Older blog entries for frob (starting at number 16)

ELT started today. Thanks to JIAS and Jewish community.

It seems to be quite difficult to improve vsdump more w/o at least "indirect access through experienced user" to Visio2k2 or 2k3. So I'm going to make some version of VSD/VSS viewer based on gtk+ or gnome.

Stencils for Dia or Kivio
If you want to use some Visio stencil(s) under Dia or Kivio, you need to convert it.
For help with conversion of stencils of version 6 (visio2k and visio2k2) and 11 (visio2k3) you can use vsdump.

Most of 'commercial' stencils made of a set of WMF and/or EMF files.
While vsdump can't convert VSS directly to Dia or Kivio stencil, it can extract all those WMF/EMFs.
It's not quite easy to preview WMF/EMFs (e.g. EOG doesn't support this), so vsdump extracts an icons of 'Masters' and saves them in .ICO files.

Slightly tired with VSD/VSS reverse engineering,
I made a small utility to dump bitmap preview from CorelDraw files.
It's easy, so I would like somebody implement similar functionality in EOG or gthumb.

Dear Lazy Web

One commercial software file format stores some raster images (icons) in the format described below:

Offset Length Value
2. . . . . 2. . . . . Width (always 0x20?)
4. . . . . 2. . . . . Height (always 0x20?)
8. . . . . 4. . . . . Size of file
0xE . . . . . . . . . start of transparency 'list'
[right after end of transperency] start of points colors

The start is in the left bottom corner.
Transparency: 1 bit per point
Points: 4 bits for color encoding

It utilizes some kind of RLE algorithm, so if
most significant bit of L=1 -- repeat next byte L&127 times
most significant bit of L=0 -- read L&127 bytes 'literally'.
----

May be you can recognize it as some well-known format?

Example:
00 00
20 00 (Width)
20 00 (Height)
16 00 00 00 (Size)
00 00 ???
02 c0 03 (2 most signif bits in the 1st byte and 2 least signif bits in the 2nd bytes are transparent)
FE 00 (next 7e*8 bits are opaque)
/because transparency was described for all points next bytes are colors/
08 FF 99 FF 99 99 FF 99 FF (2 white /in real transparent/, 2 red /color 9/, 2 white, 2 red points; 2 red, 2 white, 2 red, 2white /transparent again/ points)
FF AA (7f*2 green /color A/ points)
FF AA (7f*2 green /color A/ points)
FF AA (7f*2 green /color A/ points)
FB AA (7b*2 green /color A/ points)
end of file

vsdump
I was wondered by the #inkscape ppl reaction on my question about Visio VSD/VSS files support.
It seems to be right not to bother them with info about CDR too...

Wacom Graphire2
Yesterday I lost some time in attempts to configure my Wacom Graphire2
on reinstalled system with 2.6 kernel.
While it worked fine in console, in xorg it wasn't.
As a last resort I tried to change /dev/input/event0 to /dev/input/event1. It's The Solution.

So I have 2 questions:
1. How system assigns devices to /dev/<something>?
2. How to determine (command/utils/place in the 'cat <something>') which dev-id was assigned to the device?
At least when I used to configure /dev/input/event0 there was no any 'no such device' messages.

CISSP
I have passed CISSP competency examination!
Now I need to submit some documents (CV and endorcement) and wait for my certificate =)
Jen (aka Furry) have passed it too.

Newcomer
My friend is looking for Information Security related job in the Toronto area.
It's a resume in pdf

"GnomeMeeting VTA"
I collected and analysed additional data about Cisco VTA and 'CAST' (as ethereal dissect it) protocol.

What is 'Advantage' (as the 'A' in a 'CVTA') means?

If one has already installed Cisco IP telephony, then it can be easy and 'chiply' extended with videotelephony capabilities. The extension includes slightly modified Logitech webcam (cisco logo, different usb id, possibly some other code in the cam firmware) and some software. This 'bundle' is about twice+ in price of the same regular Logitech webcam. Software is win32-only.
To install you need attach webcam to usb-port on your computer and switch on video for your IP-phone (7940 and more powerfull models) in the CCM (CallManager -- Cisco IP PBX) configuration. When somebody with videophone capabilities calls you by IP phone, CVTA-client brings up and setup videocall. So you are looking on screen and speak/listen with phone handset/handsfree.

Technical side.

CVTA client uses CDP (cisco discovery protocol) to learn IP-address of IP phone your computer connected to. CVTA client setups TCP connection to phone and uses 'CAST' to exchange information about line/call state. As part of this information CVTA receives IP-address of calling party and setups videocall (H.323, RTCP + RTP).

The idea is to add something (support of CAST?) to GnomeMeeting and replace CVTA with GM. I'm trying to read some unix network programming books at present ;-)

Why?

"GM advantage" would be able to work with about any webcam

"GM advantage" would be able to work on OSes supported by GM

So there is some 'market' to share ;-) Additionaly such a plug-in (which extract info about calling party phone number/name) can be used as the base for CTI extensions (for example, bring up an evolution window with last e-mail received/sent to calling person).

Juniper
About a month after examination I received my JNCIS-M certificate.

More presents
Nortel presented me with usb-flash drive (256Mb only, while there is 2Gb models -- 'The Canadian Greeders' Team ;-)...

CISSP (examination day)
Have no idea about results. I answered 250 questions in about 3 hours and spent about 40 minutes for transfering the answers to an answer sheet (this is the most annoying part of exam). Proctors claimed that the results will be available at 2 weeks. It was funny to meet _two_ friends there. One of them is in the proctor position ;-) And another one is my ex-collegue from DataForce, also she is CCIE Security.

Parents
Changes of some region telephony codes in RU and modification of call routing temporary droped my ability to call to my mother. VoIP gateway insert city-code second time collect some digits from the phone number part and make call to somebody other.

My father said me by phone that the strong wind hurled a big trash container into the window of some old women at 2nd floor (1st if you count the ground floor).
"Woow-woo.. It's a strange word 'Kamchatka'!" ;-)