Westhoffswelt - Welcome to the real world

Jakob's personal thoughts

• SystemProcess - Execute system commands with ease

  by Jakob Westhoff on Wed, 04 Feb 2009 23:44:26 +0100

  A current project of mine demanded me to invoke a lot of different programms on the commandline. Some calls were simple executions of a command followed by one or two arguments. Others were more complex with the need to define special environment variables or custom file descriptors. Some of them even needed me to asyncronously run the programs to be able to read their output during execution or run multiple commands at once. Because nobody, includind me, really likes the proc_* family of functions like proc_open in php, I decided to write a simple and yet powerful object oriented wrapper around all this functionality. The wrapper is fully unit tested and licensed under LGPLv3 for you to use in your projects. For more informations and documentation please refer the the blog entry. Read more…

• First steps with Blender

  by Jakob Westhoff on Wed, 04 Feb 2009 23:44:26 +0100

  After creating and rendering some really basic 3D scenes with proprietary windows software before changing to Linux a long time ago, I never used a 3D modeling tool again. I thought it is time to take a look at the really powerful opensource 3D suite Blender. Read more…

• Creating a transparently encrypted root filesystem

  by Jakob Westhoff on Wed, 04 Feb 2009 23:44:26 +0100

  This article provides all the neccessary explanations to create a fully transparent filesystem encryption for your system root. After you followed the steps of this tutorial all your data will be stored encrypted on your hard drive during your normal days work. This is especially interesting for laptops which might be stolen with important or even secret information on it. Read more…

• Half Life BSP Entity Tool

  by Jakob Westhoff on Wed, 04 Feb 2009 23:44:26 +0100

  A friend of mine was in need of a tool to read an write entity tables from a Half Life level file. In the time Half Life was bleeding edge there existed such a tool. Unfortunately I was unable to find it on the net. Therefore I hacked some lines of c to do exactly this. Read more…

• My first application for the Openmoko Neo Freerunner

  by Jakob Westhoff on Wed, 04 Feb 2009 23:44:26 +0100

  A little story about what I experienced during the first steps towards writing an application for the Freerunner by myself. You will find a download link and a demonstration video inside. Read more…

• My Openmoko Neo Freeruner has arrived

  by Jakob Westhoff on Wed, 04 Feb 2009 23:44:26 +0100

  Finally I got the Openmoko Neo Freerunner in my hands Read more…

• PHP@FrOSCon 2008 - Call for papers

  by Jakob Westhoff on Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:54:20 +0100

  The php@froscon team will organize it's an official subconference at the FrOSCon this year. We want to encourage you to propose a talk to be held during this conference. Read more…

• Using Vim Unicode macros to create math formulas at ease

  by Jakob Westhoff on Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:54:20 +0100

  Did you ever want to note a math formula inside a vim document without using something like latex? It is just as simple as typing "pi" to get the Greek letter pi with a little script I wrote. Take a look you won't be disappointed Read more…

• PHP Usergroup Dortmund officially turns 3 today

  by Jakob Westhoff on Wed, 04 Feb 2009 23:44:26 +0100

  The PHP Usergroup Dortmund is celebrating its third birthday. Happy Birthday Usergroup. Live long and prosper. Read more…

• Imageutil - My first tool for the UFS-910

  by Jakob Westhoff on Wed, 04 Feb 2009 23:44:26 +0100

  I just released my first tool for the Kathrein UFS-910 hdtv satellite receiver, which is capable of reading and writing the flashrom contents over the integrated ethernet interface. Read more…