Ping.fm in Perl

Using the fabulous ping.fm? Want to use your own Custom URL? Want to use Perl? Use this!

The attached script takes only status updates from ping.fm and writes it out to a file. In my case, this file is then "included" by apache dynamically on the front page of my site.

Bit rough and ready, but hey, it only took 60 seconds :)

   1: #!/usr/bin/perl

   2:  

   3: use strict;

   4: use warnings;

   5:  

   6: use CGI qw/:standard/;

   7: use CGI::Carp 'fatalsToBrowser';

   8:  

   9: my $file = '/path/to/my/file.include';

  10:  

  11: open my $FH, '>', $file or die "Unable to open $file\n";

  12:  

  13: if ( param() ) {

  14:  

  15:        print header;

  16:        my $method = param('method');

  17:        my $title = param('title');

  18:        my $message = param('message');

  19:        

  20:        print $FH "$message";

  21:        

  22: }

  23:  

  24: else {

  25:  

  26:     print header;

  27:     #Do nothing

  28:     

  29: }

  30:  

  31: close $FH;

Posted by Alex at 8:18 PM| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nike+ Sportband Problems

It'll teach me to be an early adopter but I've had nothing but troubles with my Nike+ Sportband since I bought one a few months back.

My first one suffered a "bleeding" crystal display:

I sent this back to Sweatshop and they sent me a new one. A week ago, lo and behold, the bleeding display was back. I dropped them a quick mail and they replied saying that there was a known issue with the very first batch of devices and would I like another one or my money back.

So, I've gone for third time lucky! I can't say enough how good Sweatshop have been in sorting all this out.

The Nike+ utility also seemed to have difficulty in realising that not everyone used Pacific Time on their computers, which meant the time on the device was always -8 hours out. v1.1 seems to have fixed this though.

I've heard some other complaints about the calibration not working, but I've not had much trouble with that.

Anyway, I shall hold onto my wallet next time :)

Posted by Alex at 1:03 PM| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Domain Registry of America

The DROA are at it again and I'm the lucky recipient :)

For more information take a look at http://www.synuk.com/droa/ but definitely don't sign up with them!

I'm half tempted to stake out MBE on Gloucester Road to see if anyone picks up the mail, but I assume it's just a forwarding operation. Scum.

Posted by Alex at 6:30 PM| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nice ASUS kit

Leaving aside the awful Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee PC I really like the Aiguru S2. It will certainly go well with the as-yet-unreleased Essentio CS5110 which I'm rather drawn to as a new HTPC and Blu-Ray player.

Posted by Alex at 2:11 PM| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nike Sportband and Garmin 405: first impressions

I went to the London Marathon expo last night to check out the Garmin 405 primarily. I have to say that I wasn't impressed. Even though the actual diameter of the bezel is quite small, the initial part of the strap (closest to where it joins the bezel) is rigid - I'm guessing to hold some electronics or the GPS antenna. So, on someone with small wrists like me, it looks pretty stupid as it sticks out the side of your arm!

Also, the touch sensitive bezel seems overly sensitive and a bit clunky to use and reacts to you brushing it (I'd probably knock it against my leg a few times a run!).

All in all, I wasn't impressed so I didn't splurge.

All was not lost though, as Nike were there in force and I had a nice demo from a lady on the stand for the new SportBand which interfaces directly to the Nike+ foot sensor, so no iPod needed. And at £40, I couldn't resist so I've bought one. They do look very sexy indeed and definitely suit the more petite of us.

Posted by Alex at 1:33 PM| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My first WebSlice

You can now subscribe to my status updates via a WebSlice if you're brave enough to use an IE8 beta. Head over the front page if you are and give it a go :)

Posted by Alex at 12:43 PM| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

New Nike+ "watch"

So, it's not guide the Aero+ we were expecting, but Nike have released a device that neatly sidesteps the need for an iPod Nano to use Nike+ foot sensors with.

Looks like fun, but I think the Garmin 405 may well be the one for me when it finally arrives.

[via engadget]

Posted by Alex at 1:43 PM| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

BBC digital terrestrial test card

This, frankly, is the coolest thing ever: http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=728920

The result?

Posted by Alex at 7:34 PM| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Garmin's new Forerunner 405

I'm liking this lots:

Garmin's new Forerunner 405 puts the 'watch' back in 'GPS watch' - Engadget

Posted by Alex at 11:02 AM| Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Power cut hits Rackspace UK

Arses :( Sorry for the downtime this afternoon!

Power cut hits Rackspace UK

Posted by Alex at 7:26 PM| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nike AMP+ spotted!

I saw the AMP+ in the Nike Town on Oxford Street this afternoon, but I didn't buy it. I figured £60 was a bit too excessive and it doesn't look quite as good in the flesh. Plus, I'm holding out for the Aero+ that has a proper display...

Posted by Alex at 4:35 PM| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nike AMP+ soon to be available in the UK?

It seems to be on the UK Nike Store, albeit out of stock.

However there only seems to be only the one colour option (unlike the 4 in the US) and it's hugely overpriced: £60 compared to $80. Thanks a bunch Nike wankers.

Posted by Alex at 11:26 AM| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

EDGE & UC

How nice, my smartphone is now picking up O2's EDGE network at home... I'd seen it in a few places around London (like Canary Wharf) but I'm surprised to see it out here in the sticks ;)

Should come in handy to run my mobile Communicator client on, having just seen how cool it was at the launch event today. I'm really enthusiastic about Office Comms Server and I just hope our little pilot goes well at work and we get to deploy it on a grand scale :) I really want a Roundtable to play with though!

Posted by Alex at 10:34 PM| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Google DMCA

How odd - when searching for "GMF" (I wondered who they were as they sponsor the Rugby World Cup) on Google - you get this:

Click for biggerer

Interestingly, you get the same error if you use google.co.uk where the DMCA doesn't apply...

More at http://www.chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi?sID=898

Posted by Alex at 10:08 PM| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nike Amp+ on sale

In the US at any rate - $79 seems pretty good value to me. I'm still waiting for those other Nike+ watches though...

Posted by Alex at 8:25 AM| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

To buy or not to buy

£899 for one of those? Probably not. Maybe if they had a really nice camera in it, GPS and 3G then it might be worth it, but not as it stands.

Posted by Alex at 6:52 PM| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

New Google Reader features

I noticed that a new search box has appeared in Google Reader today. Sure enough, they've added a few new little tweaks to it. Yay!

Posted by Alex at 7:31 PM| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

New iPod Nanos & Nike Plus

It seems that there have been a few tweaks to the Nike+ UI on the new iPod Nanos. I don't believe that there are any new features, although if you own any of the rather lovely Nike+ running gear the new Nano isn't going to fit in any of the special compartments.

Posted by Alex at 1:11 PM| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nike+ Amp+ watch finally surfaces

You have to love the FCC - these are the first pictures of the Amp+ along with its manual and other goodies.

I just hope the Flight+ (or Aero+, or whatever it was supposed to be called) with its proper screen appears soon too.

Posted by Alex at 1:39 PM| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Vista performance & reliability updates - now available

The Vista updates that were leaked last week are now (officially) available to download from Microsoft. They are not yet on Windows Update.

Installing as we speak :)

Update for Windows Vista for x64-based Systems (KB938979)

This is a performance update. Install this update to improve the performance of Windows Vista in certain scenarios.

Update for Windows Vista (KB938194)

This is a reliability update. Install this update to improve the reliability of Windows Vista in certain scenarios.

Update for Windows Vista (KB938979)

This is a performance update. Install this update to improve the performance of Windows Vista in certain scenarios.

Update for Windows Vista for x64-based Systems (KB938194)

This is a reliability update. Install this update to improve the reliability of Windows Vista in certain scenarios.

Posted by Alex at 9:03 PM| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Vista reliability and performance updates

According to Neowin.net the following will be released next patch Tuesday. About bloody time!

938979 Vista Performance and Reliability Pack

This update resolves a number of individual issues which may be affecting some computers running Windows Vista. These issues have been reported by customers using the Error Reporting service, product support, or other means. Installing this update will improve the performance and responsiveness for some scenarios and improves reliability of Windows Vista in a variety of scenarios. Some examples of the improvements contained in this update are:

Improves performance in resuming back to the desktop from the Photo and Windows Energy screensaver.

Resolves an issue where some secured web pages using advanced security technologies may not get displayed in Internet Explorer on Windows Vista.

Resolves an issue where a shared printer may not get installed if the printer is connected to a Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 system and User Access Control is disabled on the Vista client.

Resolves an issue where creating AVI files on Vista may get corrupted.

Improves the performance in calculating the ‘estimated time remaining’ when copying/moving large files.

Improves performance in bringing up Login Screen after resuming from Hibernate.

Resolves an issue where synchronization of offline files to a server can get corrupted.

Resolves a compatibility issue with RAW images created by Canon EOS 1D/1DS Digital SLR Camera which can lead to data loss. This only affects RAW images created by these two specific camera models.

Resolves an issue where a computer can lose its default Gateway address when resuming from sleep mode.

Improves the performance when copying or moving entire directories containing large amounts of data or files.

Improves the performance of Vista’s Memory Manager in specific customer scenarios and prevents some issues which may lead to memory corruption.

938194 Vista Compatibility and Reliability Pack

This update resolves a number of individual issues which may be affecting some computers running Windows Vista. These issues have been reported by customers using the Error Reporting service, product support, or other means. Installing this update will improve the reliability and hardware compatibility of Windows Vista in a variety of scenarios. Some examples of the improvements contained in this update are:

Improved reliability and compatibility of Vista when used with newer graphics cards in several specific scenarios and configurations.

Improved reliability when working with external displays on a laptop.

Increased compatibility with many video drivers.

Improved visual appearance of games with high intensity graphics.

Improved quality of playback for HD-DVD and Blue-Ray disks on large monitors.

Improved reliability for Internet Explorer when some third party toolbars are installed on Vista.

Improved Vista reliability in networking configuration scenarios.

Improved the reliability of Windows Calendar in Vista.

Improved reliability of systems that were upgraded from XP to Vista.

Increased compatibility with many printer drivers.

Increased reliability and performance of Vista when entering sleep and resuming from sleep.

Posted by Alex at 3:06 PM| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Facebook RSS feeds

My facebook RSS feeds suddenly stopped working, so I had to go in and resubscribe to them (facebook uses unique URLs for each viewer) - it seems to be working again now.

I've added in some caching to my miniblog & status boxes up on the site here on the off chance that they were getting pissed off with it getting constantly hit. I know their T&Cs bar scraping:

... you agree not to use the Service or the Site to... use automated scripts to collect information from or otherwise interact with the Service or the Site

But... RSS is all about the automated collection of information from a website by script. What's the difference between my own hand rolled Perl picking up the XML and Google reader for example? Bah.

Posted by Alex at 10:22 AM| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Speedtouch 6.2 firmware

Ignoring all dire warnings about not using the firmware from www.speedtouch.co.uk with my Be* provided router, I've just bumped it up to 6.2.17.5.

As they don't provide any change log all I can tell is:

- It fixes the Vista SMB / CIFS / WLAN problem I had previously
- Update: it also fixes the NTLM authentication problem with IE7, so now you can login to the Speedtouch's web interface using IE.
- It has a new colour scheme:

Posted by Alex at 7:28 PM| Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)

Facebook defeated!

Ah-ha! TAKE THAT Facebook! You should now have a rather fine "miniblog" on the left hand side complete with little pictures, snide comments and an XML RSS feed all of its own.

This is to make up for the fact that I'm not posting as many big, long posts these days but still have the occasional bit of time to post something I've found on the meganet.

Woo!

Posted by Alex at 4:43 PM| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Stupid Facebook

I was going to add a little "mini feed" for my facebook activities, but Facebook trample all over the RSS spec so it's impossible to directly extract the links out of the feed and embed them here - you'd have to get redirected via Facebook first. Bah.

In other news, I'm dreadfully sorry for the lack of posts of late. Working for a bank has its downsides ;)

Posted by Alex at 9:18 PM| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

CPAN

I'm now a fully fledged author on CPAN :)

My first contribution - WWW::Nike::NikePlus - a module that interfaces to the Nike+ running site which allows you to pull out all your run/goal/challenge data.

Go me.

Posted by Alex at 11:22 AM| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Progress with Vista power management

Well, it's been a long running saga but things are actually getting better. I've recently found a new power management option, that governs how Vista behaves when "sharing media". I'm taking this to mean any share on the PC, not just Windows Media style automagic sharing.

Setting it to "allow the computer to sleep" (see below) has dramatically helped in that Vista now goes back to sleep when it's supposed to. So, my media centre PC now wakes up to record a show and then immediately goes back to sleep once it's finished. BRILLIANT!

I still have the little problem of it waking up at 4am every day, but we'll see if this new change helps at all. If not, then I have a little trick up my sleeve...

Posted by Alex at 7:36 PM| Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Alcatel Speedouch 716 & Vista

I have a Speedtouch 716WL and use its inbuilt 802.11g wireless with a few laptops around the house. Recently I got a new Vista tablet and whilst it works great on the wirless for general email & web browsing, I've found that I can't use any SMB shares or remote desktop to any PC on my LAN from my Vista notebook. XP notebooks are fine.

If I remote desktop, it will connect to the destination machine, briefly showing the logon screen before kicking me off saying that the remote computer ended the connection. Trying to browse to SMB shares invariably causes explorer to hang.

I contacted Alcatel about it and they're aware of the problem. The resolution is to switch to using WEP instead of WPA-PSK on the speedtouch. Not a great workaround...

Update: Alcatel have got back to me and said that they're due to release new firmware "shortly" that fixes this. Appendages crossed then...

Posted by Alex at 10:43 AM| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

New Nike+ watches

Now then, according to speculation back in January we were supposed to be able to get our mitts on new Nike+ watches that talk to our running shoes and our iPod yesterday.

Where are they, eh?

Posted by Alex at 1:31 PM| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (2)

Vista Media Centre Update

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932818

It supposedly fixes a host of bugs - how about you release all those fixes regarding USB devices & sleep and slow file copies as well?

Posted by Alex at 7:09 PM| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My kind of alarm clock

The kind that jumps off your bedside table and hides somewhere so you're forced to get out of bed to turn its bleeping off...

[nandahome.com]

Posted by Alex at 12:48 PM| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Stupid Vista DRM

I've been really sceptical about all the naysayers that claim that Vista's inbuilt DRM is somehow going to destroy the fabric of the universe. Or something.

But, when I come to try and watch a DVD on my new Vista Ultimate box in Media Center or Media Player I am greeted with the informative message that:

"Windows Media Player cannot play this DVD because there is a problem with digital copy protection between your DVD drive, decoder and video card. Try installing an updated driver for your Video card."

After quite a lot of digging it transpires that my LiteOn DVD drive (which is quite old) has RPC1 region free firmware, which is unacceptable to Vista. I have now had to take a retrograde step and enforce my DVD drive to obey regions just to get a legit DVD to play. Yes, obviously, I could use VLC or some other player but I don't really see the point in spending money on Vista Ultimate if I can't use all its features.

On top of this, my Casino Royale DVD subjected me to minutes of adverts and PIRACY IS WRONG messages that I couldn't skip. I just bought the DVD, why am I getting lectured at! Why would anyone want to do things "the right way" I don't know...

Bah.

Posted by Alex at 11:10 AM| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Windows Home Server

I'm on the beta of home server, which is supposed to act as a central media storage hub that grows with you, gives remote access and stuff - perfect.

I've just been through the setup and despite the fact that it has a Vista-esque backdrop to start with it soon turns into the familiar server 2003 setup GUI. Then it rebooted into DOS text mode setup titled "windows 2003 small business server". Make your mind up!

Installation did take a fair while and I lost track of the number of times it restarted, but it did eventually get there.

All in all it's pretty decent and I love the remote access stuff. It certainly needs some polishing, but the community seems good so I hope it'll be a good product in the end.

I now need to decide whether to carry on running it - if I do, then I need to get some new cooling kit for my PC as it all sounds like a jet engine at the moment...

Posted by Alex at 3:44 PM| Permalink | Comments (0) | Tra