http://www.achingbrain.net Just another WordPress weblog Fri, 12 Feb 2010 07:24:58 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en From Five hacks you can explore with your kids (Wired) The thrill of getting a root shell using a well crafted buffer overflow is a joy few non-geeks will ever know. Security cracking is skill that requires an in depth knowledge of networking, operating systems and programming. Helping your kids build ... http://www.achingbrain.net/alex/security-hacking-for-kids I'd forgotten what a time consuming, involving and generally ill thought through process updating a copy of Windows is.  On the Mac you use a desktop application, on Windows a flaky looking web app.  On the Mac you select things like "QuickTime Update 7.6.2" which kind of makes sense, on ... http://www.achingbrain.net/alex/updates Today I received my lovely new Sony Ericsson C902 couriered straight to my desk.  It was very painless: Orange rang, I'm a valued customer, they offer me a new piece of kit and a sexier calling package for less money.  I wasn't expecting much, just a new, smaller, shinier phone ... http://www.achingbrain.net/ktm/the-march-of-progress Adobe have despatched Flashpaper to the same grave of irrelevant products as FreeHand and ImageReady.  Considering Flashpaper was made by Macromedia before their assimilation, it was kind of on the cards due to it's competition with PDF. From the article the CEO a doomed startup whines: What about all the websites that have ... http://www.achingbrain.net/alex/flashpaper I found this excellent command line tool to compile Flash movies the other day. It works like this: flashcommand -p -s /path/to/fla The -p switch means 'publish' and '-s' specifies the path to the source .fla file. It works by opening Flash CS3 in the background and instructing it to compile the ... http://www.achingbrain.net/alex/flashcommand The latest krazee plan from the Home Office's policy department seems to be a massive database containing the details of every phone conversation and email sent in the UK. Assuming it works (it won't) then at least they'll realise just how bad the spam situation is. http://www.achingbrain.net/alex/uk-communications-database I've been trying to install Macromedia Adobe Flash Media Server 3 on my local development box and have run into some problems. To help out anyone else trying to do the same thing, here's how I did it. First you need to install nspr emerge -uDv dev-libs/nspr Add a user/group for it to run ... http://www.achingbrain.net/alex/running-fms-3-on-gentoo-linux I really hope this is a spoof as it makes me want to stab myself in the eye with a fork. http://www.achingbrain.net/alex/vista-sp1-sales-video I just came across this while using Prototype: "section=blo%g&id=45".toQueryParams(); To save you the trouble of running it yourself, I'll tell you what happens - the unescaped percent symbol causes a URI malformed error to be thrown. Very odd. The Prototype documentation for toQueryParams says: Parses a URI-like query string and returns an object ... http://www.achingbrain.net/alex/prototype-stringtoqueryparams-weirdness I haven't posted here for a while, mainly due to the time sink that is Facebook, but I have been writing code in my spare time, honest.  I thought I'd have a little skim through what's on my machine and share a few choice nuggets. Recently I've been trying to get ... http://www.achingbrain.net/alex/code Welcome to version 4 of Aching Brain. It's been an awfully long time, but I promise to post more often. The major change is that I've switched from a custom back end to pre-written blog software as maintaining it became a bit of a nightmare. I say maintaining - ... http://www.achingbrain.net/alex/brain-iv From an article on the Wall Street Journal about Steve Job's button phobia. When the company introduced the iPod in late 2001, the most common calls to Apple's technical support lines for a time were about how to turn the device, which lacked a clearly defined power button, off and ... http://www.achingbrain.net/alex/button-button-whos-got-the-button This is more a note to myself than anyone else, but to compile Apache2 on OS X, use the following configure: ./configure --with-included-apr --enable-so --enable-mods-shared=most When Apache starts whinging about "dlname not found, assuming libtool archive" and shit, and refuses to produce .so modules instead kicking out a bunch of .a and ... http://www.achingbrain.net/alex/apache2-and-os-x The BBC ... has always taken a platform agnostic approach to its internet services. And then a little later: It is not possible to put an exact timeframe on when BBC iPlayer will be available for Mac users. --bad, indeed. The corporation's governing body asked the BBC to ensure that the iPlayer could run ... http://www.achingbrain.net/alex/orwellian Adverts that shout work. I like them. "Bang and the dirt is gone." They weren't lying and if I hadn't been so entertained by the shouty antics of Barry Scott I wouldn't have bought what can only be described as the most potent chemical concoction available to ... http://www.achingbrain.net/ktm/shouty-shouty From the little booklet in the box: Off road riding extracts a severe toll on footwear. On and off the pedals thousands of times, lots of walking, days of 150 degree heat rotting the shoes in your trunk all means these shoes will eventually wear out. When the rubber ... http://www.achingbrain.net/alex/warranty Alex is currently wondering if the Glastonbury ticket website is run off of a beige box in the corner of someone's flat with a cat chewing on the network cable. Honestly, what with all the pre-registering bollocks it's not like they were unaware of the demand. Why can't they design ... http://www.achingbrain.net/alex/glastonbury-tickets It's hard to believe just how difficult a Nintendo Wii is to acquire. I made a vague stab on release day, trawling the electronics drags on Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street. Everywhere I was greeted with smirks, and laughter accompanied by pointing and other gesticulation. The ... http://www.achingbrain.net/alex/whither-wii Why oh why. Busker, every morning, in his licensed Carling sponsored busker spot, 8.55am, like clockwork, Wish you were here by Pink Floyd. Not only has he got a luminous cardboard sign telling people to smile, or cheer up, or something along those lines, but he's ever so ... http://www.achingbrain.net/ktm/busker-rage How to use a different username with svn:externals. Genius. Well, almost. Close enough. http://www.achingbrain.net/alex/svnexternals-and-different-usernames