Sadly, no error is thrown to let you know you have no permission to call and use mod_rewrite – it just fails silently.

So, if you are using Joomla and trying to use Search Engine Friendly (SEF) URL’s, you must go in and edit the httpd.conf file for the slice that you are using.

Config files are normally stored in /etc/apache2/sites

Open up the config file, and find the line that says:

AllowOverride None

Make it say:

AllowOverride FileInfo Options

The ADP2

Finally a new 3G version supporting Google’s Android OS is available.

With so many false starts with the Motorola Droid and the HTC Droid Eris being only CDMA (and thus useless here in Australia) I have been dying to get my hands on a newer piece of hardware.

It is a true quad band phone operating on 850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz and supporting W-CDMA (UMTS).

Sadly the phone still appears to have the same 3MP camera as the ADP1, which would have been a welcome improvement had it been replaced.

Developer (ADPn) phones are only available to Android developers, more information is available here.

I can only assume that it’s greed that has led Optus to prohibit the purchasing of App’s from the Market when users have an Optus SIM in their phone. There was a way around it using this app, which until recent versions of the Android OS worked just perfectly on rooted phones.

My solution at the moment is to swap SIM’s between my two phones (to a Telstra SIM) when I wish to purchase app’s, and then swap back.  If you don’t have a Telstra SIM of your own, get a prepaid (it doesn’t need to have credit if you have a WiFi connection) or borrow a friends.

I have asked Google for comment on the issue with the Android Market and Optus, and will update the comments here when I get a response.

As an aside… for ADP1 users – to regain “root” access on your phone in 1.5 or 1.6  – simply:

Become root in adb

$ ./adb root
restarting adbd as root

Then connect to the shell on your handset:

$ ./adb shell

And execute the following commands:

# mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system
# cd /system/bin
# cat sh > su
# chmod 4755 su
# reboot

After your phone restarts you will have the “root” access you were used to previously.

We have spent many years trying to perfect the automation system in the house. I am very confident in saying that it is probably one of the most integrated and automated houses in Australia. Almost all the services that can be automated in some way, are.

For a bit of information about what we have done, have a look at a brief description of the automation sytems at Belcastro.

After several years of trying to get Dynalite to work, if there is one standout lesson here – it would be that it just doesn’t – and it should never be used in a residential install. I am partially to blame for Dynalite being selected, because I backed it when it was recommended by the lighting designer. My experience with Dynalite in theater had been great – in a commercial setting – it is robust and reliable. Our experience in a residential setting is that it is wholly unreliable, and when you turn to Dynalite (now Phillips) for support – they ignore you.

Google Hosted Applications and Mail is Offline

Annoyingly it seems that the Google Hosted Services have suffered yet another major outage. In speaking with the support center they have only just become aware of it, and are currently investigating.

What I find most annoying about this is that we pay for the premium service, but somehow when ever there is an outage of all the unpaid customers, the premium customers also experience that same outage.

Google are still yet to update their status page about the issue, and it seems like they have been taken a little by surprise.

[UPDATE 20:21 8 May] It seems that this has rapidly spread to all of gmail. Not just hosted applications, gmail itself seems to be completely offline.

[UPDATE 20:28 8 May] And we are all back and happy again. Still no information on the Google Status page as to the cause of the outage though.

R&D have been able to replicate the problem and are currently working on a fix for this, in the meantime the suggested work around is to use the SMB protocol. At this stage I do not have an ETA for the release…

Whilst it is fine to suggest the use of the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol (also sometimes referred to as SAMBA) in our case (and I am sure many others) this is not appropriate. The availability of a working AFP server was the primary reason for the selection of this product. If our clients had of just wanted a generic SMB share, we could have chosen any one of significantly cheaper Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices.
At this point I have only been able to confirm this fault on the 1TB and 2TB 2Big Network devices, but I am very keen to hear from you if you have any other NAS device that advertises AFP support, but fails to deliver.
I have asked Lacie to have this issue resolved within five working days, and after that time will hand my findings over to the Office of Fair Trade in Queensland and New South Wales given that Lacie are misrepresenting the capabilities of their devices.

ip route flush table 200
ip rule del fwmark 0x50
iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -j MARK --set-mark 80 -p tcp --dport 80
iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -j MARK --set-mark 80 -p tcp --dport 443
ip route add table 200 default via 192.168.52.1
ip rule add fwmark 0x50 table 200

The first line flushes (empties) table 200. We are keeping our special routing table here, you can use any number you wish.
The second line deletes the reference telling the router to route all packets that are marked via the rule.

The next two iptables lines establish the rules for what gets to go out the auxiliary / secondary interface (in my case a VPN). Without explaining how iptables works, I am essentially looking for anything matching port 80 or port 443. That is HTTP and HTTPS respectively. If it does match that rule it gets marked with an “80″ or “0×50″ in hex (the hex is important in a moment).

Next we add the default route to our special routing table (table 200). It only has a default route for the moment, and it is the gateway IP of the VPN endpoint.

Finally we instruct the router to use the special routing table (table 200) for any packets marked as 0×50 (which is 80 decimal).

UPDATE
For those looking for some information about applying these sorts of rules in an OpenVPN environment, have a look at Taiter Tech Blog.

I don’t think it is an entirely malicious act on the part of those downloading. Many viewers are falling behind because episodes are too slow to air, or stations continually change broadcast times making it hard for people to actually watch the episode when it airs.

Television series are designed to be addictive. If you are “involved” in a series such as ABC’s “Lost”, episodes taking a long time to air could be enough of a reason to go online and download a high quality copy online. Spoilers appear online almost as soon as the episode has aired, and if you follow the series on the web – you are almost bound to hear about the episode unintentionally.

If you use uTorrent, Vuze (formally Azureus), Deluge or Transmission then the services provided by Feed my Torrents make it exceptionally easy for those who want to follow their series uninhibited. Simply add the RSS Feeds provided to your Torrent client, and as soon as a new episode is available the downloading will begin, automatically if you wish.

It is exciting to see, and this is a major step towards a wider acceptance of Google’s communications system.

It is yet to be turned on for our hosted app’s domain, but I look forward to trying to Sync all 6Gb of my mail…