The curse of Dennis D. Spreen

Lua 5.1 for Delphi 2010

Dennis Spreen — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:36:18 +0000

This is a Lua 5.1 Wrapper for Delphi 2009 and Delphi 2010 which automatically creates OOP callback functions.

“Lua is a powerful, fast, lightweight, embeddable scripting language, it has been used in many industrial applications (e.g., Adobe’s Photoshop Lightroom), with an emphasis on embedded systems (e.g., the Ginga middleware for digital TV in Brazil) and games (e.g., World of Warcraft). Lua is currently the leading scripting language in games and it has a deserved reputation for performance. To claim to be “as fast as Lua” is an aspiration of other scripting languages.”

This Lua Wrapper is based on Lua-Pascal v0.2 by Marco Antonio Abreu
- converted PChar to PAnsiChar
- converted Char to AnsiChar
- added function LuaLibLoaded: Boolean;
- added a new base class (TLua) with OOP call back functions

Download
LuaDelphi2010-v1.3

History
1.3 Improved Callback, now uses pointer instead of object index. Modified RegisterFunctions to allow methods from other class to be registered, moved object table into TLua class
1.2 Added example on how to extend lua with a delphi dll
1.1 Improved global object table, optimized delphi function calls
1.0 Initial Release

Example
TLua automatically creates OOP callback functions for Delphi <-> Lua:

uses
  Lua, LuaLib;
 
type
  TMyLua = class(TLua)
  published
    function HelloWorld(LuaState: TLuaState): Integer;
  end;
 
function TMyLua.HelloWorld: Integer;
var
  ArgCount: Integer;
  I: integer;
begin
  writeln('Delphi: Hello World');
 
  ArgCount := Lua_GetTop(LuaState);
  writeln('Arguments: ', ArgCount);
  for I := 1 to ArgCount do
    writeln('Arg1', I, ': ', Lua_ToInteger(LuaState, I));
 
  // Clear stack
  Lua_Pop(LuaState, Lua_GetTop(LuaState));
 
  // Push return values
  Lua_PushInteger(LuaState, 101);
  Lua_PushInteger(LuaState, 102);
  Result := 2;
end;
 
var
  MyLua: TLua;
 
begin
  MyLua := TMyLua.Create;
  MyLua.DoFile('Helloworld.lua');
  MyLua.Free;
end;

helloworld.lua

print("LuaDelphi Test");
p1,p2 = HelloWorld(1,2,3)
print "Results:";
print (p1);
print (p2);

WordPress Plugin – QR Code Tag v1.0

Dennis Spreen — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 08:12:06 +0000

QR Code Tag

Use QR Codes (Google API or QR Code Lib) anywhere in your WordPress blog, as a Widget, Shortcode, Tooltip or with a PHP function.

Features:

Choose your QR Code generator: Google Chart API (online connection required) or QR Code Lib (included)
Uses cURL if allow_url_fopen is disabled (Google Chart API)
GIF, PNG or JPEG image output
All QR Code images are cached
Use as a Sidebar Widget
Use the Shortcode [qrcodetag]content[/qrcodetag] within your posts
Use the Tooltip mode [qrcodetag tooltip="content"]some text[/qrcodetag] within your posts
Use the PHP function inside your own template
“Best Read Mode” for optimized QR Code image size
Works with PHP 5.3 as well
Works on symlinked plugin folders
Available plugin admin interface languages: English, German

Installation
FAQ
Screenshots
Download QR Code Tag v1.0

Donations are welcome:

Favourite Android applications

Dennis Spreen — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 07:31:45 +0000

Here are some of my favorite free essential Android applications

Barcode Scanner
“Scan barcodes on CDs, books, and other products, then look up prices and reviews, or search for a word in a book and find where it occurs. You can also scan QR Codes containing URLs, contact info, calendar events, and more.”
This application is made by the Google ZXing Team. Very handy for these QR Codes poppin’ up everywhere. Oh yes, this website uses these codes, too – move your mouse over the application links and a QR Code appears – use the Barcode Scanner for easy application installation!

NetSentry
“NetSentry is a network traffic alert system for the Android operating system. It keeps track of how much data is transferred over each network interface of your Android system. When certain usage levels are reached you will be notified over the notification facitlity.”
If you’re on a limited data plan, this one is the best network traffic monitoring application.

Locale
“Locale dynamically manages your phone settings based on conditions, such as Location and Time. Never worry about your ringer going off in the wrong place or at the wrong time again. You can set it and forget it!”
One of the best android applications at all.

SkyMap
“Google Sky Map turns your Android-powered mobile phone into a window on the night sky.”
By using the Android phone’s orientation sensors, a star map for your location is shown. Impressive.

Toddler Lock
“Graphics and sound to keep your toddler entertained without having to worry about them dialing a number or going in to other applications.”
Very essential if you’re surrounded by kids.

Call Faker
“Ever been in an uncomfortable situation or with someone who talks too much? Just set the contact, time, and ringtone, and the phone will ring with a fake call, allowing you to escape!”
Oh yes, works great and helps you to escape mother in law sunday afternoon talks. Somehow essential.

WifiAnalyzer
“Turns your android phone into a Wi-Fi analyzer!! Shows the Wi-Fi channels around you. Helps you to find a less crowded channel for your wireless router.”
Best Wifi analyzer. Use Menu|View to change graph and list view mode.

Ultimate Stopwatch & Timer
“Nice UI stopwatch with lap timer and countdown timer. Can run in background and you can save lap times to compare later. New Alarm Sound when Countdown complete, uses system volume.”
A very nice interface and it does it’s job very well.

SwiFTP Server
“SwiFTP is an open-source FTP server that allows you to connect to your phone over wifi to upload and download files. Any FTP client may be used.”
Nice and easy interface, transferred the data faster than any other Android FTP server application.

TV-Guide
“Fast and easy TV listings for Germany. Quickly get an overview of what’s on right now – the shows, the movies and the sports events.”
This version is for German Television – it works nice and gives you a quick overview. Swedish and UK version also available.

Layar – Reality Browser
“The Layar Reality Browser displays real time digital information on top of reality in the camera screen of the mobile phone.”
Depends heavily on your location – you won’t find any additional informations right out in the sticks. Use it while you’re in the city.

aTrackDog
“aTrackDog finds the newest version for all apps even they are not listed in Market.”
Gives you a nice overview about installed applications and updated versions.

GPS Status
“Display your GPS and sensor data: Shows the position, number and signal strength of GPS satellites. Check your position, GPS accuracy, speed, acceleration and bearing. A magnetic compass is included which displays both magnetic and true north. Use it as a leveling tool or detect magnetic anomalies in your area.”
The one with the best interface.

aCurrency
“A currency converter for 160+ currencies with daily exchange rates update.”
Always up to date. Nice.

klickTel
“Funktionen: Telefonbuch, Branchenbuch, Rückwärtssuche und Lokale Suche in einem Geldautomaten: Suche nach Bankautomaten aller Banken.Kaffee und Burger: Überall Starbucks und McDonald’s finden. Nie wieder im Stau stehen: Anzeige aktueller Verkehrsinfos und Baustellen”
German only. Sehr kompakt für alle oben genannten Informationen.

Android Application Browser (Website)
“Now you can keep up with new Android apps from the comfort of your desk!”

What are your favorite Android applications?

Hint: Blank Typo3 installation screen

Dennis Spreen — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 11:45:47 +0000

If you experience a blank installation screen while trying to setup Typo3, take a look at your mysql database time out setting in your php.ini file:

mysql.connect_timeout = 60

If this exceeds your max_execution_time setting, you’ll get a blank typo3 installation screen. Set it to a low vale, e.g. 5.

How to create an ESXi v4 Whitebox ISO with Windows Tools

Dennis Spreen — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 10:58:44 +0000

This is a short tutorial on how to build a custom ESXi v4.0 Whitebox ISO with Windows Tools (and an Ubuntu-VMImage for VMWare Player) by integrating a new driver (RTL8169 network card) into the Community Driver Pack and integrating this pack into the ISO, too.

See “Create an ESXi v3.5 Whitebox ISO” for creating an ESXi v3.5 Whitebox.

1. Warning:
You need a 64bit CPU in order to run ESXi v4! Download Processor Check for 64-Bit Compatibility on the VMware site and determine whether your CPU is supported!
Btw: the Intel T2300 CPU is NOT a 64bit CPU…

2. Warning:
There are reports that the RTL driver may not work on all boards because of the new 64-bit portion of the ESXi driver model. Try ESXi 3.5 then. Or wait until a new full supported 64bit driver is made. Check vm-help forum regularly.

ESX Hardware Requirements
VMware ESX 4.0 will only install and run on servers with 64-bit x86 CPUs. Known 64-bit processors:

All AMD Opterons support 64 bit.
All Intel Xeon 3000/3200, 3100/3300, 5100/5300, 5200/5400, 7100/7300, and 7200/7400 support 64 bit.
All Intel Nehalem (no Xeon brand number assigned yet) support 64 bit.

Use this tools
- UltraIso $29.95 USD / Free Trial
- Ubuntu Server 8.10 for VMWare Player Free
- Bitvise Tunnelier Free for individual use (or Putty, but Tunnelier is preferred)
- WinImage US$ 30.00 / Free Trial

Let’s prepare by downloading the VMWare ISO, the Community Driver Pack and the new driver.

Download VMware ESXi 4 Installable
Download Community Unified oem.tgz v1.1.0
Download Realtek RLT8168 Driver oem.tgz package
Download Realtek RTL8169 Driver (if needed, try above first!)

1. Extract image.tgz from the VMware ISO with UltraIso

2. Use Tunnelier to log into Ubunto and create a new directory called “esxi” (either with SFTP or by command console with mkdir esxi)

3. Move image.tgz to this esxi directory (use Tunneliers SFTP)
Extract the contents by changing to this directory
cd esxi
tar zxvf image.tgz

and remove the tgz file
rm image.tgz

4. Decompress the VMWare diskimage
cd usr/lib/vmware/installer/
bzip2 -d VMware-VMvisor-big-171294-x86_64.dd.bz2

Skip step 5-12 if you’re using the Realtek RLT8168 Driver oem.tgz package

5. Make a new directory for the Community Driver Pack
cd mkdir oem cd oem

6. Upload the Driver Pack into this directory and rename it to oem.tgz then extract the contents and remove the file with
tar zxvf oem.tgz rm oem.tgz

7. Prepare a new directory for the realtek driver
cd mkdir rtl8169

8. Upload the mymods-0.1.tar into this directory and extract the content with
cd rtl8169 tar zxvf mymods.tgz

9. Then add this driver to the pack
cp mod/r8169.o ../oem/mod cd ../oem

10. Add the PCIID to the simple.map by using the texteditor nano (no, we are not using the “thing called vi”. Thanks).
cd etc/vmware nano simple.map

11. Insert the line 10ec:8169 0000:0000 network r8169 at the appropriate place:
... 10df:fd00 0000:0000 storage lpfc_740 10df:fe00 0000:0000 storage lpfc_740 10ec:8169 0000:0000 network r8169 1166:0211 0000:0000 storage ide 1166:0212 0000:0000 storage ide ...

12. Now create the updated oem.tgz file and download it to windows
cd cd oem tar cfvz oem.tgz *

13. Now download the usr/lib/vmware/installer/VMware-VMvisor-big-171294-x86_64.dd file to windows and open it with WinImage (open partition0).

14. Use WinImage to replace the oem.tgz on partition 0 and save.

15. Transfer the dd file to ubuntu /esxi/usr/lib/vmware/installer/ and compress it
cd cd esxi cd usr/lib/vmware/installer/ bzip2 VMware-VMvisor-big-171294-x86_64.dd

16. Now recreate the image.tgz file
cd cd esxi tar cfvz image.tgz *

17. Download image.tgz to Windows

18. Use Ultraiso to replace image.tgz and add oem.tgz (yes, as of v4 the file isn’t here by default as it was with v3.5)

19. Burn ISO and start installing ESXi.

ESXi Tips and Tricks
http://www.vm-help.com/

Ext: tt_news – no translation for name of months

Dennis Spreen — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 11:21:48 +0000

Typo3-Extension: tt_news – non translated month names

If you stumble across this problem, maybe you haven’t installed the right locale on your linux computer. Open a new shell and type

locale -a

This prints out all available locales. Refer to your OS manual on how to install additional locales.
Try this php script for testing locales (taken from php manual setlocale)

 
/* Set locale to Dutch */

setlocale(LC_ALL, 'nl_NL');
/* Output: vrijdag 22 december 1978 */

echo strftime("%A %e %B %Y", mktime(0, 0, 0, 12, 22, 1978));

/* try different possible locale names for german as of PHP 4.3.0 */ $loc_de = setlocale(LC_ALL, 'de_DE@euro', 'de_DE', 'de', 'ge'); echo "Preferred locale for german on this system is '$loc_de'"; ?>

check_apachestatus_auto.pl v1.2 released

Dennis Spreen — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 11:52:52 +0000

A Nagios plugin that parses the status page of an apache or lighttpd server, the plugin returns the response time, the amount of idle, busy, open (apache only) and total slots. The perfdata returns the status of all slots including Requests/sec, Bytes/Request and Bytes/sec. Optionally you can specify how much slots should be available. Use http(s) and basic user authentication with non standard server-status urls. This is an enhanced version of an enhanced version of Lieven De Bodt’s check_apachestatus.pl.

Detailed info at http://www.spreendigital.de/blog/nagios/?#check_apachestatus_auto

Whats new
v1.1 Works with lighttpd server-status as well, added accesses perfdata (Lighttpd v1.4.19 tested)
v1.2 Updated perf data to be PNP compliant, added proxy option

Download
check_apachestatus_auto.tgz v1.2
check_apachestatus_auto.php.tgz (PNP template)

Ext: indexed_search – Disable indexing of meta tags

Dennis Spreen — Mon, 11 May 2009 09:39:04 +0000

Typo3-Extension: Indexed Search Engine – how to disable the indexing of meta tags (description, etc.)

Just put this line into your template setup code

config.index_metatags =

That’s all. Do not use

config.index_metatags = 0

because this does not work (indexing still occurs).

nagios_mdaemon_check.exe v1.0 released

Dennis Spreen — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 15:40:23 +0000

A Nagios NRPE plugin that checks the active connections to and from a MDaemon server,
the plugin checks and returns the SMTP, POP, IMAP, WorldClient and Webadmin connections.
WorldClient and Webadmin connection detection is limited because of the stateless
connections to the server.

Download
nagios_mdaemon_check.zip v1.0

Detailed info at http://www.spreendigital.de/blog/nagios/?#nagios_mdaemon_check

Create an ESXi Whitebox ISO with Windows Tools

Dennis Spreen — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 11:24:47 +0000

This is a short tutorial on how to build a custom ESXi v3.5 Whitebox ISO with Windows Tools (and an Ubuntu-VMImage for VMWare Player) by integrating a new driver (RTL8169 network card) into the Community Driver Pack and integrating this pack into the ISO, too.

See “How to create an ESXi v4 Whitebox ISO with Windows Tools“ for creating an ESXi v4 Whitebox.

Let’s prepare by downloading the VMWare ISO, the Community Driver Pack and the new driver.

Download VMware ESXi 3.5 Installable Update 3
Download Community Unified oem.tgz v1.1.0
Download Realtek RTL8169 Driver
Download Realtek RLT8168 Driver! New! oem.tgz package!

1. Extract install.tgz from the VMware ISO with UltraIso

2. Use Tunnelier to log into Ubunto and create a new directory called “esxi” (either with SFTP or by command console with mkdir esxi)

3. Move install.tgz to this esxi directory (use Tunneliers SFTP)
Extract the contents by changing to this directory
cd esxi
tar zxvf install.tgz

and remove the tgz file
rm install.tgz

4. Decompress the VMWare diskimage
cd usr/lib/vmware/installer/
bzip2 -d VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0_Update_3-123629.i386.dd.bz2

5. Make a new directory for the Community Driver Pack
cd mkdir oem cd oem

6. Upload the Driver Pack into this directory and rename it to oem.tgz then extract the contents and remove the file with
tar zxvf oem.tgz rm oem.tgz

7. Prepare a new directory for the realtek driver
cd mkdir rtl8169

8. Upload the mymods-0.1.tar into this directory and extract the content with
cd rtl8169 tar zxvf mymods.tgz

9. Then add this driver to the pack
cp mod/r8169.o ../oem/mod cd ../oem

10. Add the PCIID to the simple.map by using the texteditor nano (no, we are not using the “thing called vi”. Thanks).
cd etc/vmware nano simple.map

12. Now create the updated oem.tgz file and download it to windows
cd cd oem tar cfvz oem.tgz *

13. Now download the cd usr/lib/vmware/installer/VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0_Update_3-123629.i386.dd file to windows and open it with WinImage (Partition0).

14. Use WinImage to replace the oem.tgz on partition 0 and save.

15. Transfer the dd file to ubuntu /esxi/usr/lib/vmware/installer/ and compress it
cd cd esxi cd usr/lib/vmware/installer/ bzip2 VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0_Update_3-123629.i386.dd

16. Now recreate the install.tgz file
cd cd esxi tar cfvz install.tgz *

17. Download install.tgz to Windows

18. Use Ultraiso to replace install.tgz and oem.tgz (yes, we need to replace this one here, too)

19. Burn ISO and start installing ESXi.

ESXi Tips and Tricks
http://www.vm-help.com/

What’s new
Realtek RTL8168 driver by Jens Jacobsen