Corbicula anti virus: squashing bugs

I did some bug squashing on Corbicula today, somehow the scanning worker thread stopped recursing into subdirectories. Then I remembered I changed the depth perception a couple of days ago.

Why did I change it? It was like this, the scanner algorithm would be started with a depth of 0 and it would add up during recursion and finally stop recursing until it hit a hardcoded depth of 20. Of course I could always add some GConf stuff to my worker thread, but that didn't seem like the way to go.

So I decided I would actually start at the root with my maximum recursion count and decrease while getting more in depth, this way hardcoding a depth of 0 to stop recursing wouldn't be dirty, and the recursion depth parameter could be passed in a nice and clean dynamic way.

Skillfully using the ubiquitous poor mans debugger (ie, using 'Console.WriteLine ()') I eventually found out I forgot to change the smaller-than sign into a greater-than sign, forcing the algorithm to immediately stop recursing, because 20 wasn't smaller-than 0. A textbook case of human error...

The Preferences Dialog now also stores it's GConf settings in the correct place (/apps/corbicula) instead of the GConf root (/).

Cisco cables

I received my much needed Cisco cables today, I ordered them with some friends from Anthony Panda, it only took a few days for them to deliver the cables:

• 2 DB60 - DB60 back-to-back serial cables
• 2 DB9 - RJ45 serial console cables

Pricing was very reasonable, though the dutch customs decided they wanted a piece of the action, they added a whopping 19% to the price.

Now I can finally start playing with my two elderly Cisco 2501 routers, oh well, they still run IOS 12.1, so it's not too bad...

Corbicula anti virus: late breaking news

I worked on Corbicula some more today.

I managed to add a Preferences Dialog to Corbicula, though it only includes one setting: the maximum directory recursion depth. The Preferences Dialog uses GConf to store it's settings, as any self respecting GNOME application should.

If you've taken a look at the previously posted screenshot, the Results Dialog was missing the Toggle widgets in the ListView's Delete Column. The Toggle widgets are now in place, and the actually toggle now (no, that does not happen automagically!).

Also in previous 'versions' of Corbicula it didn't matter what Target was selected it would always scan a hard coded target path. Yes, I know that's not very nice, and that's why I fixed it, now Corbicula scan's the user selected target path!

Still no release yet, I might be able to do a CVS commit by the end of the week, no promises though!

Corbicula anti virus: threaded

Today, I fiddled a bit with threads. I've managed to separate the actual virus scanning process into a worker thread, where it doesn't interfere with the responsiveness of the user interface.

Corbicula now also displays which files are being scanned and pulses the indeterminate progress bar.

I'm not happy with the way windows are created and destroyed, so that may be subject to change in the near future.

I'm reasonably happy with the user interface now, though it's far from finished, it gives a good first impression:
So much to do, and so little time to do it...

Corbicula anti virus: progress report

I have finally been able to do some work on Corbicula anti virus!

First off, I now have a final user interface design, and after having read some more of the GNOME HIG, making it a druidish user interface seemed like a mistake. So it'll be a classic virus scanner interface using plain ol' dialogs.

I also have a proof of concept application, the virus scanning process actually works, but the application doesn't work very well. Amongst other things, I need to thread the scanning process to keep the user interface responsive. This also means I need to seriously read up on Mono threading!

Anyway, I did apply for another sourceforge project, which will be available at corbicula.sourceforge.net if it gets approved.

Edgar Bronfman Jr.

After having just read this, I believe Edger Bronfman Jr. is certifiably stark raving mad!

Mr. Bronfman thinks not all music is created equal, and I'd have to agree, more or less. But he thinks songs should be priced according to popularity. Hmm, that sort of implies that music quality has a direct correlation with music popularity. That doesn't make sense, at all! This means, at least according to Mr. Bronfman, the Spice Girls actually were any good.

Mr. Bronfman also said the music industry shouldn't have to use it's content to promote MP3 players. Unless Mr. Jobs is actually blackmailing the Warner Music Group, they simply don't have to. Ofcourse if they deny Apple to distribute it's music, Warner would mis out on (too much to ignore) profit.

Mr. Bronfman had the brilliant idea that Apple should share the profits of it's ipod sales with the Warner Music Group. But why? Why should the Warner Music Group get any money for doing nothing? Apple promotes Warner's music. Does Warner promote the ipod? Apple has a web shop to run, and that entails costs & risks. It should be Apple who reaps the benefits in the end, not Warner. The Warner Music Group is supplying the content, and is getting paid for it.

It's weird to see what greed can do to one's ability to reason in a logical fashion!

Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

I watched the original BCC series of the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy yesterday. The orignal BCC series consists of six, thirty minute long episodes, totalling 180 minutes of entertainment, very good entertainment indeed.

The original BBC series is actually almost a quarter of a century old, it's copyrighted in 1981! The publisher wasn't even ashamed to list 'Mono DD 2.0' sound on the cover.

The parts, where the Hitchhikers Guide is actually being used, are quite entertaining, for example the Babelfish entry depicted above.

Another thing I noticed was the shouting of the large lumpy Vogon: 'Resistance is useless'. Anyway that sounded a bit familiar: 'Resistance is futile'.

And now for the coolest character award... Marvin, the paranoid android was definately the coolest character is the series, being ever so depressed. Like Arthur Dent said: 'An Android?!? It's more like an electronic sulking machine!'.

Just for Fun

A few minutes ago, I just finished reading Just for Fun, it's an (auto) biographical account of Linus Torvalds' life.

I didn't even think about reading Just for Fun, until a good friend told me it was actually fun to read, and one day I finally ordered the book at bol.

Throughout the book the chapters alternate in perspective, most chapters are auto biographical and basically written by Linus himself. Irregularly intersperced between those chapters are the biographical chapters written by David Diamond.

I generally enjoyed reading Linus' chapters better, probably because they carry a distinct geek way of saying things. The chapters written by David Diamond were probably intended to give Linus' life a bit more depth, but his effort is mostly undermined by Linus' confessing what a big geek he really is.

Most of the book is excellent bedtime reading, and doesn't really require all that much attention from the reader. The chapter on Intellectual Property does require a bit of attention, and Linus really succeeds in expressing his two faced opinion.
I mostly agree with Linus that Copyright laws are not bad by themselves, but they suffer from perversion by greed. Patents and Trade-Secrets are a Bad Thing(tm) no matter which way you look at them.

I can recommend Just for Fun to anybody considering themselves to be somewhat geeky.

P4 Pascal on my Router

In the last couple of days I managed to get the P4 Pascal compiler / interpreter running on my ADMtek 5120P based router.

Anyway the main problem cross compiling P4 Pascal was the elderly toolchain supplied by Edimax. Apparently Edimax (or ADMtek) didn't think it wouldn't be necessary to include libm, which is the standard math library. Ofcourse the P4 Pascal interpreter needed the math functions. Buildroot to the rescue!

The cool thing about P4 Pascal is that it's a classic compiler outputting p-Code (much like the UCSD p-System), which is a form of assembly for non-existant hardware. Then this p-Code can be fed to the p-Machine (which basically is a pcode interpreter).

This predates the Java VM concept by almost two decades! Most of the credit goes to Urs Ammann, who also wrote P4 Pascal.

Opera

Opera Software ASA has made their Opera Web Browser available for free, hmm wait that's not anything new... right... But now it's available without the built in advertisements!

It's a good product, Opera feels very snappy and most important, it complies with web standards.

Too bad I can't compile it myself :(

24, The biggest Cisco commercial yet

I was watching episode 21 of 24 last night, and I noticed Cisco Systems, Inc. seems to be a major sponsor:

Chloe: How did this happen?!?
Chloe: Mr. Buchanon the network security module lit up.
Chloe: Someone on the outside is trying to jam our satelite servers.
Buchanon: Can't this be just a high network load?
Chloe: No, it's definately a denial-of-service attempt!
Chloe: What do you want me to do?
Buchanon: Did they do any damage yet?
Chloe: No, the Cisco system is self defending!
Buchanon: Alright, have one of your people use the security auditor tool, maybe it will leed us to Marwan's network.
...
Marwan: Is the warhead in place?
Terrorist: Yes, but we have a problem, I can't jam their satelite.
Marwan: You assured me you could handle it!
Terrorist: CTU must have just installed new software, this wasn't in place last week.

This is the most shameless way of promoting hardware I've seen yet. I hope this doesn't become a trend, this could really ruine commercial TV as we know it!

This makes me sad... very sad indeed!

Midge

Today I stumbled upon something called Midge, it's a tiny Linux distribution, specifically engineered to run on the ADMtek 5120P SoC (system-on-chip).

The ADMtek 5120P SoC is a 175mHz r4Kc MIPS processor, and has a memory management unit. It has 5 Fast Ethernet interfaces, it can use up to two banks of SDRAM and two banks of Flash memory.

The really cool thing about this is that boatloads of different brand routers use the ADMtek 5120P SoC. And I just happened to have a unused Eminent 4012 Broadband Router lying around, which basically is an overpriced and undersupported equivalent of the Sweex' LB000021 Broadband Router, it just has a better looking case!

Midge didn't support uploading using the vendor's firmware upgrade feature yet, I didn't want to mod my router so I decided to contact Midge's author, Vladislav Moskovets, who was very helpful and sent me an alpha version of Midge which does support this. Uploading the Midge firmware went like a charm.

Midge uses the 2.4.31 Linux kernel, patched with ADMtek 5120P support. It includes the Dropbear SSH daemon, for secure remote access. Midge uses Debian's network configuration scripts, which make Midge easy to configure.

I'm downloading the development toolchain as I'm typing this. Midge should provide me with plenty entertainment for weeks to come.

Microsoft Office 12

I finally took some time to take a look at the Office 12 screenshots.

This is a hoax, right? Please tell me it's a hoax...

The new design seems extremely inefficient to work with. You probably need boat-load's of mouse movement to get just about anything done.

They removed all menu's except for the File menu. This is plain inconsistent, and makes no sense at all, they could have easily made a tab for that as well. Even if they made this consistent, it's still inconsistent with it's environment: Windows!

It seems they've applied the bigger-is-better paradigm to the toolbar, just look at how much screen space just the 'top' of the program takes, it's plain huge... I'd rather have more oversight of my document.

Conclusion: GNOME HIG rules!

Play TV® Legends Street Fighter 2®

Today I bought a Play TV® Legends Street Fighter 2® console. These things are just great. It's basically a downsized Sega MegaDrive (aka Genesis) with the cartridge slot removed and embedded games added.

Before buying the console I was a little weary of poor manufacturing, and cheap components. But as soon as I opened the packaging, I noticed the reasonably long controller cables (2+ Meters). The controller cables also had very thick insulation, which is a definite plus.

Another nice feature is that it can be powered by four AA batteries, as well as having a power inlet for use with an external power transformer.

The console has two games:

• Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition
• Ghouls 'n Ghosts

Both are fun to play!

Another thing I noticed was that the included controllers are really authentic. I can still remember them clearly. If I recall correctly the Sega MegaDrive was one of the first game systems to have ergonomic controllers.

I can seriously recommend it to anybody who's into retro-gaming.

Ubuntu Backports

I just tried the Ubuntu Backports repository, I finally upgraded my Mono development environment. Everything seems to work just fine.

I also took this opportunity to upgrade Liferea and Drivel. In Liferea's case the main reason for doing this were it's frequent crashes (which seem to be gone now). The upgraded version of Drivel now supports Blogger.

During the upgrade process I did manage to install some weird dependancies, like libgcc1. I'm not really happy with that at all, but it'll do as a stop-gap solution, at least until Breezy has been released.

Also, Ubuntu's update manager went totally bonkers, it wanted to upgrade 'half' my system. I didn't agree. Anyway the story concluded with me having to remove the Ubuntu Backports repository from my sources.list.

Corbicula anti virus

I've come up with a possible name for the ClamAV GNOME user interface. The word Corbicula comes from Genus Corbicula which are also known as Asian Clams.

The user interface design is proving rather hard. At first I wanted to go with a 'normal' multi window interface, like most contemporary virus scanners have. Then it occured to me these user interfaces aren't all that great, all those windows coming and going.

So I think I'm going to go with a druidish user interface, hoping to guide the user through the virus scanning process.

The GIMP

I've been fiddling with The GIMP a bit. The tutorials on The GIMP's homepage are quite good. I used the selective colorization tutorial for this one:
The eyes don't come out as well as they should. The yellow just doesn't contrast that well.