As an avid gamer I like to revisit some of the classics that I used to play as a kid, most notably Super Mario Bros. As I sold the system back in 1995 to get a SNES my only option is to play my old games on my PC, but playing Super Mario Bros just isn’t the same when you haven’t got a square brick for a controller that is giving you cramp in your hands! This ended up leading to me thinking – why not just convert an old controller to work via USB? And so I have. See below some pictures and a little demonstration video of the controller in use

If you’re as lazy as me, you’ll hate having to login to the web front end for your ReadyNAS every time you want to shut it down or getting up and holding down the power button for 5 seconds (it isn’t just me that hates doing this, right?). I finally decided to make an easier means of doing this which I thought I’d share with you all.

Although the title says this is for Ubuntu it should work in pretty much any Linux distribution seeing as it’s all pretty standard stuff. If you are using a different distribution you’ll have to use your distribution’s alternative to apt-get if it isn’t Debian.

The first thing you will need to do is install the Expect package using the following command:

sudo apt-get install expect

The reason we need Expect is to make the automation of the commands easier.

The second thing you will need to do is install the EnableRootSSH addon which is available from the official Netgear site (http://www.readynas.com/download/addons/4.00/EnableRootSSH_1.0.bin). Once you have downloaded this, login to your ReadyNAS web panel and make sure you are in Advanced Mode. Once logged in click the “Update” option underneath the System section and then click the “Local” tab. This screen will allow you to select the bin file you have just downloaded and install it to your ReadyNAS by pressing the “Upload and verify image” button. After the installation is complete you will have to restart your ReadyNAS.

Now that we have root access via SSH to the ReadyNAS and have Expect installed create a new document on your desktop and call it “ShutdownNAS.sh” and open it up in a text editor.

Copy and paste the following into the file, replacing IPADDRESSOFTHENAS with the I.P address of the ReadyNAS and YOURPASSWORD with the password you use to login to the web panel for the ReadyNAS (be sure to leave the \r at the end of the password) and save it:

Note: for some reason my blog is replacing the double quotation marks with a different character that will not work, so if you copy and paste this be sure to replace any quotation mark manually.

Now run the following command to make the file executable:

chmod 755 ~/Desktop/ShutdownNAS.sh

Now if you drag the file into a terminal or double click and press Run it will login to your NAS and shut it down for you; simples

If you have any problems with this or want any help / information for expanding on this script feel free to ask.

Yesterday I decided to set up a new NAS on my home network and opted in for the Netgear ReadyNAS RND2110. I managed to pick it up for just £136 and included was a 1TB Seagate Barracuda drive and if I send off my invoice and serial number to Netgear they will mail out another one for free.

At the moment I have the Barracuda installed as my primary drive and a 1TB Samsung SpinPoint F2 that I had lying around as the secondary drive in the RAID array. Getting it all set up was much faster than I had anticipated, the caddies are very easy to remove and install and the NAS unit auto detected the second drive and began synchronising them instantly. Although I will always keep the mirroring enabled you can also set up the drives in RAID0 which is a pretty nifty feature.

While I am very impressed with this, I am having a rather strange bottleneck. I hooked my PC up straight to the NAS via Gigabit Ethernet but the write speeds were not exceeding 18MB/s. The read speeds seem to be fine as I was able to read from the drive at around 40MB/s (which is normal for the hard drive I was copying to), but the write speeds are very inconvenient when copying large amounts of data as I have been doing over the past 24 hours.

If anyone has any idea what may be causing this bottleneck or how I can fix it please contact me, it would be much appreciated.

I recently ordered one of Apple’s new Aluminium Keyboards and as I expected I had some issues getting it fully working on a Windows machine, having never actually used an Apple keyboard before I was unaware that the alt keys on the Apple keyboards are actually where the Windows key would be on a regular keyboard, and the print screen and scroll lock keys are not present either, instead replaced by extra function buttons.

The only solution I came across was to extract the Windows drivers from Boot Camp however I didn’t want to fuss around trying to convert Apple’s DMG files to a format that can be mounted with any standard virtualisation software such as Daemon Tools.

Instead I made use of a tool called SharpKeys and re-mapped the appropriate keys, so now I can touch type as normal with my CTRL and ALT keys in the correct positions and use scroll lock and print screen, in addition I have also set F18 to lower the system volume and F19 to raise it.

If you are looking for the same functionality simply download This File, unzip the file inside and double click it, it will insert the appropriate values into your registry, after doing so you will need to restart your machine for the changes to become active.

Alternatively you can insert the following values yourself into the registry:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout]
“Scancode Map”=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,07,00,00,00,37,e0,64,00,46,00,65,00,\
5b,e0,38,00,38,00,5b,e0,2e,e0,69,00,30,e0,6a,00,00,00,00,00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout\DosKeybCodes]
“00040402″=”bg”
“00000c04″=”ch”
“00001004″=”ch”
“00001404″=”ch”
“0001041f”=”tr”
“0000041f”=”tr”
“00000412″=”ko”
“00000804″=”ch”
“00000425″=”et”
“00000426″=”us”
“00010426″=”us”
“00000427″=”us”
“00000411″=”jp”
“00000423″=”us”
“00000402″=”bg”
“00000419″=”ru”
“00010419″=”ru”
“00010c1a”=”us”
“00000c1a”=”us”
“00000422″=”us”
“00010402″=”us”
“00020402″=”bg”
“00030402″=”bg”
“00020422″=”us”
“0000041C”=”us”
“0000041a”=”yu”
“00000424″=”yu”
“00000405″=”cz”
“00010405″=”cz”
“0000040e”=”hu”
“0001040e”=”hu”
“00000415″=”pl”
“00010415″=”pl”
“00000418″=”ro”
“00010418″=”ro”
“00020418″=”ro”
“0000041b”=”sl”
“0001041b”=”sl”
“00000442″=”tk”
“00000813″=”be”
“0000080c”=”be”
“00001009″=”us”
“00010c0c”=”cf”
“00000c0c”=”cf”
“00000406″=”dk”
“00000413″=”nl”
“0000040b”=”su”
“0000040c”=”fr”
“00000407″=”gr”
“00010407″=”gr”
“0000040f”=”is”
“00001809″=”us”
“00000410″=”it”
“00010410″=”it”
“0000080a”=”la”
“00000414″=”no”
“00000816″=”po”
“00000416″=”br”
“0000040a”=”sp”
“0001040a”=”sp”
“0000041d”=”sv”
“0000100c”=”sf”
“00000807″=”sg”
“00000809″=”uk”
“00010409″=”dv”
“00030409″=”usl”
“00040409″=”usr”
“00020409″=”us”
“00000409″=”us”
“00000452″=”uk”
“0000046e”=”sf”
“00000408″=”gk”
“00010408″=”gk”
“00020408″=”gk”
“00050408″=”gk”
“00000404″=”ch”

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout\DosKeybIDs]
“0001041f”=”440″
“0000041f”=”179″
“00010415″=”214″
“00000442″=”440″
“00000410″=”141″
“00010410″=”142″
“00010408″=”220″
“00020408″=”319″

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Intel has unveiled a prototype chip that packs 48 separate processing cores on to a chunk of silicon the size of a postage stamp.

The Single-chip Cloud Computer (SCC), as it is known, contains 1.3 billion transistors, the tiny on-off switches that underpin chip technology.

Each processing core could, in theory, run a separate operating system.

Currently, top-end chips for desktop computers typically contain four separate processors.

Intel and rival AMD will both launch new six-core devices in 2010, allowing computers to simultaneously tackle a number of complex tasks, such as processing graphics.

‘Tiny islands’

The chip has won the “cloud” name because it brings together the computing resources typically filling several racks in a data centre.

The SCC is made up of 24 “tiles” each one of which is effectively a dual-core processor.

The chip maker said the research that had gone into the chip suggests that it could, eventually, cram 100 cores onto a single piece of silicon.

In 2007, the firm showed off an 80-core processor, whilst earlier this year a US firm called Tilera announced a 100-core chip. Also graphics chip maker Nvidia has previewed its next-generation processor that has 512 cores.

However, unlike both of these, the SCC is based on Intel’s X86 architecture, meaning it can run operating systems found in normal desktop computers such as Windows and Linux.

Microsoft said it had already put SCC into its development pipeline so it could exploit it in the future.

Intel said it had already demonstrated Linux running on each core. It has also found a way to slash the management overhead required to keep the processors crunching data in synch.

In a bid to keep power consumption down, the tiles making up the chip can be divided into islands of different sizes that run at separate voltages.

“Over time, I expect these advanced concepts to find their way into mainstream devices, just as advanced automotive technology such as electronic engine control, air bags and anti-lock braking eventually found their way into all cars,” said Justin Rattner, Intel’s chief technology officer.

Intel said the SCC would be made officially available during the first half of 2010. More details will be released at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco on 8 February, 2010.

Original article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8392392.stm