Overclocking an iMac G4 with 133MHz Bus

I've been too lazy to write the summary. Perhaps it's coming soon!

Mac OS X Lion and Xterm

If you’re running Lion as your desktop OS, you may well have bumped into this little one already. If you try to use commands such as nano or top or many other normal things, you may well be getting this error.

Error opening terminal: xterm-256color.

Brilliant.

It happens because there is no file defining a 256 colour session in Snow Leopard, or Leopard, or Tiger for that matter. You’re even likely come across the error when SSH-ing in non-Mac systems. So how to solve it?

Updating VMware ESXi

I don’t like visiting vmware.com. It means that there’s a problem, and I know that the solution will involve an awful lot of searching and staring in bafflement, usually with pretty high stakes. Feeling lost and apprehensive, I delve through many pages of documentation looking for the latest instructions that really should be in bold on an obvious page, or at the very least returned in my searches.

So you can imagine my happiness when I discovered that the incredibly simple, stress-reducing vSphere Host Update Utility has been unceremoniously ditched for ESXi 4.1. Gone. Kaput. Why? Only a cynic would say that it’s to encourage users to give VMware money for their fancier tools. And I’m not cynical. Oh, no.

Markdown Test Post

I've been too lazy to write the summary. Perhaps it's coming soon!

Elgato Netstream DTT

I bought one of these recently, and I really like it. It magically plonks digital terrestrial TV and radio onto your network, so you don’t have to beat up your broadband connection to get it. But you can read all that on the Elgato website; there are just a few brief things I wanted to mention.

Compiling Squeezeplay

If you’ve ever tried the binaries of Squeezeplay 7.6 available from the nightly downloads, you’ll know that things aren’t quite right for Ubuntu. The same holds true for the Joggler the graphics and the audio are pretty messed up. But there is a way, if you compile it yourself!

Hello, Joggler

My word. After a chat with a friend in a pub, I found out that I had missed the opportunity to buy a hackable 7” touchscreen computer with an Intel Atom chip for £50. I’d been looking for something cheap and touch-screeny for the kitchen, so it was time for a trip to eBay.

I managed to pick up a mint condition O2 Joggler for about £70 in the end, and it’s superb. There’s no branding on the front at all, so it looks rather swish and inconspicuous. It’s rather like an electronic picture frame, but the spec is much more impressive. Made by OpenPeak, there’s an Intel Atom Z520 running at 1.3GHz, 512MB RAM, 1GB internal flash, wifi and wired ethernet, audio out, lovely display… and a USB socket on the side. That becomes important in a minute.

Security, Energy and Home Automation

Everybody loves a bit of home automation, don’t they? Traditionally, geeks such as myself would be toying around with X10 modules, which provide a mature platform for automating pretty much anything in your home. But if X10 isn’t your thing, there may be an alternative.

Here’s my admission. I never figured X10 out. If I’d bought a few modules and started playing I’d probably have got a lot further, but I always held back because of the price of the modules and the fact that I already use powerline communication for ethernet, and didn’t really like the idea of putting more interference into my mains supply.

Mac OS X Energy Scripting

I've been too lazy to write the summary. Perhaps it's coming soon!