Moved

To allow me to create more of a website around my blog this blog has moved to my own webspace at  http://zed0.co.uk/

Net

While I was bored a few days ago I thought I'd have a look at how terminal based GUI applications work, as I was wanting to see the nitty gritty of it I decided that it would be more educational to work directly with ANSI codes.

The project I ended up with was writing a terminal based version of the game Netwalk, probably best known from Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection. This was inspired by playing around with the box drawing characters, making a grid and thinking, "hey, that looks like Net!"

Thus, I have created a fairly simple version of the game, the source is on my GitHub page. If you want to try playing it then you can download it from there and compile it with g++. Alternatively if you have an account on codd (the Warwick compsoc server) then you can run it directly from /home/zed0/programming/net/netgame .

The game seems to run without issue through PuTTY, on the condition that you are using UTF-8. The only other configuration I've tried it with is Cygwin, which compiles and runs fine, however, assuming you're using the default Cygwin terminal, you'll need to change the font to one which has the box drawing characters.

As this was made in the space of a few hours there are quite a lot of improvements to be made.
My current todo list includes:
Adjusting the drawing methods so that it only updates the bits of the screen it needs to.
Adding wrapping as the game is fairly trivial without it.
Writing a better map generation algorithm.

On that last point I haven't really got many ideas. Writing an algorithm to generate a tree which takes up the entire map is fairly trivial, however I have no idea how to ensure that the map has a unique solution which would be desirable. If any mathsy people know how to do this then please comment.

Feel free to suggest other features or report bugs. Multiplayer has been suggested, which I may, at some point, try to implement.

WPA Enterprise networks on rooted Android 1.6

So I spent a while in DCS (Department of Computer Science) today trying to get my phone to connect to the network.

For some reason on the Cyanogen ROM I'm using at the moment (I don't know about the official 1.6 build) wireless certificates were failing to install properly. They appear to install fine, however the drop down for certificates still shows no entries when one tries to connect to a network.

The easiest solution (at least for users with root access) to this appears to be to transfer the certificates to ones SD card and then edit the file /data/misc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf to add a new network.
Assuming one is connecting to the wifi in DCS this looks something like this:

network={
    ssid="dcs_wl"
    key_mgmt=WPA-EAP
    group=CCMP TKIP
    eap=TLS
    identity="csuxxx"
    ca_cert="/sdcard/root.der"
    private_key="/sdcard/csuxxx.p12"
    private_key_passwd="blah123BLAH"
    priority=11
}

If one tries to connect beforehand then there will already be an entry for dcs_wl that can be edited.

Voila, it now connects automatically.

From what Chris Sinjakli has said, he found connecting to the network significantly easier so it may well be that more recent ROMs don't have this problem.

Easter Lego

During the Easter holidays I found myself rather bored at points, thus, given the amount of Lego in my room, I did the only logical thing:


My mecha, complete with ominous shadow.

As usual sorry about the quality of the pictures, I'm terrible at keeping my hand steady for them.






Close up of the gun thing.


Close up of the claw thing.



Close up of the cockpit.


The only picture to come out not incredibly blurred.

I'm not sure what I was expecting when I started making this, it looks rather more like it's from Bioshock than intended. I also didn't expect it to be this yellow, but then realised I didn't have enough dark grey pieces.

I have actually made quite a few Lego models over the last couple of years, I'll probably blog about them too before too long.

Minamicon Pictures

I went to Minami Con in Southampton last weekend which was a nice break before my term of horror.
Here are a few photos (sorry about the quality, I can't keep my hand steady while taking shots):


Nikki's great dark Zelda cosplay.


No idea what this is from, I just really liked the detail on the clothing.


One of my favourite cosplays of the entire con, a self designed witch.


I can't remember which series this is from but I recall being told it was some sort of space pope, whatever it's from the hat was fantastic.


I think this is from Utena, though having never seen it it's hard to say.


This is pretty self explanatory, if you don't know who KOS-MOS is then play Xenosaga.


Lastly a picture of Claire abusing P Chan.

If you want more pictures then there are quite a few here on Facebook.