After hacking the Nokia 5800 phoneplugin and turning off contact sync in iSync I got older firmware versions (V10, V11 and V12) to sync my calendars. This was the most important thing for me, but still very annoying.

First download Nokia-N97.phoneplugin.zip. Extract to ~/Library/PhonePlugins/ as usual. Now pair your phone with bluetooth and select the option to enable iSync. Open iSync and turn off contacts sync. It should now sync calendars properly. This is where I’d been up to V20.

To get contacts to sync you need to reset the contacts database. Insert a MicroSD card into your phone and do a backup of your contacts from the phone’s “File Mgr” app. Now immediately restore just the contacts, the phone will reboot. Turn on contacts sync in iSync and it should work great =)

Enjoy!

Package installation

Install the required packages:

# aptitude install e2fsprogs cryptsetup

Partitioning

Use your favourite partitioning tool, for example fdisk or cfdisk to set aside a whole partition with enough space to store your data.

Erase

This step is optional. For complete security you want the contents of the disk to be random before you start using it. Use the badblocks tool to do this.

# badblocks -c 10240 -s -w -t random -v /dev/sdX9

Format

The luksformat tool will format a partition to be used with LUKS (Linux Unified Key Setup) and then create a filesystem on it.

# luksformat -t ext3 /dev/sdX9

crypttab and fstab

Now all that remains is to a line in each of these config files.

Add this line to /etc/crypttab:

myname /dev/sdX9 none luks

The crypttab file is examined by the system during boot. Each line maps a real encrypted device file (/dev/sdX9) to a virtual decrypted device file (/dev/mapper/myname). Once you’ve added done this run the following command to actually set up the mapping:

# /etc/init.d/cryptdisks restart

Now you can set up that virtual device file to be mounted like any other. For example, the following command would mount your filesystem:

# mount /dev/mapper/myname /mnt

Note that you should probably use partition UUIDs (UUID=XXXXX) in place of device file names (/dev/sdX9) in your crypttab for a more robust system. The easiest way to find these is by running:

# ls -l /dev/disks/by-uuid

Add a line like this to /etc/fstab

/dev/mapper/myname /path/to/mountpoint ext3 defaults 0 2

The Fink project has two components. First, the port of Debian’s apt-get tools to Mac OS X combined with a binary package repository for the stable distribution.

Second, the ‘fink’ command line tool. It generates .deb packages from a source package description (located in /sw/fink/dists). Once generated you can move these packages between machines and install them with apt-get or dpkg as you would in Debian. This can save rebuilding from source.

Next the infamous stable vs unstable distributions. Unstable in Fink has the same meaning as it does with Debian. Don’t be too scared of using unstable. It won’t make your system crash. What it will do is have up to date packages (in most cases). It will get more frequent updates, meaning you’ll have more to recompile more often. Because of this, if you’re using the unstable distribution there tends not to be any prebuilt binaries so installation can take longer than in Debian. Also note these more recent packages may have had less testing, so sometimes they may not install.

One other thing you should know about is a neat package called ‘debfoster’. It’ll help you clean out unused packages and libraries. One of the consequences of Fink unstable building from source is that you often get lots of development packages installed that you don’t need anymore.

Just install debfoster and run it as root, then answer either y(es), n(o) or p(rune) to keep a package and its deps, not keep, or remove a package and all it’s deps. It’s quite clever. Give it a shot.

Finally, remember Fink is a volunteer project that you can contribute to. If you find a missing or out of date package, feel free to dig in to the .info file and update it. This is often as easy as just changing the version number. See the Fink website for a good packaging tutorial and reference.

This post describes how to fix the function keys and swap command (windows or ’super’) keys with the alt (or option) keys.

This command will fix the function keys, it saves you pressing fn-F1 whenever you want F1. The first command is for older kernels, the second is for version 2.6.28 or later.

# echo 2 > /sys/module/hid/parameters/pb_fnmode
# echo 2 > /sys/module/hid_apple/parameters/fnmode

Then add that line to your /etc/rc.local file, somewhere before the exit 0 at the end, so that it gets run on startup.

Next to swap the Command/Alt keys using xmodmap. I’m aware you can do this from the Gnome Keyboard Settings panel, but I’ve found this method works better. Particularly when combined with synergy.

Create a file called ~/.xmodmaprc with this inside:

clear mod1
keycode 115 = Alt_L
keycode 116 = Alt_R
keycode 64 = Super_L
keycode 113 = Super_R
add mod1 = Alt_L Alt_R

On another computer I’ve found this worked:

clear mod1
keycode 133 = Alt_L
keycode 134 = Alt_R
keycode 64 = Super_L
keycode 108 = Super_R
add mod1 = Alt_L Alt_R

Now run to activate the new keys, run:

$ xmodmap ~/.xmodmaprc

Don’t forget to add it to your list of startup programs. If you’re using Gnome, look at System->Preferences->Startup Applications
Otherwise you can just add it to ~/.xsession

To find the keycodes above I used the xev program. Try running it from a console. It shows you all X11 events that the xev window receives, including key presses/releases.

Hulu is a website that offers commercial-supported streaming video of TV shows and movies from NBC, Fox and many other networks and studios. Currently Hulu is only available from within the United States of America.

If you want to be notified of updates to this post, subscribe to the comments feed.

This is kind of lame. One of the fundamental principles of the internet is global access. That’s why we have the world wide web, not the America-web.

So, in that spirit, here’s how to make Hulu fully functional on your local network and accessible from any ordinary web browser.

Requirements

• A machine in the US that you can run programs and serve web pages from.
• A Linux machine at home that shares your net connection

For my friends

You can skip the USA proxy configuration and just use 72.232.203.84 everywhere you would put that server’s IP.
Make sure you email me and I’ll add your local IP address to the allow list for the RTMP proxy.

USA Proxy Configuration

First we need to set up your US server to forward some selected HTTP sites as well as the Flash RTMP video streams. Do these steps on the server in the US:

• Create a file, hulu_proxy.ini with these contents:

  [proxy]
  mode = proxy
  listen_port = 9997
  
  [allowed]
  host1 = YOUR_LOCAL_IP_OR_DOMAIN
  

• Download proxy.py and run this command to start forwarding requests on port 9997 from the allowed hosts.

  proxy.py -d hulu_proxy.ini

• Create an HTTP virtual server for these domains: releasegeo.hulu.com
• Download proxy.rb and path.cgi to these virtual hosts.
• Edit path.cgi to end with

  proxyTo "http://" + ENV["HTTP_HOST"], False

• Now set up a rewrite rule to forward / to /path.cgi for each of these virtual hosts.

Local network

If you have a Linux router you can configure it to forward all packets destined for Hulu from inside your network to your US server.
Follow these steps on your LAN’s router or your on any Linux computer:

• Add this to your /etc/hosts file (these addresses may be out of date, see the last section in this blog):

  XXX.YYY.ZZZ.AAA releasegeo.hulu.com
  205.241.224.55 cp41752.edgefcs.net # HULU
  205.241.224.45 cp39465.edgefcs.net # HULU
  205.241.224.158 cp51756.edgefcs.net # HULU
  205.241.224.37 cp47346.edgefcs.net # HULU
  

  where XXX.YYY.ZZZ.AAA is the IP address of your US server.

• If you’re using dnsmasq for your LAN’s DNS server ensure that it reads these addresses from your and resolves them for hosts on your network.
• Add this to your firewall config for Linux:

  grep 'HULU$' /etc/hosts | awk '{print $1;}' | while read huluip; do
      iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i eth0 -p tcp \
          --destination "$huluip"  --dport 1935 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 9997
      iptables -t nat -A OUTPUT -p tcp \
          --destination "$huluip" --dport 1935 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 9997
  done
  

• Add this to your firewall config for OSX:

  grep 'HULU$' /etc/hosts | awk '{print $1;}' | while read huluip; do
      ipfw add 50000 fwd 127.0.0.1,9997 \
          tcp from any to "$huluip" dst-port 1935
  done
  

• Create a file, hulu_interceptor.ini with these contents:

  [proxy]
  mode = interceptor
  listen_port = 9997
  host = XXX.YYY.ZZZ.XXX
  port = 9997
  

• Download proxy.py and run this command to start capturing and forwarding the Flash RTMP port to your US server.

  proxy.py -d hulu_interceptor.ini

Some ISPs in Australia (Internode, iiNet and others) override the DNS entries for Akamai servers. This is why the modification to /etc/hosts is needed. Note that using the rules above, only traffic to specific Akamai Flash RTMP servers will go through your US server. So unmetered ABC iView content will remain unmetered. However, if Hulu adds new servers to this list, or if I’ve missed some, then some videos may not work and the hosts file will need updating.

If you are having difficulty viewing videos and you suspect that this is the issue, try running this tcpdump command to see whether your connections are being sent to a server within your ISPs address range:

# tcpdump -i INTERFACE port 1935

You’ll then need to find the corresponding domain name and the ‘correct’ IP to add to /etc/hosts

Automatic /etc/hosts updating

The /etc/hosts file is used to know which IP addresses to route over the tunnel to USA. My USA server resolves the Hulu video hosts that I know about and makes them available at this URL: http://delx.net.au/files/huluhosts.txt. This is automatically updated every hour.

I use a daily cronjob on my client machines in order to keep their hosts file up to date. Adapt this to your needs.

#!/bin/bash

cp /etc/hosts /etc/hosts.hulubak &&
grep -v HULU /etc/hosts > /etc/_hosts.new &&
curl -s http://delx.net.au/files/huluhosts.txt >> /etc/_hosts.new &&
chmod 0644 /etc/_hosts.new &&
mv /etc/_hosts.new /etc/hosts &&

# Ensure you clear the previous Hulu firewall rules and restart your
# DNS server (if you use one)
/root/hulutables
/etc/init.d/dnsmasq restart > /dev/null

I was aware you could set a default and default-push repository in .hg/hgrc, in fact whenever you clone a repository a default remote path is created for you.

You can actually put arbitrary names in there. For example, I have a repository “chatbots” that I cloned from Katie’s repository: http://katharos.id.au/hg/chatbots". I want to be able to push and pull changes from my repository as well as pull from her’s without typing the full path out at any time.


[paths]
default = ssh://hg@delx.net.au/chatbots
katie = http://katharos.id.au/hg/chatbots


The above snippet goes in the repositories .hg/hgrc, and I can now run commands like this:

$ hg pull katie
$ hg push

This pulls any new changes in from Katie’s repository and pushes them to the default, mine.

There’s a Git repository with the patch included here:
http://delx.net.au/git/offlineimap

I followed the plan John Goerzen suggested in offlineimap ticket 18. Here’s an overview of the changes.

• Use imaplib2 as it implements the IDLE command and a few other nice things. This is written by Piers Lauder, the author Python’s standard imaplib.
• Some small changes to the OfflineIMAP code were needed for it to work with imaplib2.
• Added a config parameter ‘idlefolders’ to specify a list of mailboxes to monitor. This parameter forces holdconnectionopen, keepalive and maxconnections to be sane values.
• Hijack the keepalive thread. Use the available connections for IDLE, one on each of the given mailboxes. If there are leftover connections we send NOOP as before.
• Added documentation to the sample offlineimap.conf

Last night I went to Emma Hunt’s NYE party at her parents’ place in Milson’s Point. We had great views of the fireworks there. They were quite nice, particularly the heart shaped ones at the earlier 9pm show.

This year I’ll be doing a PhD, probably on something to do with computer security models and user interfaces. I got an Australian Postgraduate Award (APA) scholarship which will be great to keep me solvent for the next three years.

Have a great year everybody!

The previous two trips were planned afterward but we ended up doing StarCity last. We had a really nice relaxing few days. Breakfasted at the Garden Buffet, got pampered with a massage at the Star Spa and just generally relaxed and enjoyed ourselves.

Greg, Katie, Steve, Julieanne & I shared one apartment while Thomas, Tomek, Emma Fitzgerald & her boyfriend Matt shared the other. It was a great group of people, mostly CompSci with a bit of Physics and Math. As a Music major Julieanne was worried she’d be left out, but she’s just as geeky as the rest of us and got on well with everybody :)

With 9 people we took 3 cars up, nobody wanted to be squished into the back of a car with three people for a 12 hour trip from Sydney to the Gold Coast. 7 of us were drivers, but 6 of those could only drive automatics and Greg’s car is a manual. So, he had the fun task of teaching Katie & I how to drive a manual a few days before we left. It was more difficult than I expected from playing Daytona at Timezone :) However, by the end of the trip I was at the point where I hardly stalled it at all!

On the first night we walked into town and had dinner at an ok restaurant that cost a lot. They refused to give us tap water and made us pay for bottles! Evil! Apparently having a liquor license in Queensland doesn’t require you to serve free water, unlike in NSW. We then walked back home along the beach, quite pretty at night time.

A bunch of us visited the beach one day. I sat on a towel reading Mindstar Rising and minded everybody’s things while they went swimming. I don’t particularly like swimming in the beach, too much sand. I do enjoy the view though :)

Katie & Julieanne made a sand mermaid, while Thomas and Steve attempted to write on the sand all the most important mathematical and physical equations for the benefit of future generations.

On Wednesday the group split into those who wanted to go to a theme park, namely Dreamworld, and those who didn’t. Having already visited Dreamworld several times I opted to give it a miss this time.

Emma, Matt, Steve and I then went bush walking around Mt Tamborine for a few hours instead.

Earlier that day Steve & I spent a few hours watching a show called Andromeda that Katie brought along on DVD. It’s a cheesy but fun scifi show, a bit like Star Trek but not. Interestingly they seem to attempt to make the physics more real, for example energy weapons don’t have a beam that travels slower than the speed of light. However the writers don’t seem to understand black holes particularly well. It also makes the classical mistake of sound transmitting through the vacuum of space. Still fun to watch though.

Later in the trip almost all of us went bush walking again. This time in the Lamington national park. It had fantastic views of a valley with a river winding through it. We also saw a little family of two wallabies while we were walking around.

We all went kayaking in the rivers nearby for about an hour. Had a great time, although it was quite tiring. I also forgot to put sunscreen on my legs and they got a nasty burn. Not as bad as Greg though.

For our last day Emma had organised horse riding for all of us. It was the first time I’d been on a horse before and I had a great time. At first I was worried about the smell, but you quickly get used to it.

We had a 3 hour walk around with a short stop in the middle to rest near a creek. There wasn’t really much we had to do for the horses, they all just followed the experienced leaders in front. A couple of times they needed a bit of a kick to get going again though, and they were constantly trying to slow down and snack on bits of plants along the way. My horse had a sore eye and tried to rub it on his leg. As soon as I loosened the reins a little to let him rub his eye more comfortably he jumped straight for the grass! Clever horse :)

The fastest we ever got to was a horse trot, which was fairly jarring because I wasn’t experienced enough to move with the horse. I ended up just bouncing rather uncomfortably on the saddle!

The whole trip was lots of fun. It was great spending time with all my friends, especially as I’ll not be seeing as much of them all this year. Thanks for a great time everyone!