michaelwyres.com » Geekdom

Epic Dragon Sculpture

Michael Wyres — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 07:19:53 +0000

I spotted this awesome sculpture in North Laverton on the way to work this morning – (avoiding a heavily congested Princes Freeway) – made out of scrap metal, and used to advertise a scrap metal merchant.

If memory serves – (and it often doesn’t) – I do think I have seen these before, but had certainly forgotten about them.

Also, sample one of the fine potholes you’ll find on Melbourne roads.

Funny Foursquare Moment

Michael Wyres — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 08:10:27 +0000

Had a bit of a chuckle this evening at this response from Foursquare, while checking into the local McDonald’s for the birthday party of a school friend of our daughter Hannah.

If this was my SECOND time checking into this location, why is it the first McDonald’s I’ve checked into, and the first fast food restaurant I’ve checked into?

Lulz – but I’ll take the nine points!

Holy Levitation Batman!

Michael Wyres — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 22:03:30 +0000

I was just pointed towards this really cool video about quantum levitation.

The possibilities for transportation systems alone are mind boggling.

Awesomesauce.

Setting Your iOS5 Device Up For Wireless Sync

Michael Wyres — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 06:53:06 +0000

So, you’ve managed to update your iDevice to the newly released iOS5 – hopefully you didn’t have the problems that some have had.

Now that you’ve done it, how do you setup one of the coolest new features – wireless iTunes synchronisation? You’ll never need to connect up your device to your computer with a cable ever again.

Well, you will at least one more time!

The first thing to do is to connect your device with your Apple cable to the computer you normally sync with. Once iTunes finds your device, go to its summary page and make sure that “Sync with this [iDevice] over Wi-Fi” is ticked, like so:

Click “Apply”, and do a normal sync to save this new setting to the device itself.

Now, disconnect the device – and you may never need to connect it by cable again. Make sure your device is connected to your wireless network.

Go into your “Settings” app, and under “General” go to “iTunes Wi-Fi Sync”, like so:

Once inside you can click the “Sync Now” button – watch what happens in iTunes on your computer. Your device will also sync automatically whenever you plug it into your charger, and you can tell it to sync from within iTunes on your computer, and it will find your phone on the network.

Pure magic – and about time!

Solar Rocks

Michael Wyres — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 01:33:37 +0000

Just a quick post for anyone considering getting a solar electricity system for their home. This should bring a smile to your face:

A meter running backwards always brings a smile to mine! This was ours this morning, generating almost 1.5kW.

WordPress Frames Hack

Michael Wyres — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 12:11:45 +0000

For security reasons, by default, in the later versions of WordPress – (not sure which version this started with) – you cannot load a WordPress site within a frameset of another page.

This prevents people with malicious intent, from hi-jacking your site inside a frame within their own site, and possibly stealing information from within your installation. A most sensible precaution.

However, there are times where you may in fact want to do this yourself.

If you must do it – and please, only do it if you really know what you are doing, because you may open up a security hole in your site – it is as simple as changing a single line of code.

Inside the “wp-includes” folder within your WordPress installation, edit the “default-filters.php” file, and remove – (or comment out) – the following line:
add_action( 'login_init', 'send_frame_options_header', 10, 0 );

This line should be at or around line 225.

That’s it. Done.

Your WordPress installation should now load inside a frame.

Gold Class IPTV

Michael Wyres — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 06:02:22 +0000

Anyone who has a modern TV capture card in their computer will probably be aware – (depending on software) – that whatever your card is capturing, can be streamed onto the network.

Some do it well, some not so well.

In the midst of the project I’m working on at the moment, here is the “gold version” of how to stream TV over an IP network:

There’s a range of different encoder cards in this chassis. There are cards to turn terrestrial free-to-air channels into IPTV streams, cards to turn Foxtel channels into IPTV streams, and cards to turn analogue inputs into IPTV streams.

In the end, each stream can be access as required, such as shown below, clockwise in order – FOX8, Sky News Australia, Discovery World HD, and Fox Sports 3.

Tiny little set-top boxes are configured to access the streams, and be attached to televisions anywhere on the network via HDMI connectors.

Seriously cool, but not cheap.

But I still want one.

Google Street View Face Recognition Fail

Michael Wyres — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 02:31:09 +0000

In the wake of claims from Senator Stephen Conroy a little over a year ago about Google committing the biggest privacy breach in history in the midst of collecting updated data for their StreetView service – (which the Privacy Commissioner later basically dismissed as rubbish) – as a goodwill gesture, Google promised to make sure that people’s faces and other identifiable markings such as vehicle registrations would be blurred out.

Take a look at this image from Street View I just found here, click for larger version:

It’s funny enough – (but fair enough, since the face detection algorithm is ultimately designed to detect faces) – that it blurred out a face on a poster, but curious that it didn’t blur out the identical face on the identical poster immediately next to the first one.

Now, of course algorithms like this are never likely to be “perfect” – but I do worry a bit when two – (for all intents and purposes) – identical pieces of the image are treated differently, and it does make me wonder how many “real” faces got missed.

Food for thought.