Headline: upgrading Home.org.au

I've upgraded home.org.au to TWiki's trunk (in preparation for fastcgi), and updated to the latest incarnation of MoveableTypeSkin - WidgetsSkin.

WidgetsSkin not only uses the latest incarnation of Moveable Type's HTML and CSS (and because they are now GPL open source, contains their themes, but begins to add more userfriendly Widget style mini-TWikiApps for use in the sidebars.

Hopefully there won't be too many glitches along the way.

21 Oct 2008 - 09:08 upgrading Home.org.au

Headline: Day One of driving

120 hours of log book driving - is a very long time when you don't use a car. Sunday was the beginning - 1.5 hours done, 118.5 to go.

wishful thinking says we could do this in 3 months - reality? not so much

13 Oct 2008 - 00:51 Day One of driving

Headline: easy MTB trails in Northern Sydney

After spending so much time in the shadows of the Uetliberg and Zuriberg, I've been missing being able to go for a quick easy offroad mountain bike ride.

From Lane Cove, I've finally realised there's plenty around me - today for example, I rode to the EasternArterial? road entry of the Two Creeks Track which starts off as a fire trail, then changes into a nice easy, low traffic walking track - prefect for the beginner MTB rider.

It seems to cope well with the wet day we had today too - buckets of fun from there to the Roseville bridge, and then an easy ride home.

• see a nice map by the Ku-ring-gai Council

04 Oct 2008 - 08:38 easy MTB trails in Northern Sydney

Headline: Pasta night

I love how 100g of flour and one egg can make the most wonderful pasta. Its such a simple thing to mix up before you make the sauce, then while its cooking, roll it out & cut (ok, i've got a pasta maker ) and boil.

loverly

13 Sep 2008 - 12:26 Pasta night

Headline: Bemused.

I just rode my bike to the RTA, and got myself a Learner's booklet.

Its an odd feeling, knowing nothing about the process, since the last time my friends looked at that sort of thing was over 15 years ago!

Combine that with going to the printers to get my first set of Business cards made... Australian renewable paper please and I get a very interesting day.

15 Aug 2008 - 05:17 Bemused.

Headline: Possibly the dumbest thing I've read on the web today

To book your tickets for the conference you need to fill out the registration form below. Once submitted you will be emailed a copy of your registration and your payment form. Fill in the form and fax back to: XXXXXXXXXXX.

I'm not sure what's dumber - no online payment option, or requiring a fax to register for a conference... worse, a web conference!

Seeing as I run a paperless office - I emailed them a pdf of the electronic back transfer confirmation - will be funny to see how that turns out.

01 Aug 2008 - 03:39 Possibly the dumbest thing I've read on the web today

Headline: VirtualBox host interface networking with wifi

I normally use vmware server to do alot of system testing, but this week, I'm setting up to visit my parents, and vmware decided it didn't want to work on my notebook. I'm guessing its due to vmware's rather woeful debian support, and that this is a somewhat ruft debian testing system.

VirtualBox? uses NAT out of the box, meaning that I can't connect to the virtual machine from my notebook (just the reverse) so I went out looking for HOWTO's...

And the best I found for my situation was the Ubuntu docoo.

A small tweak later - for debian's sake, and I get the following instructions resulting in two network interfaces on the VM - eth0 NAT'ed to get out to the world, and a host-host eth1 to enable me to get from my notebook to the VM.

Install parprouted

• sudo apt-get install parprouted

create a vbox network startup script

• sudo vi /etc/network/if-up.d/vbox_network

giving it the following (replacing $USER with the username that you run your virtualbox as, and $WIFI0 with the network interface you have (ath0 in my case, wlan0 for others etc))

sysctl net.ipv4.ip_forward=1
VBoxTunctl -b -u $USER
ifconfig tap0 up
ifconfig tap0 192.168.1.1
route add -net 192.168.1.0 dev tap0
parprouted $WIFI0 tap0

then make the script runnable by root

• sudo chmod 700 /etc/network/if-up.d/vbox_network

run it to start the new network

• sudo /etc/network/if-up.d/vbox_network

then change the virtual machine's configug to use your newly created tap0 interface

• in the VirtualBox? Network cfg, add a second network adaptor (eth1, of type 'Host Interface' and set it to tap0)

Start the virtual machine,log in and then we can configure the vm's network

• sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

auto eth1
iface eth1 inet static
        address 192.168.1.2
        netmask 255.255.255.0

and restart networking on the vm

• sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

and tada, you have a secure VM that you can talk to only from your host system.

03 Jul 2008 - 01:48 VirtualBox host interface networking with wifi

Headline: and now, the Weather in Sydney

it seems that its so windy here in Sydney that it'll blow the dog off the chain.

Never heard the expression before, but, its a pretty accurate analogy.

Which shows that there's an awful lot of Aussie I still haven't learnt, even after 32 years.

02 Jul 2008 - 03:17 and now, the Weather in Sydney

Headline: testing Crawford's ReadWriteOfflinePlugin

So far, I'm loving it, this Blog post is written on my notebook's copy of the Blog web, and later tonite, it will get synced to the home.org.au server.

The pleasures of fuly functional software are huge

12 May 2008 - 12:48 testing Crawford's ReadWriteOfflinePlugin

Headline: We finally put some holes in our flat.

After owning the place since December 2006, and not living in it properly tile August 2007, we finally went out to Bunnings, bought a hammer drill and a bunch of dyna-bolts.

mmmmmm, dyna-bolts - fantastic things.

Dyna-bolts work by using the strongest feature of concrete - compression, to create a nice and strong fixing - which just leaves worrying which breaks first - a 6mm bolt, or the resin climbing hold, or , well, me

12 May 2008 - 12:34 We finally put some holes in our flat.