img_1193 img_9367 crw_9459.jpg crw_9625.jpg Kristen's Wedding RiversOfSound crw_5635.jpg crw_5421.jpg img_14480 img_9496 crw_10327 Queens Tower (Reflection) img_15855 img_1129 img_14364 D1278-084 crw_10257 selectLayer img_15784 Spider with fly

Getting a WMP56G pci wifi card working under debian etch

So I got my card working not long ago, then went and bought a amd64 pc and had to do it all again. It wasn’t a walk in the park last time, and this time the driver would compile but wouldn’t load. I was about to email the amd64 debian mailing list when I found someone saying to try the rt2x00 driver. So I did…

module-assistant get rt2x00
module-assistant build rt2x00
module-assistant install rt2x00
modrpobe rt2x00

All fine, so I decided to try loading up the card.
my /etc/network/interfaces looks like:

iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wireless-essid MySSID
wpa-driver wext
wpa-conf /etc/wpasupplicant.conf

and my /etc/wpasupplicant.conf was modified from the wpa example supplied with the wpasupplicant package (/usr/share/doc/wpasupplicant) and looks like

ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant

network={
ssid=”my ssid”
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
proto=WPA
pairwise=TKIP
group=TKIP
psk=”my wifi key”
}

Then running

ifup wlan0

and I am connected.

Sooo much simpler than the other way I did it

EDIT: Don’t forget (like I did first) to grab the firmware from ralink as the driver won’t work without the firmware files!

RFID passports secure?

If you thought the new UK RFID passports are secure, then you need to see the following article which says otherwise: Cracked it! – Guardian Unlimited

Suffice to say, I will be carrying mine in a foil wallet when I get it!

nvidia in debian

Since I last had to install the nvidia drivers in debian, things have changed a bit.

It used to be fiddly to get the nvidia drivers installed, but if you are running etch (or later) you should just be able to run (as root)


apt-get install module-assistant nvidia-kernel-common nvidia-glx
module-assistant auto-install nvidia
module-assistant install nvidia

Then just edit your X config (/etc/X11/xorg.conf) and change the driver line with “nv” to “nvidia” and restart your window manager and all should be running.

There is a wonderful howto with loads more detail at http://home.comcast.net/~andrex/Debian-nVidia/installation.html

Why beauty is only screen deep

If you thought that the models you see in ads were born beautiful, perhaps you should watch this… Evolution – A Dove Film – Google Video

Now, if only I could do that sort of stuff in photoshop. Sadly I am not that good…

Ugly veg competition

I had no idea that the UK has an ugly vegetable competition

RSS feed broken

Apologies if you have been unable to view the RSS feed.

It turns out one of my plugins had some whitespace at the end of it and some feed readers do not like an empty line at the top of the xml file. All fixed now though.
(Thanks Andrew for pointing this out)