Virgin Media Netgear VMDG280 Wireless Connection Problems

I was having very annoying wireless connection issues with Virgin's Netgear VMDG280. Most devices would be fine, but the odd one would connect and have wireless access for a few seconds, but then the wireless connection would die, though the device would still report that it was connected. Restarting everything/anything would just repeat the same. Last night I tried reducing the maximum connection speed of the router from 300Mbps to 54Mbps, which seemed to solve the issue completely. I've since put it up to 145Mbps which seems like a happy medium.

Time Lapse with ffmpeg

Because I do it too infrequently to remember, here's how to put together time lapse/stop motion/animation with ffmpeg.

Firstly renumber you images. Make sure that this script won't overwrite anything.

x=1; for i in *.JPG; do counter=$(printf %04d $x); mv "$i" img"$counter".JPG; x=$(($x+1)); done

Then put the images together.

ffmpeg -ss 1 -t 70 -i music.mp3 -r 15 -i img%04d.JPG -b 15M -s 1440x1080 out.avi

The ffmpeg documentation mentions using the "image file demuxer" -f image2 before the input image file name template, but I haven't found that necessary.

Remember that ffmpeg options act on the next input or output, so for example you can set the frame rate of the animation by using -r x before the input image parameter or set the frame rate of the resultant video by using the same switch before the output filename.

In the above example we also add a sound track, starting 1 second into the track and cut after 70 seconds.

eBay Dicks

hi there would you accept 260 cash? bearing in mind i can pay cash on collection you wouldnt have to pay ebay and paypal fees(ebay 10% final value fee, paypal 4% service charge). put that ontop of my offer comes to over £300 on ebay which obviously if you look at completed listing they dont get. let me know

- morne1514

> put that ontop of my offer comes to over £300

No it doesn't*, and I'm hoping to get £330 for it, but I'll keep your offer in mind, thanks.

- jamiekitson

hi there no problem, i cant do more then 270 am afraid, if you look online you will see they are new 330 nowadays. as for what they go for on here, i have added you some links to completed listings so you can see for yourself, most of them are brand new and minues the ebay and paypal fees they dont even clear 250 so the choice is yours, let me know otherwise going the other route and buying a samsung galaxy note

- morne1514

Mine comes with a cradle and receipt.

Please go away.

- jamiekitson

no need to be rude, i was offering you a valid offer which in theory should have been good for you and me. you send me links for the ones going for most they go on ebay, thats just retarded as the average NEW ones still sell for under 300 as i showed this to you, as for the amazon link lol even xxx online sells them for 340 new so please you are embarrassing yourself. sorry i ever contacted you i can assure you i wont again

- morne1514

He lied.

lolz i would have actually been the highest bidder if you didnt block me from bidding. gutted

- morne1514

Well thank god I did.

* Yes I did embarrass myself with that maths.

HTTP Headers to Disable Caching in Firefox

It took me ages to find this:

Cache-control: no-cache
Cache-control: no-store
Pragma: no-cache
Expires: 0

To alter headers in the IIS7 GUI go HTTP Response Headers. It won't allow you to add two headers of the same name so either add no-cache,no-store or you can set no-cache by expiring web content immediately in Set Common Headers at the top right and add Cache-control: no-store manually.

VSTOR30.exe has changed since it was initially published

Note that the following error can be caused by a missing internet connection stopping installation files downloading necessary installation files:

Error: Setup has detected that the file 'C:\Users\...\AppData\Local\Temp\VSD5056.tmp\VSTOR30\VSTOR30.exe' has changed since it was initially published.

There are other posts mentioning installing VSTO 3.0 SP1. You might try installing this on the dev machine and republishing.

Arch Linux on a Thinkpad X220

Some thoughts on Arch Linux on the X220:

• The screen brightness jumps to full after certain ACPI events, such as at startup and lid open. I haven't fully solved this but have added xbacklight -set 80 to my .xinitrc.
• Occasionally when I connect to power, yacpi reports a maximum CPU frequency of 800MHz. I haven't been able to reliably recreate or investigate.
• Volume/Mute buttons work with xbindkeys, though I haven't got the mic mute to work yet. Also if the machine is muted at boot the mute toggle doesn't work. (Windows seems to exhibit similar behaviour.)
• For right and middle click on the Touchpad install xf86-input-synaptics-clickpad. You can also configure XOrg for tapping the corners.
• I haven't properly measured battery life, but it's estimated at around five hours with my standard 6 cell pack, which isn't bad, and is similar to the Windows estimate. Actual battery life seems to be more like four hours on Linux.
• If your machine reboots after shutdown add rmmod ehci_hcd to rc.local.shutdown.
• If your machine pauses at shutdown with e1000e 0000:00:19.0: eth0: Could not acquire PHY then add rmmod e1000e to rc.local.shutdown.
• Power button to power off instructions here. Note that you have to hold the power button down for three seconds until the machine beeps. Note also that I couldn't get the "first solution" on that page to work, but the second does.
  

I've had a bit of an adventure with wireless, so I thought I'd give it its own section:

• I made the mistake of not paying £3 to upgrade the wireless to Intel and got the RealTek 8188ce card by default. The kernel driver doesn't seem that great, use the RealTek driver or better, the AUR package (currently neither is available for 3.1).
• As I found out to my cost, the Thinkpad BIOS has a whitelist of wireless cards, and if yours doesn't match then your machine won't even boot, even if it is a genuine Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6200. However there are plenty of modded BIOSes out there, although not necessarily quite up to date. Try googling your model number + "whitelist". I got my X220 BIOS here.
  
• Oddly, after installing the 6200 my machine started suspending twice when I closed the lid, fixed by adding the following line to /etc/acpi/actions/lm_lid.sh
  

  if [[ `cat /proc/acpi/button/lid/LID/state | awk '{print $2}'` = "closed" ]]

• Disappointingly the Intel card doesn't seem any better than the RealTek, not connecting as fast as the RealTek did with the Aur driver and it didn't cure my disconnection issues. They seem to have been cured by flashing our Virgin provided D-Link DIR-615 with dd-wrt.
  

See also my post on the X220 and booting GPT drives.

A note for Windows 7 - don't install the Intel HD graphics driver before Windows SP1 or you'll get a blue screen.

Mount/Read VMWare vmdk Disks

You can try the VMWare-Mount utility, but an easier way is to use VMWare Player to "map" the disk in the Utilities menu in Machine Settings.

UEFI Bootable Windows 7 USB Media

Instructions here: http://gitorious.org/tianocore_uefi_duet_builds/pages/Linux_Windows_BIOS_UEFI_boot_USB

Problems with the Thinkpad X220 and GPT, UEFI, MBR and Legacy BIOS Booting

After several days banging my head against a brick wall and suffering the indifference of Lenovo/IBM tech support I have learnt a lot about UEFI, in regards to the X220 in particular.

1. The X220 cannot/will not boot GPT disks using Legacy BIOS. I would call this a bug.
2. The X220 will not boot /efi/*/*.efi unless "signed"(?) into BIOS, you have to copy it to /efi/boot/bootx64.efi. I guess this is a security feature, but I'm not sure how secure it is if you can bypass it so easily.
3. Disabling the BIOS setting "USB UEFI BIOS Support" disables *all* USB booting, ie, both UEFI and legacy BIOS. If this isn't a bug then
   1. it at least needs relabelling,
   2. could be moved/linked to the boot menu and
   3. is redundant as you can disable USB booting using the Boot menu.

I should say that this was with BIOS version 1.22 (I think).

I recommend following these instructions to create a very useful and versatile boot disk for diagnosis.

If you want to use the X220 UEFI boot menu I recommend disabling booting from LAN as it adds a few seconds to the boot time. You have to disable it in several places in the BIOS to avoid the wait.

See also my more general post on Arch Linux on the X220.

Fix HTC HD2 Digitiser/Touchscreen

Make sure you try a soft-reset first by pushing the little red button on the back of the phone while it is on. After four months I just discovered that that fixed it. Luckily I hadn't ordered a new screen/digitiser on ebay.