Building a “Flash LED on Twitter Search” with a Raspberry Pi and Python
Because there’s not enough flashing on Twitter.
Tag: computers
Advanced Lawnmower Simulator for Codebug
We got a Codebug this week. So naturally, I had to write Advanced Lawnmower Simulator for it. Because that’s what you do with new programming kit. If you want the code (and you can remix the code if you like – and run it in an emulator so you don’t need the actual device), then you can find it here. Just press the A button to start, then after the, uh, title screen, press A again. To mow, press A. …
Can’t log into SQL Server 2012 with domain admin account
I recently migrated a database from SQL Server 2008 to a new server running SQL Server 2012. Everything worked fine, but it was annoying me that I couldn’t log into the database (using SQL Server Management Studio) as a domain administrator – specifically DOMAIN\administrator. Logging in as the SQL user “sa” worked fine, but using Windows Authentication I got the error: Error Number: 18456 Severity: 14 State: 1 Line Number: 65536 Now, I’ve had similar to this before, and the …
How to set up a Linux lab with no Linux machines
So when you’re told that you might have 30-odd students that need access to Linux for some course they’re doing, and you don’t have any spare machines and don’t want to dual boot with Windows on a computer suite and you don’t have time to do that anyway, what do you do? Well, one solution is what we’ve done: A Linux virtual machine running on a Hyper-V server, with “child” virtual machines, each accessible from a Windows machine. Specific for …
Switching audio output between jack and HDMI on RetroPie
RetroPie is a great multi-emulator project for the Raspberry Pi, but I noticed that its auto-detect for which audio device to use seems a bit erratic. I’ve speakers plugged into the 3.5mm jack, as the HDMI cable runs to a speaker-less monitor, and usually (but not always) RetroPie defaulted to squirting sound out the HDMI port. There’s two ways of fixing this. Firstly, you can change the audio output for the current session (i.e. until you reboot it) by issuing …
Finally! The version of RSG you’ve been waiting for!
Many, many, many years ago, I wrote a terrible text based roleplaying game called RSG. I initially made a version for the Sinclair Spectrum, but lost the code soon afterwards. Then I wrote a version for the Acorn A4000 in BBC Basic instead of doing my A level computing project. Then a version for the Casio programmable calculator when I’d finished a physics exam. At some point I also made a version in AMOS on the Amiga, and eventually rewrote …
Fixing “Not enough free space” error when deploying Windows image
After creating a new install of Windows 7, with all the software on I wanted, I then tried to use our Windows Deployment Services Server to capture the image. However, it failed using both methods we’d used previously. When booting to Windows PE over the network, choosing all our usual capture options, and then triggering the capture, an error message came up – “not enough free space”. This seemed odd, as there was a good 60GB free on the local …
EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard
When choosing a data recovery program, the most important thing is whether it will actually recover your data or not. In my job I’m often asked to restore files that have been deleted or “lost”, and if there’s no backup (which, invariably on a removable disk, there isn’t), data recovery is the only way to go. I’ve been testing EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard 7.0, to see how well it performs. EaseUS’ product does two things I’ve not seen in other …
Making MacPorts work again after upgrading to Mavericks
Although pretty much everything “just works” after upgrading from Lion/Mountain Lion to Mavericks, one thing that doesn’t is MacPorts. Well, it still works, or at least it did for me, but you’re unable to upgrade it or install more ports, as they all fail with various error messages (including “Error: org.macports.extract for port gperf returned: command execution failed”), and the usual sudo port selfupdate just gives the message MacPorts base version 2.2.1 downloaded. —> Updating the ports tree —> MacPorts base …
Can’t upgrade Exchange 2010 – “The service cannot be started”
The time had come to install SP3 on Exchange 2010. Things hadn’t worked, with nothing useful in the logs, when I tried to apply all the SP2 update rollups, so I thought I’d skip them and go straight to Service Pack 3. I had a few odd issues to begin with: For some reason it thought I had Windows Update running. I didn’t. Then it got through the “readiness checks” but failed because “beremote” (Symantec Backup Exec was running – …
Possible solution to Camptune X’s “repair disk” error
My Windows Bootcamp partition was getting a bit full, so I wanted to resize it. It seemed the easiest way of doing this was by using Camptune X, and, after solving the following problem, I think it was: Run app, use slider to resize OS X and Windows partitions, wait. That’s it. However, when I first ran it, it came up with an error – saying that my OS X partition was damaged and telling me to run a disk …
How to get rid of inaccessible extra mailboxes in Outlook 2010
It’s pretty common in an Exchange environment for users to have access to other users mailboxes. Permission can be given via the Exchange Management Console for users to access another mailbox from within Outlook (File > Open > Other User’s Folder), and, in theory, permission can be removed using the EMC as well. Unfortunately, even though permission is seemingly removed, it often leaves the now unnecessary mailbox in Outlook where it can’t be deleted, accessed, or even hidden from sight. …