Vanity Address Generator

Introduction

"Vanitgen" is an interesting program if you are in any way interested in the development and fulfillment of the Bitcoin industry. The Bitcoin currency system utilises a wallet system that can generate a unique 56 Bit random number to receive currency transfers or payments. All address bits of this type start with a single prefix "1" plus a continuous random sequence of 55 additional alpha numeric characters that comprise of a Public and Private address that form the Bitcoin address system, not the Bitcoin currency itself.

Bash Scripts - An example

I thought I might share with you, those that are interested that is, how you might write your own useful "bash script". Well just what is a "Bash" script? to answer that you first need to know where the word Bash comes from, it is a *nix term given to one of the many various shell(s) in use the likes of Unix, Linux and yes Mac's, of which these are only accessible from the terminal. A terminal console on it's own does very little it needs to run using a shell of some sought, these shells and by now there are a few of them for *nix family essentially do different jobs, but the one you are most likely to use is the bash shell as it is perhaps the most popular.

Lame encoding from .wav to .mp3

I am no audio expert but given that the "ripping and encoding" tool I used to use "Grip" is no longer available within the Ubuntu repositories, I have had to resort to something else. Grip as an application has not been updated much since it was released and this along with other applications need to be continually bettered and updated. I liked "Grip" a lot and was saddened that it is no longer available in the Ubuntu repositories.

Recovering from an Upgrade Failure at Boot

Twice now upgrading from "Karmic Koala" to "Lucid Lynx" both are LTS versions the server have failed. I had each server fail to boot after upgrade and whilst I can not understand why, I can at least try to find a way around the failure and restore the system to working order. This article is my attempt to recover from such a disaster.

There are few things more satisfying than a good backup

Introduction

Backups rely for the most part, on *unix at least (something called "cron" jobs), wikipedia defines cron as follows:-

Cron is a time-based job scheduler in Unix-like computer operating systems. The name cron comes from the word "chronos", Greek for "time". Cron enables users to schedule jobs (commands or shell scripts) to run periodically at certain times or dates. It is commonly used to automate system maintenance or administration, though its general-purpose nature means that it can be used for other purposes, such as connecting to the Internet and downloading email.

Cron is without doubt the workhorse of the *unix system it schedules all the jobs you want completed at a certain time. You need to think of cron as nothing more than an alarm clock. The only difference with this alarm clock is that multiple alarms can be set to run multiple single instruction commands or scripts. You perhaps better off to think of cron as a table this table allows instructions by way of digits, wild cards and commands that can be entered on one or more instances.

Vim or V(Improved)

I came across this article today on Liinux.com there are any number of similar tutorials elsewhere on the net and each have there merits. "Vi" or "Vim" for that matter is a console application used for many functions including programming and file editing.

Note what follows in this article explicitly for beginners new to Vim.

Interrogating Domain Names

Introduction

Console commands can be quite useful not least for which the immense power they provide given the size of the application, "nslookup" is one such command although by enlarge replaced by the "dig" command, both apparently perform the same or similar function. Both these commands perform the function of lookup for a given domain name returning a four or six digit sequence of decimal numbers separated by periods "." this number when returned gives numbered address assigned to that domain. This you might already know, what you might not know is that any given domain name can hold more than just one numbered address. What is the point of that I here you ask?

Video Ascii - ASCII Art

Introduction

ASCII stands for "American Standard Code for Information Interchange" it is one of the the most widely used examples of usable character standards currently in use. You probably don't even realise it but if you are using a computer to read this, then you are most likely using ASCII to access and read this very article. It is widely used as common printable characters a-z, A-Z and 0-9 along with the various punctuation marks and readily found on your screen and keyboard. Video Ascii is a form of Ascii Art this is the depiction of a readily distinguishable object, person or form that uses the tonal qualities within individual characters to display a recognisable picture. This type of art first came about with the early typewriter and with individual keyboard characters painstakingly manipulated to depict a person or object. This process was only made slightly quicker with the introduction of the electric typewriter, but not much. As computers came into the scene display outputs were extremely simple, both video and print but the production of Ascii Art was almost automated and much simplified. Now it is possible to produce video Ascii Art using common tools readily available from within standard Ubuntu repositories.

ASCII code Table

Scripting Layer 4 Android

Introduction

Talk is "Perl" is available for the Android Phones well it is and it isn't, in order to run any scripts you must run them in an emulator this is what the "sl4a.apk" program does. Why, I ask myself, Perl runs on many platforms so why not Android, I can not answer that question all I know is that in order to run Perl you need an emulator to do it.

Rooting your Android with ClockWorkMod Recovery & CyanogenMod

Introduction

Warning this upgrade is not for novices. Neither SoSLUG or the author of this article will take responsibility for any damage or loss of data to your phone since it is possible you will lose your contacts and any sms messages stored on your phone. Eeven if this data is something you have taken care to backup it is still possible you will lose your GApps Market (This at least we can show how you can get this application back).