Category: Tech Lab

Techincal materials related to electronics, hi-tech gadgets, computer programming and misc. experiments.

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PHP5 on Vista 64 and IIS7

Hello,

The other day I wanted to install PHP the Vista 64 with IIS7, however IIS7 is totally changed and couldn’t get PHP to work without doing some research on how to use IIS7 and add PHP handlers to it.

At first, I found “How to install PHP on IIS7 (RC1) – BillS’ IIS Blog” excellent article describing how to get started.

However, after following the exact steps, PHP still failed to load, saying:
After some research it turned out to be that the ISAPI modules are for x86 (32bits) and this is why they are not being loaded.
For this reason you have to do these additional steps:

  1. Open IIS Manager and expand the root node
  2. Click on the “Applications Pool” node
  3. Notice you have “DefaultAppPool” and one more  entry in the list
  4. Now to the right, select “Advanced Settings”
  5. In the “Advanced Settings” dialog, select “General: -> “Enable 32-bit Applications” and set to True (screenshot)

Now everything should be working.

While you’re here trying to fix your PHP / IIS7 installation, you might want to take a look at FastCGI a collaborative work between Microsoft and Zend.

More useful links:

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Scan for Virus using several AntiVirus programs

Have you ever scanned a file using your favorite AntiVirus (AV) program and found nothing, but yet you were infected?
Is your AV not up to date and not detecting everything?
You want to know the different names of the same virus?

If you answer is Yes, then VirusTotal.com is what you’re looking for. You can either send your suspicious file as attachment via email to scan@virustotal.com with the “SCAN” as subject, or you can simply upload the file using their online interface.

Speaking of OnLine file submission, did you check out BitDefender’s Online scanner?

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Visual Studio and some useful keyboard shortcuts

Hello

I will present a short and handy list of useful keyboard shortcuts:

Key Meaning
*Make text selection then Shift+( This will surround the selected text with “(” and “)”
*Make text selection then Shift+{ Same as above but with { } surrounding
Ctrl+Ins/Shift+Ins To Copy / Paste (aka Ctrl+C/+V)
Ctrl+SPACE or Alt+RIGHT Toggle the autocompletion combobox
Ctrl+T To test a resource dialog
F12 When cursor is over an identifier, it goes to definition
Ctrl+- and Shift+Ctrl+- To navigate back and forth
Alt+F, J To go to Recently Opened Project

Hope you find them useful!

(*) You need Whole Tomatoes Visual Assist

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Panasonic BL-Cxx network cameras

Recently I had the chance to explore the two network cameras from Panasonic: BL-C1 and BL-C10.

Both cameras have built-in web servers and can be plugged to the network and operate standalone. They can also be configured to get static IP address or make use of a DHCP server.

Once the camera is set up, the user can explore its features by accessing its IP address via web protocol, example: http://192.168.1.253:80/ .

From there on you can see the camera image stream (pseudo-stream), control brightness/image quality, add users so they can access the camera, control timers, sensors, etc…

BL-C1 is a simple model where it provides nothing more than image capturing facility and motion detection which works by comparing an image with a previous image and see if the difference is within the user defined threshold.

The BL-C10 is a bit more complex model allowing you to control the camera’s eye direction. You can move the view to all the four directions. There is no motion detection, though one can implement this feature from the software, there is human detection sensor (“by picking up the infrared light naturally emitted from people and animals”).

The cameras come with a software CD containing set of user manuals and a windows application to control the cameras. For developers, they can download C SDK written and provided by Panasonic. You may compile the code using Visual Studio or (did not try it) any other C compiler. The C code is highly portable and should also work on other operating systems such as Unix. In case you want to program the camera using a different programming language, then you may download the CGI programmer’s document and start forming your own HTTP requests in order to talk with the camera’s webserver.
Now using CGI, to control the camera’s direction, one for example can call this web address: http://camera_ip_address:80/nphControlCamera?Direction=HomePosition

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C++0x ?

Hello

I’ve been looking around and was surprised that there will be a new C++ standard and additions dubbed “C++0x”.

According to Bjarne Stroustrup, “the new standard will be almost 100% compatible with the current standard”.

Some of the features I like about this new addition are:
– atomic keyword (for uninterruptible code)
– thread local storage
– asynchronous calls through the “future” keyword
– implicit function calls (as if using properties in other languages)
– parallel execution

The good news for some, probably bad news for eager ones is that the C++ Standards Committee aims to introduce the new standard in 2009.

Reference:

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EEG analysis with altered states of consciousness

Hey,

Yesterday a friend of mine payed me a visit to experiment with EEG and how it reads brainwaves.
I wanted to do the experiment with my friend when he’s in an altered state of consciousness, so I proceeded and hypnotized him and put him into a relax and trance like state.
The next thing was to hook the device and start interpreting the readings.

  • Me: Close your eyes, then open them
  • NFB (NeuroFeedBack device): Direct rise of Alpha waves when eyes closed, Alpha disappears when eyes are open again
  • Me: I want you to remember what you used to play at age of 5
  • NFB: We can see rise in Theta and Alpha and some Delta. It is so clear how the subject requested a recall from his subconscious mind (this explains the Theta waves).
  • Me: Tell me what you did 3 hours ago
  • NFB: High level of beta, little alpha, and subject reports annoyance and inability to remember details. We can see the absence of Theta and alpha which explains why the subject cannot recall.
  • Me: Close and roll your eyes as if looking at your forehead
  • NFB: Alpha rising and going down, mostly trying to stay up.
  • Me: Lie down and sleep
  • NFB: After some time, the subject showed increase theta, moderate Alpha and low beta and delta

After some tests like that, I hooked the device to the PC and launched BioExplorer and loaded the FlashPacman design. This design takes one channel input and a bandpass filter to detect alpha activity. If the activity is present a YES will occur while a NO will occur in its absence.

Now the Pacman character will move and eat the dots as long as the desired brainwave is reached and maintained. It was very fun to control alpha waves while eyes open!

It was a nice experiment where I learned and saw how the brainwaves play a role in the functioning of the brain.

Pacman game

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Emulating CoCreateInstance()

Introduction

A while ago I wrote a small utility that converts DOT syntax into an image using
the WinGraphViz.DLL COM component.

However it is not very usual to have the user register this component before
running the tool, thus I started looking around for a way to use COM component
as if they were normal DLL.
The research yielded that there are many techniques to accomplish that:

  1. Registration-Free COM (for XP and above)
  2. Emulating the CoCreateInstance()

To learn more about the Registration-Free COM please check the references at
the end of this article. Continue reading “Emulating CoCreateInstance()”