This is a question I've posed in the Ubuntu forums, but I haven't found the answer yet. I've got a great little IP security camera - the Y-Cam. It's Internet accessible, so it can email me photos of any suspicious behaviour. It will also stream video and audio to a number of devices - including mobiles. Under Linux, it's very easy to get the video and audio via mplayer. mplayer…
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Two quick patches which should be in the next version of Calibre PHP. Adding File Size This shows the sizes of the eBook files. Screenshot shows a demonstration using the free "Hacking The BBC" eBook. (more…) …
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(These are mostly notes to myself!) I love Calibre, it's the perfect eBook management tool. It comes with a built in WWW server so you can easily access your library on the go. The only problem is that this really only works if you have a single machine dedicated to Calibre. For various reasons, I don't have a single machine. I have a desktop, laptop, and server. The Calibre Library is just…
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Every so often I find a device which - inexplicably - doesn't include Linux support. I've been very impressed with how well Ubuntu runs on the Lenovo ThinkPad X200. Everything worked out of the box - with the exception of the fingerprint reader (AuthenTec AES2810). Now, I know that fingerprint readers can easily be defeated by jelly-babies, but it annoys me when something doesn't work. The…
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For the last few weeks I've been unable to run Spotify in Linux using WINE. I was continually getting a crash with this error message: Unhandled page fault on read access to 0x00000068 at address 0x7bc34e57 After lots of fruitless digging around, I discovered that the issue is with the Facebook integration! The fix is simple. Visit the Facebook Applications Page, remove Spotify. I've noted…
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Yes, yes, yes, the title is linkbait - but it's not inaccurate. Let me explain.... I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Linux user. All my machines run some variant of Linux, usually Ubuntu. So, when a new client asked me to to use Windows XP I nearly quit on the spot! But, after a week of using the ageing OS, it strikes me there are a number of things that XP does better than Ubuntu. I was able to…
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I've been looking for a way to manage my backups. Burning DVDs and then leaving them around the house doesn't strike me as a sensible way to preserve my data any more. I just want a simple way to thrust my files onto the cloud with the minimum of fuss. The two big contenders I could find are Ubuntu One and Dropbox. Both allow me to map a drive and seamlessly sync my files just by copying them …
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I gave a quick talk at BarCamp Brigton about how to hack the Amazon Kindle 3G. These hacks come in two flavours - easy and very easy. Very Easy - Pictures Wouldn't it be great to view pictures on your Kindle? Well? OK - pictures, perhaps not so much - but comics? Yes please! For best results, image files should be the same resolution as the Kindle. 600px * 800px - and grey-scale. Let's use…
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Sauntering down Oxford Street, Mauricio Reyes spotted Nokia's secret Android plans. Nokia phones "running" Android Is this just a hapless Photoshop mistake - or a sign of things to come?!?!?!?! (more…) …
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I'm a huge fan of Paul Battley's iplayer-dl. In brief, it downloads videos from iPlayer by pretending to be an iPhone. The .MP4 files it grabs are suitable for playback on most mobile devices (480 x 272 and stereo audio). It also downloads radio programmes as .MP3 files. I was having a bit of trouble installing it on my XNAS - running Xebian Linux, so I've written this as an aide-mémoire. I …
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I wander around the world in a perpetual state of confusion. Why is the world the way it is? Why do people make bad decisions? Why - when there are so many better alternatives - do people choose the worst of all possible worlds? Rather than getting bogged down in philosophy, I refer to the reason people choose Microsoft Windows to do anything public facing. Advertisers obviously care…
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So, I've hit my first snag with the Humm Duet Energy monitor. As I mentioned in my first post, the device doesn't have any Internet connectivity. Instead it records everything onto an SD card. In order to visualise the data, I have to manually upload the files to the Green Energy Options MyEnergy site. Rather than a simple web based uploader - GEO have decided to go with Adobe Air as their pl…
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