Sunday 29 April 2007 at 9:58 pm
Two things.
One - yet more drawing speed (it's STILL buggy though. Better than it was, but still buggy...).
Two - Sound!
More specifically, one sound. (it's
here, and it plays when you get money in :) )
Oh, and a third - the photomosaic wasn't lost, further inspection of the desktop of that machine would reveal a file named "Untitled", in which it was saved. Will post it later...
Saturday 28 April 2007 at 11:27 pm
Wow, 17 hours short of an entire week without an update.
Oh well, some big news. zTower's got an icon
Square, I know. (OS X icons aren't actually meant to be square... it's an unwritten rule. (Actually, it might be written in the HIG documents, I'm not sure...))
I made a photomosaic around it... but someone shut down the computer and it didn't get saved. Oh well, I'll regenerate it again.
I'm trying to implement scrolling in zTower. That is fun :)
GPSTool's gpsd-interfacing code was randomly crashing at points, so I removed it entirely (it wasn't much anyway, and was badly written...). It's going to be rewritten from scratch.
By combining various wordlists, I made one that was nearly 2GB. There was one I found that was nearly 2GB, but after running it through uniq, it was reduced to 1.6GB (great, duplicates in a wordlist...). I also thought of an innovative method of storing these - put it on a compressed DMG. The wordlist takes up 280MB on the DMG, and it can be mounted, and accessed as if it was a normal file.
... and that's just about everything.
Oh, wait, there is this that I have been working on:
R100 stumble drone
Saturday 21 April 2007 at 6:16 pm
zTower's coming along nicely.
I made some adjustments today.
How the game works is that there are 5 layers:
top
menus
transport
tower
back
and that every frame that is drawn, the background needs to be redrawn. Spot the problem? Every time the back layer is redrawn, it will obliterate the others, and all 5 will need to be drawn. And the background is constantly updated.
So, I made some adjustments. The menus are now drawn straight onto the background (because they both update every frame anyway). The background is masked and drawn over the top of all the layers. And the other layers are now only redrawn when they have to be. In other words, it's much much faster.
It's a little buggy though - stuff doesn't quite get redrawn that should, and so there is the odd problem.
On the KisMac front:
The kismet drone code is coming along nicely. I've modified the driver preference pane to make setting the IP and port a little nicer.
I'm also working on implementing the
aircrack-ptw attack in KisMac. That should be fun. It's also a nice match, as the packet reinjection in kismac only supports reinjecting ARP packets, and that attack only works on them. Convenient.
Also, that exploit in airodump could prove to be some fun :)
Friday 06 April 2007 at 11:50 pm
After getting netmonitor mode working on my old nokia phone, I remember about the field test on Motorola phones.
Make some seem edits - (0032_0001 - offset 44 bits 4,5,6,7 on).
Then hexedit the two menu files - I replaced the Connections option in the main menu (it's doubled up by settings->connections anyway). Reboot the phone...
and all hell breaks loose. The "Personalize" menu is attached where the main menu should be, the key mappings are wrong, and the icons are all wrong in the main menu itself.
The menu file is a binary file. A few bytes of menu info, then the menu item name, then a bunch of nulls out to the next one.
The problem being the last byte of the menu data just happens to be "A" in ascii. Don't overwrite this with the menu name.
I should mention that the field test menu is named FEM.
So after changing that item (use overwrite mode), and covering the excess characters with nulls, reboot the phone. Hmm, no hell breaking loose this time. And I see a test mode icon.
... but... it doesnt work. It opens the connections menu.
Hmmm, according to the notes on the seem edit we did before, it should add a menu item to the tools menu.
Same editing procedure, further down the file. I replaced "alarm clock" - I've got much better devices to use for that, and apparently it's buggy.
Reboot the phone again. Go into the tools menu, test mode is there. And now it actually launches the test mode menu.
Turn test mode visibility on here, and you will see black text on white cover the phone screen.
Exit and enter by pressing the centre button of the 5-way selector and the top left key in quick succession.
Press the up/down keys to change screens.
I'll do pictures tomorrow when I've got another camera besides the phone itself...
Friday 06 April 2007 at 9:12 pm
Remember when I said I'd enable
netmonitor mode on my Nokia 6210?
I first read about it and thought "this would be cool", as I generally think of "hidden" features.
I go and buy a datacable for my phone off eBay. While waiting for it to arrive, I mention to a friend about it (who also has a 6210, and data cable). He lends me his data cable until mine arrives (Damn, could've saved myself $20, I thought at the time, as I'd only need the cable once). I then install Gnokii on my PB G4. I mess around, and find the phone won't work in FBUS mode... only the AT command driver works.
Further inspection would reveal it is trying to use 115200 baud on the serial port. My serial port, being a Keyspan USB PDA adaptor, can only do 57600 baud. Damn.
And there's no way of doing it in AT mode at 9600 baud.
Another attempt follows, attempting to connect via IrDA on a friend's laptop. Nope, no go there. Damn. Cable arrives, try again with my exactly-the-same cable, no go again.
Make some attempt to find someone with a laptop and serial port, who can be convinced to install gnokii. No luck there.
File data cable away in bottom drawer. Forget about it...
Fast forward to yesterday. I remember the serial cable. Hey, what device do I have that has a serial port and runs Linux? Ahh, a WRAP!
Download the sources for gnokii. Compile... and half way through the WRAP runs out of disk space. I MUST get a bigger CF card for that thing already... seriously.
Remove some stuff, continue compiling, install.
Now, the serial port is used for a serial console. I realise the console is specified in 3 seperate places. Once in TinyBIOS, once in the Linux Kernel for the boot messages, and once in /etc/inittab for a console once the system has booted.
I don't need the console, I've got ethernet plugged in and can SSH in.
Alright, just edit /etc/inittab.
I go in and comment out the entry for the serial console, and reboot with the nullmodem connected to the computer. As expected - TinyBIOS goes through it's screen, then the boot messages come up... then nothing. The serial port is now free to do what we want.
Edit gnokiirc to point it to the serial port, and select the phone driver.
Unplug the nullmodem cable and plug in the datacable. Run gnokii --identify. Nothing. Run it again. Nothing. Uh-oh, is this going to work?
Look at the phone. Whoops, the other end has to be plugged into the phone. That helps.
Run gnokii --identify for a third time... and it works! Surprise surprise.
Alright, now for the big finish. gnokii --netmonitor devel. It runs through, and unceremoniously dumps me back to the shell.
I hit the menu button on the phone and scroll back through the menus. Nothing special. Hmmm.
Ok, turn the phone off and on again. Look in the menu... and see this:
Wow, finally. After I don't use that phone any more.
It's got some cool functionality - telling you what channel the phone is on, the received signal strength in dbm, the battery voltages, basically tons of internal phone parameters. It's really quite cool, and I wish I had it earlier... :)
Oh, and no, my 3 sim card doesn't work in that phone (the phone displays "Sim card rejected", apparently this is normal as the sim is only meant to work in 3G phones anyway). The vodaphone sim that was in that phone works in my 3 phone (as I got it unlocked :D), but can't make calls (for obvious reasons i.e. credit has long since expired).
Which means I can walk around with the phone... and measure network signal levels :)
Friday 06 April 2007 at 8:58 pm
http://www.xseries.iinet.net.au/
"As part of the iinetwork, iiNet's next generation ADSL2+ network, you can experience the fastest ADSL broadband speeds available in Australia today."
Ahh yes, iinet's "Next generation" "iinetwork" (somebody please shoot whoever came up with that one) that seems to be half as fast as it should be. The fastest speeds (that are the same as every other ADSL2+ ISP). What about really fast but expensive connections you can get? ipop (100mbit, although you do have to be in the right building, and know the right people)
The interesting part being:
"That means high-speed file transfers between your PC and your 3
eries mobile using services like Orb."
Of course, this completely forgets Internode's offering of Annex M, which could triple your upload speed to ADSL2. Stock ADSL2 = 1mbit up, Annex M = 2, maybe 3 depending on exchange distance.
"And best of all, iiNet won't count the stuff you access via your
eries mobile towards your home broadband quota."
Umm, this is true of any ISP that doesn't count uploads - all the good ones, basically.
