3d Rep-rap printer build (phase 2)

Thought I would share the current state of the 3d Rep-rap printer I am building... z-motors installed along with Z-guides, the Y axis wood bed (the Z motor wires are sitting on it) is also installed now and everything is now tightened up and secure - the weight has pretty much trebled too!

ATM card skimmer (real)

Well as I am being all photographic today, I thought I should get some photos up of the ATM I aquired from some friends who found it on an ATM machine in Oxford Street London (they contacted the police but they didnt seem to care - nice!) So after some months I have it and here it is in its full glory.

Now to try to figure out how it works and get into some proper hardware reverse engineering!

Shop anti theft tag (non dye version) taken apart.

Did this a while ago and never got round to blogging it.


This is the type im on about. (it was very damaged from removal by monkeys)

Here we see the damaged tag taken apart, you can (hopefully) see the RFID security part in the long area, and the pin (on the right top) and the black part on the left top is the pin retainer.

 Here you can see the RFID disassembled on the left, and the pin+ retainer on the right top, using a magnet you pop the pin retainer off and the pin comes free.

I leave it to the reader as an excersise on where to place a rare-earth magnet to dislocate the pin retainer.

Motorola Xoom Android Honeycomb non-mobile web browser setting (fixed)

So since buying a Xoom when it was launched one thing has bugged me from the start, its browser would be detected as a mobile device and websites would redirect me to their mobile version - which sucked specially for sites not offering a way to move back to the full site.

It seems alot of people have had this issue so here is the solution.

open the browser and close all the tabs so the browser shuts off, reopen it and click the url bar and type about:debug now click the icon in the top right and goto settings then debug then UAString and select Desktop.

you can now browse like normal people!

ubuntu unity launcher hiding behind windows (solved)

OK an annoying but that happened a few times now is the launcher and tab-switcher like to hide behind any other window so i cant see them...this is a bug and not the set up behaviour..

so how to solve this without fucking everything your doing up? easy

open a terminal and write

unity&disown

then hit enter and a few screen flicks later - your back in business with nothing lost - AWESOME!!

ubuntu 11.10 upgrade black screen, cant login, wifi button blinking (all solved!)

So today was full of fail for the new ubuntu 11.10 upgrade....

first snort failed to upgrade and because it was doign an upgrade i had no wifi to send the report which killed the upgrade.....cunts - that was just hte start of problems.

Eventually I got the thing upgraded and was presented with the five dots screen, then a black screen.....nothing...no matter what i did helped.

(solution)
ctrl+alt+1
login
sudo -i
mkdir -p /run /run/lock
rm -rf /var/run /var/lock
ln -s /run /var
ln -s /run/lock /var
reboot

so that fixed the black screen error.....but now i couldnt log in under gui except as guest which to be honest fucking sucked donkey cock!

(solution)
ctrl+alt+1
login
sudo rm ~/.Xauthority
go back to your gui (ctrl+alt+7) and login

so now ive fixed that....next problem!!

I have a HP elitebook 8440p which has an intel wifi, it has a nice touch button/indicator above the keyboard to turn the wifi on and off and also as an indicator (orange off/blue on) but since the upgrade it now blinks when wifi data is sent (all the time...and so its fucking annoying) so how to fix this new feature?

(solution)
echo 'options iwlagn led_mode=1' >> /etc/modprobe.d/wlan.conf
modprobe -r iwlagn && modprobe iwlagn

now im all sorted :)

Installing and getting CUDA to work under ubuntu 11.04 x64 bit

So I want to play with CUDA in the coming months, getting it to work under ubuntu 11.04 was a challenge in itself specially running x64bit!

so here is how I got it working..

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:aaron-haviland/cuda-4.0
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

64-bit :
sudo apt-get install nvidia-cuda-gdb nvidia-cuda-toolkit nvidia-compute-profiler libnpp4 nvidia-cuda-doc libcudart4 libcublas4 libcufft4 libcusparse4 libcurand4 nvidia-current nvidia-opencl-dev nvidia-current-dev nvidia-cuda-dev opencl-headers

32-bit :
sudo apt-get install nvidia-cuda-gdb nvidia-cuda-toolkit nvidia-compute-profiler lib32npp4 nvidia-cuda-doc lib32cudart4 lib32cublas4 lib32cufft4 lib32cusparse4 lib32curand4 nvidia-current nvidia-opencl-dev nvidia-current-dev nvidia-cuda-dev opencl-headers

this is really important, if you didnt have nvida drivers already installed, you have to run this
sudo nvidia-xconfig

the next thing to do even if you skipped the last line is to REBOOT - you MUST do this!!

CUDA should now be working :)

-- to get compiling working is another ball ache!
in somewhere like your home folder do the following

mkdir gcc44
cd gcc4
ln -s /usr/bin/cpp-4.4 cpp
ln -s /usr/bin/gcc-4.4 gcc
ln -s /usr/bin/g++-4.4 g++


edit /etc/nvcc.profile to look in the gcc44 directory (give it the full path)

compiler-bindir =/home/xxx/gcc44

now your ready to compile stuff - here is an example
nvcc -c yourprog.cu

that should give you a .o file then run the next
g++-4.4 -lcudart yourprog.o

that should give you a a.out file - just run it as ./a.out

How to get Citrix ICA to work on Ubuntu 11.04 x64bit

So thought I should write this up so I have a note of it somewhere.


goto http://www.citrix.com/download
select the "receiver" and download the x64 bit version
open a terminal and cd to the download location

sudo dpkg -i icaclient_12.0.0_amd64.deb

open firefox and goto
edit > preferences > applications > Citrix ICA settings file
change this to "use wifca" rather than "use citrix receiver for linux (in firefox)

should work now :)

Minecraft Ubuntu 11.04

Right to get it working just use this script!

http://pastebin.com/vmVUNnUE

Convert VMware vdk to virtualbox vdi file

So today I was messing about with metasplot+nessus and needed a confirmed target to check out, and found metasploitable - trouble is its only available as a VDK for vmware

the following can be used to convert it

sudo aptitude install qemu
qemu-img convert /tmp/Metasploitable/metasploitable.vmdk metasploitable.bin
VBoxManage convertdd metasploitable.bin metasploitable.vdi

and your done!

Relaunch!! 2011 baby!

So after aheadofthetimes.co.uk got shut down by google...I thought I would relaunch the greyhats again.

Just a place to keep techy notes and interesting things - no titties or adult content just plain boring shit to keep my notes online.

virtual box 2.1.0 issues

OK so this morning I had some issues with my bridge/tap interface network with the old virtual box, and in my travels around the net I soon discovered that the latest version of virtualbox removes all the hassle of tap and bridge interfaces! wooohoo I think, and swiftly upgrade!

ok so a minute later all my virtual pcs are fucked :(

"Assertion failed: [!name.isNull()] at '/home/vbox/vbox-2.1.0/src/VBox/Main/NetworkAdapterImpl.cpp' (1068) in nsresult NetworkAdapter::loadSettings(const settings::Key&). Please contact the product vendor!."

woopee...seems the new virtual box breaks because if you have virtual machines that are set to use the tap interface, and you upgrade it cant convert the config for you.

So the simple solution is to goto your virtualbox config file eg
/home/freakyclown/.VirtualBox/Machines/windows/windows.xml
and delete everything between and

so that something like this...













becomes something like this



save and restart virtual box and problem should be solved, you will just have to goto the config and select "host" and start the box.

My friend NapalmTheElf has launched his own blog over at http://napalmtheelf.wordpress.com/
go visit it for his wit, his charm, his forthright opinion and because I said so!

So google released their zeitgeist for 2008, the fastest growers this year are:

1. sarah palin
2. beijing 2008
3. facebook login
4. tuenti
5. heath ledger
6. obama
7. nasza klasa
8. wer kennt wen
9. euro 2008
10. jonas brothers

It's been a big year for the Internet.
From BBC's iPlayer to Facebook to YouTube, many of the top searches in Britain this year have been for our favourite websites. We also see three web-savvy politicians come tops in searches
Fastest Rising

1. iplayer
2. facebook
3. iphone
4. youtube
5. yahoo mail
6. large hadron collider
7. obama
8. friv
9. jogos
10. wiki

Most Popular

1. facebook
2. bbc
3. youtube
4. ebay
5. games
6. news
7. hotmail
8. bebo
9. yahoo
10. jobs

Politicians (Most Popular)

1. gordon brown
2. david cameron
3. barack obama
4. tony blair
5. sarah palin
6. john mccain
7. george osborne
8. alistair darling
9. boris johnson
10. nicolas sarkozy

Recipes (Fastest Rising)

1. cupcake
2. meatballs
3. rocky road
4. crumble topping
5. eaton mess
6. pork belly
7. rhubarb fool
8. lemon posset
9. honey comb
10. beer batter

Finance terms (Fastest Rising)

1. icesave
2. hot uk deals
3. natwest
4. hmrc
5. hbos
6. money saving expert
7. halifax
8. barclays
9. rbs
10. lloyds tsb

Hottest tickets (Fastest Rising)

1. oasis
2. leonard cohen
3. ac/dc
4. the ashes
5. steve coogan
6. sos
7. oliver
8. gladiators
9. tina turner
10. nickleback

Official Gmail Blog: Spice up your inbox with colors and themes

G mail launched their new Built in themes today, still haven't shown up yet on my g mail account (even though I was one of the first to get one when they launched)

Official Gmail Blog:
Spice up your inbox with colors and themes