Windows Media Player Hotkey Handler (phew, that was a mouthful!) is a small app that runs in the background of your system and listens for particular hotkeys, which it uses to control Windows Media Player. It was originally written so I could control my music whilst playing Counter-Strike 1.6, mainly so I could control the volume without switching windows and without adjusting the entire system volume.

WMP Hotkey Handler recognises the following shortcuts:
CTRL + SHIFT + /                  Pause/Play
CTRL + SHIFT + <                 Previous track
CTRL + SHIFT + >                 Next track
CTRL + SHIFT + UP              Volume up
CTRL + SHIFT + DOWN       Volume down

Features

• Low memory profile (1,08KB)
• Low CPU Usage (0%)
• Can be dropped in the Start Menu Startup folder and left running all the time
• Compatible with WMP 9, 10, 11, 12 (and possibly others too!)
  

Drawbacks

• Unable to stop a track ( I could add this, but have not had any real use for it)
• Unable to start WMP (again, this could be added)
• Hotkeys can’t be customised (once more, this could be added)

The drawbacks are few, but they have not really been a problem for me; if I get enough/any requests then I will add new features to mitigate these drawbacks.

WMP Hotkey Handler was written in Visual Basic 6.
WMP Hotkey Handler can be downloaded here.
The source code is currently unavailable.

Do you have the need to protect your documents from prying eyes? If so, this may be the tool for you!

File Encryptor takes any file and uses a simple, yet effective encryption method to protect your files with the password/encryption key of your choice; simply tell it which file you want to encrypt, enter a password and press encrypt. The file will then be encrypted using XOR encryption and a new, encrypted file will be generated with a .enc extension.

eg myfile.jpg -> myfile.jpg.enc

Decrypting is just as simple, select a .enc file, enter the password and press decrypt; the file will be decrypted and the original restored.

Features

• Quickly encrypts/decrypts files.
• Uses a non standard algorithm.
• Allows you to choose if the original is deleted when the file is encrypted.
• Allows you to choose if the encrypted file is deleted when the file is decrypted.
• Brute force protection (If the password is not correct there is no warning, the output will be garbage.)
• Case sensitive.

Drawbacks

• If you forget your password you may never be able to decrypt your file.
• It may still be possible to use frequency analysis to calculate the password.
• Palindromic passwords will not work. eg. ‘abcba’, ‘ABBA’, ‘glenelg’.
  Passwords such as ‘race car’ and ‘go hang a salami im a lasagna hog’ are fine as they do not reverse perfectly due to spaces.

File Encryptor was written in Visual Basic 6.
File Encryptor can be downloaded here.
The source code is available here.

Ever inserted a software CD and had it automatically open up an installer or menu screen? Perhaps you have inserted a USB drive or external hard drive and had a similar thing happen?

This automated action can be very useful and time saving, especially for the inexperienced computer user, however, it presents a very real and easy to exploit security risk.

When you insert a CD, connect an external drive or open a network share, Windows automatically looks for a file called Autorun.inf; this file contains a set of plain text instructions that tell windows what icon to give the drive and which programs to execute immediately and can even add new menu items when you right click the drive in Explorer.

The contents of Autorun.inf generally look something like this:
[AutoRun]
icon=setup.ico                                 ;choose an icon to use for the drive
open=setup.exe                                 ;automatically run setup.exe
shell\readme = &Read Me                        ;add a Read Me option to the right-click menu
shell\readme\command = notepad readme.txt      ;when Read Me is pressed open the file readme.txt using notepad

It should be immediately obvious to most people that it would take no effort at all for a virus to copy it’s self and an Autorun.inf to your portable devices, which you no doubt will connect to other computers, whether they be at home, school or in the office or visiting an important client to give a presentation. Once the device is connected to another computer, Windows will unwittingly run the virus, which will proceed to install it’s self on the system and likewise copy it’s self to all portable devices and where possible network shares.

These tactics are already very common with malware and viruses and are only increasing in use.

To help protect my own computers from other peoples portable drives and my own portable drives I have used in other computers, I have written AutoRun Disabler.

AutoRun Disabler does exactly what the title suggests, it disables all Autorun files across the system and allows for them to be re-enabled easily when necessary. While there are many methods for doing this, the one I chose to use is virtually fool proof. Windows does allow Autoruns to be disabled through device manager, however, on some systems it does not honour the setting and while Microsoft Has released a patch for this, there is no guarantee that the feature will not be broken in future or that you have the patch installed on your system.

Simply click the Protect button and all Autoruns will immediately disabled. To re-enable Autoruns, simpy click the Unprotect button; some times it is necessary to restart your computer after clicking Unprotect.

How does it work?

Windows provides an easy way of remapping ini files to registry keys; by using this, we can map all Autorun.inf to effectively nothing. Now, when you insert your external storage device, Windows will look for Autorun.inf, and if it finds it, it will go to the registry to check if it has been remapped, upon doing so it will see the mapping, determine there are no instructions to carry out and do nothing.

The registry key for remapping ini files is located in:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\IniFileMapping\

All we need to do now is add in an entry for Autorun.inf:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\IniFileMapping\Autorun.inf

Lastly, we add a Default string value:
@SYS:DoesNotExist

AutoRun Disabler was written in Visual Basic 6.
AutoRun Disabler can be downloaded here.
The source code is available here.

MSN Virus Remover is a tool that removes annoying MSN viruses from your computer. I started developing in December 2007 after a few of my contacts contracted MSN viruses and I could put up with it no longer.

For those of you who don’t know what an MSN virus is, they are generally simple programs which install themselves on your computer and connect you to a botnet and proceed to attempt to steal passwords, banking details, CD keys from the registry, have capabilities to launch DDOS attacks, can update themselves and of course spread through a variety of means including, but not limited to dropping themselves in the shared folders of P2P applications (such as Limewire, Emule, Ares, etc) and spamming your MSN contacts with messages such as:

• do you think my picture is too kinky for myspace?
• check out my new photos, i just scanned them

These messages are generally followed by a link of file transfer request.

MSN Virus Remover was written in Visual Basic 6.
More information about MSN Virus Remover and a download link can be found here.
This project is closed source.

My current Akismet stats are as follows:
111 spams caught, 0 legitimate comments, and an overall accuracy rate of 100.000%.

Date             Spam Count
2010-02            4
2010-03          10
2010-04            9
2010-05          87

It generally only takes a few minutes to sort through all of the spam, however, I can see a bit of a trend is occurring and personally, I’d like to stop it before it escalates any further. It is for this reason, I have decided to add another layer of protection. Enter WP-reCaptcha.

WP-reCaptcha is a powerful plugin that takes advantage of reCaptcha to prevent spammers from posting on your WordPress blog. It has many different settings to allow you to customise many aspects of its appearance and behaviour. In this particular instance, I have decided to only enable its most basic functions:

1. Require “Anonymous” users to fill out a captcha when they attempt to post.
2. Require all new registrations to fill out a captcha when they are registering.

The effect of this will be all automated spam bots will be blocked from posting anything and human spammers will (hopefully) be filtered by Aksimet.

This means less time sorting spam and more time doing what I want to do.

Home made PVRs are not all that new and have in fact been around for quite some time, however they have not been something I have had any interest in, until the Government made its announcement late last year, that is.

My aim was to build an HD PVR that could do what I want, for less than a commercial unit; as it turns out, it is rather easy to beat the current prices.

Existing Systems
Harvey Norman sell a range of devices varying from $280 to $1000, the cheapest being the Topfield PVR Ready High Definition Set Top Box and the most expensive being the Topfield 500GB High Definition PVR.

The Topfield PVR Ready High Definition Set Top Box is not much more then a glorified set top box, capable of tuning in to one HD digital channel and recording it to an external hard drive.

On the other end of the spectrum we have the Topfield 500GB High Definition PVR, a much more functional system, capable of recording 2 HD channels at the same time. It also has an optional 10/100 LAN connection (presumably for acquiring TV recording schedules and moving recorded video across the network), 3 USB ports for connecting optional external storage and an internal storage of 500GB. Furthermore, there are features for advert skipping and is able to fast-forward up to 128x speed and can function as an MP3 player.

Whilst the Topfield 500GB High Definition PVR appears to be the best all-round system, it is a bit on the pricey side and quite frankly, I wouldn’t want to spend so much.

Designing a homemade system
Whilst browsing the web a few months a go, I came across a very interesting piece of software called MythTV. MythTV is a Linux based PVR system designed to record cable/satellite, analogue and digital (both SD and HD) television. It can also playback the recordings, automatically detect commercials and skip commercials or remove them entirely to save HDD space, pause and rewind live television, burn recorded shows to DVD, stream live TV and pre-recorded shows to multiple frontend systems or even over the internet, function as a jukebox, tell you the weather, be controlled via the internet (eg schedule recordings, etc) and much, much more.

MythTV setups are highly modular and can consist of multiple back ends and multiple frontends and hybrid systems.

Backends are used to record and distribute video, manage the database (used to store recording information, programme guides, etc); they tend to be located in rooms other then the viewing room or locked in cupboards, the basement or under the stairs as they usually are noisy (due to fans) and aesthetics don’t matter.

Frontends sit by your TV or projector, they are usually designed to be quiet,  can be diskless and only have the job of streaming the video file and outputting it to your viewing device and/or sound system.

Hybrid systems are a mixture of a frontend and backend system and are generally used by people on a budget or those who do not care how their setup looks or whether or not it is noisy.

After learning of MythTV, I did a fair bit of research, including reading through the wiki, mailing list, forums, reviews and hardware specs. I then joined the Ubuntu forums where I asked for advice on designing and building my first system. I had already decided that I would need at least 1TB of disk space and a dual layer DVD writer as well as being able to record at least 2 channels at once.

After discussions with several of the forums members and looking around the MSY parts list, I came up with the following hardware:
Motherboard: GA M85M-US2H ($70)
CPU: AMD Athlon II 240 ($65)
RAM: 2x Kingston 1GB 800 DDR2 ($29) – I intended to buy 2 1GB sticks, however due to a mix-up at the store, I bought 1.
HDD: Seagate SATA 1TB ($101)
TV Tuner card: Hauppauge Nova-T 500 ($64.67)
DVD-WR: Aopen SATA ($33)
Case: Coolermaster RC360 ($85)
Thermal Grease: Arctic Silver 5 ($9)

Total: $456.67

The motherboard I chose is a Micro-ATX with an inbuilt Nvidia 8100 chipset which is capable of VDPAU (allowing an MPEG encoded file to be sent directly to the GPU, removing the burden of decoding from the CPU), furthermore it has an inbuilt HDMI port and the integrated sound card is hardwired to the HDMI output and 10/100/1000Mb Ethernet. The board I purchased was the last of its  model at the South Australian MSY stores; it was returned under warranty as it was missing its backplate, so they kindly took $5 off the original $75 price.

The Hauppauge Nova-T 500 is a PCI card capable of tuning in to 2 HD channels at the same time and is well supported under Linux and MythTV. I bought mine second hand off ebay; brand new it costs ~$190. It is unable to tune in to analogue stations.

The case is a Micro-ATX/ATX case, specifically chosen for its dimensions and ability to be used as either a tower or desktop. It came with a PSU and has a nifty screw-less drive mounting system, which I found holds the drive tightly and securely and was easy to use. The case will fit nicely in our cabinet, replacing the VCR with a 4mm clearance above it and several inches clearance either side.

Here is a picture of the “completed” unit. It is still missing IR (for the remote).

Assembled MythBox (Click for larger image)

]]> http://www.andrewcraigmackenzie.com/2010/01/home-made-pvrdvr-part1/feed/ 0 http://www.andrewcraigmackenzie.com/2009/12/bicycle-pov-version-1/ http://www.andrewcraigmackenzie.com/2009/12/bicycle-pov-version-1/#comments Fri, 11 Dec 2009 09:30:53 +0000 Andrew Mackenzie http://www.andrewcraigmackenzie.com/Blog/?p=9 This is my first real project involving a PIC where I am not using anyone else’s plans or designs.

So what is Bicycle POV?
POV is an abbreviation for Persistence Of Vision, which is a phenomena experienced by humans that causes an after-image of an object to remain, even though the object has moved.

For example, if something is moving fast, say, a spinning wheel, it will appear to be stationary, or it will appear to be moving much more slowly then it actually is.

For a better example, see Wikipedia

Bicycle POV exploits this phenomena to write text (such as your speed, how far you’ve travelled and anything else you desire) on your bicycle wheel as you ride.

Hardware
The brains of Bicycle POV are a PIC 16F88 microcontroller.
Currently, I am using green LED’s, but I have some nice blue super-brights which I will put in the final device.
Version 2 will include a hall effect sensor for determining wheel speed and resynchronising the text.

Software
The firmware was written using MikroBASIC.
To assist in working out the code for lettering, I am using a simple VB6 application consisting of a set of tick-boxes. The desired letter is formed by ticking and unticking the boxes and the code is generated.

Here is a video of version 1 in action.

As you have probably already realised, the software that I am using is WordPress. I chose WordPress for several reasons, including its price (free), popularity, simplicity and ease of use and set up and that it allows you to install it under your own server/domain.

Originally I was considering writing the software myself, however my PHP knowledge and general HTML knowledge is mediocre at best and I really don’t have the time to be fiddling around with the planning, debugging and beautifying of what would probably turn out to be a nasty looking blog that wouldn’t have all of the functionality of a common place blogging software.

So far I am very happy with the way WordPress is performing and hope to add some new content very soon.