Qwirx

This is the qwirky homepage of Chris Wilson. E-mail me at: web@qwirx.com. Index: My Photos Boxi MP4 plugin for XMMS IPMI plugin for Nagios Lexical Analysis PIC Software Modem Stuff Music Industry rants DeCSS and LiViD (Linux Video) Piper: a SOCKS manipulation tool for Linux

I work full time for Aptivate, since 1st July 2004. We are developing appropriate ICTs to make a difference in developing countries.

In my spare time I like to work on open source software. Some of my projects have web pages, listed below.

Boxi

Boxi is a free backup component for Windows and Linux. It backs up over the Internet, without disks or tapes, is fast and efficient, and protects your data on the server and in transit with strong encryption so that even the server owner can't read it. For more information, please see the Boxi project home page at http://boxi.sourceforge.net.

Lexical Analysis

Lex is a project to develop linguistic tools for RRG analysis of the Hebrew old testament. The code is open source (GPL license) and can be found at http://rrg.qwirx.com/trac/lex. Unfortunately the Hebrew data is not open source, but you can try it out on Genesis 1-3.

PIC Software

This is a Linux port of David Tait's PP software for programming Arizona Microchip PICs (specifically the 16x84 model). The hardware needed is either a Tait-style programmer, or the AN589 support which I have added to this version and submitted to David Tait. Documentation is included which describes how to build the necessary hardware.

Supported hardware:

• The Tait-style Programmer (Quick and Dirty version)
• The Official AN589 Programmer (PDF format)

Download:

Please read the README file before using this program.

You can get the Linux source code here:

• Version 0.7 (Linux 2.6 - NEW)
• Version 0.6 (older Linux)

The LSM (Linux Software Map) entry is here.

More links:

• Application Notes from Arizona Microchip.
• David Tait's PIC Archive might be closing soon, but there is a mirror here.

Pace, an old friend from the BBC Micro days and the last remaining British modem manufacturer, has gone bust. Infoserve.com has the cheek to charge £10 for access to Pace drivers. Well, not any longer. Here they are:

• Pace Modem Drivers (all models).

• Courtney Love explains why the record industry is ripping off musicians far more than Internet music piracy ever will.
• FreeNet is an open-source replacement for Napster and Gnutella.
• Diamond makes the Rio PMP300 portable MP3 player which really sucks. Don't buy one.
• Sharp Electronics makes the most excellent MD-MS722 portable MiniDisc player, which was once my favourite toy! Unfortunately it broke down after 2 years, so I can't recommend it for long-term reliability.

From the LSM entry:

This program allows one to test various functions of servers which implement the SOCKS5 protocol (see http://www.socks.nec.com/). Functions include:

• Function test (try to connect to a host)
• Performance timing
• Bouncer (redirect other protocols through SOCKS)
• Interactive session (like netcat or telnet)
• Portscanning
• Banner collection

The SOCKS protocol is described in RFC 1928.

Downloads:

• Piper 1.14 (tar archive)
• Piper README file
• Piper LSM entry

Other Stuff

• Sluggy Freelance is amazing!
• Dilbert is funny.