...stuff I do and things I like...

today I saw quite a spike in my webserver logs for mulliner.org so I tried to find the cause. Maybe some popular site linked me, but it was just garbage. When looking closer the garbage had one strange thing a decent looking referer. After checking out the links in the referer (pointing to Pr0n sites) it was clearly SPAM. The funny part is that this is only going to end up in my website statistics. So maybe this is the new trick to get the SPAM URLs public? Also in my case the webstats are not public available.

Anybody else seeing this?

Referers (slashslash) and (dot) inserted by myself:

3332 x http:(slashslash)rehlasaida(dot)com/contacta/inc/27/ rate-girl-boob(dot)html
Source host/IP: 91.121.17.57

3332 x http:(slashslash)www.montien(dot)ro/Flash/inc/37/ cum-on-ebony-face(dot)php
Source host/IP: infong198.kundenserver.de/212.227.127.51

other then I said before I'm now releasing my IpHome home/desktop plugin for Maemo 4.x (for the N8x0 devices) even I don't have a N810 yet.

In this release it now supports virtual interfaces in the style of wlan0:1 which was requested by some people.

Please report back any errors.

Left to do for Chinook is support for a transparent background - to get rid of the white ugly window.

Install IpHome

As described in my last post I have disassembled my Pennon touchscreen in order to identify the touchscreen controller type since it seems to be buggy and/or broken.

On the USB bus the controller looks like a eGalax touchkit device. But when removing it it looks more like a MagicTouch SE-E04U.

A while ago I contacted the eGalax (eeti) for support for the touchscreen controller since it looked buggy. I thought I might be able to do a firmware update. So yesterday I sent them the pictures of the controller so they could take a look (earlier they told me I have strange firmware version of 2.18 - which is supposed to be a DEBUG firmware). Now they of course told me that the controller is not made by them and that they are not going to support me (which I kind of understand). Also they mailed me this Urgent Announcement about fake/knock-off products.

The controllers shown on the site don't look like my controller so now I wonder if my controller is fake or not.

Anyway I'm kind of pissed about the whole story. Hopefully I find a cheap replacement that just works.

today I didn't feel so much like coding (I actually wanted to work on one of my many software projects) so I decided to do hardware stuff. I ended up disassembling the 17" TFT touchscreen I use for my InfoPanel project. This had two reasons. First I need to disassemble it in order to remove the casing to make it smaller so I can put it into my self made frame. Second I need to checkout the touchscreen controller. I think it is broken or has a software bug since it sometimes just stops reporting any events and only comes back to life after power cycling the display. I probably need to buy a new controller, any tips for where to buy such a controller (in Germany) is welcome.

On the good side I found that the actual LCD is perfect for my project. It is only 1 cm thick and has nice mounts on each side. This will make it really easy putting it in my own frame.

For those of you who like hardware porn, the images are here.

In mid December I realized that it would be really helpful to know what exactly is going on with my Maemo repositories. So I decided to have a special webalizer only for the Maemo repository (I have a global webalizer for the whole domain). After looking at the stats I regret that I didn't do this right from the start.

Some interesting observations so far

Most people already download Maemo 4.x (Chinook) packages
last 12 days of December => 1.7 GB packages

I wouldn't have guessed that so many people already run Chinook in December (maybe only the super hard core early adapters use my stuff).

See the for yourself: MUlliNER.ORG Maemo Repository Stats

Btw: Many people ask me about ipHome applet (shows IP address on home screen). I'm going to release it as soon as I have my N810. I know this is not nice :-P

This year the videos are available just 6 days (actually just 4) after the congress was over. It kind of extends the congress into the first week of January so you can watch the talks with the congress still fresh in mind. Just great!

Over the weekend I watched nearly every talk that I wanted to see but missed at the congress. Some of the good was were: Deconstructing XBox 360 Security, Elektronische Dokumente, Security Nightmares and Mifare Security.

Contradictory to what I wrote before there was a highlight at this years congress: Mifare Security. These people really reverse engineered a tiny RFID chip (size 1x1mm) using polishing and x500 microscope. Watch the video!

Security Nightmares had a fun part about electronic toy robots and what you could do with them (e.g. eavesdropping). People where asking all sorts of questions about various toys such as the Nabaztag. This is indeed really interesting since all of the newer/fun toys have some kind of network/internet connectivity which could be ab-used for many things. Botnets made from toys?

With this fast video release the Chaos Communication Congress (one of the best events in the hacking area anyway) now set new standards! This is the way to go!

One cool thing of 24C3 is that people/geeks come from all over the world and bring the latest and greatest gadgets. So if you are a gadget fan like me you have a good time convincing other people letting you play with their latest toy.

I had the chance to play with a Asus Eee PC (the black version). This thing is really sooo light you almost can't believe it is a laptop not a PDA. Also I must say the screen is a little small (the size not the resolution). I didn't had the chance for a long run because there were just too many other people. Nice little thing!

The next device was a Flybook. I know this is not really new, but I never saw one in real before. The thing I remember best is that the track point seems quite usable even being at a strange position. Nice device all together.

The most expensive mobile device I ever saw. The Vertu Constellation mobile phone. According to the owner this is a 6000 Euro (!!!) mobile phone. The phone is kind of heavy and kind of feels like it is made out of pure gold. The owner told me that it is really tough (indestructible) also Vertu will replace it if it breaks somehow. The money you pay is not only for the device but also for services attached to the device. You have a kind of a personal agent 24/7 that can arrange things like Hotels/Flights for you. It doesn't have any cool technical features - so nothing for me.

I talked to many people with a Nokia N810 Internet Tablet. I wrote a separate story about this here.

I also took a look at the Chumby.

There was a crowed of OLPC owners. They seem to all have a final device, since they had the logo printed on the cover lid (as far as I remember this was not the case with the developer version).

The iPhone. OMG everybody has one now. Steve says: thank you ;-)

Something I really didn't expect, I found bunnie one of the guys behind Chumby at 24C3 - no surprise he was sitting together with the XBox hackers. He had a bunch of Chumbys with him so I took my chance to take a look.

I found that the Chumby is slightly smaller then I expected (nothing wrong with this). It has a nice look and feel (pictures are ok but nothing is as good as reality). The Chumby has nice leather-like skin which makes nice and squishy. Playing with it at the congress was kind of hard, since the Chumby needs a power adapter because it doesn't have a battery and power outlets are kind of hard to get at the congress. The second obstacle was getting Chumby onto the wireless network which was almost impossible (this years wireless network sucked big time). Interacting with the Chumby touchscreen worked quite nice (I didn't had much time to play with it). It didn't feel slow or anything. One particular funny part is the touchscreen calibration which has a nice different addition, a drag'n'drop test at the end.

All in all it was quite fun (much better then the Nabaztag). Also I must say I wouldn't buy a Chumby but this is not because it is not cool or functional but because I already made my own Chumby-like device (which can also play Chumby content).


[1] Chumby
[2] bunnie's blog
[3] The Nabaztag

Ich wollte ja schon laenger was zu toothR der Firma meines Bluetooth/trifinite Bekannten Marin Herfurt schreiben und heute mache ich es.

toothR ist ein Foto scharing/upload Dienst bei dem man seine Fotos vom Foto-Handy direkt auf dem Event via Bluetooth zu toothR hoch landen kann. Das direkte hoch laden auf dem Event hat den Vorteil das die Fotos nicht verloren oder vergessen werden ausserdem hat man ja auch nur begrenzten Speicherplatz fuer Fotos auf dem Handy. Anschauen kann man sich die Fotos dann auf der toothR Webseite. Hier werden die Fotos auch automatisch dem Event zugeordnet auf dem sie aufgenommen wurden. Ausserdem gibt es wohl je nach Event noch ein Display auf dem Fotos direkt nach dem hoch laden angezeigt werden.

Um toothR benutzen zu koennen muss der Veranstalter natuerlich toothR auf sein Event einladen (das geht hier office(at)toothr.com).

Meiner Meinung nach ist toothR eine sehr coole Bluetooth Anwendungen ausserhalb von dem was man so kennt! Viel Erfolg Martin!

I had some time to play with the N810 while attending 24C3. The interesting part was that I saw quite a lot of people with a N810 in their hands - the ones I talked to had it imported from the U.S.

Since the N810 is mostly like the N800 (software wise) I only checkout the hardware. First impression was very good. The case looks very nice. I think it is a very clean design no bumps or strange edges. (Pictures don't tell you anything when it comes to hardware like this.) For me the most important thing to try was the keyboard since it is the novel part of the N-series. So I was very pleased to find it working just fine - much better then I expected (also I only had a couple of minutes). Sliding the keyboard up and down also seems to work nicely.

All in all it was a nice experience and I'm looking forward to get my own.

Mmmh somehow I never manage to blog on more then the first day of the congress :-) So here is my personal 24C3 roundup.

First a big thank you to the organizers. It was real fun again! I meet a lot of friends I only see at these kinds of events (C3, Camp, etc) and again I meet a bunch of interesting people I didn't know before.

The talks were quite good all together and I had the impression that the overall quality was better then in the years before. Also I was missing THE high light of the event. Maybe I just missed it?

A couple of people asked for my Home InfoPanel talk which I didn't give so I'm going to keep this in mind for the next conference/meeting that comes up.

As usual I meet with the Bluetooth (Security) people to chat about this and that. Evilgenius Martin has a nice story about some 24C3-Bluetooth-Stuff on his blog. I also briefly meet balle from Datenterroristen.de he is behind Bluediving (a Bluetooth security suite).

As a side note. There seems to be an exploit in the JPEG parser of Nokia Series40 phones which cause the phones to crash when ever trying to read a special kind of JPEG image file. Apparently someone was sending a special crafted file to every mobile phone with Bluetooth switched on at the congress. I heard that there is another mobile phone brand that is also vulnerable to this JPEG and apparently one guy got his phone bricked by this. I'll soon look at this JPEG and post about this issue.

Great time, see you at 25C3.