Recent blog entries for tim

While playing around with some DocBook XML tools for Red Hat Linux, I thought I'd actually use them and write an article.

Released notary-0.0.2 today. Now all my emails get automatically signed and timestamp-corroborated (thanks to an early-adopter). Cool.

Just released vtgrab 0.1.1: now it's possible to actually control the machine whose console you are observing, 'just like' you're at the console (for very limited 'just likeness').

Got communications going with the jazPiper, albeit unreliably. I'm stuck at how to get the thing to switch directions from reverse to forward, so at the moment I can only send one command to it before the game's over. :-(

Today I received a jazPiper MP3 player in the post, two days early! I'm going to try to write a driver for it before Wednesday, so that I can surprise Laszlo with it before he even expects me to have started..

First problem: it needs some batteries.

I have to move out all of the furniture in the living room in order to make way for a carpet that's coming on Monday. That will be fun..

Read some scary things yesterday about the (already scary) RIP bill. I think I understand what a key-signing key is for now. Maybe I should make one. The trouble with doing that is that my fingerprint will change, and so I'll have a bunch of business cards with the wrong information on. Plus, I'll lose the signatures on my existing encryption key. Grr.

It's table soccer time, but Jules has gone back to Holland. Now what?

Wrote tcpify last night, so that vtgrab can work over a serial line or a TCP connection.

Discovered this morning that someone else has already written virtually the same program with the same name. But I think my code's better. ;-)

Anyone want to tell me what I've missed? Review the protocol for VNCified virtual consoles that I just wrote: RVC and let me know.

Today I heard that the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill passed its final vote. I phoned Demon Internet (my dial-up ISP) to ask them how and when they would implement the bit that requires them to intercept all my traffic and send it to MI5; they didn't know.

I also asked them whether or not it would be okay to arrange with someone outside of the UK to have a virtual private network, and send all my email via that, and if so whether or not I'd be required to hand over the encryption key or face jail; they didn't know.

Bad.

Neat stuff landed in my inbox this morning. Jens Wagner has at last cut a release of x0rfbserver, which can export your current X desktop in a manner like WinVNC.

Also, a guy sent me code to make vtgrab able to control another machine's console, i.e. you press a key on the observing machine and it makes the observed machine think it was pressed.