After a lookup, seems lots of people seem to come through this when working on MAMP
so to fix that, start your terminal and create a link to “mysql.sock” manually

Now go back and have a happy bake

I had a broken Philips DVD player lying around for sometime, so I decided I’ll take out the LCD panel inside it and play a little.

First of all, I discovered that it was a VFD not a LCD, but programmatically that wasn’t a huge difference !.

The unit contained 7 digits, each digit was a 16 segment VFD, And was driven by an ET16312n chip !

First thing was to get the datasheet to know how to wire the panel to my computer, and how to talk to it !

After some research I found the NEC datasheet and learned that most VFDs have the same NEC standard and if you manage to program one panel, it’s most likely that any other brand will work the same way with minor mods in your code !

After some tracing I managed to get the serial leads, which were STB, CLK, Din, Dout (Din and Dout are shorted on my board, input is read on the rise of CLK, and outputs are read on the fall of CLK)

After wiring those pins to my parallel port (Yeah I didn’t have a serial interface and I’m too lazy to buy one, and I’m bad with soldering too !),
I connected the STB pin to pin 2, Din/Dout to pin 3 and the STB to pin 4 on my parallel port.

Power connections are give in the datasheet pins 7, 14, 27 are for Vss, Vdd, Vee respectively (You’ll need to power sources for that, Vss it in the 5.5 v Range, and Vee goes down to -30 volts (That’s a VFD thing, don’t ask)

After all the wiring and powering is done, it’s time to go to my PC and start writing a driver code !

My box runs Ubuntu, you’ll just need the `build-essential` package for this. You probably have it, if not just “sudo apt-get install build-essential”

You can go ahead and download the code attached to this post, it’s written in C, just compile and connect your panel and things should work right away

I’ve written the code to read text from a file, then scroll it on the screen (since we can only have 6 chars displayed at a time)

Another issue that came across me was how the encoding of the characters worked, I tried lots of methods but the easiest (for me) was to calculate it by pen and paper, took around 20 minutes to calculate the binary representation from letters from A to Z. they are defined in the 16seg.h header file for your convenience

Here’s a picture of the final product, hope you like it:

For the time being that’s all I reached and all I’m going to do on this project, it can be pushed further but for my concerns, it was just for fun and I don’t really need it. however there are many cool uses that can be done (since it contains push buttons and an IR sensor), think about the possibilities, perhaps yet another twitter notifier that works via a TV remote ??

If you have questions leave it in the comments or email me, I’d be happy to help anytime !

Happy reversing

Downloads:
vfd.tar (Source code)
UPD16312 (Datasheet)

To enable mod_rewrite on ubuntu server you should write the following command:

sudo a2enmod rewrite

Apparently, this isn’t enough to do the job, it actually enables the module and loads it, but it won’t show up in

sudo apache2ctl -l

after you’ve enabled mod_rewrite, it’s time for the fix to make it actually work !

head to /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/ and then edit the site you’re currently using mostly it’ll be the file: 000-default

When you open the file, you’ll notice it’ll probably look like this :

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin admin@localhost

DocumentRoot /var/www/
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride none
</Directory>
<Directory /var/www/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride none
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>

You need to replace the occurrence of AllowOverride none to AllowOverride all

now the file should look like this :

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin admin@localhost

DocumentRoot /var/www/
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride all
</Directory>
<Directory /var/www/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride all
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>

After editing your file, you will need to restart your apache2 server to see the changes !
in your terminal, type:

sudo service apache2 restart

Now fire up your browser and check your working mod_rewrite !, happy development.

(This works for any iOS jailbroken device on any iOS version)

There are two ways to do this, first way is to do it via SSH, the second way is via mobile terminal.app

1st method:

1. You need to have OpenSSH installed on your device, to do this, just install the package “openssh” from Cydia
   
2. Get your device’s IP address (Settings->WiFi) then tap on the blue arrow next to your WiFi connection and get your IP
3. Connect to your device via SSH using any computer in your network, open up your terminal (cmd) and type the following

   
   ssh root@192.168.1.2
   

   If this is the first time you connect to your device, you will see the following message:

   The authenticity of host '192.168.1.2 (192.168.1.2)' can't be established.

   RSA key fingerprint is xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
   Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
   

   Just type “yes” and hit enter

   
   Warning: Permanently added '192.168.1.2' (RSA) to the list of known hosts.
   

   You will next be asked to enter your password, the default root’s password is “alpine”
   write alpine and hit enter

   
   root@192.168.1.2's password:
   

   You will be then logged in to your device !, you shall see something similar to this:

   
   mostafa-bergs-iPhone-4G:~ root#
   

   Now you should change your password by typing in the command “passwd”

   
   passwd
   

   You will then be asked to type the new password, do that twice (make sure you don’t forget/loose the password)

   
   Changing password for root.
   New password:
   Retype new password:
   

Congratulations!, You’re now safe from attacks.

2nd method:

Assuming that you can’t use SSH, so we’ll use the terminal on your phone directly !

1. Install terminal.app (if you don’t already have it) by searching for “MobileTerminal” in Cydia
2. Depending on your terminal, you can be logged in as a different use (“mobile”, “root”, etc…)
   To know your current user, type in:
   whoami
   if it says “root” then you’re ready to go to step 5 , if it says anything else, proceed to step 3 !
3. Switch the current user to “root” by typing “su” or “su root”
4. The terminal will ask you for a password, which will be “alpine”, type it and hit enter !
5. Now it’s time to change your password, type in the command “passwd”
   passwd
6. The terminal will show something similar to this:
   
Changing password for root.
New password:

7. Type in your new password twice and you’re done !

Congrats again !, you’ve done it.

Changing your root password is a must, anyone in your network can access your iDevice and control everything on your gadget if you’re not secured !, after following this little tutorial you’ll be really safe to go and play outside.

I’m writing this quickie as a tutorial on how to create your first server on rackspace, However, I won’t discuss how to set it up, just the creation part, I’ll show you how to interact and setup the server in another article.

So let’s start with the requirements

1. A Rackspace account (Duh…)
2. An Internet browser

After you’ve got those requirements ready, let’s head over to the next part !

1. Login to your account (www.rackspacecloud.com)
   
2. You’ll be redirected to your dashboard, where you can CRUD your servers
   
3. On the menu to the left, you need to go to “Hosting”, Then “Cloud servers”
4. Now you’ll be taken to your servers’ page ! (I have cleared my IP addresses and server names / Data Centers)
5. As you guessed, the next step was to add a test server by clikcing the (Add server) button
   You’ll be bombarded with a beautiful list of server flavors !, choose the best to fit your needs
   for this test I will install an Ubuntu Server (as I only need it for webdev and I need a simple setup) 

   

6. *Clickety Click* and Ubuntu was chosen, now choose the server size ( I chose the smallest *Cheapest* as a sandbox)
   this can be resized later !
   Call the server any name you’d like (Make sure it’s something meaningful !) 

   

7. After creating the server, it takes about a minute to create your server (Allocating hardware, it’s a cloud you know)
   You’ll be emailed right after the server is active ! (Notice the password written in the green box ??)
   
8. After the server has been built, you now have full access to a 256mb box =)

And you’re ready to go, under the “Cloud server details” group you’ll have the IP address for this box, rackspace usually ignore any traffic between their servers, so you can do lotta backups without worrying about bandwidth !

This was a little tutorial to help you out knowing how Rackspace looks like before actually paying for anything, I love Rackspace and chose it over amazon’s EC2 !, The reasons are many, but one of the most important reasons is Non presistance of EC2 servers, (In plain english, if you shutdown, you lose all data) which is not the case in Rackspace !

If you have any comments or require any other tutorials similar to this, please leave a comment below and let me know !

I’ll be posting more articles to complete the series, in the end you should be taken through all the steps to create a Production LAMP server (and a test one too) !

1) My final year in Engineering, so lots of tests and studies ! (1 semester to go !)

2)My scratch&win game has gone big, so I’ve been working on a newer version where players can actually win money

3)Working on the apple platform with Cocos2d to make a nice car physics game (It’s still a work in progress, you’ll find it in my lab)

4)I’ve been working on my car for a while, tried to sell it and had to remove all my mods and expensive equipment, but then decided to keep it, so i’ll be busy putting everything back in

Keep tuned, there’s going to be some nice tutorials here about web development and iOS development..

Yours,

Mostafa Berg

my applause for the genius who sketched that

http://www.flickr.com/photos/31698344@N02/2968154073