Golden Gate is the software that I wish I were smart enough and/or had enough time to make myself. It is an emulation layer for the Apple IIgs that runs on modern operating systems. With it you can run command-line Apple IIgs programs (like Orca/C) on a Windows computer, for example.

Orca/C itself is experiencing a resurgence, in that the original developer released its source code. Now there is an active group of developers updating it, adding new features and fixing old bugs.

From the Golden Gate website:

One unanticipated use is installing ORCA/C updates, since they also follow the standard ORCA layout.

opus-extractor --verbose --source=/ ORCAC.220B3.2mg


It’s been a while since I did any electronics or embedded programming, but lately I have found a bunch of chips that seem interesting. Don’t think I will have time to play with these but I wanted to create a table (to be updated as I find new chips) to keep a record.

As a related link, this lists 40 embedded SBCs from 2014.

• Sequence diagrams
• PlantUML

• Flight Data
• OpenFlights

Low power RF modules

Open Source Circuit CAD

Low price PCB manufacturing

RTL-SDR

I’ve been trying to get started programming in Android for a while now, but for several reasons haven’t really gotten to the level that I can do something useful. With the government shutdown I have some free time, and have re-engaged with the Android programming tutorials.

The one constant I have experienced is that the eclipse to emulator link is very flaky. The only time I have had success is by manually starting the emulator and running a command shell and running adb commands directly. Apparently whatever I am doing with Eclipse, it doesn’t start the adb server properly.

• adb start-server

• adb install App.apk

I have been happily using Windows 7 for about a year or so, but recently got a nasty “Windows is not genuine” error on boot. Since I legally acquired the license key, something must be amiss. After some searching the web, I found the following solution that appears to have fixed the error. Note this is not the same as the 0x80070005 error causing Windows is not genuine errors as well.

Recreate the Licensing Store

• Run Command Prompt as Administrator
• cd C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\NEtworkService\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\SoftwareProtectionPlatform
• net stop sppsvc
• REN tokens.dat tokens.bar
• net start sppsvc
• slui.exe

This apparently recreates the tokens.dat file (licensing store) and all was well. I didnt even have to reenter my license key. What is more troubling is how the error happened in the first place. One possibility is that the C: hard drive is failing, resulting in file corruption. I have bought a new 2TB hard drive ($99 at MicroCenter), and will install it as the new boot drive first chance I get. I am thinking of installing linux on it as the primary OS; I am getting tired of all this DRM silliness in the Windows world.

EDIT

Actually, it appears this is not the only failure mode for my increasingly degraded PC. It appears now that certain services fail to start up at boot up, including the Windows Activation Technologies Service. (The other services that fail to start up are the Windows Audio and Windows Audio Endpoint Builder, causing my sound to stop working, but that is another story).

I have just confirmed that the following works:

• Run services.msc and check to see if the Windows Activation Technologies Service is running. If not, start it.
• Run an administrator console window and type the following

  • slmgr.vbs /ato

• This attempts to re activate Windows and it succeeds, because there is nothing wrong with my license key. I believe I am going to have to go through one of the two procedures above each time I reboot my machine, which will be a pain.

Real World Mapping with the Kinect « Decorator Pattern (Martin Szarski’s Blog)

The Register reports that Oracle is splitting the Java Virtual Machine into two tiers, a free one and a paid “premium” one. This is a natural progression of Oracle’s strategy to monetize the major assets of its Sun Microsystems acquisition.

While paying for a (presumably) faster or more feature-full JVM is no problem for large development companies, as a small business developer, I am glad most of my development projects use truly open and/or free languages, including Python, C++, and C#.

The recent attack on twitter serves as a reminder about the dangers of cross-site requset hijacking. This entry provides a few suggestions on how to secure your site from this form of attack.