Archive for the ‘Life: Work and Techy’ category

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Snippet: Adding ISOs to XenCenter

April 8th, 2009

Here’s just a reminder incase I forget/lose how to add ISO (DVD/CD images) to Citrix’s/XenSource’s XenCenter/Xen virtualisation software. Do NOT copy (from XenSource 5.0+ above) the ISOs to /opt/xensource/packages/iso as this directory is now reserved for “built-in ISO” images – you’ll need to follow these steps instead:

From Xensource.com:

To use local ISO storage from the control domain
1. Log onto the host console.
2. Create a directory to copy the local ISOs into:
mkdir -p /var/opt/xen/iso_import
3. Create an ISO storage repository by:
xe sr-create name-label=isos type=iso device-config:location=/var/opt/xen/iso_import/ device-config:legacy_mode=true content-type=iso
4. Copy the ISO images into this directory, taking care not to fill up the control domain filesystem.
5. Verify that the ISO image is available for use by xe vdi-list, or checking the CD drop-down box in XenCenter.

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Snippet: Length of Time to Clone a VM in Xen

March 24th, 2009

*snippet* This is more an aid to my memory, it takes 1 hour 2minutes to copy/clone a 100Gb Virtual Machine (VM) in Xen using XenCenter on an 8Gb Intel Xeon 2.5Ghz Quad Core machine.

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Call costs to 056 VoIP numbers

March 17th, 2009

I’m just relooking at the various Voice Over IP (VoIP) services on offer and I’ve found quite a number offering 056 numbers. Telephone numbers starting 056 are officially classed by Ofcom as “Location Independent Electronic Communications Service” (in the Ofcom National Telephone Numbering Plan) and have been allocated by Ofcom since September 2004 (so they aren’t exactly new!) and are mainly used for VoIP. However, trying to find out how much it costs to actually call these numbers is quite difficult – here’s a list of the call charges I’ve found for UK 056 VoIP numbers: and they vary quite a bit (and sometimes, it’s very difficult to find out how much they actually cost to call from the different telephone networks):

Where the tariff/plan may alter the call costs, I’ve included details:

BT: Call band “g21″ (the same band as 03 numbers). 4.784p per minute daytime/1.955p per minute evening/1.150p per minute weekend
o2 iPhone 35 Pay Month: 20p per minute at all times (found via telephone customer services: they had to call back!)
Orange: Pricing unavailable (live chat)
Virgin Media Land Lines: Call band PG21. 7.82p connection fee and 4.79p per minute daytime/1.96p evening Price guide
T-Mobile (Combi plan): 40p per minute t all times (according to telephone customer services)
Tesco Land Line: 6p setup charge, 5p per minute daytime, 2p per minute evening, 1p per minute weekend
Gradwell: 1.36p per minute peak, 0.85p per minute offpeak and weekends
Vonage: 1p per minute at all times

Congratulations to Virgin, Tesco, Gradwell and Vonage for having the most easiest to find price guide (bonus points to Gradwell for having a simple “Telephone number lookup” section), BT next (slightly more difficult) and thumbs down to Orange being unable to find any pricing!

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iPhone: Jail broke, now what?

March 9th, 2009

By following the very simple guide on Gizmodo on jail breaking by Apple iPhone using QuickPwn on Windows (combined with the list of IPSW firmware for the iPhone 3G from Hackint0sh), I now have a fully jail broken Apple iPhone with Cydia and Installer.

The jail breaking was extremely simple and afterwards, all my data and media remained in tack, however I’m now thinking “Why did I bother?”. Ok, I’ve managed to find a “turn-by-turn” navigational GPS system with speech (xGPS on Cydia) and it’s tempting to use it as a modem (however, now I’ve finished moving house, there is now very little need for me to have this functionality:hence I haven’t even bothered doing that yet).

So, have you Jail Broken your apple iPhone and if so why, how and which apps have you found worth while? At the moment, when Apple release the next iPhone firmware update via iTunes, I’m not going to bother re-jailbreaking…

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Techy: Create an iPhone Ringtone from your own MP3

February 22nd, 2009

As you may be aware, I’ve given in to the “white side” and just switched from a Nokia 6230i to a brand new Apple iPhone 8Gb Black from o2 (whilst being disappointed that I wasn’t able to get a discount after being with them 17months on current contract and over 6 years in total). Anyway, one of the first things I wanted to do was copy over my ringtone, but Kool Katy said she didn’t think it was possible to make your own ring-tone on the iPhone without paying via iTunes…

I then found this guide to creating free iPhone ringtones with iTunes 8 which states:

  1. Right click on the song you are going to make into a ringtone and select “Get Info.”
  2. Go to the “Options” tab and go down to the “Start Time” and “Stop Time” check boxes. Check both boxes and input the time you want your ringtone to start/stop. The ringtone has to be 30 seconds or less. Click “OK” when you’re done.
  3. Right click on your newly “clipped” song and select “Create AAC Version”. Or directly click the “Advanced” tab on the main menu of iTunes 8 and select “Create AAC Version” from the drop-down list. The song will be re-encoded using the start and stop times specified.
    Note: If your menu item does not read “Create AAC Version” and reads “Create MP3 Version” or some other format, please go to ”iTunes -> Edit -> Preferences -> General”, click “Import settings” and change “Import using” to “AAC Encoder”
  4. After the song is done encoding, navigate to your iTunes Music folder, locate your song, and drag it to your desktop. After the song is on your desktop go back to iTunes and delete the clipped version from you iTunes library (It won’t delete it from your desktop, it will only remove it from iTunes).
  5. Go back the song on your desktop and right click on your song and choose “Properties”. Go to the name and extension section and change the extension from .m4a to .m4r (or you can just change the extension right from your desktop).
  6. After the extension is changed simply double click on the file to add it to your iTunes library under the ringtones section. Sync your phone with iTunes and you’re done!

Basically – iPhone ringtones need to be 30 seconds or less, less than 3Mb in size (which should be easy with a 30 second limit) and have an .m4r filetype.

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