Just a small notice this time, I am a bit late, however the first Beta release of Fedora Core 9 was released!

Although I’ve already mentioned which features appeal the most to me in Fedora Core 9, I hadn’t noticed the changes being made to Anaconda. Frequent readers of this blog remember my initial problems with Anaconda, so I’m please to see some progress going on.

One of the most interesting features, to me, is the ability to resize ext2, ex3 and NTFS (!) partitions. The latter being the most interesting for people installing Fedora Core 9 alongside Windows (which I don’t ;-)).

Be sure to grab it and report any problems you find!

Update: Removed the core part, core and extras repositories were merged ever since Fedora 7. I hadn’t realized the effect that this had on the name yet.. *sigh*

Today i succeeded in completing a small Visual basic program that can send instructions via bluetooth to a Nokia (or other AT-commands) cell phones. AT commands where used to communicate directly to the Nokia cell phones. I was struggling for a long time to make a proper connection, i have tried some different Nokia protocols, in fact there are three. The standard At commands, the Mbus and the newer Fbus. There are many sites where you can lookup the supported format.

Although to make a connection with the PC i buy a serial data cable, yes the old serial ones, because we want to connect it lateron to a microcontroller.
To connect it to the pc i must use a usb to serial adapter, because i don’t have a serial port anymore. Like the most of us, i hope ;). Like i said before, i can’t get a proper connection through the cable for a long time, i have tried almost everything. So i came up the idea of using bluetooth instead. It was in fact really easy by then. All the ’simple’ AT commands worked properly. So why didn’t the cable work? I think its about the usb- serial adapter, that have its on drivers. The strange thing is a demo application called: Lylix worked good with (only) the Fbus protocol.

On the other hand, using bluetooth is easier then connecting a cable again and again..

So now the solution or rather called, tutorial:
First check of you (Nokia) phone supports AT commands and have bluetooth. We use a nokia 6021
Second get yourself a bluetooth connection, for example buy a bluetooth dongle.

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It won’t be long until we can welcome Fedora Core 9 into our PC’s onto our hard disks. I’ve already written about the Fedora Core 9 Alpha release, where one could start testing with KDE 4 on Fedora.

Besides KDE 4 there are a lot more interesting things planned for Fedora Core 9. Let’s pinpoint a few interesting changes.
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In this small tutorial or better called experiment we take a look at touch sensors.
Touch sensors are used for faucets, industrial switches and so on. You can imagine a nice solution..

So to get started we look at the components
- QT113-D Touch Sensor (parallax)
- 5 V voltage regulator (if you use a 9V battery
- 1 led for testing
- off course some wires and a test-board
- 2 resistors.
- cap 103 or 104

* additional look at the parallax scheme in the data-sheet on the page:
http://www.parallax.com/

Or just connect the parts like the picture to make a switching touch sensor:

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I recently released PHP4 RPM’s for CentOS 5, claiming they worked fine alongside the stock PHP5 that comes with CentOS 5.

Okey, that wasn’t entirely true. I had forgotten about php-pear! If you install php (stock version) alongsides my RPM’s you would get some errors, this has been resolved

After a few days of playing around with my RPM’s, I’ve finally managed to have a php4-pear RPM to work fine alongside php delivered by CentOS. Below an example of my results:

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I’ve upgraded my previously mentioned version of wp-update. A simple bash script that only updates the files that were changed in the latest wordpress release.

The following bash script works with Wordpress 2.3.1 and 2.3.2 and upgrades it to the latest 2.3.3 version.

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In my earlier post regarding KDE 4.0 on Fedora Core, I said that I achieved running KDE4 by running an early release of Fedora Core 9 (rawhide). For the people interested, there is an official pre-release of Fedora Core 9 available!

I would definitely recommend people to grab it and give it a glimpse! Don’t forget to fill a bug report if you find anything!

Today i was wondering if it’s possible to developing a low cost GPS tracking device. After playing around with the basic stamp, I found a GPS module that outputs the standard world coordinates in NMEA0183. For more details read the wikipedia page.

The GPS module can send coordinates of your current position by means for an SMS module to another mobile phone which can be attached to the PC. The easiest way then is to store the data in an XML type of file.
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As some of you visiting this blog have noticed, currently the RPM’s I made for PHP aren’t available in any yum repository, making you have to check our blog every time for updates. Although I’m quite happy to have you visiting our blog more often, things really should be easier

I’ll take you through the steps I took to setup the yum repository for labcoding.com; with my next PHP update I’ll repost the instructions on enabling this repository (as described below).

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In this article we are programming the basic stamp to trigger a remote switch for your home lights or any other power switching device, like a garage door, fireplace and so on. We are controlling it through the web or the ipod (the ipod also has a web browser)

How does it work?
After programming the basic stamp, it looks for a specific variable; when it receives this variable we are putting a current on the output pin of the basic stamp. The current switches a relay, this closes the electronic circuit of the remote “klikaan klikuit” transceiver. The variable, where it all starts with, is send through the serial / usb port by a single web page.

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I’ve been using Apache for quite some time, having many custom scripts that do chores for me. Recently I was asked to install Apache on a machine, a few yum installs and some editing of the Apache vhost files later I was all set.

Because the site being served by Apache started to grow I noticed that the log files got big, I had completely forgotten to have a script rotate the log files!

At the office we simply have a script that has been doing just that since Apache 1.x, this script also runs fine with Apache 2.x. Because I never use office related scripts anywhere outside the office, I decided to look around and encountered rotatelogs which is included with Apache 2.x.

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In most cases Sendmail is the default MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) for many systems (like with CentOS), it can however be hard to configure or maintain (although it has improved over the last years).

I myself prefer to use postfix for various reasons.

Postfix describes itself as “Postfix attempts to be fast, easy to administer, and secure. The outside has a definite Sendmail-ish flavor, but the inside is completely different.”

Postfix can be easily installed and configured, just follow the steps ahead.

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I’m sure most of you are familier with CVS and Subversion (a compelling replacement for CVS), the latter being a version control system I’ve had some great experiences with. Both CVS and Subversion are Centralised SCM’s (Source Control Management), today I encountered Mercurial which is a Distributed SCM.

To get our terms straight, let me just explain the differences between a Centralised CSM and a Distributed CSM.

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This is a short preview of a open-source script we wrote. It allows you to acces your content, like music or video to your iphone or ipod touch, streaming. So if your 8GB or 16GB is not enough, there is hope!

Note: this is not the final code but to keep you updated i decided to post my progress.

Things that are not included.
- rating
- number of files
* and some design bugs needed to be fix.

How its done?

• First you need a (local server) like wamp.

• Second we add some php files and the conent to the right folders.

Folder structure:
WWW (default)
contains: php and css files.

WWW/my_dirs/albums/
contains: your albums named like: Artist - AlbumName

WWW/my_dirs/movies/
contains: your movies (.mov or .mp4)

Of course you can setup more folder and program other sites, for example like favorites.

The php files makes a listing of the folders and output them in a basic html page, witch the iphone or ipod can view.
When opening the actual files, the iphone or ipod opens the internal quicktime player, so your files can be viewed streaming.

see the screencaptures for more details:

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I’m pretty sure all the other WordPress bloggers out there noticed the shiny bar in their WordPress admin panels, announcing the release of Wordpress 2.3.2, about 18 days ago.

If there is one thing I hate at the moment, it’s having to upgrade my blog while I’ve done custom modifications and copy all those files by hand. To save all you other folks some hastle, I’ve looked at the actual changes and the adjusted files. Based on my findings I’ve created a simple bash script that updates your blog (and makes a backup before doing so ;))

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I’m sure you’ve heard about it, KDE 4.0 has been released!

I can honestly say it looks damn sweet! Unfortunately I quickly learned that KDE 4.0 wouldn’t make it into Fedora 8, it will be made available in Fedora 9 which is scheduled for an April 2008 launch.

If you’re adventurous like me and don’t like to wait that long, here is what you could do.

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Before we start throwing you guys into the deep we first talk a little about what microcontrollers are and where you can use them.

A microcontroller is an computerchip including a ‘little’ microprocessor. Microcontrollers are frequently used in automatically controlled products and devices, such as automobile engine control systems, remote controls, office machines, appliances, power tools, and toys. By reducing the size, cost, and power consumption compared to a design using a separate microprocessor, memory, and input/output devices, microcontrollers make it economical to electronically control many more processes.

What is the BASIC Stamp microcontroller?

The BASIC Stamp module is a microcontroller developed by Parallax, Inc. which is easily programmed using a form of the BASIC programming language called PBASIC. It is called a “Stamp” simply because it is close to the size of an average postage stamp. The basic stamp is one of the most used Microcontrollers for hobbyist and professionals.

Blinking the led!
i start interesting in microcontrollers when i read an article to use sensors interacting the computer with Adobe director. So a start thinking of what you can make.. Thats alot of fun projects!

After a long trip over the internet i found a book called: physical computing. This book contains al the basics (and advanced) to get started whit the microcontrollers. I would deffinately recommend buying this book! In one of the first chapters you get starting making your own led blinking. Thats what we gonna show you first, because we need this basics to get understanding our future projects!

To keep in mind this is not a replacement for the book physical computing! It only describs the set up for starting bigger projects. We also dont describe the dangers and basics about electronics. For example if you want to know how a ristor operates you have to buy the book!

Get started!
first like you expected, we started with the shopping list:

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As I promised yesterday, the RPM’s (i386) for PHP4 can now be downloaded for your convienence.

You can find the SRPM along with the RPM’s. The SRPM was slightly updated since yesterday to fix a small glitch I encountered when trying to build a eAccelerator RPM for CentOS 5.

NOTE: None of the RPM’s are signed at this time, in a while i’ll setup a repository where you will find these files. Obviously those will be signed then.

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Although I was initially struggeling, I finally managed to build a PHP4 RPM for CentOS 5

Initially I planned to make tutorial on how I managed to build my RPM (which you can still use), however due to some issues with the original PHP 4.3.9 RPM for CentOS 4 I decided to create a RPM of PHP 4.4.7 (and upgrade to 4.4.8 later).

A few challenges later I managed to cleanly build PHP4 including passing all the needed tests.

UPDATE: See this new post for a slightly new version and eAccelerator RPM’s.

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The next webapplication we discuss allows you to control itunes and winamp running on windows. without jailbraiking!
In the previous post we explain how you can set up a connection and how you simply launch an app.
But whats the use of that? So in this chapter we learn how to control iTunes and Winamp.

To keep the cost as low as possible we use free plugins. So everybody can follow along, although off course we like to hear other or even better solutions.

Before we start we look at Shopping list:
- Adobe director
- Director shell xtra (free)
- Itunes control trough command line (free)
- Winamp control trough command line (free)

in this quick example we use some different (easy) solutions like the “control trough the command line”. This is actually an extra step that isn’t paticular nesseccary, for example you can write directly an windows message (see next chapter) with the buddy Xtra. The buddy Xtra is a little bit more advanced and not free. So we keep on going the easy way..

There are some different approuches to interact with an program. We dont discuss all the options but two off those are basically sending keys or sendingwindows messages. Because we are now focus on Windows (see remote buddy for the mac) we want to use (the more stable) function sendmessage().

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