Jonathon's Blog

Downtime

Jonathon Hill — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 20:26:25 +0000

Slight downtime there as i migrated servers. Should be sweet now.

Liberated Melody LIVE 03/07

Jonathon Hill — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 10:17:58 +0000

Wahoo! The very first ever live show for my radio station! Guess what I am the DJ! This is quite an epic event really the primier show for my radio station that I’ve been working on for weeks now.

Righto enough of me saying how great it’s going to be here’s the line up (or what I hope the general flow of the night will be like. First up I’m going to play some dubstep/dance music from various artists (creative commons and non) we are going to play a mixture of it then once we get sick of this and into a more happier mood we are going to switch (slowly) to a more upbeat(or downbeat) rock music. Which will set the tone put for the rest of the night as a merry cheery night with lots of singing.

Now listening to that now I know that you all want to come to the party that I’m streaming but that is invitation only but you can get the next best thing! Listen to the live show!!! Anyone can come online and have a listen (heck I want you too) you can even come into the chatroom during the show and talk to me and others listening to the show and after the show when the non-live playlist takes over you can talk to others listening too. Ok now pop yourself over too http://radio.jonys.info to read more infomation about liberated melody but since I’m nice I will put the show info here too.

So here’s the details:

What: Liberated Melody LIVE show
When: Saterday 3 July 0900-(1000 or 1100) GMT+0
Who: Dj Jb mixing up some sounds for him and some mates.
Why: Because we can and want to have a good time.
How: Simply click the listen link on the navigation page @ http://radio.jonys.info ( NOTE: when it’s not live it plays a playlist of Creative Commons music obtained from jamendo.com , if you want more infomation about non-live check out the non-live link on the navigation bar). Also check out the irc chatroom (click the ‘chatroom’ link on the navigation bar @ http://radio.jonys.info ) to chat to people about the station and to chat during the live show( NOTE: My nickname in the chatroom is ‘jony123′ feel free to talk to me but note if I don’t reply I’m either away, busy, at school or sleeping)

Hope to see you in the chatroom sometime or atleast I hope to see you there during the show.

Lastly know that basicly I am just streaming up a party so it’s going to be really unpredictable so come with a open mind really to listen to possibly everything and anything. XD

witch Linux

Jonathon Hill — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 06:57:55 +0000

Meet witch Linux. Witch Ignites, Thunderously Casting Hexes! She is currently an Arch based GNU/Linux distribution with the intent of being elegant, while also nimble, free of bloat, and otherwise quite minimal. Standard features include: your choice of tiling window management (scrotwm/dwm), text-based irc client (irssi), web browser (links2), file manager / text editor (MidnightCommander), and drop-down tabbing terminal emulator (tilda)… just to name a few! (Source wiki http://witch.jonys.info/wiki)

Me and the witch’s history

Witch Linux was a project i recently found out about in the crunchbang IRC channel. I got involved by just offering to host the projects files such as iso and vdi files. After alpha 1’s disaster and the release of alpha 2 thats when I got involved more by testing it out. Following the release of alpha 3 and 4 I tested more and installed alpha 4 to an old celeron I had. Now the most recent release of witch linux is alpha 5(released only as a .vdi as of time of writing) which has seen the base distro change from debian based to arch based.

04:06 < almigi> she’s gone from her debian diapers to her training bra phase

The time from the release of the ISO version of alpha 5 is a lot greater than the previous releases as there is a lot of new things to learn for everyone because of the base change but we are inching closer everyday.

Here are some screenshots of the witch in all her glory. (Screenshots are of alpha 5)(Click on screenshots for a larger version)

Here are some of crouchingpenguin’s screen shots which is from alpha5 with some custom applications installed.

Now to download the recent vdi for witch linux pop your self off to here http://witch.jonys.info/wiki/doku.php?id=arw . Feel free to pop along to the forums @ http://puffinux.freeforums.org/witch-f24.html . There are also some website for witch @ http://wastedartist.com/distros/witch/witch.html and http://invariability.net/witch/ .

And last but not least come to the IRC channel. #witchlinux @ freenode . (Not sure what IRC is? Use this http://invariability.net/witch/irc/ or http://webchat.freenode.net/ )

Internet Radio Station

Jonathon Hill — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 08:20:19 +0000

After looking for something to do recently I though I may as well try to get an internet radio station to work. With an earlier attempt at this providing some information I decided to look for a guide on the internet that uses icecast2 for the streaming. And something like mpd with an easy interface for controlling what music is playing.

While searching for something to use i couldn’t find anything decent that had debian as the base OS however i did find a guide that was for arch which I found useful. Here is the link http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Streaming_With_Icecast_and_MPD. I set that up and it worked great but after awhile I noticed mpd would stuff up and from then on would refuse to play anything and the only way I could fix it was to purge it and reinstall it. Even though this was a major issue I continued on this way. After awhile I decided I wanted to do some live shows were I play “free” music that I find around the place with this i also made the realisation that I didn’t need mpd any more and something like ices2 could be used to play random music from the library when I was unable to do a live show.

Once mpd failed for the last time i set out to try and setup ices2. I had quite alot of issues with this. The first problem was connecting to the icecast server. I found out this was because it was trying to connect to the stream that had a different user name then the default source one I quickly fixed that. My next issue was the temporary playlist while I figured out some sort of timeslot system. The only really problem with this is that ices2 for a basic playlist wants a full path to the file to be played and it wants them all on there own line. This wouldn’t be a issue if the library was only a few songs big. But at that time the library at already grown to 3Gb or so which translates to alot of paths to enter. I quickly set out to find some sort of script that could do it for me. I found this here (Which is an epic bash script) http://www.debianhelp.org/node/1167. What that does is greats simple playlists in each directory of music starting from the current working directory. This made my life way easier. So far I have been running ices2 non-stop and it hasn’t failed yet. My next mission is to write or find a script that during certain hours will only return a random song from a certain directory.

The link to the statistics page and links to the m3u file for the stream is http://radio.jonys.info:8000/. If you want to skip that you can use some music player such as vlc for linux or winamp for windows. Point vlc’s network stream to http://radio.jonys.info:8000/live.ogg . For winamp add a item to the playlist and select URL and then enter http://radio.jonys.info:8000/live.ogg .

If you have any other questions feel free to leave a comment or contact me via identi.ca/jony123

Downtime

Jonathon Hill — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 20:03:22 +0000

Yep had some major downtime as I was transitioning the server from ubuntu based to debian based. Just had mysql issues. All it well now.

crunchbang10-cont

Jonathon Hill — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 08:28:49 +0000

(Continued on from here http://www.jonys.info/2010/03/crunchbang10-is-out/)

(Also see the bottom of this entry for pictures)

After getting more time to play with Crunchbang 10 I decided to run through the installer process in my Virtualbox session. I fired it up and choose the “Text Install” option first off. The first thing that hit me was that this is pretty much exactly like the Debian installer. There a few changes here and there but it looks mostly the same (I could be wrong). The install was quite simple didn’t take to long either.

Now I decided to check out the ‘Text Expert’. I was actually caught off guard here as I didn’t expect it to be as involved as it was. Lots of options. However I quickly found out that the default options were actually what i needed. However it still took considerably longer to install compared to the “Text Install” but as i said it was also considerably more involved.

After rebooting and going through the boot squence I was pleased when it didn’t take very long to boot up. Both versions of installing took up roughly 1.6GB of space disk space. I can’t remember the amount Crunchbang 9.04 took but I am pretty sure it was more than 1.6GB.

Crunchbang10 is out!

Jonathon Hill — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 01:49:50 +0000

Finally Crunchbang10 is out (I refer to it as #!10). I was just casually reading the updates on identi.ca saw the link to the iso’s made me very happy. I quickly started downloading the I686 and AMD64 versions of both the openbox and Xfce types to my server. I then downloaded the openbox I686 version and burned it to a CD (I’m offering the ISOs to download here http://data.jonys.info/crunchbang/ the directory contains the md5sums to OR you can download them off the official website for Crunchbang here http://crunchbanglinux.org/downloads/statler/alpha-01/).

(See the bottom of this post for screen-shots)

Before i burned the CD i tested it in Virtualbox I was very impressed with how fast it loaded and the fact that it looked almost exactly like 9.04 . After i was satisfied with it in the Virtualbox I then burned to a CD and tried it out in the broken laptop i normally use when i can’t get access to the main laptop. It loaded in a fast ~1min 38secs this was faster than 9.04 loaded in. I then proceeded to try to connect to my wireless network and I was amazed when it said connection established. I then started xchat and connected to #crunchbang @ freenode it worked again(My only disappointment here is that irssi wasn’t included by default). I then started browsing around youtube worked, few other sites worked too. Basically everything just worked. I have not tried a install but i assume it is as easy and simple as normal.

(Continued to here http://www.jonys.info/2010/03/crunchbang10-cont/)

Using putty to proxy.

Jonathon Hill — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 04:48:57 +0000

Do you often find yourself on an insecure connection or in an restrictive network? Do you worry about who could be watching(or what). Or do you need a connection to your server were only port 80 and 443 are allowed out. I found myself in a situation which had both. It took me awhile to search the net and find a solution so i thought i would share it here.

You will need.

Putty. (Either the Windows version or Linux version. If you are using the windows version I suggest the portable version http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/putty_portable)
An SSH server.
A browser. (I suggest Firefox Portable. http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable)

# Warning – I take no responsibility to what you do with the knowledge I’m about to present.

Step 1: Setup the SSH server. (Linux only. You might be able to use an SSH server on windows but that is beyond me.

To install the SSH server execute from shell

Code

sudo apt-get install ssh

If you are in a restrictive network you will also have to either make the SSH daemon listen on port 80 or 443. To add a port for the daemon to listen to edit sshd_config with

Code

sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

and add this

Code

[...]

# What ports, IPs and protocols we listen for

Port 443

[...]

Now to apply these changes restart the ssh daemon.

Code

sudo /etc/init.d/ssh restart

Step 2: Configuring Putty.

Launch putty. First we are going to need to enter in the IP of the server and what port we are connecting to. Now we need to configure some proxy settings.(Note you only need to do this if the network uses a http proxy which is the only way out). To configure the proxy settings go under the category “Connection” and click on “Proxy”. Now select http proxy and then enter in the IP and Port of the proxy server (Note: You may need to ask around to get this information. If its not your computer you can normally find out via the browser settings). Now we need to setup the Socks proxy. To setup the Socks proxy go under the category “Connection” then under the sub-directory “SSH” and click on “Tunnels”. Under “Source port” putt “8081″. Under Destination put in “127.0.0.1″. Then click on box next to “Dynamic” and now click the button “Add”. The last thing that is needed to do is click on the button “Open” to initiate the ssh connection and enter in your username and password.

Step 3: Configuring Firefox to use the Socks proxy.

Launch Firefox. Goto Edit/Preferences, click on the Advanced icon, make sure its on the Network tab and then click on the button labeled ‘Settings…”. Now click on the “Manual proxy configuration” circle box. Then under “SOCKS Host:” enter in “127.0.0.1″ and under “Port:” enter in “8081″. Finally click “ok”.

Now the moment of truth. Try to load up http://www.jonys.info/. If it worked congratulations. If it didn’t work leave a comment with any errors that came up and i will try to help you out.

Also here are some pictures of setting up. They might help you.

Crunchbang 10

Jonathon Hill — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 07:52:18 +0000

Crunchbang 10 (Codename Statler).

This is honestly one of the things I have been looking forward to for ages. Crunchbang based on Debian Squeeze. Finally I got my wish. I beleave this is going to be huge for Crunchabang and I and many others see this as a step forward.

Here is an image of found of the setup. Looks good. ( When it comes out I will host it here and make a blog post about it )

Follow the conversation at http://identi.ca/group/statler

Pymail

Jonathon Hill — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 02:00:38 +0000

PyMail

(A seperate blog for PyMail as been made at http://pymail.jonys.info

Recently i wished to write some sort of script in python. I thought about it over a day and decided a python script that could read an email. Then depending on its contents send the email back with something in it. I goggled and read lots then came up with the current script. Read on for more….

My original design put the entire thing in one script. I called this script pymail.py. From a various tests including checking inbox, receiving and deleting inbox items, and sending emails back to the sender. From here it rapidly progressed until the script file had hundreds of lines. At this point i though it needed to be made more clean and tidy. This is where i split the original script into 4 different scripts. The first was the original main file pymail.py this contains the main script body, the second is config.py which contains all the configuration variables, the third is commands.py this contains all commands that are for sending to the server and receiving from the server, the forth and last is functs.py this file contains all the functions that respond to user input such as the Google function.

After making it more neater i wrote the first real function. I decided what better of a ‘hello world’ function then a Google one. So i did a quick Google search and found the xgoogle python module i quickly wrote up the function and started testing it and like clock work i would send it an email asking the Google results for random strings like ‘google’, ‘pizza’, ‘chocolate’, etc and it would send emails back with the results. I choose the xgoogle module here because it would allow me to greatly expand on this function to include more like Google fights and google rank.

Now you can test it! (yay) Just pop an email off to pymail@jonys.info the only feature i have in it so far is the ability to search google. To do that put ‘google search (string you want to search)’ I have not updated the help function yet.

After lots of thinking i decided i should write a module to authenticate users. After some discussion on IRC GPG was thown up(GPG — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Privacy_Guard ). So i did some research into it and found python-gnupg which had all the features that i would need. So i started to write the simple modules that decrypted the message and exacted various points of data. (I have not gone very far with this yet. But some of the features will include stuff like facebook, myspace and twitter from email.)

I will upload the source to my website in a short time but if you have any suggestions feel free to email me at jony123@jonys.info