brett.jenkins

Hey,

I’ve had some interest in my icecast script over at the SRA forums, so I thought i’d post it here so that anyone who cares can read and do what they want with it!

This is my listener_join.php:

http://brettjenkins.co.uk/code/icecast/listener_join.txt

This is listener_leave.php:

http://brettjenkins.co.uk/code/icecast/listener_leave.txt

This is the SQL database structure:
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `icecast` (
`id` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
`icecast_id` int(11) NOT NULL,
`datetime_start` datetime NOT NULL,
`datetime_end` datetime default NULL,
`ip` varchar(20) NOT NULL,
`mount` varchar(20) NOT NULL,
`duration` int(11) default NULL,
`agent` varchar(200) default NULL,
`server` varchar(50) default NULL,
`port` int(11) default NULL,
`user` varchar(20) default NULL,
`pass` varchar(20) default NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=3087 ;

Some of the code probably isn’t as efficient as it could be, and if you want to tidy it up yourself thats cool, but I just programmed this fast.

This is a template for the icecast.xml file in the icecast server directory:

http://brettjenkins.co.uk/code/icecast.xml

Thats the backend sorted, there needs to be a front end to display the data, this is our main frontend stuff:
http://brettjenkins.co.uk/code/icecast-admin/

I’ll just repeat that most of this was programmed quickly and wasn’t necessarily programmed with best practise in mind – the front end is very basic and there is a lot of scope for improvement if someone wanted to improve it.

Hope this helps!

P.S. Big thanks to the SRA for nominating me/xtreme for Best Technical Achievement Award

I’ve now gone completely wordpressed for this site, it was a lot easier than I thought it would be, and I even imported all the old blog posts from the old blog Now all the pages and posts are managed by wordpress…. God I love wordpress

I’ll post exciting stuff tomorrow! Keep tuned!

Hey all, welcome to my new post of 2009!

Firstly, the new version of Wordpress is looking nice, they’ve completely changed the look of it, but I like it (i’m talking about the administrative backend here), Wordpress is definately the one to beat in terms of blog CMS!

Secondly, welcome to 2009! Yep we are finally in 2009, and so we say goodbye to 2008. I don’t really have any new years resolutions apart from try and do well in my course at university and the like!

Thirdly, shoutout to Sam Hastings! This guy designed the previous iteration of this site and was on Masterchef on Wednesday! He unfortunately was the first to be kicked out… oh well he can still cook way better than me, which I find scary…

Also, i’ve been out and about doing all kinds of stuff to the Xtreme website which will be unleashed when the new studio is completed…

However the thing I most want to talk about is…

Windows 7

This is the new version of Windows (obviously) and is currently out there in beta form, and I have it I’ve had it installed practically from day 1 of the beta, and I love it. I’ve only gone back to Vista once for a gig (where I had to obviously use stable  – as opposed to beta – software). It’s great! The superbar while initially unusual to see on a Windows machine becomes more and more natural to use, and when I went back to Vista the other day it seemed weird going back to the old taskbar! It feels quite natural to use once you get the hang of it. Plus Windows 7 just seems faster, and this isn’t because nothing is installed on it! I have loads of programs installed as i’m using it as my primary OS, and it just seems snappier it’s great. Even the new Windows loading screen is cool

There are one or two bugs however. I’m getting an occassional screen tearing/flickering which I suppose i’ll put down to drivers? (I’m using the drivers for my graphics card supplied by Microsoft as apparrently they are the most recent drivers for my graphics card – an intel integrated graphics job.) But that isn’t a show stopper and will probably be improved with better drivers. The notes application also is a bit weird, you’d naturally assume you can pin the notes to the desktop, which would make sense with aero peek, but no they are just a normal application, so that doesn’t work the way I would have expected. I’ve sent my feedback to Microsoft so hopefully they’ll take my comments on board, but I am one of many!

I’ll try and make more blog posts on here this year, in fact that can be more of my new years resolutions! However I only tend to want to make a blog post when I have something worth writing about! I try and update my twitter status more often (which you can see at the left of every page on this website), you’re welcome to follow me although I mostly just twitter what i’m doing and stuff I do try and twitter some interesting things sometimes, although lets face it i’m slightly more boring than @stephenfry

Cheerio
Brett

P.S. This is genius:

I’m so immature

Hey, it’s been a while since i’ve posted. I’ve been busy working on the new Xtreme Radio website, over at xtremeradio.org. I’ve installed Joomla and done some integration stuff, and I have pretty much come to the conclusion that Wordpress is the best CMS out there. Unfortunately it’s not quite suitable for a radio site, but if it was more ‘CMSey’ i’d use it in a shot. Wordpress is so well designed, it’s so easy to integrate into a site, the back-end looks really nice and iis easy to use, which I cannot say for Joomla. Joomla’s backend is confusing and awkard, I really dislike it. In an ideal world I’d live without a CMS controlled website. I prefer to get more control over my site, no site i’ve made has ever used CMS (excluding blogs like this one of course, where CMS’s like wordpress make sense). I’ve had to give up quite a bit of control with Joomla, as I don’t fancy editing it outside of the themes folder, because it makes upgrading harder etc.
We’re aiming to launch it for the start of the new university term so look forward to that!

So Google Chrome came out this week then, in fact I’m actually using it to post this! Luckily Google has changed their EULA that made all content posted via their browser usable by Google, not that Google would want to use this for anything but still. I’m quite impressed with Chrome, it’s fast, very fast, it looks VERY sexy on Vista, unlike Firefox (well by default anyway), and even better than IE7/8. I like the minimalistic style, and the lack of Adblock and a few other extensions doesn’t really bother me. Especially because I was beginning to disable it for a few sites that I visit a lot, as you know I feel bad using certain sites pretty regularly and then disabling their adverts. But anyway Chrome is great, I’ve been using it more and more recently, it is very nice.

You may have noticed a couple of new external links on the left hand side. I wondered if it was the right thing to do to put links to sites that perhaps say are not related to me, because it’s kind of a CV style site, but I decided to put them in as they are two very good sites that perhaps some people that come here may be interested in. They are twit.tv and the supersite for windows. Both of these sites are brilliant in their own way. I’ve been on and off reading the supersite for windows for years, I usually visit it when expecting a big release, such as Vista, and reading up about it before it’s publicly available, or just before I can get it. Although recently I’ve been visiting it more often, because it’s a very interesting site. I recommend anyone who’s interested in Windows and the future of Windows, and other Microsoft products I may add, to visit it.

Twit.tv is not a mild insult, but actually a very good podcast network. I first found out about twit, from Paul Thurrott’s Supersite for Windows, where I found out that he did a Windows Weekly podcast with Leo Laporte. I started listening to the podcast quite late on, but when I did start listening I found it very interesting and informative. I didn’t know who Leo Laporte was back then, but after slowly over the past year getting into more and more of his podcasts, like Security Now (with GRC’s Steve Gibson) and This Week in Tech (where TWiT gets it’s name), it is clear that he is a legend! I’ve also recently over the summer holiday’s got into TwitLive.tv, which is basically a live video stream of Leo recording his podcasts, often with user interaction via the Chatroom, especially in-between podcasts. As someone who is interested in Technology and Radio, this sort of thing really interests me, and so anyone else out there who is also interested in this kind of thing might do well to listen in. He usually starts at 6PM British Time (11PM Pacific, where he’s based). He even did a live Interview with Robert Llewelyn recently, you know that guy who does “Scrapheap Challenge” and the excellent “How Things Work”.

I’ve now officially passed the first year of University, which is nice! Computer Science, while often interesting, is a very hard course! I await the second year with nervous anticipation!

Anyway thanks for reading, you must have the patience of a saint

Google to release new browser today

Google is going to release a new browser sometime today, which has been announced in the past day. I’ve read the 30odd page comic book style explanation of Google Chrome, and I must say I am very impressed. It seems they have seriously thought about all sorts of things, including, sandboxing. Which i’m very excited about. Currently only IE7 (and do any kind of sandboxing, and only on Vista. Mozilla Firefox is not expected to be sandboxed until Firefox 4! So this is a big big security improvement. I’m also excited by the new process based system, where each tab gets its own process. So if something in that tab makes it crash, you don’t lose the whole browser!

So I’m going to be downloading and installing this beta as soon as it comes out, as it looks very very exciting. There’s currently no Google Chrome page, but I assume that will arrive later today, in the meantime see:

Google Blog Post on Chrome

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 now available.

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 has been released today. I’m currently downloading and will play with it Download it over at the IE8 Beta site here.

Overview

See what we’ve done to put the web at your service and make Internet Explorer 8 the best browser for everyday browsing.

Accelerators

Accelerators let you efficiently complete your everyday browsing activities like mapping directions, translating words, emailing your friends, and more in just a few mouse clicks. Learn more.

InPrivate Browsing

Browse the web without saving your history with Internet Explorer 8’s InPrivate Browsing. Now you can shop for that special gift with confidence knowing your family won’t accidentally find out or use a shared computer without leaving a trace. Learn More.

Web Slices

Keep up with changes to the sites you care about most. Add a Web Slice and you won’t have to go back to the same website again and again for updates on news, stock quotes, online auctions, weather, or even sports scores. Learn more.

Search suggestions

Search smarter with detailed suggestions from your favorite search providers and browsing history. See visual previews and get suggested content topics while you type in the enhanced Instant Search Box.

SmartScreen Filter

New security features help to protect you against deceptive and malicious websites which can compromise your data, privacy and identity.

Source: IE8 Features Page

International Space Station catches virus

This is interesting and a little worrying:

Nasa has confirmed that laptops aboard the International Space Station (ISS) became infected with the Gammima.AG computer virus.

The computer virus that infects machines in order to steal login details for online games and although it is a nuisance, it isn’t considered to be a highly serious virus.

However, the fact that the laptops used by astronauts to send emails, watch videos and record details relating to experiments did get infected is a cause of concern.

The machines reportedly did not have anti-virus protection, although Nasa told Channel 4 News that they were not mission critical machines.

However, when I asked their spokesman Kelly Humphries whether they were connected to the ISS’s mission critical computer network, the telephone line appeared to go down.

After about twenty seconds of silence, I asked, “are you still there?”, he replied:”yes” although when I repeated the question, the line went dead again.

After repeating this part of the conversation for five minutes, Nasa refused to deny that the computers were indeed connected to the network, but then they also refused to say they were.

Nasa said it’s not the first time a computer has been infected with a virus. When I asked “is it then routine?” I was told “it’s not routine but it’s a nuisance”

Source: Channel 4 News

An iPhone advert has been banned in the UK after Advertising Standards Authority deemed it misleading.

This is the advert:

from The Telegraph:

A television advert for Apple’s iPhone has been banned after the official watchdog ruled that it misled viewers.

The advert for the handset showed the phone in someone’s hand and a finger touching the different icons on the main page.

The voice-over then boasts about how iPhone owners can access “all parts” of the internet at a touch of a button.

“You never know which part of the internet you’ll need,” it says.

“The do you need sun cream part? The what’s the quickest way to the airport part? The what about an ocean view room part? …Which is why all the parts of the internet are on the iPhone.”

Customers complained that the claim was untrue because the iPhone did not support Flash or Java, two pieces of software needed to watch some online videos and access some websites.

Apple said that the advert was not about “technical details” but about highlighting the varied websites that owners of the iPhone can access.

It added that none of the websites featured in the advert required Flash of Java. However, the Advertising Standards Authority ruled that the advert gave “a misleading impression” of the internet capabilities of the iPhone, which doubles as a phone, iPod and internet browser.

“We considered that, because the ad had not explained the limitations, viewers were likely to expect to be able to see all the content on a website normally accessible through a PC rather than just having the ability to reach the website,” it said in its ruling.

A spokesman for Apple declined to comment.

Source: Telegraph Website

Yes, you’ve read that right. Mail Source, a company which stores customer data for banks, has sold a server on ebay for £35 with Natwest and Royal Bank of Scotland data on it amongst others.

The decommissioned server was stored in a secure room, but for some reason that server ended up on eBay, and sold for £35.

Does anyone in the real world know anything about Computer Security!? Why should we give our data to people who seem to know nothing about basic data security? It was so lucky that a good guy ended up with the servers rather than a less honest person.

Sigh.

Source: Google News

This is an interesting way to attract younger voters:

Xbox Live in youth voting drive

Americans will soon be able to use Xbox Live to register to vote in the November presidential elections.

Microsoft has signed a partnership with activist group Rock The Vote to boost interest in the upcoming election among young people.

As part of the tie-up Xbox Live members will also be able to take part in polls to gauge their voting intentions.

A forum on Xbox Live will also be used to gather opinions from gamers that will be shared with candidates.

Party politics

“To realise our goal of registering two million young Americans by this fall, we need to go where young Americans are,” said Heather Smith, executive director of Rock the Vote, in a statement. “There’s no doubt in our minds that many are on Xbox 360 and Xbox Live.”

Microsoft said that the Rock The Vote campaign to use Xbox Live would begin on 25 August.

In the past Rock The Vote has also worked with MySpace to encourage bands that promote their music via the social networking site to get fans to register to vote.

Through the partnership with Rock The Vote, Microsoft is also planning to have a presence at the Republican and Democrat party conventions to educate politicians about it and its members views.

Some aspects of Xbox Live are free but for a monthly fee members can take on other console owners in online games. In the UK the annual fee for the service is £39.99.

In May 2008 Microsoft announced that it had 12 million subscribers for Xbox Live spread across 26 countries

Will this work? Well, I don’t think it will. People playing on an xbox, won’t suddenly decide to register to vote… will they? However time will tell, it will be interesting to see how this ends up.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7576956.stm