Tech, Gaming and Bile!
software
Software posts
itunes stopped working in a virtual machine?
0Trying to sync my iPad with the iTunes library I have running in a VirtualBox virtual machine kept failing. I’d get spurious “error -5000″ messages or simply that it had failed to start. Further investigation brought to light the strange fact that I couldn’t even play any files and podcasts would download but fail to be added to the library. Trying to play the files using the built in network sharing to other iTunes clients would fail too.
What could be causing it?
End tasking and even a reboot didn’t cure things. I began to wonder if it was a change in iTunes itself, maybe Apple had disabled the use of a mapped drive for your library. Can’t be, things stopped working some days after I had updated iTunes. I then thought about the fact that the drive mapping was via the shared folders within VirtualBox rather than a straight up CIFS mapping. More recently, I had updated VirtualBox itself, maybe I forgot to update the virtual tools too? Could that be causing it?
One install and reboot later and iTunes is behaving itself! So, if you have the same problem I’d recommend ensuring your version of the virtual tools installed in the guest OS matches the version of VirtualBox you are powering it with.
Problem solved, podcasts synced and a smile brought back to my face 
App review: TVCatchup
2
App review: TVCatchup.com
OK, so this isn’t an app, per say… it’s a website. But a damn fine site with an iphone and ipad version you can pin to your main page – so you don’t need to bother with the app store for it – and use whether you’re on 3G or wifi. None of that “You must be on wifi to use this service” crap, though with all the network providers switching to metered bandwidth it could be an expensive habit!
So what does it do? In a nutshell, it allows you to stream live Freeview (UK free to air digital) TV channels across the net on your PC or mobile. While there’s no mention of geographic restrictions, I’m guessing this one is a UK only affair. Sorry, but at least you Americans have Hulu!
There’s also no subscription, just sign up for a free login account and often you have to endure a preroll ad after selecting the channel you wish to view, regardless of whether the show is currently playing or not.
And those are the only caveats, really.
The standard web layout is refreshingly uncluttered and simplistic – minimal cruft! Just choose between the EPG if you are looking for something specific or a list of channels if you don’t need to know anything more than the channel name.
EPG View
Channel View
It’s even cleaner on your iphone and ipad, presenting you with just the channel list and no option to see an EPG, though the ipad version shows you the program name currently showing.
Once you select a channel, it’ll begin streaming and the quality isn’t bad at all.
Right now you’re limited to bandwidth saving “low quality” and the default “standard quality”, with “high quality” versions of BBC1, BBC2, ITV1, Channel 4 and Five in beta and restricted to certain ISP’s. No word on when the rest of us will be able to pick up the high quality streams.
Still, video quality we can access is perfectly fine in full screen for standard screen sizes and comparable to other sources such as standard def iplayer, 4oD et al. You can even change the aspect ratio to get the best looking picture for your screen.
It may lack the flexibility of watching past episodes on your time frame and no HD streams for now, but as a means of watching live TV on the go via your iphone, in a secluded room with your laptop or ipad or a cheap alternative to a tuner for your HTPC, this site takes some beating. Especially if you’re in an area with poor TV signal quality (like me) or you just don’t want to pay for an expensive satellite/cable subscription, proving once and for all that your net connection is king!
Verdict: If you’re UK based, why aren’t you using this service already? It’s a must!
The days nemesis has been vanquished!
0This might seem a bit lame to those who actually know what they’re doing, but I have been bashing my head against the wall trying to figure out how to grab and display more than one post in a category using the archive.php file.
I’m using the archive.php file instead of creating a specific category file because I want to keep the layout the same with the least amount of editing whenever I do need to make a change. Copy pasta maybe easy, but it soon gets tiresome and is needless extra hassle.
After some frantic “help!” posts on twitter (thank you @wpbeginner for responding!) and friendfeed plus a little searching of my own, all roads seemed to lead to this page in the wordpress codex.
Specifically, this solution:
<?php
$categoryvariable=$cat; // assign the variable as current category
$query= ‘cat=’ . $categoryvariable. ‘&orderby=date&order=ASC’; //concatenate the query
query_posts($query); //run the query
?>
Now, dumping this just before the while (have_posts()) : the_post(); line, ensuring you swap out ($query) with (‘showposts=10&cat=’.$cat) will give you what you want – upto 10 posts of the category selected by the user.
Sadly, this will break the displaying of your tags, which simply won’t do! Off to the drawing board again!
My starter for ten was to try creating my own bunch of if statements to alter the query based on whether it was a category or a tag just before my while statement. No good, broke the whole page instead of just a specific functionality. Then a lightbulb flickered inside.
There’s already an if statement determining what to do based on the users actions right at the top… why don’t I just sneak them into there? I’m cutting down on additional if statements and making the code cleaner. So, I bodged together the code and got the following:
<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
<div class=”item entry”>
<?php $post = $posts[0]; // Hack. Set $post so that the_date() works. ?>
<?php /* If this is a category archive */ if (is_category()) { ?>
<h2 class=”pagetitle”><?php single_cat_title(); ?></h2>
<?php
$categoryvariable=$cat;
$query= ‘cat=’ . $categoryvariable. ‘&orderby=date&order=ASC’;
?>
<?php query_posts(‘showposts=10&cat=’.$cat); ?>
<?php /* If this is a tag archive */ } elseif( function_exists(‘is_tag’) ) { if(is_tag()){ ?>
<h2 class=”pagetitle”>Episodes mentioning <?php single_tag_title(); ?></h2>
<?php
$tagvariable=$tag;
$query= ‘tag=’ . $tagvariable. ‘&orderby=date&order=ASC’;
?>
<?php query_posts(‘showposts=10&tag=’.$tag); ?>
Hit refresh and began testing…. it works! No breaking, no spooling out the wrong info!
Check it yourself at http://dev.verticalslice.tv by clicking on “News” on the left and playing around.
Not bad for someone who only knows basic HTML and lacks any knowledge of how wordpress functions internally. Tho, as I said, it’s still prolly lame to those who actually know what they’re doing – but I’m not them, and this was my victory 
If you know of a better way of doing this or if this opens the site up to a vulnerability, please let me know in the comments.
iphone app review: iPiMP – updated!
6At the start of the month I gave a review of the iPiMP app here and came up with 2 things that would not only turn this into a must have bit of software; but strengthen mediaportal’s position as one of the best media centre applications available for windows users as well.
The first was the ability to stream live tv to the iphone – However, a bit more thought into that and I have come to the conclusion that it’s not such a hot feature after all. Too limiting and would depend on some structural changes to the mediaportal software itself.
The second one is the truly killer feature though… Remote control of a client.
Well, it turns out that I didn’t have to wait long at all after a comment popped up from the developer informing me that version 3.0.0 (latest version is now 3.0.1) now includes that very feature!
The installer now comes with a “client plugin” option that is required on every client you wish to remotely control.
Just remember to untick the server and transcoder options, this could be made a little easier for some people by having a menu before the component selections with 3 radio buttons offering “server and client”, “server only” and “client only” options to auto choose these; but then it isn’t really hard to untick the boxes.
Once installed, remember to enable the plugin from within the mediaportal client settings dialogue and add the port it runs on (55667 tcp) to your firewall.
After you have your server running and all your clients set up and enabled it’s time to fire up the iphone.
Oh, small change – the username field is no longer case sensitive so it doesn’t matter anymore about the recent auto caps’ing Apple included in the latest firmware.
And there we have the addition of “Remote control” to the home menu.
Before you can start controlling any of your clients, you’ll need to add them by tapping onto “administration”.
Tap through to the “MediaPortal clients” and you’ll see a very simple add, delete and edit screen. Tapping onto add will give you the following screen.
Here you can give it a friendly name that can be its location in your house, the name of the PC it is running on and the port the service communicates on.
Unless you changed this within the plugin options in the mediaportal config, you can leave the port setting blank and it will use the default setting; which is a nice bit of design by the developer – fewer settings for users to remember and fiddle with usually results fewer things to break.
Once you have configured your clients and saved the settings tap on the home button and go into the Remote control option.
Select your client and you’ll be greated with a two page interface (transitioned by tapping on the little guy holding a number) that is simple, if busy looking at first.
The little guys on the second page represent the different categories such as music, games, videos, pictures and live tv.
The first page is a simple navigation layout, not a bad first config but one I’m sure will be refined over time as people begin using it – the first suggestion that springs to my mind is having the tv guide button on the same page as the navigation buttons.
It is very intuative when moving around mediaportal with the iphone and this app, I can already see my logitech mx air getting even less use now!
As it is, the only fault I have picked up on so far while testing the remote control isn’t overly the fault of the app, instead it’s more to do with the responsiveness of the touch screen on my iphone – it has never been quick enough to keep up with the speed at which I can attempt to use it, causing many of my taps to not register.
The result, browsing a long list of video files can take a lot longer than a mouse to navigate around leaving you to tap, tap, tap, tap your way around. As I said tho, this is more a failing of the iphone than the app.
I wonder how difficult it would be to implement a slide scroll to it.
Anyway, time to navigate aside, this little applet just joined my list of must have apps where-ever I deploy a copy of mediaportal as it finally begins to make PC based TV’s a real and friendly replacement to a traditional TV and seperates solution without having to own expensive remote controls that are pretty much useless beyond the application they were designed for.
Convergence is always a good thing and if you ever lose this TV remote, you can always just call it and discover where they have been vanishing to all these years!
Verdict: If you’re running mediaportal and own an iphone, this just became a part of your standard install!
How to spot a scam email.
14 years ago
With the amount of scam emails that pepper our inboxes every so often, you’d have thought most people would be able to identify them. Sadly, they are getting harder to pick out with a casual glance and there are quite a few people – judging by the users I support – that still can’t identify them.
In order to help remedy this, I decided to give a quick dissection of an email I got today.
Exhibit A
At first glance, it might seem legit – it is in the style of some older emails – but a quick look at the first port of call brings up the first doubts. Who is it from?
Would they use an obscure address like that? If an email is coming from a company they’re unlikely to use addresses like "squiffymonkey269" or, in this case "edr_nick". It’s just unprofessional.
*bzzzt* Strike one.
Bad grammar tends to be the hallmark of scam emails, look out for Over Capitalising Words They Want To Emphasise and missed capital letters not to mention sentences that make zero sense! If it reads like a perfect example of Engrish then chances are it’s fake.
If they show a grasp of the English language then read what it is telling you.
Here it’s informing us that they have too many accounts and need to clear them away, but hang on a second the first line states "we’re sending it to everyone" then the end of the sentence claims to be singling out me.. So they’re deleting every account then? Are they trying to drive up Gmail users?
*bzzzzt* Strike two!
And on it continues…
Stunted English and a sudden call for personal details, why not throw in a request for your mothers maiden name (I still can’t believe some web services continue to ask for this!) and your inside leg measurement while you’re at it?!
So you can detect unused accounts? Why the general mailshot then? Also, why isn’t this an automated webpage on the net instead of using an unreliable system like SMTP?
If the scammer is a little smarter than this turd and supplies a web link to enter your details, hover over the link for a few seconds and check out the address it is really sending you to. If it’s an obscure address or ends with an obscure domain tag (.ir instead of .com for example) you can bet it’s either going to be a fake site that will post your details to the scammer or infested with spyware that will attempt to spunk itself all over your system.
Try it out on this example: http://www.hotmail.com/confirm
If it doesn’t provide a little popup telling you the address, check out the bottom of your browser window as it should tell you I’m really sending you to http://all.your.bank.details.are.all.ours .
*bzzzzzzzzzzt* Strike 3, you’re out!
Just remember the following steps:
- Be skeptical of these emails
- Check out who it’s from
- What do they want
- Does any of it makes logical and grammatical sense.
- Keep an eye out for dodgy links
If it smells like BS, it prolly is!
Windows explorer status bar.. in memorial
1When the change to Vista came it sounded the deathknell for a single UI element that I loved.
Within windows explorer you could enable something known as the Status bar, along this you would see information such as what security zone you were in, how much space you had left, how many files were in a folder and what size of data this represented.
It was this ability to see not only how much space you had left but how big in terms of storage capacity the folder I had open was consuming that I loved – system info at a glance that was germain to my task.
Not even OSX showed you this information, going out of its way to hide how big a folder is and breaking up the information as to how much space you have left into little locations across applications and folder views.
The only thing I wished it did was count up the values of the folders within that folder, but this would have made explorer very slow. I wonder if this is why browsing the file system in vista is very slow because this functionality was added, but for the tooltip hover instead of the status bar!
My hopes for this to make a return in win7 were dashed when I opened up explorer and it was just the same as vista.
Am I alone in wishing for this little UI element to return? Do you know of a way of returning this to vista/win7? If so, would you be willing to share?
Surely I can’t be the only person who mourns it’s loss?!
windows 7 taskbar
04 years ago
windows 7 taskbar in 60-ish seconds from alphaxion on Vimeo.
Older youtube video – http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=5dmuR4c1Nlg
OK, I take it back, the PDC version of windows 7 does indeed have the new interface hiding away in there for those who know where to look.
So, joining in with everyone else who has access to this here is my run through of the new taskbar in 60-ish seconds.
Sadly the quality of the video is very poor, so you can download it here (6mb divx file) and I’m pending a vid on revver.
Windows 7 screens
04 years ago
Well, I said I’d post a few screen grabs showing the subtle changes between vista and win7, here they are.
First up is the Solution Centre
The usual incessant blast of messages have been bundled up into a single system tray icon. Also, that little translucent rectangle next to the time is a “show desktop” quick button.
Then we have the streamlined desktop settings
In here the alignment of multiple monitors is now done by dragging and dropping, it also gives hint to one of the windows quick key combos – something of which many still remain unknown by most users (win+e for explore, win+r for run prompt, win+l for a quick lock of the PC and win+f for the search dialogue being 4 extremely useful combos). A very minimalist interface.
The interface has been cleaned up..
Since there is no longer a difference between the interface when opening and exploring, they have finally tidied away the two options and turned them into a single one. Win7 is full of these little cleanups that vista was just missing.
Tablet edition is basically cooked into the system.
Seems to be quite odd in that it’ll pick up words from mindless scribbles :S It must have an inbuilt bablefish for gibberish!
More to come in due time
Realtek, your drivers are driving me… into annoyance-ville!
0A couple of months ago I finally had the cash to say goodbye to the Shuttle XPC that has served me well for the past 3 years, this was especially urgent as it is now terminally sick. The result, it turns out, of a swollen capacitor – operation lazarus is underway to repair this so that it may live out its retirement years in servitude as my TVPC.
So, toodle-oo to Rumble and hello to Perceptor. I’ve returned from my SFF PC experiment to a midi tower case since I wasn’t able to keep my main rig updated and being ultra small and portable is no longer a requirement since my LAN party days are over for now.
After waiting patiently for my order to arrive I plumbed in all the equipment, installed windows and piled the drivers and software into it. All that’s left is to savour the Fresh PC(tm) sensation you get with a brand new machine.
Well.. I would have if this little annoying bugger didn’t exist.
I know I did, it wasn’t an accident! I didn’t fall across the room and land, jack first, into the unsuspecting port. And no, there is no innuendo or hidden message in there no matter how much you look for it!
It even tells me when I’ve unplugged it… I don’t need to know this, yet it insists on alerting me every time I do it.
There has to be a way to turn this incessant and pointless spam off.
A look through the settings brings me no joy.. There only appears to be an option for getting rid of the tray icon which only happens to silence it as an incidental result, bit like tearing out the lenses from your 3D glasses if you want it to stop showing you 3D images.
Still, if you want to silence this annoying message telling you about things you have actively gone out to do you’ll find it here:
* Right click the tray icon and select Sound Manager
* Click the blue "I" in the bottom right (above the OK button)
* Click the blue dot next to "Display Icon in Notification Area" to remove the tray icon, and the popups. It’s not like you needed that icon anyway.
Thanks to Paul Grav for triggering the memory of this issue and Grumpy Gamer for the resolution and image when I’m not at my machine to put them together myself and had to tea leaf them.
Taking friendfeed beyond the cloud – Revenue making 101
2Every so often you’ll see the question “How will [insert current web 2.0 darling here] make money?” and almost always people will resort to “by placing adverts!”.
Lets get this out into the open now, advertising is not and never will be a realistic business model on the internet – For a laundry list of reasons such as:
Now, to the real meat of this article. Current interwebnet 2.0-ified favourites du jour are the micro blogging sites like twitter, friendfeed, pownce (RIP) et al. They’ve grabbed our attention, got us hooked and now people are starting to ask just how they intend on financing such a lovely system so we can continue our crack like addictions.
I know many of you out there still follow the decades old belief that we shall all migrate to network resident apps and anything not in the cloud will fall away like the death of VHS when DVD came along and gave it a bloody nose and bruised it’s ego.
If you believe this then you’re missing out on a tried and tested means of making money – the inhouse solution and the juicey support contracts that go with them. Real revenue that isn’t reliant upon flakey ad providers that can change your income at a whim. If you have made a product you don’t put it into a public place and slap adverts all over it, you sell the damn product.
In order to explain this, let me pick on my favourite micro-blogging sensation – Friendfeed.
I love the ability for this system to pull in RSS feeds, mainly because this one feature alone can transform friendfeed from a public social time sink into a powerfull private system monitoring tool (among many possible uses).
It can’t really be plumbed into the public friendfeed ’cause the data is of no interest to anyone unless you were seeking vectors of attack or trying to dent the company value. Inhouse is the only place for this and it means deploying the system outside of the cloud and in the murky backwaters of the server room.
Sorry cloud utopians.
But how would it make for a great monitoring tool? Surely there’s no space for yet another competitor when you have systems like Solarwind’s NCM that trawl SNMP and WMI?
Well, pretty much all monitoring tools will fire off alerts via email and as any network admin will tell you this can get pretty annoying if it is a little too eager to inform and is quite difficult to derive any meaningful “big picture” stats from since most will either have their own (non-sharing) reporting module or don’t have one and rely on emails only.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you had a way of picking up alerts (either from RSS or redirecting the email alerts to the inhouse solution instead of you) from various systems that ordinarily can’t talk to each other. You could even create RSS feeds out of your server event logs using Greg Reinackers little applet and watch failures in real time.
Now imagine this info accessible from a desktop widget or via an API so you can integrate it with the corporate intranet instead of cluttering up your inbox every time a grunt trips over something?
Combine this with analysis modules that do things similar to ffholic and friendfeeds power to entertain morphs into the power to knit all of your monitoring systems together and open up avenues for datamining them.
A system that compliments and sits on top of your more expensive or built-in monitoring apps rather than replacing them and provides an interface for a plethora of plugins and ways to share the data across the business.
Surely that would be a far better thing to sell than pithy advertising space?