Posts in month: January, 2005

Ye gods I’ve been busy!

I know I haven’t updated this in a bit but there’s a good reason. I’m currently in rehearsal for a Tantalus Theatre Group play 6 nights a week, 3 hours a night. It’s called Ragnarok and it’s all about the Norse mythology revolving around the end of the world. It’s been a fantastically fun, and extremely exhausting, process so far. If you happen to live in the Chicago area and feel like seeing it goes up February 24th.

As if 6 nights a week wasn’t enough theatre I’m also doing a 24hour theatre piece. 24 people have 24 hours and 24 dollars to create a play from start to finish, writing begins tonight at 9 pm and the show, complete with costumes, sets and lights goes up tomorrow at 9 pm. It’s a joint venture with the Munki Haus and the TTG. Oh, and after the last performance, we’ll party until we fall down. Come and see the show if you can!

So those are my lame excuses why I haven’t updated my blog lately.

Wheee.

A while back I picked up a second hand Series 1 Tivo from my friend Josh. After living with it for a few months I really don’t know how people watch TV without them. Along with all the cool features they have already they are extremely hackable. This weekend I finally got around to hacking mine and I thought I’d post a geeky summary so I’ll remember how to do it again if I need to and so someone else might learn a bit from my mistakes.

!!Disclaimer!!
This is just how I did it. It’s probably not the best way and it might not work for you.
If it doesn’t work or cause your Tivo to change into a smoldering pile of ashes don’t blame me!

The setup:

40 hour series one Tivo
120GB replacement HD
#10 torx screwdriver
spare computer to plug drives into
TurboNet card (in my case already installed)
Hacking Tivo Second Edition and companion CD
MFSTools 2.0 CD
Hinsdale drive replacement instructions
FAT32 Hardrive (anything over 1gb should be fine)

The Hard Drive Upgrade:

To do the drive upgrade I followed the directions on the Hinsdale page. The only exception was that with the current version of MFSTools I don’t think you need the gunlock software to fix a locked drive. I’m not 100% sure about this but when I booted the CD it mentioned something about unlocking drives so it may be built in now.

The most important thing to keep in mind during this step is to keep track of which drive is which, use this table as reference:

Primary Master = HDA
Primary Slave = HDB
Secondary Master = HDC
Secondary Slave = HDD

If you’re not sure which drive is plugged in where, pull up the system bios and it should show you, if all the drives don’t show up monkey with your jumpers, the software can’t address a HD that the BIOS won’t recognize!

I also skipped the test step after restoring the original image, it’s not really necessary (although probably a good idea).

Installing the hacks:

1. Boot the CD that came with Hacking the Tivo Second Edition, or really any usable Linux boot disk will do.
2. Mount the Tivo Drive:

mount /dev/hdc4 /mnt

< -- pretty sure on this, I don’t have the reference material handy. Remember your drive name may be different.
3. Make a directory for your hacks, I choose /var/hack since it seems to be the most popular spot to put them. Of course this is currently /mnt/var/hack/ since we’re not booting from the Tivo drive.
4. Untar the hack file from the Hacking The Tivo CD to /var/hack.
Now all the goodies are ready and waiting to be used!

The Hacks 1- Telnet:

1. Follow steps 1 and 2 from the section above.

2. Either use a text editor from the boot disk or just echo to add the following line to your /mnt/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit
The syntax for using echo is:

echo "/var/hack/bin/tnlited.sh &" >> /mnt/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit

Yes you could start the telnet daemon directly (tnlited 23 /bin/bash -login) but the nifty little shell script will restart the daemon if it manages to crash.

3. /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit MUST be system readable! I just chmod’d it to 777 every time, this is uber important or it won’t boot and you’ll have to stick it back in the PC and tinker.

4. Do a shutdown and stick your Tivo drive back in the Tivo and boot it up. Don’t bother screwing it down quite yet in case you borked something.

5. Test it out! Telnet to your Tivo’s IP address and you should get a command line.

Notes: The default shell is pretty shitty, it echoes two lines with each return which is odd and it doesn’t support several very useful features such as ls and ps. The CD from the book includes a copy of BusyBox which is a fantastic all-in-one shell tool. Included in the tar was a series of Symbolic links for the tools it contains all pointing to BusyBox. If you want to enable those I suggest changing you bash shell to include /var/hack and /var/hack/bin in the path.

You do this my creating a file called .profile in the root directory that contains the following line:

PATH=$PATH:/var/hack:/var/hack/bin

The next time you log in via telnet you’ll have a much more operable shell.

The Hacks 2- FTP:

1. Telnet in to your tivo.

2. Start the FTP daemon:

/var/hack/bin/tivoftpd

3. Test it out! FTP to your tivo with a blank username and password (I recommend Filezilla).

Notes: If you want to start FTP with each restart of the machine you have to add it to the rc.sysinit.

If you use ftp to transfer files be aware that it’s friggin slow and it doesn’t support a lot of stuff (file renames/permission changes, etc) AND it is likely to bork file permissions so set them manually from the command line, or at least double check them.

The Hacks 3- Tyserver:

1. Download the latest TyServer/Tytool package from The Deal Database Forum. Yes you will have to register and yes it’s weird using software distributed on a message board, but it’s totally legit. I promise.

2. FTP the contents of the TSERVER_series1 folder to somewhere on your Tivo. I made a new directory for hacks I installed (/var/hacks/ians_hacks/) but you can put it wherever.

3. CD to the directory where you put the tserver and NowShowing.tcl files.

4. Start the tserver from the command line.

4. Test it out! Run the TyTool9r18.exe (or similar) on your PC and enter the IP address and try to connect to it.

Notes: Tyserver needs to know the location of the NowShowing.tcl file so use a line like this in rc.sysinit:

/var/hacks/bin/ty_server/tserver -s /var/hacks/bin/ty_server/NowShowing.tcl &

This is necessary because each line in rc.sysinit is run as if it was executed from the root directory.

The Hacks 4- TivoWebPlus:

1. Download the latest TivoWebPlus Binary. Get the tarball NOT the zip file.

2. Un-tar it

tar xzvf binaryfilename.tar

be sure to do this one directory above where you want it to be since the tar file will make its own directory.

3. Edit the tivoweb.cfg file, add a password and a username and possibly change the port if you alreayd use port 80 on your real world IP address and you want it accessible from anywhere.

4. Start it with

/var/path/to/file/tivoweb &

from the command line.

5. Test it out by surfing with a web browser to whatever IP yout tivo currently has (optionally appending it with xx where xxx is the port you switched the server to run on. If it works add it to your /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit

Even More Stuff:

1. For the love of god, don’t put the Tivo back together until you are done hacking it completely just in case you screw something up and you need to mount it with a CD to edit stuff again.

2. If you want to change anything on the system partition (such as stuff in /etc) you’ll need to remount as R/W with this command:

mount -o rw,remount /

You will need this for editing of the rc.sysinit. When you are done be sure to remount it again as read only:

mount -o ro,remount /

3. When editing files on your windows machine be sure to use a text editor that supports Unix line endings like Textpad or ultraedit.

4. Every hack you start from rc.sysinit MUST be followed by the ‘&’ character. This makes the program start in the background, otherwise nothing else will run until that line has executed.

5. Here are the final lines from my rc.sysinit as a reference.

#Hacks added by Ian
#start telnet server using the shell script
/var/hack/bin/tnlited.sh &

#Start tivoftpd
/var/hack/bin/tivoftpd &

#Start tytool
/var/hack/bin/ty_server/tserver -s /var/hack/bin/ty_server/NowShowing.tcl &

#Start TivowebPlus
/var/hack/bin/tivoweb-tcl/tivoweb &

*sigh*

Police eye Dalzell ties to girl, 13

CARRBORO — Despite a judge’s ruling Monday to throw out Andrew Douglas Dalzell’s confession that he killed Deborah Leigh Key, the Carrboro Police Department still is investigating Dalzell — including whether he was trying to lure a girl he met on the Internet to live with him in North Carolina.

I’m tired. This whole thing has taken so much energy to focus on and I’m not sure I can manage to do it much longer. Each time I think about the possible outcomes of this whole mess my blood pressure raises a few notches.. literally! 170/90 just isn’t healthy at the ripe old age of twenty six.

I can’t help feeling that I am watching as a friend’s life is slowly flushed down the toilet. Even if he manages to escape spending time in jail, which is not a certainty, he will probably be unable to maintain any kind of a normal life anywhere near his friends and family. I think this will be the last mention of Andrew Dalzell on this blog but I’d like to leave anyone who reads this with my final thought:

When terrible things happen lots of people are effected, and every human being is exactly that– a human being– who should be treated as such.

I stand by my position that I really don’t know what happened that night. I don’t think he did it and God knows, I hope he didn’t.

I’ve been holding off on this post for a while due to both personal and legal considerations, but I think now is the time to put it out there. Maybe by putting this tale in writing it will help me to make sense of it all.

I met Andrew Douglas Dalzell some time during my junior year of high school. He was a sort of peripheral character in my life then, a friend of a friend. I can’t tell you exactly the first time we met but the earliest memory I have of him is he and my friend Donnie smoking a cigarette outside one of the classrooms, posing in their black leather jackets like a pair of James Dean’s with chips on their shoulders.

Some time during my senior year in high school Andrew’s father died. I still didn’t know Andrew very well but I went to his funeral with Donnie as a show of support for the friend of my friend.

I really didn’t begin to know him as a friend until after I had left for college. During the long summers at home I would spend a lot of time hanging out with Donnie and Andrew, shooting pool at the masse lounge, watching movies, or just screwing around as 19 year old guys do when they have some time on their hands and nothing specific to do with it.

Andrew was always a clown and a charmer in his own way. He was also the quintessential “bad apple.â€? He dropped out of high school and lived at home with his mother. He would steal things if he thought he could get away with it, although never from friends. He wasn’t even able to hold down the most simplistic jobs– He’d either get fired for taking stuff or failing to get to work on time. He was a pathological liar who would make up a lie and stick with it as if it was the gospel until it was discovered to be false. Sometimes I felt like I was hanging out with a cross between a 4 year old child and a guest on the Jerry Springer show.

Despite his obvious problems Andrew was a good guy to know. He was entertaining and always willing to help out others, assuming he could do so at no cost to himself. I think everyone knows someone who is a failure at nearly everything yet somehow manages to struggle on with a smile on his face, the proverbial lovable loser. That’s him. That’s Andrew. I hate to admit it, but in my own mind I often considered him my karmic payback for being moderately successful in my own life. I helped him where I could, a few bucks here and there, a job interview at wherever I was working if I could swing it, and as much advice as I could offer on how to turn his life around.

In the past few years Andrew seemed to make progress. His mother got re-married and the new father type figure seemed to do him good. He had moved into his own place, finished his high school degree, held down a job, and had a steady girlfriend. I was happy to see him finally making headway in “the real world� as they say.

Then it all went horribly wrong.

The first thing I heard was from our mutual friend Donnie via instant message. He told me Andrew had been arrested by the police and was being charged with murder.

The next morning this news article told the story:

CARRBORO — Nearly seven years after Deborah Leigh Key was last seen outside a downtown bar and pool hall, a man who had been a suspect in her disappearance and presumed death was arrested Thursday and charged with second-degree murder.
Andrew Douglas Dalzell was booked into Orange County jail, according to police. Investigators, who have questioned the suspect previously, arrested Dalzell after a search Sept. 2 of his Carrboro apartment and a search Wednesday of a Lincoln County home where he was staying with friends.
During the search Sept. 2, initiated on an unrelated matter, investigators discovered evidence they believed to be related to the Key case, police said. With that information, investigators obtained a warrant to search the Lincoln County home, where sheriff’s deputies made the arrest without incident…(rest of article cut, click the link above to read it)

There is nothing in the entire world as scary as thinking you know someone, and finding out you may have been dead wrong. Could Andrew really have done this? I never knew him as violent, quite the opposite in fact– he was a coward. Every time I had seen him threatened with violence he would back down, or outright run away. He was very destructive, but never dangerous. I knew from talking to Donnie and from my own experience that Andrew had become extremely depressed following his fathers death, was he that affected that he could have killed someone? I wasn’t sure. I was so depressed and confused that I had to take a few days off of work.

My first reaction was to try to do something to help him, but really there wasn’t anything I could do. I don’t make enough to offer monetary support, I had no first (or even second) hand knowledge of the events of that evening (I was 1/2 way across the state in Asheville studying the night it happened), and I now live in Chicago so I couldn’t even go visit him in North Carolina. I was left to simply follow the case as best I could and try not to stress out too much. It was out of my hands.

As the weeks and months went by various facts came to light. The story unfolded like something out of law and order, a coerced confession, a fake arrest warrant, posturing by the police, and a controversial judgment on vital evidence. My emotions went on a little roller coaster ever time there was a new development, but there was still nothing I could do.

Then came Christmas.

Christmas is always a special time of year for most folks. As the holiday neared I made a resolution to visit Andrew since I was going to be in the general area visiting my folks for a week and I couldn’t stand the thought of him sitting alone in a cell while the rest of the world opened presents and drank eggnog. After doing some research, I found that the only possible day for me to visit him was Christmas day. “Christmas day in Jail!â€? I moaned to friends, “This is going to be weird, and probably depressing as hell.â€? I had images of more scenes from law and order; a giant industrial building filled with screaming inmates. I thought I was prepared for the worst.

Christmas day I left my parents house where I was staying and made the 40-minute drive to Hillsboro. The jail it’s self was a small and unassuming building made of brick. It looked more like a library than a jail. I walked in and a police officer behind a heavy plate glass window took my ID and checked it against her list of allowed visitors. “Go in through the door on your right”, she said.

The door led to a small hallway. Along one side of the hall were panes of glass and barred windows to an interior room. At each station there was a small steel seat. I sat down and within a few moments Andrew walked into the other room, handcuffed and accompanied by a guard.

I was so shocked to actually see him, in his orange jump suit and slippers that I don’t remember much of the conversation. The cold hard reality of it hit me all at once seeing him like that. We had to shout through the glass because the jail had removed the phones (apparently one of the inmates decided it would be fun to try to assault one of the other inmates with one, so the handsets were removed.) “I thought I was ready for this� I thought to my self, obviously I wasn’t.

I was most affected by the change in his demeanor. He had the look you see on homeless guys and street derelicts, a certain vacancy in the eyes that says “I’m not living in the same reality you are man, and it sucks in here”. He was bored, no he was way beyond bored, and he was starting to lose his mind a little. With nothing to do but reflect on his life for 108 days, I can’t say I blame him.

We talked for a while and before I knew it his allotted time was up. As the guards were about to take him out he reached through the interior bars and touched the Plexiglas, I touched it too and I could just barely feel the warmth of his hand on the other side. As I left the building I thought about that touch– I have never felt so utterly helpless in my entire life. It was as if I had become a ghost somehow, capable only of observing the events in the world but unable to effect them.

==

Andrew is still in jail. A judge will rule on his confession on January 10th (Or so they say. There have been delays innumerable thus far and I have no reason to believe it won’t happen again). People who know this story, or parts of it ask me “Do you think he did it?� The answer is; I hope not, but I just don’t know.

It’s a terrible feeling not knowing, one that I have started to get used to, as strange as that sounds.

This hasn’t been easy to write, and I apologize if it has come out as a rambling mess but sometimes you just have to get it out of your system– purge it to the world and hope that feels better.

Special thanks to John Allore who’s blog has helped me follow this case.

The Scifi channel just completed a miniseries which was supposedly based on Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic children’s books. I always have high hopes for these things but they didn’t pan out at all. The effects were terrible the acting wasn’t the worst but the poor actors struggled with an absolutely terrible script. Not only was the dialog stilted and terribly unnatural, but the writers completely made up a main character, changed the ending and ignored many key elements of what makes Earthsea Earthsea.

Luckily they aren’t going to get away with this travesty unscathed. Le Guin herself has written several articles about how disappointed she was. This one in particular was interesting to me.

It’s just amazing how people can butcher a fairly simple and elegant tale.