Xoke.org

My board at work!

Apologies for the bad quality.  I really was installing DD-WRT whilst recording, for the first time!  I tried to tidy it up but it’s still fairly rough!

1. Go the the DD-WRT website.
2. Go to Router Database.
3. Search for your Router (or one you might want to buy), in my case the Linksys WRT54GL from NewEgg (note:  NOT a sponsored link and other shops are available).
4. Read this stuff: http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=51486
5. Notes:  Initial flashing ‘Mini Generic’ via web interface.   Give it at least 2 mins after reboot!
6. Installation guide: http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Installation
7. Lifehacker article: http://lifehacker.com/178132/hack-attack-turn-your-60-router-into-a-600-router
8. Short version:
   1. Plug in the router
   2. Install the mini-generic DD-WRT firmware
   3. Reboot the router if it doesn’t restart itself
   4. Install the full DD-WRT firmware.  It should restart
   5. Enjoy the shininess of the new firmware!
   6. Reset the password and username!

Thoughts.

Just a little slideshow for the screenshots…

Also I just listened to my episode again and realise I kept calling it VMWare.  I was running Virtual Box.  Apologies for the confusion.

No I don’t want to stop listening to some of my podcasts, but seriously TLLTs takes forever to catch up on!

So I’ve been reading up on / talking to people about speeding up the playback of podcasts.  You can play them through mplayer (CLI version) and press ] to increase the speed, but the people end up sounding like chipmunks.  Whilst this may be an improvement for Dann, other people sound terrible this way.

SoX is a cool command that will sort this out for you.  You can increase the ‘tempo’ without adjusting the pitch.  I want to have a script to amend this that can be called after bashpodder so it’s a one-stop-shop to fix everything.

To install SoX (and let it handle MP3 files):

sudo apt-get install sox libsox-fmt-mp3

So far I have:

#!/bin/bash
##################################################
#
#                       LICENSE
#
##################################################
#
# Xoke's Speed Increase script for Podcasts
# Copyright (C) 2009 Xoke
#
# This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
# GNU General Public License for more details <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

# I added a bit of a version control section here to mark any changes to the code
##################################################
#
#                       Versions
#
##################################################
#
# Ver    Date            Author        Description
# ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# 0.1        Sep 2009    Xoke        Initial Version

# Increase tempo of podcasts for today
#    Issues:
#        Assumes bashpodder is running
#        Probably has issues being run twice in one day
#        Doesn't tidy up after itself
#        mp3s become *.mp3.ogg

# Make script crontab friendly:
cd $(dirname $0)

# Speed Increase - change this to change
# the speed.
incspeedby=1.5

# datadir is the directory you want podcasts saved to:
datadir=$(date +%Y-%m-%d)

# Move into directory
cd $datadir

# Find all the MP3s
list=`ls *.mp3`
for currfile in $list
do
 echo $currfile
 # Process them
 sox $currfile z$currfile.ogg tempo $incspeedby
done

# Find all the OGGs
list=`ls *.ogg`
for currfile in $list
do
 echo $currfile
 # Process them
 sox $currfile z$currfile tempo $incspeedby
done

This will go into the current date directory, as per bashpodder.  This means if you run it twice in one day it will have problems as it will try to increase the tempo of the files already increased… which will be a problem.  It will convert mp3 files to ogg as the Jaunty version of SoX does not come with MP3 export capabilities.  This means HPR069.mp3 becomes zHPR069.mp3.ogg which is a little annoying, but not a huge problem.  The files all get a ‘z’ appended to the front, as I didn’t want to delete the old files without testing this on a lot of different files!  The next version (after lots of testing) will remove the old files and tidy things up!  Also this takes a while to run to convert files.

If you think 1.5x speed is too fast (or too slow if you’re Kajarii!) then you can change the incspeedby variable to change both mp3 and ogg.

Apart from that, I posted it here and not under ‘tips’ so everyone on the planet can look and let me know if I’m missing something, or if there is a better way of doing it.  I did google however most people are converting the MP3s to WAV files to increase the tempo and then recompress them!

I mentioned Tiny Tiny RSS on the last two TiT Radios.  On the first I had only just set it up, and on the second I mentioned how it didn’t seem to be updating correctly.  I took my feeds from Google Reader and imported them into TTRSS and cleared them both down to compare how they worked.  I noted that I had a lot more in Reader then TTRSS.  Now I also said I was looking into why that was.

Well I have been playing around reading through this page, where they give a bunch of ways to update.  Some seem better then others (as they warn) and I still have to try to sort out the ‘best’ way they recommend.  But for now, it’s looking a lot more promising.

Python will be the language I do my HPR on.  Well I say 'do' because I just recorded it (although still have to edit it).  I am thinking I will create a new section for programming here, with the scripts I started with (I do ad-lib a fraction mind) and the code examples and similar.  I will also of course have show notes on the HPR site, but think putting a list here will be helpful.

So I have closed the poll.  Thank you everyone who voted / commented / spoke to me about it in IRC.

My next HPR ep is due on the 28th I believe, so look for it then!

I talk about Encryption, various ways and some examples.  Hopefully it's not completely confusing!  Link is in the podcast section.

The notes seemed to have gone from the HPR website so they are below:

Three Prime Numbers: 2, 3 and 5.
I will call them A, B and C so A=2, B=3 and C=5
Working through x as the current position, and i being the unencrypted password and j being the encrypted as an array, so i[x] is the 'current' position we get:

j[x] = ((j[x-1] + i[x] + A) * B ) MOD C

The password example I give is:

Encrypting 123

1 (unencrypted password) + 2 (Prime A) = 3
3 * 3 (Prime B) = 9
9 MOD 5 (Prime C) = 4

4 (previous encrypted) + 2 (current unencrypted) + 2 (Prime A) = 8
8 * 3 (Prime B) = 24
24 MOD 5 (Prime C) = 4

4 (previous encrypted) + 3 (current unencrypted) + 2 (Prime A) = 9
9 * 3 (Prime C) = 27
27 MOD 5 (Prime C) = 2

So the encrypted password is 442
 

We discussed this on Linux Cranks last night and I attempted to do justice by reading it.  Here is the text I was trying to read.

Another one got caught today, it’s all over the papers. “Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal”, “Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering”…

Damn kids. They’re all alike.

But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950′s techno brain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?

I am a hacker, enter my world…

Mine is a world that begins with school… I’m smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me…

Damn under achiever. They’re all alike.

I’m in junior high or high school. I’ve listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. “No, Ms. Smith, I didn’t show my work. I did it in my head…”

Damn kid. Probably copied it. They’re all alike.

I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it’s because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn’t like me… Or feels threatened by me… Or thinks I’m a smart-ass… Or doesn’t like teaching and shouldn’t be here…

Damn kid. All he does is play games. They’re all alike.

And then it happened… a door opened to a world… rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict’s veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought… a board is found.

“This is it… this is where I belong…” I know everyone here… even if I’ve never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again… I know you all…

Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They’re all alike…

You bet your ass we’re all alike… we’ve been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak… the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We’ve been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.

This is our world now… the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn’t run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore… and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge… and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias… and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it’s for our own good, yet we’re the criminals.

Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of out-smarting you, something that you will never forgive me for.

I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can’t stop us all… after all, we’re all alike.

The Mentor. 08/01/1986

It can be found here and in it I install Windows in my Virtual Box.  It was definitely interesting!