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I have a HP Compaq Mini 311c-1030SA netbook with ION. I decided to encrypt it the other day just on the off chance it was stolen that way I would be happy that none of my data would be lost.

It had the orignal OS (Windows XP Home) and Kubuntu Linux in a dual boot configuration. Windows encrypted nicely with TrueCrypt and I decided to start fresh with Linux as the version I had installed was fairly old and as far as I am aware there is no way to on the fly encrypt a currently installed distro.

Lets just say that due to a slip of the hand I somewhat destroyed my encrypted Windows partition! (Foolishly, one of the first things I did when i got the netbook a few years ago was remove the recovery partition for more HDD space too)

This isn't really a big problem for me as I hardly ever used the Windows install. Here is the clincher though, the netbook has a Qualcomm UN2400 Mobile Broadband chip which requires the firmware to be uploaded to the chip based off what country/carrier you plan on using. This firmware and some of the ppp configuration scripts are installed onto the Windows partition... which I had just destroyed!

Getting the firmware was not a problem as I downloaded the driver from the HP website and extracted the .msi file to get what I needed. (For your convenience you can download the 12 firmware images here)

Now that I have the firmware images on my netbook again I can follow the guide written by my good friend, Dataforce. This can be located on his website, home.dataforce.org.uk

To save you all some time here is what I did to get mine working (Mostly taken from Dataforce's website):


As a breif explanation I use the image in the "6" folder as it is listed on HP's Support Pages as "Generic UTMS (Europe)" however I suggest you take a look and choose whats best for you.

Restart your machine and check you have the correct number of ttyUSB devices


The hard part is done! All that is left is, in my case at least, to use the build in KDE NetworkManager check that the "Mobile Broadband" tab is no longer disabled and follow the wizard for creating a new mobile broadband connection for your contry/carrier.

Whilst this seems trivial to some people, not only did this issue affect my office, but one of our branches in India too so I figure its worth noting somewhere!

My current employer has many operating companies (OpCo's) dotted around the world, all under one brand. Because of this structure, our OpCo in the UK has a two way trust relationship between our domain and the parent company's. For arguments sake, lets call them UKNET and CENTRALNET.

At the end of last year we were told to use a Microsoft KMS server hosted on CENTRALNET to install Office 2010 on some of our workstations. Easy.. or so we thought.

On UKNET we have our own DNS servers and for the SRV type that we need, they were infact misconfigured. This lead to our Office installs refusing to activate!

The easiest way to check it is working correctly is on a PC on UKNET (adapt to meet your own needs of course):


In the above snippet, example.com is the FQDN for your domain. A result like the one above implies that your machine is being told where to go for the KMS activation and as long as you can communicate with kms.example.com, you are good to go! (Cue trusty telnet!!)

If however, you are not getting any results from your DNS server, you can either change your DNS settings to one that does give the correct result or simply tell Office where to go to activate!

For this, I will just be letting Office know where to go. You need to complete your install and then on the target machine run:


Note that Office14 is version specific and is in fact Office 2010. No doubt this figure will change for newer versions but for now this works.

Once the above command has completed successfully simply launch an application from the suite and check its activation status. If all went well, you should have a nice activated version of office!

I have known that ISPs in the UK can do this on their own hardware for some time but it usually requires you to have a special piece of kit to enable it at your end. As I am somewhat of a cheapskate, whilst the idea was interesting I decided not to opt for that service. I did however recently come across an article (I forget where I read it now) that explained that you could have a similar effect with a layer 3 solution rather than layer 2 provided by the ISP. This method enables you to implement this solution irrespective of ISP or connection type or speed. It's called VPN Bonding.

I have a Netbook that has a built in GPRS modem and I have a server in a Data Center that I could use as my end point as it has LOTS of Bandwith and a 100MBit connection so I set about giving it a try using the LAN interface and the GPRS modem on the Netbook.

After some trial and error, I had success! Albeit not much success as I believe the latency added by the GPRS link was negatively affecting the link.

I do plan on experimenting some more in the near future, preferably with 2 hard links, however I have documented my efforts. Note that this guide doesn't apply to 3G but instead assumes two hard links however it shouldn't be too hard to modify.

Suggestions or comments are welcome... when I get around to making the contact page! (Yes, it still isn't done...)

Full documentation can be found under the article VPN Bonding

For those of you that know me fairly well, you would know that over the last 5-6 years i have attended a number of LAN events hosted by MultiPlay.co.uk. Whilst I decided to take a break from the event last year we have jumped back on the band wagon again and are here for this years Spring event, i42.

To be truthful the group of us that agreed to attend this year decided this would be a meet up primarily aimed at coding DMDirc and as yet that coding remains to be seen. For the time being we have succumbed to the usual shenanigans that befalls a LAN event - Lots of junk food, lots of video games, lots of random shouting, "Hax!" or "ROFL!" (Pronounced roffle) as a brief example and general other tom foolery.

I must admit all things aside i do enjoy the atmosphere shared at a LAN especially when you are surrounded by friends.

As you have have discovered, I'm not especially big on blogging. I lead quite a mundane (or at least I think so) life compared to some other people I know. That said I feel I should share at least something new!

I had some advise from a few of my closest peers to which the "jist" was the need to not sit on my arse and at least try to better myself. As of a few days ago I made the decision to look into the possibility of gaining some professional certifications. I am looking to start a career in the IT industry and, partly because of where I live (and my unwillingness to just get up and move) and my lack of industrial experience ... its not going very well.

I feel pursuing these certifications will not only aid me in the career department (eventually) but the knowledge and mindset of "I did that" would boost my view of my own self worth and improve me as a person.

Admittedly this is all talk currently. As some of you know, most of the time my "bark" has no "bite" to put it bluntly.

I am hoping to achieve the following certifications:

Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS)
Windows Server 2008 Network Infrastructure Configuration (70-642)
Windows Server 2008 Active Directory Configuration (70-640)

CompTIA Linux+ (Exams LX0-101 and LX0-102) - with the aim of furthering this to LPIC-1

On Monday my shiny new Nexus One phone finally arrived!

The phone was ordered on 14th April but with all the recent disruptions to air traffic caused by the icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, delivery of my phone was delayed.

Overall I am really impressed with the phone. It's a lot more zippy than my older G1 and looks one hell of a lot nicer too. The UI is pretty similar to the G1's Android 1.6 but there are some significant differences. Most notably are the 2 extra home screens, giving the phone a total of 5 screens instead of 3. The AMOLED is sharp, bright and most importantly, larger which makes a nice change as it is a pleasure to look at. The phone is nicely weighted (not too heavy, not too light) and feels sturdy.

All this was expected though, given how long Android has been available on mobile devices and I think that Google and HTC have had ample time to perfect on the design. On the note of the design, one thing I (and probably many others) consider to be a flaw is the SDcard slot. You have to remove the battery to get at the card which is... not useful.

On the plus side however, I found the voice recognition very accurate with no training what so ever. I've spent a few hours crazily talking to my phone...

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me (when the contact form works) or simply ask Google to lend its wisdom.

Yesterday, I took my first official steps at attempting to learn Java. It has been on the back of my mind for a long time (since the days of Visual Basic 6) but I have just never settled into it; Yes, I've tinkered, but never anything serious.

Thanks to some of my long time friends I now have a place to develop my skills and a place to get assistance as and when I need it. Since early 2007 they have been on-off developing an alternate IRC client for Linux that happens to be cross platform with a wide selection of operating systems due to it being Java based. In my opinion their client has far surpassed any IRC client that I've ever come across. If you don't agree, keep watching, you soon will!

The client can be located at DMDirc.com

If you want to follow my progress, they use Gerrit code review, my Dashboard can be seen here

Happy new year.

This year has been full of interesting things for all of us and today is the start of yet another. I hope you're all not too stuffed on turkey as it all goes back to normal Monday, wouldn't want you falling down the stairs as you cant support yourself! There is lots to be done this year.

I have a pet Iguana called Iggy. Its a female Green Iguana and over the weekend she broke her leg, badly. (See image to the right)

I was in Milton Keynes over the bank holiday weekend with the #MDBot Group (Quakenet). We arrived on Saturday at about midday and we left the next day in the afternoon. Milton Keynes is, on average about 2.5 to 3 hours away from me so leaving at 15:15 meant I wouldn't get home till early evening.

When I eventually arrived home after having a relaxing 1.5 hour bus journey from Milton Keynes Central to Birmingham International, my pet Iguana did her usual routine of coming over to me to say hello which, in her world means she wants me to make a fuss of her and usually give her some food. After I had spent 5 or so minutes rubbing some dead skin off her back and prepairing some cress for her to munch on, I sat at my computer and proceeded to catch up on some of the TV shows I had missed over the weekend. After a short while I noticed Iggy was climbing down onto the floor (Which isnt unusual, she likes a good wander), as she walked around the side of the desk I saw her leg was the size of a rugby ball...

As this was a Sunday Evening, taking her to our local vet was out of the question. They charge £90 to look at anything out of hours, which doesn't include the cost of any extras involved such as X-rays. I was stuck as this would also apply for the Monday which was a bank holiday. Some of you may wonder why I didn't take her and spend the £90. Quite frankly, I cant afford it. My Iguana was moving around fine, she was keeping her weight off her leg so I decided I would do what I could to restrict her movement and to take her to the vet during normal working hours.

I managed to get an appointment for earlier today at a vet that deals with reptiles, Rose Cottage in Runcorn. After an examination and being advised what the issue was, I obtained the X-ray image above. As you can see the break is a relatively nasty one and is broken into three pieces. I am a bit disappointed that it wasn't something less serious, as god only knows what will happen if the break doesn't start to heal properly in the next 4 weeks.

Once I have taken her back to the vet to have it looked at again I will post another update, just in case anyone is interested!

Well, just in case you didn't realize, this is my website. For the most part it is about myself or things I enjoy. I will use this site to host facts/statistics about me and also things that will, in the future, help me with things I may have forgotten (for example, config files, command arguments for things like iptables etc).

If you find any of these pages useful please feel free to link to them. If you are sad and have no life like me feel free to subscribe to my RSS Feed.

If you have any suggestions please feel free to pop them over to me via the contact form (when it works) or alternately via IRC in #agari on Quakenet.

Thats about it for introductions, more to come (soon I hope!)