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June 27, 2006
ZyXEL B1000 ZyAIR problem
Interesting problem with my ZyXEL B1000 ZyAIR wireless access point last night. I'd updated the permitted MAC address list to add J's new iBook airpoint wireless NIC when the wireless connection went dead. Completely. First I thought it was my laptop playing up (it has done before), but the desktop PC, which is also connected wirelessly, had lost the connection too. I could see the SSID, but any attempt to connect to it failed. Resetting the ZyAIR didn't help at all. I finally gave up with the wireless connection, plugged in a network cable and opened the ZyAIR admin screen. Everything looked fine at first ... then I looked a bit more closely at the "Wireless" tab. There's a field marked "Maximum number of wireless stations", with a comment next to it that permitted values are 1-32. It was set to 0. I found this out because I made another change on that tab and tried to save it, and of course it complained because the maximum wireless stations field was 0! Setting it to 32 and re-saving fixed the problem completely. What baffles me is how this happened - the thing has been working for nearly 3 years without this ever causing a problem, so presumably some glitch when I updated the MAC filter list last night caused this to happen! Weird. Maybe it just interpreted "MAC filter" to mean that it should filter out Macs and other Apples?
Posted by daen at 02:39 PM | Comments (0)
June 22, 2006
Ghana through to 2nd round
Ghana beat the Czech Republic by a convincing 2-0 last Saturday, and have just seen off the USA by 2-1 to finish second in Group E. Great stuff.
Posted by daen at 06:27 PM | Comments (0)
June 12, 2006
Ghana World Cup supporters
Met a bunch of hopeful Ghana supporters in town today. They seem fairly confident that they can beat Italy ...
Update 13/6-2006 Sadly it seems the Ghanaian lads' confidence was a bit misplaced. They've got another chance on Saturday against the Czech Republic (who made short work of the USA last night, 3-0).
Posted by daen at 08:31 PM | Comments (0)
June 08, 2006
Danish PC license fee
Politiken reports (in Danish) that a license agreement for net-connected PC's is on the way. What is not clear is whether this is in addition to or instead of the existing license fee. Very rough translation below.
"More and more Danes are watching television on their computers. So now they will be included in the (TV) licensing arrangements. This emerges from the new media agreement which Folketing [the Danish Parliament] voted upon this morning by a wide margin. The new media license includes all equipment which are capable of receiving programs and services, namely computers and certain mobile phones, according to the agreement. The media license will be at the level of the colour TV license, and will increase by inflation during the period 2007-2010. That means it will cost 1,075 DKK semiannually in 2007 and 1,130 DKK semiannually in 2010. That covers all the household's license-incurring equipment. Poorly-off pensioners, the blind and visually impaired will continue to have the possibility of a license reduction or waiver. The new media license is a victory for DR. The station's Director General, Kenneth Plummer, has strongly argued the case for extending the license, and earlier declared that DR stands to lose 30 million DKK in 2006 because 15,000 Danes watch TV on their computers, and therefore don't pay the license. On the other hand, DR didn't get its wish that TV viewers must actively opt out of the license. In the future they will continue to opt in as users in order to pay the license. The issue had been one of the decisive sticking points in the negotiations - both Social Democrats, Radicals and Culture Minister Brian Mikkelsen (Conservative) had wanted an opt out model, where all households automatically pay the license unless they actively opt out. But opposition from several prominent Venstre politicians lead to the suggestion being dropped. With the agreement that was arrived at, DR will establish a combined children's/history digital channel and transmit news in various languages to immigrants and refugees."
Posted by daen at 12:47 AM | Comments (0)
June 01, 2006
Rendering ChemDraw image as metafile in Delphi TImage control
Assume you've already set the ChemDraw control with SMILES/MOL etc and you also have a TImage on the form already called Image1 ...
procedure TForm1.ButtonRenderClick(Sender: TObject); var WMFData: array of byte; MemStream: TMemoryStream; begin WMFData:=CSChemDrawCtl1.Data['image/x-wmfs']; MemStream:=TMemoryStream.Create; MemStream.WriteBuffer(WMFData[0],Length(WMFData)); MemStream.Seek(0,soFromBeginning); Image1.Picture.Metafile.LoadFromStream(MemStream); MemStream.Free; end;
Posted by daen at 09:04 PM | Comments (0)