All posts by Eugene Dullaard

New gadget to play with

Archos TV ConnectIt’s called the Archos TV Connect, which essentially is a tablet without a screen and battery, it has the rest of the connectors and as an extra a fixed network port which makes streaming 1080p no issue at all. As a screen you would normally use a TV or otherwise a monitor provided it comes with an HDMI input. On the picture you see the unit on top of the television and the remote in front of the TV. The remote includes a keyboard, game input and also can function as a fly mouse.

A have it for a couple of weeks and the device works fine. No problems with it thus far. Replaced the launcher with Smart Launcher Pro as this has no need for swiping and is more a point and click interface which serves the fly mouse well and it has a quicklaunch facility on its homescreen which is visible in the picture as well. Turn on click what you want to do which in case of a TV connected device is watching media of one form or another or video conferencing. The camera does the job however it is similar to what you find on a tablet and it would have been nice to have one which would deliver a sharper image on a 1080p display. The other side will not notice it I guess but if you use the standard camera app it is clearly visible the camera is on the lower end of the spectrum. That’s also all I can find as a downside to this device. I’ll have some more fun with it in the future, it’s greatest feature is acting as an endpoint for Youtube videos which I can select on my phone and then play on the TV. In the near future ‘Netflix’ will most likely be added as well besides the DLNA compliant Archos audio and video apps which currently connect to local storage. For those of you with older AC-3/DTS receivers, there is no seperate SPDIF or Toshlink connector and if your TV doesn’t pass on the full surround signal you might be left with plain stereo sound.The street price is a little over 133 Euros at the time of writing and I wouldn’t be surprised in a few months time it will be 99 Euros or something close to that. Enough of that as there is another gadget that needs some attention, the Leap Motion.

And a new homepage

htmlThe redirect to portal.dullaard.nl that was there on the www.dullaard.nl website since 2004 has now been replaced by a Modern UI homepage. This page is so modern it was written with notepad (and nano or vi after it was moved to its Linux based host) and should work with any browser that got released after 1998. On the other hand I’ve not written html pages since that period so thus far didn’t have to learn anything new. It has no CSS, javascript or any of the other features. It’s just a table formatted to remain centered on a screen. It can be squeezed a bit but the table backgrounds disappear on the right hand side which is the only drawback thus far. Maybe look into getting the tables fixed and as such allow for some sidescroll action or otherwise any expansion goes towards the bottom or in between but it will be a vertical scroller if things get added along the way. Anyway take a look at the source and you know what I mean by ahum… modern.

A lot of stuff is still pointing to the old portal pages, those will all be moved in due time to either secondary pages  on their own or pages in one of our blogs.

Update (September 2014): The tables cannot be squeezed any longer they are now a fixed width. Language specific versions for Dutch and Simplified Chinese are added. Sunny still has to check mistakes in the Chinese version so any errors in there are mine at the moment. Some links will revert back to the English version as the language specific version still needs to be created.

Update (July 2015): The above remark on not using JavaScript is no longer valid, it now contains a little bit of JavaScript to make the page clickable per tile rather than just the text itself.

First Post on the new Blog

A continuation from the previous Windows Sharepoint Services based blog. Which I wanted to migrate for a long period to Sharepoint Foundation 2010, however the ending of Technet subscriptions forced me in looking for other alternatives that do not expire every three months to half a year or cost a fortune to maintain. I did use Technet mostly for testing but also the services that you see on the outside where build on the subscription. All of these will slowly but surely be moved to Open Source for most of the functionality used by myself and members of the family. As at writing I’m still mostly a Windows System Engineer the majority of the hardware resources in use will still be dedicated for prototyping solutions based on a diversity of software coming from Redmond, however the more continues parts of the deal are now Linux based. I doubt that Microsoft will revise the policies around Technet as it was used for pirating a lot. However since I don’t have much time to test things within the time limits that Microsoft set, there is a small penalty which currently relates directly back to my work. Or I’ll simply introduce the solutions which I now build privately to work………… Anyway I hope to make same more contributions over time compared to last few years and see if I can move over all the old entries that are currently still in the Windows Sharepoint Services Portal while retaining their metadata.

ownCloud, resolve your Dropbox issue

owncloudSomehow I doubt that, but it will be the next experiment. Clients for Linux, MacOSX and Windows but also Android and iOS. The mobile ones are paid, currently going for € 0.79. For an experiment this is still affordable :-).

The features seem impressive, so lets give it a go. A dropbox clone that comes at 79 cents for the Android bit with storage limits that I can set myself is always welcome….. Bye bye dropbox or better yet, include it in ownCloud which seem to be a possibility.

Password generator function

Here is my take on a Microsoft Powershell password generator function. You can control which characters are used within the $chars variable if you want to change the default. I left out some characters to avoid issues with generated passwords and thus far didn’t run into problems. The code is documented by itself and you can copy and paste it into your own function script or create an independent New-Password.ps1 file.

#requires -version 2

<#
.SYNOPSIS
Program  : Password Generator (New-Password)
Author   : Eugene Dullaard
Date     : 23-Dec-2012
        - Initial Script
Update   : 25-May-2013
        - Added Regular Expression for checking output (complexity)
        - Added default length of 8 if no length has been supplied
        - Throw error if password is not meeting minimal length

New-Password generates a password out of predefined characters for a specified length.
.DESCRIPTION
New-Password generates a password out of predefined characters for a specified length. The generated password is always complex, the minimal lenght is 3 characters, there is no maximum specified. If no value is given it generates an 8 character password. You can modify the script if you want to remove or add characters that can be used, currently confusing characters like lowercase L, capital O and zero are not used.
.EXAMPLE
New-Password -Length 12 will give you a password with the length of 12 characters. New-Password will give you a password with a default lenght of 8 characters. You need to supply a Length if you desire a password with a different length.
.EXAMPLE
$Password = New-Password 8 will store an eight character password into the $password variable.
#>

function New-Password
  {
    param ([INT]$Length=8)

    # $chars contains the variables you would like to use in your password

    begin {$chars="abcdefghijkmnopqrstuvwxyz*[];,.()<>!-+=_123456789ABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZ"}

    process
      {
        # Check length of password

        if ($Length -le 2) {Throw "Password too short"}

        # Start Loop to check if password matches complexity

        do
          {
            # Make sure the variable containing the password is empty
            # in case of failing to meet complexity criteria

            $RandomPassword = ""

            # Password creation process using a loop for the given length
            # adding one character each turn

            for ($a=1; $a -le $Length; $a++)
              {$RandomPassword += $chars[(Get-Random -Maximum $chars.Length)]}
          }
        until ($randompassword -match "^(?=.*\d)(?=.*[a-z])(?=.*[A-Z])(?=.*[^a-zA-Z0-9])(?!.*\s)")
      }

    # Return the created password

    end {return $RandomPassword}
  }

Sound issues on Sony STR-DE475 receiver

Relays on the main PCBI’ve had this receiver for quite a while now and it served me well but lately it started acting up where the center speaker and the subwoofer would start to drop out from time to time. The usual hit would bring it back and there was always a clicking sound when it happened. The clicking sound normally is related to electronic relays which are shown in the first picture (The blue ‘boxes’ are the relays in this case). A little bit of searching on the internet revealed that contact problems are a known problem with this receiver and resoldering the connection points of the relays fixes the problem. Bottom part of the main PCBOnce I opened up the receiver there are three relays which I suspect each controls two channels of the receiver being center and sub (and my problem area), front left and right and as last rear left and right. In order to fix the problem you will have to take the whole unit apart, if you aren’t sure you can piece it together use a digital camera or a smartphone to take some pictures before you start so you can see where all connections went. After you removed all the components and have the main PCB in front of you, you can look at the front side where the relays are and on the back which connections need your attention. Each relay has six connections and just heating them up should be enough. In my case I needed some additional tin for one of the connections, maybe this will be the case for you too. After finishing this you can assemble the unit and test the fruits of your labour. So far it is working out for my unit just fine.

Ordered one

Dear  Eugene,

Order time:  May 30, 2012 7:34 AM

Order ID:  xxx16xxx.

Your pre-order from Leap Motion has been confirmed. Note that your credit card will not be charged until your order has been shipped. We will notify you by email as soon as the devices are ready to ship.

Once we are ready to ship the Leap, you will receive an invoice and tracking number for the package.

If you have any questions about your order, please contact support at leapmotion.com.

Thanks!