First get hold of Win32 ports of the GNU Utilities. Extract gunzip.exe and tar.exe and place them somewhere sensible, i.e. D:\UnxUtils\.

Fire up regedit and start hacking (the usual warnings for hacking the registry apply)…

The standard gzip file extension is gz, so add a key called gzfile to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT and set its value to ‘GZIP Compressed File’.

Add a sub-key to this called Shell, then add a sub-key to that called Decompress and set it’s value to ‘&Decompress’.

Then add a sub-key called command to the Decompress key and set its value to ‘D:\UnxUtils\gunzip “%1″‘.

Next, locate or add the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.gz key, and set its default value to ‘gzfile’.

Now when you right-click on a .gz file you should see a Decompress option. Selecting this option runs gunzip for the current file: the file will be decompressed in place and the .gz extension removed.

TAR archives use a .tar file extension. In order to extract the archive you would use the syntax ‘tar -xf filename’.

Just follow the same procedure as before and you should end up with something like this:

Link this to the .tar extension in the same way as before, by setting the default value of HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/.tar to ‘tarfile’.

<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1:80>
    DocumentRoot "D:/dev/htdocs/test/"
    ServerName test
    <Directory "D:/dev/htdocs/test/">
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride None
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

I’ve put this here because I’m bound to forget what I did otherwise.

My laptop runs Windows XP so the first thingI did was to get hold of the install package from http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi and install it.

Challenge 1: Apache can either be installed to run as a Windows Service or as a Console application. Of these two I wanted to run it as a Service, as this is a lot easier to work with on Windows. However, during installation, I got errors: apparently something was already bound to port 80. So I was limited to running it in console mode and adding :8080 to all my test URLs in the browser (not very convenient).

The culprit? Skype. Go into Skype Connection Options and uncheck “Use port 80 and 443 as alternatives for incoming connections”, then restart Skype. Remove and re-install Apache. Wha-hey! Apache installed as a Windows Service.

Challenge 2: Getting httpd.conf settings right!

I’m only interested in responding to http requests so I set things up to listen on port 80 of localhost:

Listen 127.0.0.1:80

ServerName and DocumentRoot are set as follows:

ServerName 127.0.0.1:80

DocumentRoot "C:/Program Files/Apache Group/Apache2/htdocs/"

Challenge 3: Virtualisation. My working files for the local web-pages sit on the D:\ partition. Right down at the bottom of the httpd.conf file are the virtual hosting settings. In order to access my pages as www.somesite.local I made the following changes:

NameVirtualHost 127.0.0.1:80

<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1:80>
    DocumentRoot "C:/Program Files/Apache Group/Apache2/htdocs/"
    ServerName 127.0.0.1
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1:80>
    DocumentRoot "D:/www/somesite1/"
    ServerName www.somesite1.local
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1:80>
    DocumentRoot "D:/www/somesite2/"
    ServerName www.somesite2.local
</VirtualHost>

Because these fictional domains are never going to be published to DNS, one more change is needed. Edit C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts and alter it like this:

127.0.0.1       localhost
127.0.0.1       www.somesite1.local
127.0.0.1       www.somesite2.local

Restart Apache and I’m good to go.

Visuals, music and sound effects combine to produce a eerie lo-fi game environment. Initially you control a single robot, which you can use to explore the city, buildings and collect clues. By gaining control of other robots, you can hack computer terminals to get RamPaks: passwords, power-ups etc.

Honestly, I haven’t got very far, but I’m not a big gamer. And it probably says a lot for the game that it’s immediately accesible. Best of all, it’s freeware, so there’s no reason not to give a try.

In case you’ve never come across this job before, restoration technicians are responsible for cleaning-up property after fire, flood and other accidents. It’s tough dirty work, usually performed in difficult and hazardous conditions. For the firms effected by the Buncefield accident this work is going to be essential. In most cases the insurance companies are footing the bill.

We have reports locally of smaller firms unable to pay their staff. Understandibly those without work will be anxious to find alternative income. Especially with Christmas fast approaching.

So what would you expect to be paid for this work?

Would it be £5.50 per hour for a 40 hour week? Barely over the minimum wage. What would your take-home pay be? If you want more money you could always work overtime.

How much money per man-hour do think that the company advertising this work is receiving from the insurers?

Did you see them wobble? The trial has been halted… the local judge is seeking ministerial approval before proceeding.

I went out into the street and there was no-one else up. There was a strange pulsating glow in the sky.
I’m within 2 miles of Buncefield Oil Terminal and the sky is now quite eerie, the sun is rising and has turned a strange sulphurous yellow.

A huge black plume of smoke is hanging over my house.

Before anyone gets on my case, I have to say that I have a great fondness for Turkey. It’s a beautiful country and is full of warm friendly people. Like a lot of other european countries it also suffers from the occaisional blip. A tour guide I met in Turkey made a big deal of saying that Turkey was roughly 20 years behind the rest of europe, and in some ways this is true.

There is currently a lot of discussion about whether or not Turkey should be allowed to join the European Union, or not. Personally, I hope to see Turkey join the EU soon: I think it’s vital for European security and healthy diversity. I’m sure it will only be a matter of time.

And this legislation… well, it could well be a matter of interpretation (as reportedly stated by the Turkish Minister of Justice)… you decide:

Amnesty: Turkey: Article 301…

BBC: Turk “genocide” author faces jail

BBC: Leading Turkey reporters charged

Orhan Pamuk is due in court on the 16th December.

Recently I discovered Bitwise Magazine, an online-only monthly aimed at “technically literate computer users“, and fronted by Huw Collingbourne and Dermot Hogan (both ex PC Plus).

They’ve currently run to seven issues, and have tutorial articles on C#, VB, Delphi, Smalltalk and Prolog, plus the usual editorials, reviews and letters etc.

For some reason I found myself downloading the free version of Dolphin Smalltalk from the site and installing it. I haven’t looked at Smalltalk for years, and might spend some time getting re-acquainted. It’ll be Ruby next!