QotD: Bruce Schneier on the Oyster Card Hack

July 21st, 2008 by davidtenhave

Listening to: Paradise - Icehouse

From BBC World:

Security expert Bruce Schneier said: “As bad as the damage is from publishing - and there probably will be some - the damage is much, much worse by not disclosing.”

iPhone + Rails + Eclipse

July 19th, 2008 by davidtenhave

Listening to: A Wonderful Life - Carl Craig

For my own notes: Developing iPhone applications using Ruby on Rails and Eclipse

Displaying My Own Content

July 16th, 2008 by Flickr

Listening to: Don’t You - Simple Minds

After getting my bash-scripting-fu on I was able to load my own content on the display:


Image Load Test 2
Originally uploaded by flash5.

Eventually I am going to have to recompile the OS of this puppy (it won’t do a DNS lookup for instance - let alone not having Perl or Python on board)… but I am going to try and put it off for as long as possible.

Vodafone Must be Dead Chuffed

July 16th, 2008 by davidtenhave

Listening to: Not Enough Love In The World - Don Henley

They sold out the first shipment of iPhones… seems they got their pricing bang on. Well played.

iTunes iPod Touch Remote FTW!

July 14th, 2008 by davidtenhave

Listening to: No Names (Black Debbie) - Dangerdoom

I was going to give up being an Apple Fanboi. But then I upgraded my iPod Touch to version 2.0 of the OS and installed the iTunes Remote Control. Very cool. Next Lent I guess.

Talking to Your Gumstix via USBNET and OSX

July 12th, 2008 by davidtenhave

Listening to: Belfast Child - Simple Minds

Ok having nutted out how to talk to my dev board using the USB-serial connection… I then wanted to use the USBNET connection. Again this required some new drivers - but it was basically done by following the instructions outlined here.

The biggest hassle was setting up USB Ethernet on the Mac. You don’t have a comparable ifconfig call to make as you would under Linux. You need to install the USB drivers (additionally this if you’re running 10.5.x), wait for OSX to do it’s stuff and then set up the network connection in the ‘Network’ prefs panel. Once you’ve done that you can execute the relevant ifconfig call via the serial connection and then ssh using the OSX terminal.

P1000420.JPG

Talking to Your Gumstix via USBDEV and OS X

July 11th, 2008 by davidtenhave

Listening to: How We Operate - Gomez

I have started playing with the e-ink dev kit (it uses a Gumstix as the controller). The first problem was talking to the dev board using the usb-serial connection and OSX. I got it working ok last night using my XP virtual machine. This morning I got it up and running using OSX. The key steps:

  1. Install the USB drivers for the serial port.
    I needed to install the FT232R drivers - which you can find here.
    You will need to reboot your Mac and then when you plug the USB into your machine you will be treated to a new tty under /dev (in my case /dev/tty.usbserial-A1002bao).
  2. Install ZTerm
    I couldn’t get an intelligible connection using ’screen’. ZTerm allows you to set up the serial connection correctly.

Eink Devkit Literally Down the Road

July 5th, 2008 by davidtenhave

Listening to: Banquet - Junior Sanchez Mix - Bloc Party

My devkit is literally sitting down the road at the FedEx office waiting for the customs paper work to get sorted. The next trick will be to find time… don’t even have time to blog evenly these days.

Holy Crap! Augmented Reality is, well, Reality

May 29th, 2008 by davidtenhave

Listening to: EXPOSÉ on the Journal: Chemicals in Food and Jeffrey Toobin - Bill Moyers Journal

Here you go… It’s a gnat’s fart away from Spook Country - you’ve just gotta replace the ubiquitous Google Maps with you’re own massive data overlay system.

Less-Than-Spectacular… Oh Context…

May 27th, 2008 by davidtenhave

Listening to: Heaven - The Psychedelic Furs

I was reading the latest commentary in the NYT about the iPhone and saw this:

After almost a year of strong sales that have made it one of the dominant smartphones in the United States, the iPhone has settled down to a less-than-spectacular pace: roughly 600,000 units a month, according to the company.

Wow… by what measure is that less than spectacular? This one:

…Nokia, the world’s largest maker of cellphones, sells more phones every week than Apple has sold since the iPhone’s introduction.

Holy crap!