Cheap UK Android Phone

I bought a cheapo Alcatel OT 983 Android phone to play with, it was only £40 from o2 on pay-as-you-go

Here are the specs...

Enabling mod_rewrite in Apache under Ubuntu Server

Here's some quick instructions on enabling mod_rewrite in Apache under Ubuntu 10.04 Server.

1. sudo a2enmod rewrite
2. sudo vi /etc/apache2/sites-available/default
3. Change "AllowOverride" from "None" to "all" for the /var/www directory.
4. sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

That's it!

Arduino with Sparkfun 7-segment Serial Display

Here's a quick example of getting an Arduino working with a Sparkfun 7-Segment Serial Display.

Installing Peerguardian Linux on Ubuntu 10.10

Here are some quick notes on how to install pgl under Ubuntu 10.10.

Checking video codec information via the command-line

Here are a couple of commands to get he information about a video file in Linux (bitrate etc): -

 ffmpeg -i foo.avi 

 mplayer -vo null -ao null -identify -frames 0 foo.avi 

VirtualBox piix4_smbus Error

VirtualBox 3.2.10 gives me the following error message when booting Ubuntu 10.10:-

piix4_smbus 0000.00.07.0: SMBus base address uninitialized - upgrade bios or use force_addr=0xaddr

This error is caused by VM having no smbus but Ubuntu always trying to load the module. It doesn't affect anything but is a bit annoying - to fix...

Serial connection to Seagate Dockstar via FTDI USB-Serial Cable

Here's a quick summary of how to use a FTDI data cable to connect to a Seagate Dockstar.