New Toys

It's a really small VGA display!  I've been considering what it'd take to build a "KVM in a bag" for work and home.  You know, 'cause you only need to plug a monitor and keyboard into things, what, twice a year?  So why keep a fricken 21" wide-screen monitor and a full size USB keyboard in your closet all year?  I also got a power adapter. I'm gonna need a compact male-to-male VGA cable, tho. What is it about me and miniature crap?

Processing 1.2.1 on Ubuntu 10.04

Okay, so I've got my copy of Getting Started with Processing, and I'm also now signed up for Arduino and Processing in Tandem.  So I'd better get Processing 1.2.1 running on my netbook, which is running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx.

The trick is that when you untar the processing package, nothing that comes out of the archive is executable.  It's a sensible default, but means you gotta specifically make things executable.  If you know how linux works, just chmod the "processing" script 755, chmod everything in the included java/bin/ as 755 and run ./processing from its directory.

For the rest of you, here's how I did it, in extra-verbose detail, step-by-step:

• Download Processing 1.2.1 for Linux.
• Reveal the downloaded file in a directory window.
• (In Chrome: click "Show all downloads," find processing, click "Show in Folder")
• (in Firefox: the download manager lists your files, right click processing and click "Open Containing Folder")
• Drag the processing tgz file onto your desktop.  (For this example, at least...)
• Right-click the tgz file on the desktop and select "Extract Here"
• Open a new Terminal window.
• (it's in the main menu: Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal)
• In the Terminal, change directory into Desktop, and into the extracted processing dir.
• (in this example: type "cd Desktop/processing-1.2.1" in the terminal, but your version number might differ.)
• Make the processing script executable by all users.
• (for this example: type "chmod a+x processing" in the terminal)
• The package includes a compatible version of java, which also needs to be made executable.
• (for this example: type "chmod a+x java/bin/*" in the terminal)
• And now you can get processing to open by running it from a Terminal.
• (in this example: type "~/Desktop/processing-1.2.1/processing &" in a terminal
• And that's it!  In the future, I just open a Terminal and type "~/Desktop/processing-1.2.1/processing &" again.

It took me a second to figure out, so hopefully this saves someone else a little trouble.  And of course it might save me some trouble the next time, when I've completely forgotten what I did.  Because that happens.  Often.

Shelving the Zipit Z2

W00!  I've now got a million weekend projects queued up, so the Zipit Z2 is going on the shelf for a bit.  It tweeted SSIDs and base station MAC addresses from here to Las Vegas -- which I like to think is a sort of modern-day stellar cartography exercise.

As soon as I need a cheap-ass, wifi-attached web/ssh server, it goes back into service. Meanwhile if anyone wants to borrow it ...

Two-Conference Backlog

And now I've got two conferences-worth of notes on the ipad, and no blog posts about either.  I've just wrapped up at Defcon 18, in Las Vegas.  I took my Zipit with me the whole time and scanned wifi SSIDs and base station MAC addrs occasionally.  One has a really wacky vendor ID on its mac addr.  Also, I attended the beginner lock picking presentation, and showed my financial support for toool.us, for which I received some hardware.  There was a bunch of fun info on how people hack games.  And a whole bunch of kindling to add to my dreams of opening a San Diego hackerspace.  Now I just gotta get posting!