I suppose I should really update the status of various things I've mentioned in the past.

xsm: I gave up and just added the appropriate magic to my xinitrc to start my common apps. I tried fluxbox again for a while, but although it could cope with one of each app it didn't seem to do too well with half a dozen xterms. Maybe with a little effort it could, but xinitrc does the trick well enough.

RSS reader: I've settled on Liferea for the moment, with my evil lj-openid-fetch script fetching LJ posts for me.

Netgear DG834G: I wrote up a page of info about this, just to have something static. Unfortunately it seems that the Marvell 88E6060 switch chip used only supports port based vlans, which I think means you can split the switch up so that you can have completely separate ports, but doesn't allow the creation of a wan port on the device. This is a shame, as it means I can't use it to handle my setup unaided (I need wan, lan, wireless + adsl ports).

X11 programming: I ended up using SDL, which gave me a framebuffer to play with. I suspect I could easily convert the code to run on /dev/fb0 directly, which is nice, though I should look at how to do the same with X again at some point.

Rar. Beware. I've now got the M&S USB missile launcher working under Linux. I hate libusb, it's very badly documented and seems to assume you know the USB spec inside out. Anyway, usblauncher-0.0.1.tar.gz does the appropriate magic (if crudely) and includes a basic GTK2 Perl program to control it.

Ian Jeffrey has also produced some code that works in much the same way, but it's only a command line example and I couldn't see a license that allowed redistribution attached to it. It looks like he went about things in much the same way as I did though.

Not long back from Oxford where Dom had a rather good New Year's Eve party - good to see people and I'll stick photos up later today hopefully.

Kim asked me what I'd remember about 2005 (her engagement was obviously her big thing) and I didn't have an answer. However I thought some more about it during the drive home and Tristam and Angharad (two of my best friends) getting married is probably my best memory of the year; I actually had to remind myself that it was only back in March - it seems like ages ago! It was a great day and lovely to see the both of them so happy (and I confess to rather enjoying my role as best man as well).

Let's see what 2006 has to offer all of us...

I finally had my first flight cancelled on me yesterday. I suppose given that I've been flying a few times a year for at least the past 8 years (even if it's only back and forth to Northern Ireland) I should consider myself lucky.

I arrived at Belfast City Airport at about 8am, for a 9:45am flight (the last time I flew from Belfast we hit really bad traffic, so we ended up overcompensating). On check in I discovered it was delayed by 15 minutes. Shortly after I'd made my way through security it was delayed by 45 minutes. Then they delayed it until midday. Then at 11:30 they said they'd have an announcement at midday. And then at 11:45 they cancelled it.

Now, I was flying from Belfast to Norwich. There's only one such flight a day. So I'm a bit stuck. And by the time I get to the front of the refunds queue they've filled up the flight today (Saturday), leaving me the option of a direct flight to Norwich on Sunday, or any other flight leaving Belfast City on Friday that they have seats on. So I go to London Gatwick, supposed to leave at 14:30. And it gets delayed by 45 minutes straight after I check in. Thankfully it does actually take off at 15:15 and I manage to get to England. On the wrong side of London for Norwich, but hey, the trains are running. I negotiate the Gatwick Express, get a tube to Liverpool Street and get on a train to Norwich. Which then gets delayed for 25 minutes because a train breaks down in front of it. Bah.

I finally get home just after 9pm, rather than the 11:30am or so I would have managed if my initial flight had taken off on time. The house is still in one piece, the plants haven't died, I have food again. Rar.

And I know this is small fry compared to American flight horror stories, or the potential problems we could have had when Uncle Steve lost our clothes en route to Brazil, but it's the first time I've had a major problem with flights.

(We'll ignore the fun I had when turning on my desktop machine and seeing "GRUB Read Error" displayed. Damn scanner had decided to frob the SCSI bus enough that the BIOS could boot grub but grub couldn't then see sda.)

So, the delightful Kathy bought me a Marks & Spencer USB Missile Launcher (unfortunately out of stock at present or I'd have linked directly to it. Try searching on eBay / Google to see what I mean.) Problem. WinXP/2k only drivers. That's no fun.

Plugged it in to my laptop (as you do). dmesg reports:

input: Tenx Nonstandard Devic as /class/input/input6
input: USB HID v1.10 Device [Tenx Nonstandard Devic] on usb-0000:00:1d.1-2
input: Tenx Nonstandard Devic as /class/input/input7
input: USB HID v1.10 Device [Tenx Nonstandard Devic] on usb-0000:00:1d.1-2

lsusb says:

Bus 002 Device 004: ID 1130:0202 Tenx Technology, Inc. 
Device Descriptor:
  bLength                18
  bDescriptorType         1
  bcdUSB               1.10
  bDeviceClass            0 (Defined at Interface level)
  bDeviceSubClass         0 
  bDeviceProtocol         0 
  bMaxPacketSize0         8
  idVendor           0x1130 Tenx Technology, Inc.
  idProduct          0x0202 
  bcdDevice            1.00
  iManufacturer           0 
  iProduct                2 
  iSerial                 0 
  bNumConfigurations      1
  Configuration Descriptor:
    bLength                 9
    bDescriptorType         2
    wTotalLength           59
    bNumInterfaces          2
    bConfigurationValue     1
    iConfiguration          0 
    bmAttributes         0x80
    MaxPower              100mA
    Interface Descriptor:
      bLength                 9
      bDescriptorType         4
      bInterfaceNumber        0
      bAlternateSetting       0
      bNumEndpoints           1
      bInterfaceClass         3 Human Interface Devices
      bInterfaceSubClass      0 No Subclass
      bInterfaceProtocol      0 None
      iInterface              0 
        HID Device Descriptor:
          bLength                 9
          bDescriptorType        33
          bcdHID               1.10
          bCountryCode            0 Not supported
          bNumDescriptors         1
          bDescriptorType        34 Report
          wDescriptorLength      43
         Report Descriptors: 
           ** UNAVAILABLE **
      Endpoint Descriptor:
        bLength                 7
        bDescriptorType         5
        bEndpointAddress     0x81  EP 1 IN
        bmAttributes            3
          Transfer Type            Interrupt
          Synch Type               None
          Usage Type               Data
        wMaxPacketSize     0x0008  1x 8 bytes
        bInterval               1
    Interface Descriptor:
      bLength                 9
      bDescriptorType         4
      bInterfaceNumber        1
      bAlternateSetting       0
      bNumEndpoints           1
      bInterfaceClass         3 Human Interface Devices
      bInterfaceSubClass      0 No Subclass
      bInterfaceProtocol      0 None
      iInterface              0 
        HID Device Descriptor:
          bLength                 9
          bDescriptorType        33
          bcdHID               1.10
          bCountryCode           33 US
          bNumDescriptors         1
          bDescriptorType        34 Report
          wDescriptorLength      23
         Report Descriptors: 
           ** UNAVAILABLE **
      Endpoint Descriptor:
        bLength                 7
        bDescriptorType         5
        bEndpointAddress     0x82  EP 2 IN
        bmAttributes            3
          Transfer Type            Interrupt
          Synch Type               None
          Usage Type               Data
        wMaxPacketSize     0x0008  1x 8 bytes
        bInterval               1

The Windows software appears to consist of TenxHID.dll (24k) and Missile_Launcher.exe (908k). TenxHID only exports DeviceIni, ReadBuffer and WriteBuffer AFAICT. Which implies the higher level stuff is done in the exe to me. I think it's a job for USBSnoop and a Windows box, but that'll have to wait for a few days until I get back to a WinXP box I can use to fiddle. Unless someone else manages to write a driver in the meantime. :)