NOTE: In order to access your vault from a remote location, remote access must be set up.

So the HP Media Vaults are cool little things. They are for the most part a NAS with a few extras, however.....they are also fairly hackable.

Ive been using the HP media vault for a few months now and haven't hand any real problems (other then the ones I create). I use it for storage and streaming media on my local network. I Also have been using it as a remote storage place for myself and friends as a place to work on projects.

When on my local LAN I don't worry about running it through any type of encryption, however when I'm out and about I like to have some sort of security.

I have https enabled on the MV so when I access the MV from a remote place my web session is going through encryption. The only downer with the web interface is you are only able to download, and upload one file at a time. This is where IPKG comes along.

Taken from Wikipedia:
ipkg, or the Itsy Package Management System, is a lightweight package management system designed for embedded devices that tries to resemble Debian's dpkg.

So to install IPKG, ssh into the MV and do the following.
NOTE: When following the procedure above use hpmv2-bootstrap_1.2-5_arm.xsh and not trap_1.1-1_arm.xsh as it says to.

NOTE:To ssh into the MV you need to know the MV IP address and ssh client installed on a computer. If you are using Linux you should be all set. If you are using windows machine you can download and install SSH for Windows.
If you want to be really adventurous you can install andlinux and run a full ubuntu system native in windows. (Very COOL!!!)

So to ssh into the MV you would do the flowing:

ssh root@theIPaddress
enter the system password when asked. (Thats the password you used to set the MV up.)

Once IPKG is installed do the following:

"ipkg update"
"Ipkg install openssh"

The openssh package includes something called SCP (Secure Copy Protocol). This will be need to upload and download multiple files at a time. (notice I said files, not directories.)

Next you will need to install WinSCP on your computer. You have a choice of an installer or a portable package. (You can run the portable package from a USB thumb drive)

Once you have WinSCP set up all you need to do is start WinSCP and complete the following fields.

Click Session on the Left.
Under Host Name enter the URL you would enter if you were using a web browser with out the http, or https://, or you can use the IP address

Example:
Host Name: MyHPMediavault.com

Port: 22

User Name: root

File Protocol:SCP

Now click on "Tunnel" under "Connection" on the left.
Enter all the same information for each field you just entered above.
Ensure "Connect Through SSH Tunnel" is checked.

That's it!
When asked for a password, Enter the password that was used to setup the MediaVault
Now when you go to connect you will get an error "error looking up user group" Just click ok.
There are no groups on the vault and that is why this error appears.

A Word Of Caution: You are running root! You can brick you system and possibly loose your files if you do the wrong thing.
If this happens you can recover you system but not your files with this tool here.

All of your files will be located in /share/1000
You can now upload and download multiple files.

For lots of good info, hacks, and how to's see here.

OpenFrame IP Media Phone

2008-09-24T14:11:00.003-04:00

OpenPeak looks like it could be promising. Dont know if it will ever make the light of day....lets hope it does.

In OpenPeaks own words:

"OpenPeak designs end-to-end systems that allow telephony, messaging, photos, video, and internet services to be combined on compelling consumer devices for the home. We accomplish this by developing hardware, software and services that work together.

With the introduction of the OpenFrame, OpenPeak has created a new product category: the third screen for the home. In the same way that smart phones redefined what people expect from mobile phones, the OpenFrame will redefine what people expect from a home phone."

I'm not going to post much of anything about it (mainly because I'm lazy at the moment) however this link here should get ya going.

For those who dont feel like reading and are feeling a bit lazy like me......go watch the video.

Skype/VOIP Gizmo Modded Phone Project!

2008-09-18T08:26:00.007-04:00

So I was thinking that Skype has been working out pretty good and I was toying with the idea of making it my default phone service. The only problem...how do I get all my phones to use it without loosing any of my other services.

Hey....Wait a Minute What Happen To Gizmo?

I know, I know..... Gizmo has been working out good! Its just a bummer there is no subscription. Long story short....Skype is cheaper!

Come up with anything?

I thought I did.
I went out and bought a DPH-50U off newegg, for $19 with shipping and a $10 rebate.
The idea was I would build a PC and have this device hooked up to the PC. From there I would up-link it to my ATA and set my phones to default to Skype.

UPDATE: The DPH-50U is absolute trash. I played around with it a bit and found you can't use Skype as the default call out service. If you want to use Skype you need to enter ## phone number * to call out.
The ## tells the device to use Skype. (you could in theory set all the phone number's in the address book on the phone with the ## and * to default.)
The other thing is the software to configure the DPH-50U doesn't seem to work. It looks like you should be able to set it to automatically set the ##, and *, but I couldn't get it to work no matter what I tried.

So What Are You Going To Do?

I did some more searching, and found this. Siptheeskype is a gateway for Skype and your ATA. You run it along side Skype on a PC, and you use your phone and ata like you normally would.

OK So What Can You Do With It?

What it gets me is:

* I will keep My PSTN
* One less device to deal with (not using the DPH-50U)
* I will Make Gizmo a secondary phone service
* Skype will be the Default Phone Service.

For a full list of options look here.

Ok So Tell US How And What You Did!!

Well if you remember my phone project; I will be using all the same hardware so there is no changes other than having to build an additional PC.
I decided on running Win2k on a PIC0-ITX with Skype and, SiptheeSkype. (I think the Fan less PICO case is ideal for this.)

Software needed:

java 1.6
Skype
SiptheeSkype

Obviously you will need to install java and Skype and have some credits.

Getting Things Ready.

I Unzip the archive into a folder called siptheeSkype.

Once everything was unzipped to the siptheeSkype directory I renamed the following.

siptheeSkype_sample.cfg to siptheeSkype.cfg.
SipToSkypeAuth_sample.props to SipToSkypeAuth.props.
SkypeToSipAuth_sample.props to SkypeToSipAuth.props.
SkypeOutDialingRules_sample.props to SkypeOutDialingRules.props.
SipOutDialingRules_sample.props to SipOutDialingRules.props

In the SipOutDialingRules.props I didnt change anything.

In the SkypeOutDialingRules I only changed the following.

# you could eliminate the 0 if you always use SkypeOut like this
#^([0-9]{7})$:+1561$1
#^([0-9]{10})$:+1$1
#^([0-9]{11})$:+$1

To

# you could eliminate the 0 if you always use SkypeOut like this
^([0-9]{7})$:+1myareacode$1
^([0-9]{10})$:+1$1
^([0-9]{11})$:+$1

Note: Where it says "myareacode", place your area code.
Example: if 365 is your area code it would look like this ^([0-9]{7})$:+1365$1

Next: Edit The SiptheeSkype.cfg

Note: I am using GizmoProject so these are the changes I made for my setup.

Find the following:

#Sample config with NO registration - change 192.168.0.4 to ip address of computer running siptheeSkype
# username and password not important in this mode
#Set to available port to transport SIP messages on siptheeSkype computer
host_port=5070
contact_url=sip:Skype@192.168.0.4:5070
from_url="Skype"
username=Skype
passwd=123456
realm=192.168.0.4
# --- end of NO registration example ---

Set the IP address to the IP address of the machine that will be running, siptheeSkype, and Skype. (you should make the address static)

Example: If your IP address is 10.8.80.2

#Sample config with NO registration - change 192.168.0.4 to ip address of computer running siptheeSkype
# username and password not important in this mode
#Set to available port to transport SIP messages on siptheeSkype computer
host_port=5070
contact_url=sip:Skype@10.8.80.2:5070
from_url="Skype"
username=Skype
passwd=123456
realm=10.8.80.2
# --- end of NO registration example ---

Enter your Skype username and password in the following fileds.

#Sample config with NO registration - change 192.168.0.4 to ip address of computer running siptheeSkype
# username and password not important in this mode
#Set to available port to transport SIP messages on siptheeSkype computer
host_port=5070
contact_url=sip:Skype@10.8.80.2:5070
from_url="Skype"
username=Skype
passwd=123456
realm=10.8.80.2
# --- end of NO registration example ---

Next: Find the following. (should be just below what you just edited.)

#Sample config WITH registration to GizmoProject - comment out NO registration info above first and uncomment the following
#contact_url=sip:1747???????@proxy01.sipphone.com:5060
#from_url="1747???????"
#username=1747???????
#passwd=?????
#realm=proxy01.sipphone.com
#expires=120
#minregrenewtime=60
#regfailretrytime=15
#do_register=yes
# --- end of WITH registration example ---

Un-comment/Remove # from the following.

#Sample config WITH registration to GizmoProject - comment out NO registration info above first and uncomment the following
contact_url=sip:1747???????@proxy01.sipphone.com:5060
from_url="1747???????"
username=1747???????
passwd=?????
realm=proxy01.sipphone.com
expires=120
minregrenewtime=60
regfailretrytime=15
do_register=yes
# --- end of WITH registration example ---

Add you Gizmo password to the line "passwd=?????" above.
Example: passwd=password

Add your Sip/Gizmo number to all lines that have 1747???????

Example: If your sip/gizmo number is 1-747-123-4567

contact_url=sip:17471234567@proxy01.sipphone.com:5060
from_url="17471234567"

Note: I was having audio problems so I had to set the following:

#If yes, will send RTP packets to address received from the otherside
# instead of what was received in the session descriptor.
# This may help with one way audio problems.
enableSendRTPtoReceivedAddress=no

To

#If yes, will send RTP packets to address received from the otherside
# instead of what was received in the session descriptor.
# This may help with one way audio problems.
enableSendRTPtoReceivedAddress=yes

If you still have audio problems....its a good chance it is because of a firewall.

Set the dial plan on your ATA.

To have Skype as the default phone service add the following to the begining of your ATA's dial plan.

Change 333 to your area code

(1333xxxxxxx<:@pcipaddress:5070>|remainder of dial plan)
Note: pcipaddress will be the address of the machine running Skype and SiptheeSkype.

To enable more then one area do the following.
Change 333 to your area code. and 444, and 555 to the area codes you will be calling to.

(1333xxxxxxx<:@pcipaddress:5070>|1444xxxxxxx<:@pcipaddress:5070>|1555xxxxxxx<:@pcipaddress:5070>remainder of dial plan)

To add 888 and 800 numbers

(1333xxxxxxx<:@pcipaddress:5070>|1444xxxxxxx<:@pcipaddress:5070>|1888xxxxxxx<:@pcipaddress:5070|1800xxxxxxx<:@pcipaddress:5070>remainder of dial plan)

Note: When dialing out you will need to enter the full phone number to use Skype.
Example: 1-333-123-1234

I have found with the current dial plan on my ata; If I dont enter the 1-area code it will use gizmo. (I think that is good! If Skype ever fails I can use the same phone to try calling from gizmo.)

I've tested this out making calls through the PICO (skype) from my house phones, and no problems as of yet. Sound is good, loud, and clear.

I will do a follow up as soon as I use SiptheSkype a bit more, and let you know what I think. So far I like it!!

This was written fairly quick so please excuse any spelling/wording.