Information Technology

Often, as in the case of Linus Torvalds, software is developed for personal use and given away to others so they may add their skills to the project and improve it for use by its creator. Linus received $60M from the Red Hat public stock offering which was a bonus.

Open Source means that everyone has access to the source code for a particular project and can spawn their own version. The best being decided by users, the worst often being abandoned. The result is software that evolves and is improved by some great minds and everyone can use it for free.

This effectively gives you an Information Systems Development department that does not need to be paid or managed.

None of the skins available for B2Evolution look exactly like I would like my web sites to look like. So I have decided it is time to create my own. The following are attribute or functions that I would like to include, based on the Chuck_zen skin I had already produced by modifying the Simple Zen skin by Foppe Hemminga.

• At least 2 sidebars.
• Smaller header graphic.
• Header graphic using same technique.
• Tighter text, less white space
• Wider columns

And the results are in.........

The Art of War by Sun Tzu, artofwar.davidryman.com The image at the top of the page follow the idea I used for my first attempt at a skin. The idea was to take one image/photo and create a header graphic for the web site skin. This is done by creating a mirror image of the selected picture to be located on the right side of the header.

To "join" the 2 images together I have taken a 1px slice from the left side of the right one (or the right side of the left one, as they are the same). In this case I searched google for a suitable image tagged as "labelled for reuse". The images were manipulated using Gimp (which can be found on my software download site, along with other open applications)

Speaking of which, here is the Free site The 3 images are named swright.jpg, swcenter.jpg and swleft.jpg. The free site demonstrates what happens if the right image is missing. Hopefully this will work in IE.

In the img folder within the skin are additional folders that contain the different sets of images. These can selected in the B2Evolution back office as a skin setting, the parameter is the folder name e.g. /artofwar. I am thinking that I should probably add an additional parameter to enable the selection of gif and png images. Look for it in the next release.

This final screenshot is from the new Dixie County Advocate site I am building. To blow my own trumpet, the lightbox plugin and the scrolling contents widget are also my own development projects.

After I finish testing and massaging it I'll put a link here so the download.

The first computer to be installed in the RV to transform it into an Ubuntubus is finally complete. Not without problems though.
The selected components are as follows:
The case: APEVIA Black / Red SECC Steel / Aluminum X-MASTER-RD/500 ATX Media Center / HTPC Case.

Read more »

Building a Mythbuntu box for my RV project presented unexpected issues, one of which was the motherboard, an ASRock A780GXE/128M. Basically nothing happened much when it was assembled. An email to tech support generated the following information, which I pass on to anyone who can use it.

Read more »

Link: http://dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Client_Mode

Having found a suitable router to use as a client bridge to connect the on-board computer network in the motor home to an internet access point, we now have to configure it.

I chose a Linksys WRT54G for the purpose and happened to buy a Version 3 edition to load the DD-WRT firmware on.

First step was to ensure the router worked correctly as it is supposed to. Next, the firmware was brought up to date with the latest from Linksys. Then we get to the real upgrade, to DD-WRT vintage mini version. I found instruction on the DD-WRT wiki page. This particular router works best with the vintage edition of the firmware and can be updated with a variety of versions. As we only need to use it as a bridge, the mini version would suffice.

I have cut and pasted the instructions to configure as a bridge, but research on DD-WRT provides all the information needed to do the job.

Read more »

One of the primary reasons for creating an UbunutuBus was to have the ability to work on the road. As a major part of arsenal is being on-line, so having access to the Internet is important. Also the growing stock of media available there is another important resource for the project.

Read more »

Finally I got around to writing a plug-in for Gallery2 for the content management system I use, b2evolution.
The original stopped working when I installed some other plug-in. Seems the original used a javascript library that did not play well with others. I waited and waited, but no-one else was offering one that worked with Gallery2 and B2evolution, so I got tired of waiting and started writing, and researching.

Read more »

Pages: 1 · 2 · 3 · 4

Chess can be considered as a warfare based board game. Sun Tzu's Art of War is the ultimate warfare manual. It makes sense to join the two together.
Many of Sun Tzu's guidelines can be coded as rules, some are merely statements and govern things like the reason for going to war. These reasons can be excluded from any coded rule base. The rule base that can be extracted will form the basic strategy for our player.
A second element, to provide a picture of the battle field, will be a color map of the board. The idea being that each square on the board will be assigned a number based on how many chess pieces have access to that square. For development purposes, and possible visual effect, the Red and Green components of the squares background color will be based on each player's coverage of the square.
There will be further elements involved, one at least to tie the first two elements together. This is how my style of development works, it evolves.

Link: http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~bpisupat/work/usb.html

Background of Work
This tutorial is a result of an independant study I made with the original intention of porting USB to RTLinux (a real time operating system)

Who should read this?

Read more »

Someone asked me the other day "why I chose the Suse distribution of Linux?"
Good question, and it made me think.
Originally I bought a copy of Red Hat 5.2 to investigate Linux as an alternative to using Microsoft products. I do not remember why I failed to get it up and running as it is quite a few years ago. Suffice to say I gave up on it.
As a long time user of IBM products, I have come to trust their judgment in most things IT. They have made a few "errors" in my opinion, but that is neither here nor there. When I heard that IBM supported Suse, that was my clue to try again.

Read more »

Or I guess on most Linux distributions, as the problem I had resulted from the Firefox installation.
The issue concerned my inability to see my beloved Formula One live timings as it utilizes Java. I also had issues with sites using the Adobe Flash plug-in. As with most problems encountered over the past decade that have no urgency, I move on to other tasks that can be done with more ease, and I can view F1 on the laptop anyway.
If you want to cut a long story short, just skip to the end for the solution.

Read more »

Last September Boycott Novell published a piece claiming that the FAA have had numerous incidents regarding the security of their current installed systems. CNN reported yesterday that a new invasion had occurred on their servers, which are Windows based, but that the Air Traffic control system, which was developed in the 1940's and 50's, had not been infiltrated.
The Pentagon are continually fighting off hackers.
When are they going to get it?
If I, as a computer consultant, recommended a Microsoft based system for a mission-critical system that required superior security, I would be at least fired, but would probably admit myself to the nearest psych institute.
Also yesterday, a story from eWeek reports that researchers have already worked out how to take over the NEW Windows OS that has not been released yet.
When are they going to get it?
Microsoft OS's will never be secure, as it is not in our best interests as the majority of the virus/malware industry would be redundant, with the associated loss of jobs. Why would you ever use a product in a security conscious environment that includes security flaws as part of its business model.

How many people have to die?

April 1st 2009, the date for the Confiker worm to activate, came and went without the apparent mass destruction envisioned. The havoc is perhaps not as imminent as expected, what better way of advertising your existence than through an April Fools Day trick. Many surfers seek out the better pranks, and would have their interest piqued by a worm on the loose.

Confiker has only just begun, building itself into ......

Read more »

Link: http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/

To clarify, there is only one Linux, the one written and overseen by Linus Torvalds, the robust unix style operating system ( o/s ) at the heart of the Open Source movement and the Free Software Foundation.
There are, however, a multitude of Linux Distributions, which are packages of the core Linux o/s and a variety of software applications, geared for specific demographics. There are several mobile phones on the market that are run on the Linux o/s, if it has a computer chip in it, then there is probably a distribution out there that can operate it.

On the topic of general purpose computing ( home PCs etc. ) front, a friend and colleague found this site.
By answering a few simple questions ( lookout for the next button! ), it will match you up with the best distribution of Linux for you.

To provide some background to this article:
Having been involved in the Computer Industry since the 1970's, I witnessed first hand the evolution of computing since the industry was about 15 years old. Much has changed, from Scientist in white coats entering climate controlled computer rooms holding the Mainframe and its peripheral devices through an airlock with tacky mats to wrist watches and cell phones with more memory and processing power than the first Mainframe I worked on, which was an ICL 1903a running George III, and NO screens.
I remember the plethora of proprietary PCs and their unique operating systems, before the advent of Microsoft. Halcyon days indeed.

Read more »

I recently received an email relating to a project I am working on. The segment below triggered this post.
Q. I don't know if you use firefox or IE, but...
A. For work both Mike and I(Ed) have IE for browsing and I have IE for home as well. Please don't hold this against us and we will try to do better in future.
To cover my bases, I have to inform that the project the 3 of us are working on is connected to and approved by the company, so that use of company email is permitted, and may even be required (see other posts).
Ed seems to be aware that I am not a strong fan of Microsoft's Internet Explorer. He is probably also aware that my advocacy lies in a different direction (see other posts). I would also not hold it against them as it is not their fault.
The reason they are where they are, is simple. Firefox is free.
The explanation of why they do not use Firefox because it is free is perhaps a little more complex.

Read more »

I am getting more and more irate with the IT industry. Why?
In the 1980s, around the time IBM entered the PC market, IT was an industry of professionals, and I considered myself one of them. Now I am embarrassed to be associated with it. Here is a list of what is different, and in my opinion, wrong with it:-

Read more »