Latest Randomness

The last thing to pour randomly out of my skull.

Virtual Existance to Communicate with the Elderly

Author: Kevin Kurtz Date:4/17/08 Time:2:09PM

I am the Electrical Engineering co-op at an aluminum foil plant, which is usually pretty fun. I get to play with robots, program PLCs, and of course... nap. Well, that last few days I got a bigger project. We have drives here (drives are electrical machines that run motors) that can be programmed. The problem is they are 15 years old. The program used to program them only runs in DOS, and the last Operating System that supported this was Windows 98. So, when one of the electrician needs a new laptop I have to find one that I can still get Win98 drivers for so that it will be able to communicate with the drive. These laptops are getting harder and harder to find. I have a few; we have been buying Dell C610s whenever we can, but eventually the batteries will die and then what will we be left with? I was told to solve this problem.

qemu I decided that the best course of action (as with any software that will no longer run) is to emulate the operating system that can run it. I downloaded Qemu for this job. Of which, I have to say, is more impressive than I would have thought. I began to build an entirely emulated x86 PC. I downloaded Qemu Manager for my XP installation that would allow me to quickly and easily create and manage these virtual pcs, but after a couple of minutes I went back to my batch files, because it is missing quite a few options that I like to play with. It's good for the normal user, but if you are trying to boot from an iso you have to get a little more crafty than that. The first thing I did was boot from a cd that I usually use to setup Windows 98. It booted and I created the virtual disk and partitioned it with fdisk. No worries. Then I tried to insert the Windows 98 disk so that I could run format.com and eventually setup. EH! Wrong answer. You can not swap cds in Qemu, at least not under Windows. You get a strange read error from your host Operating System saying please insert the proper disk. Well, that's obnoxious, but no problem. I'll just boot from a boot floppy and have the Windows CD in the whole time. EH! Wrong again. Laptops don't have floppy drives, and neither do most of the desktops around here. My solution? I found a desktop that did and I moved my Qemu installion over to it. This worked for a while, but was horribly slow. After formatting and running setup.exe from the Windows disc the computer wouldn't boot again. Don't know why that was, I think a bad floppy, so I download a Win98Boot disk and tried again using the floppy image instead of a real disk. This cause the installion to fly!

I wish this would have been the end of my trouble, but alas, I am not that lucky. Once, during setup, the computer blue screened (BSOD IS EVIL!), but after a reboot it was fine so I'm going to assume it was nothing I did, just some random error. Finally, Windows 98SE was installed and ready to go. Now, I thought to myself, how am I going to get the files I need onto this virtual machine. VMWare, from what I hear, has a very nice drag and drop ability... I do not recommend trying that with Qemu, explosions are likely. I thought, well, I'll just add the -usb argument to the batch file and enable USB support from the virtual machine (ps I still haven't managed to get that working). Why not just boot from the usb drive and then move all the files over with Knoppix or something? okay. So I spend the two hours downloading the Knoppix iso only to finally figure out that there is no way (unless I'm just too dumb to find it) to boot that virtual machine from a usb drive. I tried -hda "//./e:" and "fat://e:" and anything else you can imagine. Nothing seemed to want to do it. I finally gave up and started looking for another alternative. The next step was file sharing. Well, when I finally tried to get it enabled in Win98 it wanted the windows disc, which I had not inserted before I started and therefore it was not going to read. When I tried to restart the machine I got a file missing error and no boot was possible.

After hours of pain and suffering I found a program call IMDisk which will let you mount an imaginary disk drive in Windows using a raw data image. Unfortunately, qemu stores it's images in qcow2 format, which is compressed and handy, but not readable. Luckily, though, it comes with qemu-img or something of the sort that will let you convert a qcow2 disk to a raw hard drive image with a couple of arguments. So, I did that (but now my file is 2gb instead of 2 hundred megs because raw is obviously uncompressed) and then mounted the drive. ERROR! Wtf?! Now, I was getting angry. Problems seem to follow me. Oh, wait a minute, raw drives would store the MBR at the beginning, so I needed to offset my partition reading by 63 blocks before I could load the data. After I figured that out it mounted just fine and off I went moving data.

Thank god that is finally over, now I all I have to do is get it communicating through the serial port, I'm sure that is going to be a nightmare, but that's the only communication those drives have. I hope the -serial COM1 option works like it should or all this will have been for nothing. Virtual 98 was bad planning, but might be working now. I think I'll check out VMWare and see what it can do. God, I hate computer. =)

News

His Dark Materials Book Review

Author: Kevin Date: 3/19/08 Time: 11:57AM

I finished my review of the His Dark Materials Trilogy. It scored a 8/10 just in case you don't feel like reading it, but I suggest checking it out. I also cover a couple of points about why the people who flipped out over the movie (The Golden Compass) are a little off their rocker. See, I can still be productive... Now I need to find a better way to organize news, this file is gettng awefully long. Maybe I should just archive the older stuff..?

New Layout and a BUNCH of New Content

Author: Kevin Date: 3/17/08 Time: 2:45PM

This new layout is much less cluttered and I think it puts a lot more focus on the content. Your ideas? Also, New Tutorials found here and New Hardware Review found here (Asus EEE PC as promised). It has been a busy week. I was holding a lot of this content until I got the new layout ready. The old one was a real eyesore in my opinion. Hope everyone enjoys, and have a great St. Patty's day!

New Tutorial and Software Recommendations

Author: Kevin Date: 1/24/08 Time: 1:23PM

The new tutorial (found here) explains how to let your users log into your site using your forums password like mine does. It shows you all the steps to checking a PHPBB hashed password and gives you a copy and paste function to do it as well as EXCESSIVE comments on how it is working. Took about an hour to write so I hope someone gets use out of it. I also wrote up a list of free software that I recommend using. If you are geeky enough to be reading my website you probably know about must of it already, pretty mainstreams stuff, but for those who are looking for a free alternative check out the list here.

Site Logins, Project Status, and New Movie Review

Author: Kevin Date: 1/23/08 Time: 3:08PM

I got the site logins working, it uses the same username and password as the forums... this was a pain, PHPBB does some goofy stuff to it's passwords, but I eventually got it going. Now you have to log in to post comments (that way web bots can't post) and you have to login to get special downloads (like pre-release games, check software project page). I added the project status updates you see in the right panel above the google ad. It will tell you where I am on things around the site. Finally, I wrote a movie review about the movie Juno, which I liked. It got a 7/10. Check out the movie reviews link on the left navigation panel. Also, Hack Wars is in progress. That link will tell you what it is (or will be is more like it). It has a been a prodcutive few days. The entire code for the site is different. Even the comments work differently now, it is all database driven for easier administration... Why do I rewrite everything all the time? I'm not sure. I just find things that I think I would like better and sometimes implementing them means taking everything apart and starting over. :)

Updated the Site, but you can't see it!

Author: Kevin Date: 1/16/08 Time: 10:32AM

I spent a little while updating everything. The site is completely modular now, loaded from a series of files (everything that is static anyway). Also I updated all the Randomness-es and every other page for that matter, to be XML compliant. That means not using breaks or inputs without closing the tags (usually breaks wouldnt have a closing tag, but adding a space and a / makes then closed by default. Take a look at the source of this page.) So, in the event that I randomly die and someone else decides to keep hosting this, the page is ready for the future. I sometimes have bad coding practices, I should have fixed that when I first made the site (a mere 4 weeks ago now), but I like to leave the work for later so I have to go back through and completely reorganize. Basically, what I'm saying is, I spent a bunch of time changing stuff you can't even see :) isn't that spectacular? But it also means I can add new features. I intend to allow you to log in to any part of the site with the same login that you use for the forums and then allow you to access special content (like games I'm making that are still in testing). I figure why have two signups? So, soon, you will be able to log into this site with your forum logins (will have to relogin to use the forums, but you use the forums signup page and then can log into both with the same username and password.) Enjoy the lack of new features, but know that I am future safe.

MOVIE REVIEW!

Author: Kevin Date: 1/06/08 Time: 5:03PM

I just finished my first movie review... and I promise they will get better. I decided I didn't really know what I was looking for during the film so I'm going to make up a list of criteria that I can comment on to make the rating proper. Deducting and adding points for this or that. You should read it and tell me what you think. Don't Worry! I've decided to try and not spoil any movies in these reviews, so there is nothing about the story in there, except that it's glorious.

Comment Forms added to Appropriate Pages

Author: Kevin Date: 12/30/07 Time: 8:15AM

If you click on some of the pages on the left navigation bar (like the randomnesses and the projects section) and then go into thier sub files (like the page for the mp3 renaming software) you will see the new comment form at the bottom of the pages. This allows users to write whatever they want and it will be added under the comment section of that page. I will keep an eye out for anything vulgar and I would prefer that bugs go to the forums, but other than that have a ball. I had to learn two new languages to accomplish this, but didn't take too long. I am, however, very happy it's finished. I am still working on some of the formatting. It doesn't look quite right, but I'll be able to modify that later.

Mp3 Organizing Software Up and Functional!

Author: Kevin Date: 12/28/07 Time: 6:32AM

My software for renaming and reorganzing Mp3s based on their tags is up and fully functional. Download it Here It allows you to customize the desired output name using variables such as %TrackName and %Artist. It also copies the music to a new folder where it is organized into subfolders based on ArtistName and AlbumName. I think it is a pretty handy piece of software. I know I had a lot of tracks that were named properly in my media player library, but the file names made it impossiblle to navigate. Well no more. This is a free alternative to Mp3 Tag and Rename which I believe goes for around $20. I know, you guys love me! :)

Believe it or not!

Author: Kevin Date: 12/22/07 Time: 7:56AM

There are 19 Randomness posts up todate, One piece of software (good software too mind you), Fully Functional Forums (the 3 F's of the Web), and no dead links (that I am aware of). That means, that as of right now, I am declaring KreepyIndividual.com a functional website! This is very exciting... It means that I actually managed to semi-complete something I started working on. Couple this achievment with that PPC thing I built and I have had a pretty productive 2 days. And if your wondering about all the 6-9AM posts I've been making, I'm not an early riser, I just haven't been to sleep yet. Actually, come to think of it, I haven't seen the sun in 3 days, I've been sleeping from about 10AM-5PM and I am currently residing in a basement which means no windows. I think I've actually become whiter than before.... Wow.

First Piece of Software Posted!

Author: Kevin Date: 12/21/07 Time: 9:00AM Updated: 12/22/07

In the Projects section you can find my Media Manager for the Pocket PC. NOW WITH SHUFFLE AND FULLY CONFIGURABLE TO USE WHATEVER HOTKEYS YOUR MEDIA APP USES! It basically acts as a remote control for you Media Player on your computer. It's pretty nice because I use my computer to listen to a lot of music and now I can change the song from anywhere through SMS. It was a good deal of work, but I wanted to learn how to program for Windows Mobile. I think it was a worthwhile effort. Tell me what you think if you have a Pocket PC running Windows Mobile 5/6 and have tried it out. I hope to have more software posted soon as well as a few reviews, it has been a busy few days trying to get this all running. It's having all this spare time and nothing to do that is actually getting me in a productive mood again. Look out world!

Randomness Up and Functional

Author: Kevin Date: 12/20/07 Time: 8:11AM

The php code I wrote for my randomness section is up and working, so give it a look. I wrote the first randomness of the series up real quick (just wishing everyone merry christmas and telling of what is to come) but it will get much more entertaining later I promise, the code was the big part. There is only one randomness page and it will dynamically load a randomness depending on what variable is in the title bar. (If you click Start at the Start it will make that number 1, if you click latest, you will see whatever number is the latest one) Anyway, I hope to have more content on here in the next few days, It's only been several years in the making, no worse than the wait for Team Fortress 2 I assure you.

New Layout

Author: Kevin Date: 12/20/07 Time: 6:28AM

Only took 4 years to get it looking this good. No more temporary place holder for once. Now just to get everything else up and running, only this page actually works as of yet so I don't recommend trying out the links unless you like 404 pages and I don't have a custom one so don't bother :) but here's to actually doing something more productive than sleep for once.