I finally got around to fitting my NEC AD7173 DVD drive. I flashed it with the 1-2D firmware from Liggy and Dee and now it supports auto-bitsetting and is region-free. I tested it and a 16x DVD+R is now identified as a pressed DVD-ROM by the Xbox! I went shoe shopping this morning, none of the stuff in the sales was work-dress, so ended up paying 32ukp for a pair that are OK.

I was playing with my TV card last night, I’ve figured out how to get sound to work (via soundcard in!) and how to do realtime software encoding to XviD. Being a regular TV tuner, the WinFast2000 has the advantage over my PVR250 in that your can watch realtime in a nice TVtime window on your desktop, and don’t have to convert everything from MPEG2 first. I just watched My Brothers Keeper, which was pretty boring, way too long and a bit of an obvious ending.

My USB-to-serial cable arrived at work today, it works a treat with Fedora 5/6 using the built-in kernel drivers, it identifies itself as /dev/ttyUSB0. I tried it with some Cisco and Sun equipment earlier. I’ve been playing with THC-Hydra today, and some password lists borrowed from John The Ripper. Just watched The Sarah Jane Adventures pilot episode that I missed on New Years Day, it wasn’t great.

I’m back from France – had a lovely Xmas with the family, nice relax, met Brandy the cat, lots of lovely presents, ate/drank too much…. Now it’s back to work, although it was a little slow today, I’ve got to sort an extension out this week. Hopefully I will get the USB-serial adaptor tomorrow as the first one hasn’t turned up at the house via 1st Class, they’re sending a replacement Recorded Delivery to work.

It’s my last day at work this year, before I go home to France for Xmas tomorrow with Phil. I left a little early, but hey at least I turned up unlike most of the people. The last payment day was yesterday so I won’t get paid until after January 3rd now, that’s due to having to wait for the bloke to sign my timesheet. The fog is ridiculous at the moment, I very much doubt if my flight would go ahead tomorrow, and I expect the M25 will be crawling.