Oh XBox 360, how do I love the! Let me count thy ways … but watching downloaded movies is not one of them.

With the recent fall update for the XBox 360, Microsoft has opened you its Media Client to allow it to connect to third-party UPnP Media Servers. Which is awesome, except for the fact that the XBox 360 only supports WMV (and MPEG) encoded movies. I mean seriously, no “person” voluntarily uses your media formats Microsoft. And with the 360’s horsepower, there shouldn’t be a problem here to decode these things in software. What’s a gamer to do?

Thankfully a group, with a little piece of software called TVersity, recently added transcoding capabilities and support for the XBox 360 Media Client to allow for transcoded videos to be streamed to the XBox 360 on demand. As the little man rejoices and struggles to get it all to work, I write a guide on what I needed to do to unlock this desirable capability.
Continue reading Stream Transcoded Media To Your XBox 360 Using TVersity »

In my previous articles, I discussed how to install and setup OpenWRT on the WRT54GL, and how to setup Shorewall as a firewall solution. Today I will be discussing how to install, setup, and use VPNC to connect to a Cisco VPN 3000 Concentrator, as well as how to configure Shorewall to allow VPN communication through the firewall.
Continue reading VPNC with Shorewall on OpenWRT »

The other day, David Sklar decided to come up with an ingenious method translating XML into simple JSON; nicknamed BadgerFish. At about the same time, I was looking for a format in which I could convert XML to JSON without loosing the features of XML yet keeping the JSON objects simple. BadgerFish is about as close as a good format as I have seen. However, a project I am working on requires an XML DOM in JavaScript to be converted into JSON for easier processing. Being that no one has written one yet, I went ahead and wrote my own - and am offering it free for others to use.
Continue reading JavaScript DOM to BadgerFish Encoder »

In continuation of my previous article on installing OpenWRT on a Linksys WRT54GL, I discuss how to set some of the more advanced network configurations of the router, and how to setup a firewall with traffic shaping.
Continue reading OpenWRT Advanced Firewall »

Linksys really hit a niche when they created the WRT54G line of wireless routers, although unintentional. These particular routers were originally written using Linux which, due to the GPL, requires Linksys to release the source code. Since then, many open source groups have gotten ahold of this code and hacked it to bits. As such, there are many different open source firmwares available for the WRT54G line of routers that you can install. (Warranty voiding of course)

One of the most popular third-party firmware available is OpenWRT. This firmware is essentially a stripped-down embedded Linux operation system with addon packages to allow it to be a wireless router. It’s small, simple, and powerful; though not for the light of geek, as any configuration must be done by CLI.

I recently got a WRT54GL wireless router, which is the same as a WRT54G v4 router. (Linksys changed the model number since v5 does not use Linux and will not run custom firmwares.) In only a few hours, I was able to install OpenWRT and setup a powerful router/firewall for my home network. Here’s how you can too…
Continue reading Installing OpenWRT on the Linksys WRT54GL »

Permalinks are a necessity in today’s online world. With the speed at which information is moving, it needs a way of always being referenced to without it “disappearing”. Permalinks are nothing more then a URL that will always point to the target information, regardless if it moves or not. WordPress has a built in permalink feature for posts and pages which works as intended. Unfortunately, permalinks are permanent, and if you don’t plan ahead, you could be stuck with a permalink structure that you do not like. I initially thought that the permalink structure I had setup on my website was well thought of and practical. However, in practice, I changed my mind and wanted a different permalink structure. I also didn’t want to break any links people had already made to my site. Here’s how I went about it…
Continue reading Changing Permalink Structure in WordPress »

One of the things I’ve always wanted to write, ever since I started writing web backends, is a proper extendable (plugin) framework in PHP. I’ve spent a little time searching for something that would fit my needs, but surprisingly there are very few free, documented plugin frameworks available. Though, I know there are some PHP applications out there that have very good backends (my favorite so far is Gallery 2), but they haven’t released the backend as a standalone package that is documented for others to write their own programs.

A plugin framework is nothing new, as there have been many great minds who have worked on the subject, so I shouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel. I started my search with the well known Eclipse. After delving into the development docs, I found that Eclipse 3 is built on top of the OSGi framework and JPF. So, delving in further, I read the spec on the OSGi framework and, after much thought, I believe it is possible to implement this framework in PHP and, at the same time, break new ground in PHP development by adding features that have never been done before (in PHP).
Continue reading PHP OSGi Framework Concept »

I was looking for a good traffic analyzer for my website when I came across AWStats. It looked good compared to other log analyzers, so I decided to give it a try. I’m a fan of the Debian operating system, which I use on most of my servers. So, like any typical Debian user, I used the package management system (APT) to install AWStats. Normally the Debian packages are pretty good for doing everything automatically for you, but not so with the AWStats package - which required some setting up. For those wanting to go this route, this is how you get AWStats’ Debian package to work with Apache.
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One of the things I wanted to do when integrating Gallery 2 into WordPress (using the WPG2 plugin) was to be able to see, on the main page, all the latest pictures posted in my gallery. The WPG2 plugin only supported displaying the last item added, and I could not find anyone else to have done this. So, I wrote up a quick hack to perform this function. It’s not pretty, but it does the job. Feel free to use it for your own site.
Continue reading Latest Gallery pictures in WordPress »

Poplars is a turn-based strategy game that is traditionally played on a 6×5 board with two opponents. (You can, however, play on any sized board with up to four players optionally) It is a game for all ages that requires recursive thinking and good foresight. Poplars is a game of position and territory that requires pure skill (as are other games such as go, chess, and tic-tac-toe). The object of the game is to completely own every square that contains a Poplar without letting the opponent do the same.
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