SOCKS proxy using SSH

I've just seen and used a brilliant ssh option.

The command:

sudo ssh -D localport user@externalhost

will set up a local SOCKS proxy listening on localport which will route all your traffic (including privledged ports) via external host.

Notebook Audio

My notebook audio (Intel HDA) is terrible. Using jackd, I constantly get xruns, and I cannot change any parameters to try and alleviate the problem.

So, I bought an external USB audio device, plugged it in, and it just worked. No more xruns. Jackd no longer complains, and I have 5ms latency. Amazing. Even a cheap ($5) USB device performed better than the internal audio device in my laptop. It's an XPS M1330 by the way.

To celebrate I bought a pair of Edirol MA-15 Monitor speakers, which are a pleasure to listen to. Now I can look forward to getting to grips with Pure Data, or maybe Galan, which looks quite interesting.

Pyglet + Joystick

I've written a pygletified Joystick class. I'm not sure I'm using dispatch_events correctly, but it seems to work. With some more work it could support OSX and Win32.

from pyglet import event
import sys

if sys.platform == 'linux2':
    import struct
    from select import select

    class Joystick(event.EventDispatcher):
        JS_EVENT_BUTTON = 0x01 #/* button pressed/released */
        JS_EVENT_AXIS = 0x02  #/* joystick moved */
        JS_EVENT_INIT = 0x80  #/* initial state of device */
        JS_EVENT = "IhBB"
        JS_EVENT_SIZE = struct.calcsize(JS_EVENT)

        def __init__(self, device_number):
            device = '/dev/input/js%s' % device_number
            event.EventDispatcher.__init__(self)
            self.dev = open('/dev/input/js0')

        def dispatch_events(self):
            r,w,e = select([self.dev],[],[], 0)
            if self.dev not in r: return
            evt = self.dev.read(self.JS_EVENT_SIZE)
            time, value, type, number = struct.unpack(self.JS_EVENT, evt)
            evt = type & ~self.JS_EVENT_INIT
            if evt == self.JS_EVENT_AXIS:
                self.dispatch_event('on_axis', number, value)
            elif evt == self.JS_EVENT_BUTTON:
                self.dispatch_event('on_button', number, value==1)

        def on_axis(self, axis, value):
            pass

        def on_button(self, button, pressed):
            pass

    Joystick.register_event_type('on_axis')
    Joystick.register_event_type('on_button')

else:
    raise ImportError('Platform not supported (%s)' % sys.platform)
    


if __name__ == "__main__":
    j = Joystick(0)
    @j.event
    def on_button(button, pressed):
        print 'button', button, pressed

    @j.event
    def on_axis(axis, value):
        print 'axis', axis, value

    while True:
        j.dispatch_events()