incubus

Compressed Hard Disk Image

inc — Sat, 29 May 2010 14:27:47 +0000

The commands given below will allow you to create a compressed image of a complete hard disk. Under normal circumstances I would boot from a Linux Live-CD prior to performing these tasks:

dd if=source_disk | gzip > /destination.gz

For example /dev/sda is the source disk and /mnt/usb/image.gz is the destination:

dd if=/dev/sda | gzip > /mnt/usb/hd_image.gz

Then to restore the image:

gzip -dc /mnt/usb/hd_image.gz | dd of=/dev/sda

The format of these commands is very important and if used incorrectly will result in data loss, for which I take no responsibility.

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It’s been along time …

inc — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:28:18 +0000

Well, Open University studies have started already with the first TMA for T224 due in a couple of weeks. Things have been pretty busy of late …

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Update (15/05/2010): The second TMA for T224 is due the end of the week … time is flying by at the moment …

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Update (29/05/2010): The second TMA for T224 is over, time to move onto Block Three (Embedded Systems).

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Update (18/07/2010): The third TMA for T224 is over, unfortunately I did not have time to start yet alone complete this module. It is now time to catch up on this and also complete the final block.

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T209 ECA Result

inc — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 19:25:43 +0000

Finally received my ECA result this morning, did better than I had expected (call me a pessimist if you like). Moving on towards T224 – Computers and Processors starting in February 2010. I wish all fellow T209ers all the best with their results and further studies.

TMA01 (Module 1 – In touch and informed) = 90%
TMA02 (Module 2 – Talking with computers) = 84%
TMA03 (Module 3 – Network management) = 96%
TMA04 (Module 4 – Cyborg) = 93%
TMA05 (Module 5 – Security) = 0% (Did not have sufficient time to complete this module)

CMA41 (Module 1) = 81%
CMA42 (Module 3) = 85%
CMA43 (Module 5) = 0% (Did not have sufficient time to complete this module)

ECA = 77% – Grade 2 PASS.

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Old Linux Discs…

inc — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:13:28 +0000

Found some of my old Linux discs tonight … thought they deserved a mention… dating from 1997 & 1998.

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Panasonic CF-U1 / 2D Barcode Imager

inc — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 10:16:57 +0000

Had a good day Friday, after failing to get relevant information from the manufacturer (been requesting for what seems to be a lifetime). Finally manged to get the 2D barcode imager functional under Linux, what a feeling of accomplishment.

All other significant hardware is supported by the 2.6.30 Gentoo Kernel. However the finger print reader, camera and HSDPA modem have not been tested as they are not required for the application the unit is going to be used for.

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Useful Gentoo Aliases

inc — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 09:15:55 +0000

Just a quick post to save some time when updating your Gentoo system (Portage 2.2_rc51) , please note this is just a starting point, feel free to extend these.

nano ~/.bashrc

if [ -e /etc/bashrc ] ; then
 source /etc/bashrc
fi
alias esync='emerge --sync'
alias eupdate='emerge -uavDN --nospinner --quiet --keep-going --with-bdeps=y world'

To update your system just call the following two commands:

esync
eupdate

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Hosting Provider Changed.

inc — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:49:09 +0000

Just a quick note to inform you that the Hosting Provider for this Web Site changed last night. You may have experienced some outage of the site during this time, please accept our apologies for this.

I have been quite busy over the last couple of months and this is set to continue until Christmas. Hopefully I will get some spare time to post some articles soon.

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Linux – Merge AVI Files

inc — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 18:33:42 +0000

Usually when I need to merge avi files I use avimerge (part of the transcode package), however recently the output of this suffered some serious audio sync issues. So along comes mencoder (part of the mplayer package):

mencoder -oac copy -ovc copy input_1.avi  input_2.avi -o output.avi

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Coders at Work

inc — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 18:12:23 +0000

Just started reading an excellent book (well its good so far), Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming. It is very interesting reading about other coders experiences and how they think.

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Remove OGA Office Not Genuine Notifications (KB949810)

inc — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 13:25:51 +0000

The following slightly modified instructions were taken from http://www.mydigitallife.info, thank you MyDigitialLife.

To uninstall KB949810, just follow these steps:

Go to C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download\8998da55d52b36c0e98ba016ddd50de0\ folder.
Note: The directory may be different on your system, so if not located search for OGANotifier.cab.
Extract OGANotifier.cab with 7-zip to get a file named OGANotifier.msi.
Right click on OGANotifier.msi, and select Uninstall.
Block the update from being installed again in Windows Update.

No more Office Genuine Advantage notification messages will be displayed on your system, regardless of the genuine status of the installed Office software, unless of course you chose to reinstall KB949810.

We do not agree or support the usage of pirated software, in order to purchase a genuine version of Microsoft Office please visit Amazon. This post is merely for information purposes.

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