Dave's Blog

New Website!

2013-02-07T19:30:00.001-08:00

I have a proper website now. (Hosted on a Raspberry Pi in my lounge room. =D). I'll probably start migrating some of my old posts here over to my new site. You can check it out at daviewales.tk.

Steam for Windows on Mac in Wine

2012-10-06T07:13:00.001-07:00

I use a Mac, but occasionally I want to run Windows games. I usually try to use Wine if possible, because it means I don't have to reboot to run my games. The other day my friend told me about a cool sounding game on Steam, and suggested I play the demo. The catch? It was only released for Windows. I decided to try installing Steam for Windows in Wine, but every time I tried to run the installer, it gave me the following error message "wine: Bad EXE format for Z: /path/to/SteamInstall.msi"... At first I thought it was a problem with Wine, but after some research I found the following forum page, in which a helpful person called "schtufbox" gave instructions on how to execute .msi files in Wine.

Apparently (and this worked!) instead of typing "wine ./file.msi", you type "wine msiexec /i file.msi". I tried it and it worked! Yay!

Disk image: No mountable file systems

2012-06-04T04:47:00.000-07:00

I downloaded a disk image recently, but it refused to mount, complaining that there were "no mountable file systems". I tried redownloading it, because I knew that this error can be due to incomplete or corrupted disk images, but it still refused to open. After reading through countless webpages which told me to use long convoluted methods and third party data recovery software, I finally found a nice short Terminal command that worked on this site. The command was

hdiutil convert /path/to/yourfile.dmg -format UDRW -o newfilename.dmg

After using this command, a new disk image was created, which worked when I clicked on it. =D

2012-06-04T04:11:00.001-07:00

I've recently written a couple of programs using Python. They are both text based programs designed to be run from a command line. The first is designed to help learn about the charges on common ions, and can be downloaded from here. The second is a command line based version of Minesweeper, and can be downloaded from here. Both programs are very much alpha versions, but they should work. You will need Python 3 to run them, which can be downloaded from here. NOTE: The Minesweeper game relies on the *nix curses module, and won't work on Windows.

History and Memory: Mark Baker's Fiftieth Gate.

2011-10-12T21:19:00.000-07:00

I've uploaded some notes on Mark Baker's Fiftieth Gate here, in case anyone studying the HSC module "History and Memory" wants to look at them.

Problems updating iPod Touch 4th Gen to iOS 5

2011-10-12T16:58:00.000-07:00

I downloaded the new iOS 5 update for my iPod Touch this morning, but when I tried to install the update, it told me that it could not restore, as there was an internal error. I hit google, and looked through numerous potential fixes, before finally deciding that I would have to force restore it. As a last resort, before force restoring, I decided to try a different cable, as the one I was using was a little frayed. I was pleasantly surprised when the iPod happily backed up and restored. The moral is of course, that if your iPod isn't updating properly, there might be a problem with your cable.

Spoofing a MAC address in Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6)

2011-07-19T21:13:00.000-07:00

I heard that it was quite easy to spoof a MAC address in terminal, and thought it would be interesting to try it out on my own network. After reading through a number of sites which listed commands for 10.4, I finally found a method that works in 10.6. This worked for both wifi and ethernet.

First disconnect from the network if you are already connected. For ethernet, this involves disconnecting the cable. For wifi, it may be a bit trickier if you have instructed your computer to remember your passwords, as it will keep reconnecting, and there is no disconnect button. You can't just turn the wifi off either, as ifconfig will return an error. There are two possible methods for disconnecting from a wifi network without turning it off – the Terminal way, and the non-Terminal way. The Terminal way is easiest, and I don't know why you'd use the other method, unless you really hate using terminal. (Which is pointless, because you need Terminal to do the next steps anyway...)
The Terminal method is to copy the following into terminal, press return, enter your password, and press return again:

sudo /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/A/Resources/airport -z

The non terminal way to disconnect from a wifi network is to go to the wifi menu in the menu bar, and select "Join Other Network..." (This may seem counter intuitive, but bear with me.) A dialogue box will appear asking you to enter a network name. Instead of following instructions, click the button in the lower left that says "Show Networks". This will display a dialogue box with all the networks available. Select the network that your computer keeps wanting to join, but type a random (wrong) password into the password box and press join. The computer will try to connect, but will be unable to. After a message appears informing you that your computer cannot connect, press cancel, and proceed to the next step. (If your computer reconnects to a different wifi network, repeat these steps with that wifi network, until it is not connected to any wifi network.
Now that you are disconnected from the network, open Terminal, and type the following command to find out what your current MAC address is:

For ethernet, type: ifconfig en0
For wifi, type: ifconfig en1

In both cases, the current MAC address will be found after the word "ether", and will look something like this: 00:11:22:33:44:55

MAC addresses are hexadecimal, so they can include letters from a to f

Record your current MAC address somewhere, in case you want to change it back.
Assuming you know what MAC address you want to spoof, type the following command, replacing 00:11:22:33:44:55 with the MAC address you plan to spoof.

For ethernet, type: sudo ifconfig en0 lladdr 00:11:22:33:44:55
For wifi, type: sudo ifconfig en1 lladdr 00:11:22:33:44:55
When you press Return, the computer will ask for your password. Enter your password, and press return. The MAC address should be changed. To confirm, type ifconfig en0 for ethernet, or ifconfig en1 for wifi.

Your computer should now be displaying a different MAC address. Note that the MAC address will reset to the original MAC address on restart.

If this didn't work, go back and make sure that you are disconnected from all networks. Ethernet cables should be completely unplugged, and wifi should be on, but not connected to anything.

A Brief History of Quantum Mechanics

2011-06-12T21:35:00.000-07:00

This website gives a broad overview of the development of quantum mechanics.

A Brief History of Quantum Mechanics

A random site I made when I was fiddling with Google sites...

2011-05-17T02:09:00.001-07:00

https://sites.google.com/site/davidwalescreativewriting/a-journey-of-a-thousand-miles

Lego Mindstorms NXT on Snow Leopard (Mac OS 10.6)

2011-04-22T17:07:00.000-07:00

The other day I pulled out my lego robotics kit, and put together a little robot. To program it, you have to install an application off the CD that comes with it. I put the disc in, installed the program and launched it. After waiting several seconds, the app loaded, then quit. I repeated this process multiple times, and concluded that the app was broken. After trying many different fixes suggested on the web, I finally found one that worked. It turns out that Lego Mindstorms NXT relies on an outdated version of flash to run. I downloaded the uninstaller off the Adobe website and uninstalled flash, then uninstalled the lego program, then ran the installer again. This time it installed flash 8, instead of flash 10 which I was using before. Amazingly, the program worked. It's not the most desirable workaround, because I'm forced to use an outdated version of flash, which probably has many more security vulnerabilities. However, it was the only workaround that worked. Hopefully Lego will put out an updated version of the software that works with the latest version of flash.

UPDATE: After installing NXT with flash uninstalled, so it installed its own version of flash, my dad discovered that it continued to work when he updated back to flash 10... Obviously it needs to install flash eight, but doesn't care what you do once it is installed.

Brother's Blog

2010-10-27T02:49:00.000-07:00

My Bro's just made himself a blog... It's a lot more involved than this, because he made it in iWeb, and had to find some other web hosting service to host it. Anyway, check it out and see what you think...

www.mylifewithaspergers.cz.cc

Running Classic Apps on Snow Leopard

2010-04-01T02:06:00.000-07:00

I came home today, and found my mum trying to get an old pre-OSX game to work on our mac running Snow Leopard. In preference to digging out one of our old macs, I thought it might be a good idea to try and find a classic OS emulator on the net. It didn't take long to find one, but having downloaded Sheepshaver, I couldn't get hold of a working ROM. I tried all the strategies suggested on the website, including trying to extract the ROM from an update, but to no avail. Having given up on that, I searched the web for sites with ROMs available for download. I eventually found one, but none of the ROMs worked. Finally, just as I was about to give up, I found a site which explained everything beautifully, and included a link to a working ROM. After following all the instructions, and finding everything worked perfectly, exactly as described in the article, I decided to post this post to make it that much easier for other people to find the page. So, after all that, here's the link.

Classic on a modern mac

Hopefully you'll be up and running a lot faster than I was.

End Of The World 2012 - Dooms Day

2009-08-07T18:56:00.001-07:00

End Of The World 2012 - Dooms Day

Shared via AddThis

Murphy's Law

2008-11-28T19:16:00.000-08:00

Murphy's Law states "If anything can go wrong it will go wrong." The question is "Can that be proven conclusively?"

My dad and I were theorizing about it a while back and came to this paradoxical conclusion- Murphy's law cannot be proven wrong in any circumstance. Murphy's law is always proven wrong in every circumstance.

See if you can work out how it works!

The Day Our Electricity Stopped

2008-10-07T13:40:00.000-07:00

Here's a poem I wrote.

The Day Our Electricity Stopped

I woke up one morning

Then jumped out of bed,

Reached for the light switch,

Then turned round instead.

You’re probably wondering

What prodded my mind,

When instead of the light switch,

I reached for the blind.

It wasn’t a thought of electricity saving,

Nor yet an electricity bill,

But if you wait quite patiently,

I’ll tell you the reason. I will.

The world was shutting down

Electricity production today.

The world was out of coal and oil.

I heard it yesterday.

We can’t use our computer,

Our email or our phone.

We can’t use laundry timesavers,

Our washing pile has grown.

We can’t get any news.

The radio’s on strike.

There isn’t even the power

to power a radio mike.

For lack of foresight we have paid.

We’ve used not wind or water.

Our solar power isn’t made,

And our spare time is shorter.

First Blog

2008-10-07T01:10:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone who's reading this. This is my first blog. I'm planning to put any poems I write that I think you might find interesting (or photos I take, or anything else that interests me). I hope you like it.