Last updates: 21-Jun-2009

Warning: This hack will not just void your warranty. It will drop-kick it to the floor, stomp it in the gonads five or six times, shoot it in the head, douse the body in petrol and set it ablaze THEN spit on the remains for good measure. And that doesn’t take into consideration what it could do to you or your equipment . You have been warned. Don’t try this unless you’re comfortable with multimeters and soldering irons.
Now, on to the good stuff. Suppose you have a Linksys WRT54G router & antenna that you want to mount somewhere, say on your roof. So, one fine Saturday morining, you grab a few tools and get to work. About 35 minutes into your little project, it hits you: How exactly do you get power for your router? The roof has no power outlets and you need to keep the antenna cable as short as possible to minimize signal losses. (more…)

Anyone who’s ever tried to customize the Usplash theme that comes with Ubuntu knows that it’s a bit of pain. And if you’re trying to create your own theme, things just get a bit more difficult.

Enter Splashy, a boot splash manager with some very flexible features. One of the thing I like about it is that it does require any kernel patching and runs completely in userspace. And it supports 8bit, 16bit and 24bit framebuffers and TrueType fonts. Even better, its ridiculously easy to create themes for Splashy. (more…)

If you’ve ever had to reinstall Windows on a computer, be it yours or someone else’s, you probably know that boot disks can be rather useful things to have around. The best kind are the Windows 98 boot disks (IMHO); they fit onto one floppy and give you access to the cdrom even if the computer’s BIOS doesn’t support booting from cdrom.

So what do you do when you need to reinstall Windows and the computer your’re working is a tiny laptop with no floppy, no cdrom and a serious malware overdose? (more…)

I was trying to install Beryl on a friend’s machine earlier today and I run into a few speed bumps. Beryl would exit immediately I started it and gave me this message:

/usr/bin/compiz: GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap is missing
/usr/bin/compiz: Failed to manage screen: 0
/usr/bin/compiz: No manageable screens found on display :0.0

(more…)

Warning: This can brick your router. Goes without saying, I will not take responsibility for whatever havoc you wreak. You have been warned. If you use your router for internet access, tt’s best to have an alternative method of getting online. You have been warned!

I have a Meraki mini I’ve been playing around with. I’m running OpenWRT Kamikaze 7.06 on it and I love it. It’s very flexible piece of hardware and comes with an 8mb flash and 32mb of RAM, which is more than enough for the stuff I run on it. The only annoying thing is the lack of a web interface. (more…)

Before I begin: This WILL void your warranty (if you haven’t done that already) and might result in damage to your router or cause you to sustain injury. You have been warned. I will not take any responsibility for any mishaps that may occur as a result of this post.

My Linksys WRT54G version 5 suddenly stopped working over the weekend. On powering the router, all lights powered on and stayed that way. I had previously been running DD-WRT Micro.I tried holding the reset button for 30 seconds, powering the router, holding for another 30 seconds and then usnig TFTP tool to flash the router but that did not work. My situation was desperate and I was ready for desperate measures. (more…)