Archive for December, 2009

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Kindle Easter Eggs


2009
12.23

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Igor Skochinsky at Reverse Everything has some fun Easter Eggs for the Kindle (tested them on the Kindle International Edition). All the below is Igor’s work and time and effort.

From the Home Screen:
Alt-Shift-M Minesweeper
Alt-Z rescan picture directories
Alt-T show time

Alt-Shift-R reboot Kindle
Alt-Shift-. restart GUI
Alt-Shift-G make screenshot
due to an implementation bug, screenshots can only be stored on SD card, not the main storage. A gif file is saved in the card root.
Shift-Sym start demo
Enabled only if allow_demo=true is passed on the Java commandline. Needs a special demo script present on the SD card.

Off the Settings Screen (but you knew that already!)

411 show diagnostics data
511 run loopback call test
611 diagnostic data service call

The bit he notes about the picture viewer is quite cool:

I’m not sure why Amazon didn’t make it public (maybe because paging is kinda slow), but there is a basic picture viewer in Kindle.
To activate it:
1) make a folder called “pictures” in the root of Kindle drive or SD card. Kindle also checks for “dcim” made by cameras.
2) put your pictures for a single “book” into a folder inside that. The subfolder name will be used as the “book” name. Supported formats are jpg, png, gif.
3) in Home screen press Alt-Z. A new “book” should appear. Open it to view your pictures.
4) In the local menu you can toggle dithering, resize to fit and full screen mode.

Good to know! There’s a lot more info there about the file system structure etc, info that is useful if you pursue the discussions over at OSCON’s Ignite Allegedly, there’s also a GPS-linked item available in the browser…

Jesse Vincent gives a blow-by-blow run-down of the inner workings of the Kindle over at his blog.

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Kindle format “cracked open”


2009
12.23

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So the Kindle format conversion from .azw to OTHER format was already something out there in Python some time ago, now it’s hit the news again.

828 lines of Python (posted 16hrs ago) thwarte the Kindle’s proprietary format (allegedly) to switch to the .mobi format. Seems that the new approach does not require the Kindle’s unique ID (unique decoding and encoding keys are used when creating .azw’s for DRM purposes) (as it rips it from the application). However, the code published on pastie.com also has a full dependence on mobidedrm.py and actually runs that to decrypt the azw — ahm…

Ja… all this has been done before – why is this news now? Oh – slow news day, I guess… on the other hand, it focusses on the use of Kindle for PC as your interface…

In the new code, the Topaz file still seems to be the holy grail, so there’s not much new here:

raise UnswindleError("cannot decrypt Topaz format book")

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And it’s time for 2.9!


2009
12.19

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Posted in sysadmin, wordpress | 5 Comments »

As also noted on the blog, it’s time to upgrade (if you haven’t already) to version 2.9 of WordPress. There are a huge whack of benefits and improvements (over 500 bugfixes), like the online image editor and easier video embedding that’s included now.

Well done, guys!!

When doing the upgrade, just make sure all the /pomo/ files and wp-settings are updated appropriately…

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Meep – a blatant attack on Freedom of Speech?


2009
12.19

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Meep. A word we all know and treasure as spoken by the inimitable Beaker (that long-necked scientist’s assistant from the Muppet Show, always the right-hand “man” of Dr Bunsen Honeydew).

However, according to the Salem News and other sources, schools are now threatening their students/learners/scholars/pupils (what does one call them nowadays?) with immediate suspension should they utter the muppety statement at school. Sure, I agree — don’t misuse the word for the work of chaos and anarchy to disrupt ordinary school processes — but don’t ban it!? From the article:

“It’s really not about the word in particular,” Murray said. “The reason for the message (was) a group of students were instructed to refrain from that language and other language in a particular part of the building.”

There are Facebook groups for Meep (according to some sources). On the up side — the Muppets live for another generation ! :)

But you knew that already!

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Processing large data volumes


2009
12.15

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Posted in Did you know, sysadmin | 1 Comment »

So a compressed text file that ends up being 72GB sounds like a lot, right? Especially if you have to data-churn it with per-line processing. Fine. Wow. A lot.

That pales in comparison to the (reported) volumes of data processed by Google and Facebook:

In December 2007 (!) Google was processing 400 PB (petabytes) per month, with an average job size of 180GB.

Facebook’s volumes have been steadily increasing, too: From March 2008′s 200GB of daily new data, they’ve moved up to 2TB per day in April 2009, to steady off to 4TB per day in October 2009.

Most of which are, without a doubt, LolCat pictures :)

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news.bbc.co.uk looping includes, broken


2009
12.12

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The power of bad includes

The power of bad includes

It seems that a looped include error has broken http://news.bbc.co.uk, creating repetitive nestings — or just a whole whack of emphasis on the Copenhagen climate change story which is self-included 5 times – no wonder the poor BBC Apache server reports “[an error occurred while processing this directive]” — seems that there is an incorrect citing or link… ho hum… happens to all of us :)

I’m sure it’ll be fixed soon (though the last update time points to either a serious error or a very slow news day Blair: ‘Right to remove’ Saddam is competing directly with the Climate change prosters march in Copenhagen story (which incidentally does not have a link on the page…)

The server decries the bad code

The server decries the bad code

Ah, the wonder of automation… I wonder what impact this has on twitter and news.google.com feeds?

Update: 9 minutes later, they fixed it :)

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MTN Business Effect on Hetzner


2009
12.02

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From Hetzner‘s Website: “All new websites and servers hosted in SA are housed in the Johannesburg MTN Business facility.”

Yikes – that’s the wonky one that went down earlier…

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MTN Business goes down – Network Outage over


2009
12.02

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Seems as though systems are being restarted / links restored, 1hr 10 min later… Whole of South Africa was affected by the network outage.

Running commentary here.

To quote the WebAfrica forum “Is this “network issue” anything to do with the power failure (and generator backup failure) that occurred at MTN moments ago bringing down the entire Hetzner hosting facilities?”

mybroadband.co.za is still struggling to come back online, and has been taken offline again…

Update:  “According to MTN Business’ Edwin Thompson an Eskom power failure at 14:30 meant that the data centre relied on generator power this afternoon.  Unfortunately the main generator ‘blew itself up’ which impacted the electricity infrastructure at the facility.  While the power and generator system for the facility is fully redundant, Thompson explained that this it is not really possible to prepare for these types of unexpected events.

“The Gallo Manor data centre is a key hosting facility in South Africa with numerous large clients like iBurst and Hetzner.  The downtime therefore does not only affect websites like MyBroadband, but also hosted services like authentication & billing for iBurst and hosted PBX solutions.” – mybroadband.co.za is back up…

MTN confirmed that it is experiencing network problems.  “MTN is experiencing network problems in Pretoria and surrounding areas, which are impacting on all services. We are currently investigating the matter and we will shortly confirm how soon the problem is expected to be resolved,” said Sameer Dave CTO of MTN SA.

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MTN Business goes down


2009
12.02

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Posted in General | 3 Comments »

So MTN Business’s Datacentre is down (was Verizon Business, was UUNET). JNB issue, but whole network affected. Should sites not resolve, that’s most likely the problem. No indication of source of issue (Telkom ATM link? faulty Cisco router reload?)

We await with baited breath… Meanwhile, iol.co.za and FNB, as well as iafrica.com and Standard Bank, to name a few, are down…

The MTN Business sites are all non-responsive – all DNS not returning IPs, either… “Server not Found” issue…

Sigh…

Update:

It’s a doozy:

  • ns4.iafrica.com returned (SERVFAIL)
  • ns0.is.co.za returned (NORECORDS)
  • ns1.coza.net.za returned (SERVFAIL)
  • ns0.neotel.co.za returned (NORECORDS)
  • ns2.coza.net.za returned (NORECORDS)
  • ns0.plig.net returned (NORECORDS)
  • ns2.iafrica.com returned (SERVFAIL)
  • ns1.iafrica.com returned (SERVFAIL)

Update: Indeed, can confirm that there was a power failure in Johannesburg (JNB) (co-incidentally at the same time as the comment below). Alledgedly just been restored and network is being brought back online/troubleshot… They’re also investingating why the network in Cape Town (CPT) went down on a JNB issue…

Affects the entire network in South Africa, so browsing is going to be helluva slow…

Update: 16h30 — MTN Business Customer Centre is online again, guess they’re bringing things up step by step… But sites like mybroadband.co.za are still down…

Update: Allegedly, they were going to replace and update the Durban UPS setup today (and Cape Town, too), finishing at 13h00 (15h00), which is not to have caused the issue — no notices or information yet; there was not even a notification mail triggered (via any network).

Update: 16h41 — Iafrica.com’s back, as is Standardbank.co.za.

Total down time on network: 1hr 10min – all systems and mail and DNS responding correctly from the Farm. Some server up north don’t seem so lucky – looks like they’re being physically restarted!?

Sigh. Let’s see what the “explanation” is.