Install Ubuntu Linux from USB.

Dec 12, 2010 | ,

This is actually quite easy.
Follow the below steps.

  • In Linux go to a terminal and type the following
    sudo apt-get install usb-creator
  • Type your root password.
  • Insert and mount a USB key. In the majority of times the USB key will automatically be mounted by the system.
  • Go to the system menu, then to administration and then finally to start up disk creator.
  • Point the creator to the ISO that you’ve downloaded.
  • Point the creator at the USB key that you want to use. Be aware that you do not need to use the erase button. I did this thinking that I needed to first remove the content on that disk before the process could continue however what it actually does is unmounts the partition. This is not what you’d really want.
  • Now just use the button called Create start up disk and wait for the process to finish.

That’s really all there is too it.

The perfect set up for the Apple TV.

Nov 29, 2010 | , ,

This is not a post about accessibility but I should start by just saying that I’ve blogged about the Apple TV before for that reason.

I wanted to explain my media playback set up at the moment. It has taken a few massive leaps in the last few years.

First, I had a first generation X-Box modified with XBMC. That was a great little machine. It’s since been moved to the attic because it’s no longer used. It never let me down though so I kind of feel guilty throwing it to one side like that. I picked the X-Box up for €30 and the installation of XBMC wasn’t all that difficult.

The one major drawback was that the interface wasn’t accessible at all. Ahem…. Sorry. I didn’t mean to bring that word up in that post. Please excuse me.

The next solution was the Eea PC. This was the smallest PC around at the time. No bigger than your hand and running at the same noise as a wrist watch this machine is particularly cool. It’s sitting there doing nothing at the moment because I haven’t got around to working with it but for over a year it was behind the television connected via a HDMI cable providing full HD playback of video and music. Thanks to Windows 7 and Jaws it was fully accessible! Ah sorry! It slipped out. I can’t help it! The only problem was that Jaws caused video playback to stutter and intermittently fail when played in full screen mode in Windows media player on the 40 inch television. This is a limitation of the mirror driver.

Lately, I’ve begun using the Apple TV. At the start I accessed this using the Apple remote software from the iPhone but recently I’ve been given access to it via the IOS 4.1 update thanks to the newly added voiceover support. This is by far the best option I’ve ever had both for accessibility, usability and versatility. Wow. That’s a mouthful isn’t it?

Now, let’s get to the interesting part! For the rest of this blog post I won’t mention that horrid a word once more ok?

The Apple TV has one major drawback. It needs iTunes to work to access your music collection. But, what if you’re desktop isn’t on or you don’t want iTunes running? Or, what if you have media from a number of different sources and you don’t want all the media on your iPhone, iPod or iPad. For a large library such as one with two Terabytes of music this becomes a particularly important issue.

The solution? My favourite word at the moment: Virtualization.

I have a server here running a number of systems. It now has a Windows XP machine on it with a copy of iTunes installed.
The virtual machine has been given two 5TB disks. One for backups and the other for storing all of the media that was previously stored in different computers. All of the music and videos have been consolidated onto this one server. The drive has been shared out to authenticated users connected to the Windows domain so that when I’m using Windows media player I can still access everything. I’ve also got a group policy created using client side extensions mapping a drive letter to this share for all computers that log on. But that’s only a side note really.

iTunes won’t run as a service so when the Windows XP machine starts it automatically logs in, starts iTunes then locks the session. It only logs in with a service account that I’ve given very limited permissions to so it’s reasonably secure. I hate setting up systems that automatically log on. It’s a bad security practise so I try to stay away from it.

iTunes has been set up with my Apple ID, it has all of the media added from the 5TB drive and it’s working perfectly. With genius drawing from the massive library available to it the collections it’s coming up with are very impressive.

I’m sitting here writing this post with music that I’d never consider listening to playing in the background. The iTunes media server is hosted on a server that has dozens of uses so it’s never even considered. It just works and I won’t have to touch it for ages!

Now, on a technical note, with Forefront antivirus, Data protection for backups and WSUS providing windows updates this Windows XP virtual machine won’t need to be touched ever if everything works the way it has been designed. It will reboot once every week or two depending on the requirements of installed updates and if something goes wrong, Forefront or data protection will email me.

I’m quite happy with it.

The matching visit with my perspective new guide dog.

Nov 27, 2010 | ,

A picture of Ike. My new guide dog?

Ike is standing beside me.

So… I’ve had eight text messages, four direct messages, one email and 5 calls from people wondering how the matching visit went today. Thanks for the concern. I know that many of you have gone through this process so your support is appreciated.

The day started at half 7 in the morning. As the song says, the weather outside was frightful! The winter decided to fling all its lode at us in one night. Thunder, lightning, rain, snow, sleet, hail, wind and frost ravaged the country over night. The M1 and M7 were particularly bad roads. Certain parts of it were reduced to one lane. Most dangerous parts of the road were made worse with compacted ice.

I was more concerned about traveling than Emma was. She braved the elements with a lot more confidence than I’d have in that kind of weather. It was very slow going in parts. In total it took us five hours to get to Cork.

We got to the Irish guide dog centre in Model farm road in Cork at just before half twelve where we met the instructor. He introduced himself again and started the conversation off right away by introducing the dog to me. We went into a different room after a few minutes and we continued talking.

I asked a few dozen questions and the instructor answered them all expertly. It was very interesting to hear about this perspective dog. We discussed its likes, dislikes, things that needed to be improved and its strengths.

The next stage of the matching visit was the walk. We did a route that the dog would be reasonably familiar with. It’s important that the dog is happy with where it is walking around so that it has one less thing to worry about when it’s doing the first walk with what could possibly be its new handler.

After the walk we had another quick conversation with the instructor. I was impressed with his plans for the next dog. He has some really nice methods of ensuring the perspective dog is given the right training to enable it to hit the ground running so to speak.

We decided that Ike, the dog that I met was a very suitable dog for me and I will begin training with him on the 10th of January.

The walk was better than I thought it would be. The dog is incredibly easy to anticipate. With Freddie, movements were fast, snappy and very confident. This dog is a little bit more apprehensive. This is obviously something that will improve but I hope it doesn’t change his body language all that much. I love it! Everything he did I could anticipate well in advance. He’s a very long bodied dog so when he’s making a change to his position or his movements there seems to be a little bit more advanced warning.

Let’s see how it goes.

Matching visit with the perspective new dog.

Nov 26, 2010 | ,

I found out on Monday that IGDB have a dog that may be suitable for me.

I’m going down to Cork tomorrow for a matching visit. At this point, I have absolutely no idea what kind of dog it is, if it’s a he or she, what the dogs name is or anything else. This is standard for everyone going down for a matching visit. I suppose it’s to ensure that people don’t have any preconseptions or expectations so I completely understand their reasoning. Still, I’d like to have some kind of idea.

Of course, I’ll let you know how I get on. I’m sure Emma will have a picture or two to post up here.

I’m nervous. Mainly because any dog that I get is going to have some very large shoes to fill and although I understand I’ll have to start it of easy, it’s going to have a lot of work and a lot of responsibility if or when it’s fully trained.

Choosing a password manager and getting the PHP Password Manager installed.

Nov 26, 2010 | , ,

An update to this post detailing the KeePass password manager is available.

I have been searching for a decent password manager for ages. Ideally I’d love to be able to use Network password manager as from using that in work I know that it’s a really small and fast application that integrates with active directory easily and provides some really nice search functionality. I was looking for something that would accept authentication from multiple users and would also store license files. Network password manager is really the best option. The problem is, it’s far too expensive to justify the cost.

When I couldn’t find a decent installable application that I could access from any windows PC that will access passwords from a central location I started to look for web based applications. There are some great applications out there but none of them were secure enough or provided the right level of encryption. Passwords even if their just for websites are probably your most important asset when your online a lot.

After a bit of digging I found PHPPasswordManager. and USB password manager . I was almost willing to consider having to bring a pen drive everywhere with the USB password manager on it but knew that at some stage I wouldn’t have it with me when I needed it most. PHPPasswordManager seemed to be the best bet. It didn’t have everything I wanted but it was simple, lightweight and fast and it wouldn’t take all that long to get running.

In the end, I decided to go with PHP Password Manager as it encripts passwords before sending them to or from the server and the user interface is very clean. It required a bit of work though.

I have customized this web application extensively in a very short time so that the interface provides the information I want at the top, the help information at the end of every page is hidden and only shown if or when I want it and I’ve replaced some of the buttons such as configure and add with links to make it easier to jump to them very quickly.

Most importantly, after installing the PHPPasswordManager, I found that its authentication wasn’t as good as I thought it was going to be. When a user visited the url they could see all of the accounts that had passwords associated with them. This isn’t all that bad. With some cryptic names it could be hard to determine what systems the passwords were for and of course, the passwords can only be unlocked with the master password however this was still a concern. So, I have password protected the directory that this site is in and I only accept log ins from one account. These details are sent using Digest authentication to add more security.

The following summarises the steps I used to install PHPPasswordManager

  1. Download the .gz archive to your Linux box by visiting the URL:
    http://sourceforge.net/projects/phppassmanager/
  2. Extract the archive using
    Tar xzvf phppassmanager*
    when in the directory containing the downloaded file.
  3. Navigate to the install directory:
    Cd phppassmanager*/install
  4. Create the database:
    echo “create database passwordmanagement” | mysql -u username –password=password
    Replace the username and password with one with the required privlidges to add databases.
  5. Add the tables into the database:
    mysql -u username –password=password phppassmanager < tables.sql
    Again, replace the username and password.
  6. Using PHPMyadmin, create a new account and give it access to the database we have just created.
  7. Edit config.php and change the username, password and database to provide the information you have just added.

Create a new virtual directory for this. You can most likely past the following into /etc/apache2/sites-available/default

Alias /passwords “/home/web/phppassmanager/”

Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride AuthConfig Order allow,deny
allow from all

Obviously, it goes without saying that you will need to change the paths etc in this to reflect the structure of your file system.
Now reload your Apache2 config.
/etc/init.d/apache2 reload
Navigate to yourdomain/passwords in your browser.
The password manager should be shown.

Now, lets harden the configuration a little bit.

  1. Within /home/web/phppassmanager or where ever you have left this directory, you will see a directory called install Rename this to TMPinstall. This can be deleted at a later date. Leave it there for the moment in case you need it in the upcoming days.
  2. Now, lets password protect the directory.
    htpasswd -c /etc/apache-passwords YourUsername
    Replace YourUsername with what ever name you want to log in with.
    You will be asked to enter your password twice.
  3. Enable the Auth_digest module:
    A2enmod auth_digest
  4. Restart Apache2.
    /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
  5. Use nano or your favourite text editor to create a .htaccess file:
    Nano /home/web/phppassmanager/.htaccess
    Remember to change the path to reflect your own set up.
  6. Paste the following lines. Take care to change the path to the password file and change the username as well.
    <
    AuthType Digest
    AuthName “Restricted Files”
    AuthUserFile /etc/apache2-passwords
    Require user YourUsername

That’s all there is too it.
Go to the configure button and start making groups.
Add passwords.
It’s all very easy after that.

This set up has a major limitation. It doesn’t allow for multi-user environments but for what I need right now, it will do… Just about.

A bad hair day

Nov 24, 2010 | ,

I arrived in just before 9AM this morning. It had been a good morning up to then, servers hadn’t done anything weird during the night, the emailed alerts didn’t show anything out of the ordinary and there wasn’t all that much going on so I could get things done for a change without fighting fires.
While working on a few things I logged onto a server using remote desktop and as I always do, I started Jaws.
Two seconds later alarms started going off all over the place!
The server throughout a blue screen of death and wouldn’t respond to anything even when accessed using the network KVM.
Of course, the server I took down had to be in the furthest building away. I had to go over and reboot it and make sure everything worked afterword.

This is where things went even worse!

The tip of my Cain isn’t moving. It’s jammed! So, it’s still usable but it’s not very easy.

I made it over eventually.

I got into the server room which by the way is in a lower basement.

I unlocked the iPhone and looked for the saytext app so I could read the labels on the front of the servers to find the one that I needed to reboot. To my horror I hadn’t installed it after I lost everything on the phone a few days ago. I tried reinstalling it but because I was in such a bad location I couldn’t! I had to close everything and go back out of the basement to download it.

This sounds easy but there are fire suppression systems to turn off, a KVM to fold up, racks to close and security systems to get in and out of.

This server room has three air conditioning units and 16 racks so it’s very noisy so it’s probably the place I hate going to most.

All because Jaws made a server crash.

I’m kind of surprised.

Nov 23, 2010 | ,

Do you really think that the election in this country will make any difference?

Hahahahahaha!

It’s just laughable.

Ok. I’ll explain it again. The politicians we have elected and the ministers that run our departments have no experience in general of the area they have been instructed to run. This isn’t their fault necessarily. They openly depend on consultation from people who should know about the area that they manage.
Now, look at the consultants. Most of these are civil servants. The majority of civil servants are taken in and given a limited amount of training to ensure they can do the job that they’ve been instructed to do.
These people are doing the best job they can. Ordinarily, from what I am aware, they have very little interest if any at all in the area they are working in.

Do you see the problem yet?

The people who are being advised are the ministers. They don’t necessarily have any experience or interest in the area they are representing.
The people who are advising the ministers are the civil servants. They are basically in the same boat. They have a few advantages in terms of the training they have been given but compared to the people who have studied these areas they are amateurs.

There are consultants who advise civil servants. These generally provide very technical and complex recommendations to people who with no disrespect intended at all, have really no idea what impact the recommendations will have. They heavily rely on the integrity, ability and impartiality of the consultants.

This doesn’t mean that I have anything against the consultants either.

No one part of this is the problem.

The entire thing is what’s wrong. There are so many layers of consultancy and committees that the people who we hold accountable and responsible are actually far from it. Now, don’t get me wrong. They are not far from the problem but for the purpose of this point, they’re not the people we should be aiming to remove.

Keep fianna fail in power. Keep anyone you want in power. But first, before you start marching to get the current bunch of wasters out, march to demand complete reform. The system we have is completely broken beyond repair. I’ve blogged about this before so I shouldn’t continue.

Apple TV accessibility.

Nov 22, 2010 |

I strongly encourage everyone to get the word out.
Let me say first of all that I am not a so called “Apple Fanboy”.
I do however believe that Apple have done more in the past three years for accessibility than any other company as in a short time they have change the landscape of mobile, desktop and now TV accessibility for the better.

Recently we have found that devices such as the iPod nano, iPod Touch, iPhone and the Mac OSX operating system are as accessible as any other out there if not even more so in some situations. I’m now delighted to say that the Apple TV joins the lineup of accessible products made by Apple.

Until today a visually impaired person had to use the apple remote software on an iPhone or ipod touch to access and play content independently on the Apple TV. With the release of IOS 4.1 for this it is no longer the case. The remote was efficient and perfectly adiquit but Voiceover support makes this the only real compelling solution for someone looking for this level of multimedia integration.

I have recorded a review of the Apple TV with access through the Apple remote to demonstrate the flexability of that option. With the release of Voiceover support it was great to release a second guide. This walks users through updating the Apple TV, enabling voice over and navigating around music, videos, podcasts and playlists.

All of the recordings relating to accessible media players are available on Listen and Learn Recordings.