Mereo, Life… Technology

Note: English is not my first language.

The video game industry is a hard and competitive market place. Unfortunately, these days, the PC market is sick. Due to the increased piracy, more and more game publishers are only developing. I think one of the piracy’s fuels is the lack of Video Games demos so that potential customers can test the video games.
Continue Reading »

Ublock-US is a great DNS service for viewing region locked online content. Contrary to VPN services, it simply tricks the sites into thinking you’re in the permitted country, therefore, no slowdowns due to the VPN’s service being clogged.

But trusting that service for all web browsing can be difficult, hence it’s better to use Unblock-Us only for certain websites the service supports.

Here are the steps required for Unblock-US DNS’ to resolve certain websites:

• 1. Enter Tomato's web interface
• 2. Click on Advance, then click on DHCP/DNS
• 3. In the textbox, write: server=/changeMe.com/208.122.23.22
• 4. To add more websites, simply add the above code on a new line

Voila, you’ll only use Unblock-US DNS’ only resolve certain websites.

Firefox 4 is finally out! But unfortunately, since Ubuntu is a non-rolling release, the repository won’t have this software goodness.

Fortunately, you can add the Mozilla repository that will upgrade Firefox 3.6 to Firefox 4.0 with this easy process:

1. Open the Terminal:  Applications, Accessories, Terminal
2. Write this command to add Mozillateam’s repository to your apt database:
   sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-stable
3. Write this command to update your apt database:
   sudo apt-get update
4. And finally, you’ll need to update your system in order to receive the new Firefox browser:
   sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

There you go, Firefox 4 will be installed, enjoy.

One of the the advantages of the new processors is they way they can under-clock themselves in order to save power (I don’t think you need all those Ghz just to write that e-mail, would you!)

“ondemand” communicates with that underclocking technology by adjusting the speed of the processor depending on the application’s need.

But I’ve noticed that the default “ondemand” configuration likes to keep the processor speed at its lowest even though the application is clearly demanding. Luckily, there’s a way to fix this:
Continue Reading »

Hibernation in Linux can be a pain because it may take close to a minute to start with a heavy image.

One of the way to speed it up is by using USWUSP:
Wikipedia’s explanation:

uswsusp (userspace software suspend) is a suspend-to-ram and suspend-to-disk implementation for the Linux operating system, compatible with kernels 2.6.17 and onwards. It supports both s2ram (“standby“) and s2disk (“hibernate“), as well as a mode called “s2both”, which saves state to disk and RAM. S2both is intended for use in low-battery situations where restoring from ram is desired but can’t be relied on as the battery may fail causing a restore from disk to be necessary.

I found the laptop to resume much more faster with it.
Here are the steps to enable it. Using the console:

• 1. Download and install USWSUSP:
  sudo apt-get install uswsusp
• 2. Create or edit the file 00sleep_module located in /etc/pm/config.d/ :
  sudo gedit /etc/pm/config.d/00sleep_module
• 3. Type the following code:
  SLEEP_MODULE="uswsusp"
• 4. Save the file.

Now hibernate the computer and watch a faster resume.

For some, especially SoundBlaster owners, PulseAudio is a Virus. In my case, it took nearly 40% of the cpu simply for listening to music.

Unfortunately, removing PulseAudio in Ubuntu 10.04 is not a trivial case since the audio applet (which accepts the volume commands from the multimedia keyboard) depends on PulseAudio.

Thanks to mgol from the Ubuntu’s Forums: I was able to rectify the problem.
From the console, type these commands:

1. 1. remove pulseaudio and its dependencies: sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio
2. 2. add the “audiohack” repository: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:dtl131/ppa
3. 3. update the repository database: sudo apt-get update
4. 4. update the system: sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
5. 5. Reboot the System.

The next step will be to add the sound applet:

1. 1. Right click the top panel and choose add to panel.
2. 2. Search for sound
3. 3. drag the sound applet to where you want it to be.

Voilà, you removed pulseaudio and you can control the volume using the multimedia keyboard’s volume.

Yeah, I haven’t posted in a while, in fact, I haven’t had even the time to be with my grandmother from Morocco. I will begin posting again in a week… and maybe I’ll transform this site to something useful.

You thought those simple act scenes in the TV Shows and movies were shot in real locations? Think again! Most of those acts are only taken in a studio using green screens.

Tags: backlot, compositing, effects, green, screen, vfx, virtual, visual

I was home, doing my homework when I heard a long distance call from Atlanta, I picked it up and politely said it must be a wrong number. Seconds later, another number called and this time they asked me if I sold credit cards, flabbergasted by that question, I said no.

… And then the deluge starts! I was receiving long distances calls from Atlanta by the seconds and they wouldn’t stop! Minutes, hours went by and I just continued ignoring them. I called my telephone company asking them if it was a problem at their end and they replied me by a negative. I couldn’t block the numbers because they where more than 50 of them.

Lo and behold, I just remembered that I had an asterisk server connected to the internet as a long distance telephone line. I went to voip.ms and there I see all the calls made to Atlanta from the time I began receiving the long distance calls.
By checking my Asterisk log, I saw a bot used one of my extensions to initiate the calls.

Moral of the story? ALWAYS, ALWAYS choose a SECURE password when a device is connected to the internet, it’s a true jungle out there. Also, always update your server! I learned my lesson the funny way. But imagine If I had a business… I would be crying right now…

I mean really! Right now, I’m failing a course… and it’s Java! The one I need to continue my Computer Science studies!

My problem is that I started my semester on the wrong foot! I chilled a lot, slept a lot, talked a lot. I was going to the library and searched for friends that I wanted to talk to instead of concentrating on my studies.

But, it’s a learning process. You can’t really advance until you’ve experienced defeat. Only then you’ll be able to feel the true desire to succeed. I will still advance no matter what happens. It’s just humiliating because I know I can do better…