Last week I looked at getting the hardware up and running for a Raspberry Pi GPS tracker. However, as I said I was using some Python code and I don’t speak Python so I wanted to convert it to PHP. So this week I am going to look at what I did.
Before I could even begin to look at the converting the code I had to see if it was even possible for PHP to access the serial port. Turns out this is exactly what Direct IO (dio) is for but it isn’t included as standard so you … Read the rest
If you want to get noticed by curious developers I guess that this is one way of doing it!
Having secured a Pi Zero from the cover of a the magazine MagPi I thought I would start out simple by trying one of the projects shown there. The one that caught my eye and required no soldering was to build a GPS tracker.
Getting hold of a cheap USB unit was pretty easy but make sure it is Linux compatible. I bought this one from eBay.
The first thing I did when I got the unit was to try it out on the Pi and while it was working I could see that it had got a satellite … Read the rest
It’s no secret that I am a big fan of Kickstarter having backed many, many, many projects but, as you can see from the above screen grab, not everyone is of the same opinion and I believe that stems from a fundamental misunderstand about just what exactly a crowd funding site is.
The reason for the ire shown by the commenters above is that the project delivery end date is slipping and so people are becoming unhappy. In this particular project’s case the delivery date has slipped by approximately one month – in Kickstarter terms that is nothing, … Read the rest
I have been a big fan of Sunrise but there was always a danger when it was taken over by Microsoft that they would eventually shut it down and that is now on the cards. I really like the way that Sunrise allows me to see in my calendar information other than my diary entries such as Tripit travel plans and Foursquare checkins and I didn’t want to lose that.
My initial thought was to do something through IFTTT but not all services were covered and I couldn’t get the options I wanted to change the entry colour, for … Read the rest
NOTE: This post has been updated to include the requirement of mod_unique_id.
As part of some investigations at work I have been playing around with ModSecurity, the open source web application firewall (WAF), and the standard set of rules provided by OWASP. All our infrastructure is hosted with Amazon AWS so I thought that it would be useful to drop down the steps I took to get this working on a bare bones Amazon Linux box.
You can, of course, compile ModSecurity from the sources but it is easier to install via yum, however, it is part … Read the rest
Just thought I would put down my initial thoughts on the new Pebble Time. I’ll do a fuller review, including the same tests that I ran with the old Pebble, in a few weeks when I have captured more data.
I’ve had my steel version a couple of weeks now and it really like both the look of the watch and the new interface itself. In fact Apple seemed to like the timeline too so they pinched the idea for their watch!
When you pledged via Kickstarter the Steel variant comes with both a leather and steel link straps. … Read the rest
[UPDATE – I’m being trolled by my bank! See the update at the end of the article]
The above is a conversation that I had with my bank about their iOS app and highlight, I think, an increasing issue that developers are going to have with more and more public involvement with beta testing.
I have been running iOS9 for a while now and on the whole it is pretty good but having beta software out in the wild does cause issues for developers of apps. It may not be possible to get fixes that are caused by the beta … Read the rest
As spam goes this is pretty benign but irritating nevertheless and I have no idea how to rid myself of it.
Just recently I have started to receive messages through the contact form on our website that are allegedly related to our blog posts and they are smothering with kindness and praise for our work.
I blog quite often and I seriously appreciate your information. This article has truly peaked my interest. I’m going to take a note of your site and keep checking for new information about once a week. I subscribed to your Feed too.
When they take … Read the rest
This is why you need to open up your PC occasionally and give it a bit of TLC. The pile of grubby dust above is just six months worth from our always on media server.
I got into the habit of cleaning it out regularly after it started (unsurprisingly) to become pretty noisy and given that it is in our lounge that became an issue. It is amazing the difference that a really good clean makes.
One important thing is that you MUST NOT use your normal hoover to suck out the dirt. This is a bad idea as it … Read the rest
