Jordyn Gets Early Start

First things first. Another very nice release party for PA Ubuntu LoCo.
(Philly/Southeast region)

Food - An Install - Questions about switching people from other operating systems - all good stuff!

Always a good time, if you have the opportunity I recommend attendance. The empathy of other Linux users will recharge your need to geek.

The only jaunty preparation I did was to install the Ubuntu Net Remix to a usb thumbdrive so people could check it out. It was a big hit, would've been bigger if I would have remembered my ac adapter, but the 2 hours of playing with it and laughing at the big icons on a regular sized laptop were worth the effort. (by the way, it seemed to be the right size for my middle-aged eyes)

The following Sunday I updated my home laptop to jaunty with the assistance of my granddaughter Jordyn. Went super smooth, only some workspace switcher issues.

The release party had reminded me of how well Compiz works as an advocacy tool - you don't have to like it - you don't have to use it - but believe me: it grabs people attention! So, I Compiz'd up my gnome session. I rarely use gnome anymore, preferring to use xfce, the Xubuntu desktop, but since the majority of users are using gnome, I like to have it a session change away.

Compiz and the compiz-config are super easy to turn a capable device into a cube spinning terror. Also, btw, no fglrx driver for jaunty, would the open radeon driver work? YES! 3d effects were NO PROBLEM with the open driver.

jimf@dell6000:~$ glxgears
3834 frames in 5.0 seconds = 763.588 FPS

I'll take it!

Still one Gnome problem: Nautilus would crash - opening nautilus from terminal pointed me to the preferences segment of gconf. I looked at the info in the gconf-editor and kept missing that one of the boolean options was set to 'false' - DOH - 'false' was interpreted as a string, and indeed, NOT A BOOLEAN VALUE. Reset the key, and all was well, a fully functioning, cube spinning, advocacy heroin, Gnome session.

Very nice.

Now, what desktop for Jordyn?

Dell Latitude LM

Ok so after thinking I had some bad hard drives, and that the power supply on my imaging box was fried, I am back on to refurbishing the laptops that I save from the recycling pile.

The hard drives were ok, I did FRY another 2.5 to 3.5 ide adapter. My local computer parts store didn't have any. MicroCenter to the rescue!
MC only had one left, the plan was to buy two so I always have a spare.
Ebay and the Hong Kong parts to the rescue, 2 for half the price of 1 !!

Back in business. Two Dell Latitude LM's,

(SPECIFICATIONS:
Pentium/166 MMX, 256Kb of pipeline-burst cache, 40Mb of RAM, 1.6Gb hard disk, ten-speed CD-ROM, 12.1in SVGA TFT colour screen, 1.1Mb NeoMagic graphics, removable floppy drive, ESS AudioDrive ES1688 audio, integrated stereo speakers, 115Kbits/sec infrared serial port, one Type III or two Type II PC Card slots, lithium ion battery)

it's real nice when I get common machines, makes setting them up easier after figuring out the first one.

No boot - have to add pnpbios=off to boot line.

My default Puppy Image installed, but the video resolution on these old boxes was too low to run in an acceptable manner. Try DSL - couldn't get any video to work, let alone be acceptable. Ok, no problem, I'll make these cli only machines for people who want to learn command line.

Install Ubuntu CLI only Hardy - about 350 megs installed - NICE.

The tty font sucks - ugly - hard to read - dpkg-reconfigure console-setup to change tty fonts to something acceptable - terminus - clean.

Hmm, I know I can increase resolution and add a desktop; more to come.

Dreamhost - What a Bargain ! Dropbox in the cloud.

Every morning when I arrive to the office I have a ritual; check all my email accounts, then check LifeHacker for any new info.

This LifeHacker post caught my eye - DreamHost offering 2 year domain hosting for $11.00.

I was late by one day, so the promo code only granted me the 2 year deal for $42.00. What the heck. I signed up.

I already have 2 Google Domains. One for work, and one for the family.
They suit what I need very well. Actually, they more than fulfill all my requirements; except the need to GEEK.

I have enough equipment and internet accounts that I could have set up my own server and done it all myself, but that takes time. This was easy - sign up - set up ssh access - good to go.

Now what to do with my DreamHost account. Don't really want to set up a web page. Ok, maybe this was a bad impulse buy. But, I do have unlimited storage and unlimited bandwidth to NOT use.

DreamHost bosts 'Single Click' installations for a variety of web applications. I had some time Saturday night, and Sunday during the football games to give it a whirl.

First install: Wordpress - Easy - Just as advertised. See it here.

Next install: Gallery - Easy - Just as advertised. See it here.

Final Install: MediaWiki - Easy - Just as advertised. See it here.

My domain is jedijf.com, and the hardest, and still ongoing process so far, has been trying to get a favicon that I like. It is still a works in progress.

DreamHost ++ So far, so good.

Also, I would like to let you know about Dropbox. Another LifeHacker find; before the DreamHost find. Finally started using this as well this weekend. I like having things 'in the cloud' as I use computers at home, in the office, and on the road (literally). Using Dropbox for some photos for now.

New Year's Day Treo 650 Sync and Bluetooth File Transfer

Pet peeve. Works; stops working. That's how it is with syncing my Treo 650 cellphone with jpilot.

Actually, had it working with my iBook G4 and Gutsy; maybe Hardy, can't remember because I gave up on Ubuntu PPC and the iBook. I do remember that it involved creating a new udev rules file so that the usb cable would be recognized when plugged in. Info here.

The Sunday after the Ubuntu US PA LoCo Intrepid Release Party I helped get someone else's Palm device syncing before I could get my own to sync. All the while acting like it would be a piece of cake and then being shocked as hell when it worked.

The following week I worked on my own sync. Googled. Read. There was a known bug, and a fix had been released. Use the proposed repos; a patch had been added. It works. I sync my Treo. Fix info here.

New Year's Day, January 1, 2009; it's time to sync again. No go. What the heck. It's 8:30 am, I have plenty of time.

It's now noon. No sync. I remember talk in irc of bluetooth. This laptop doesn't have bluetooth, but I do have a dongle. I think I'll give that a whirl.

Bluetooth is recognized. Kensington dongle. Pairing is straight forward. Now Google and learn.
hcitool - hidd - lsping - rfcomm - all good stuff.

Bluetooth File Sharing. It's a Gnome thing. Supposed to allow right click nautilus file send to devices. The nautilus part doesn't work. But, if you use the bluetooth applet and right click the applet you can send files that way. Very nice. Jpilot is great for calendar and phonebook, but for files it was lacking.

In Xubuntu and with Thunar, right click bluetooth send to WORKS.

Ok. Bluetooth is a success, now to the usb cable, the Treo, and the Jpilot sync.

Open a terminal and issue the command: tail -f /var/log/messages

Open another tab in the terminal now. In the new window type: sudo modprobe visor

Now plug in device. Initiate the sync; nothing will happen until the sync is initialized. Switch to the first tab and hopefully you will see your device getting recognized and a device assigned. Note the second device, that's the one you need.

Open Jpilot and set that second device in File - Preferences - Settings - Serial Port.

Start the sync on your DEVICE, then hit sync in Jpilot. You should hear the sync tones.

Now we want to make this permanent, so sudo /etc/modules and add
visor to the end of the file.

So what started as a bummer, ended up being a bonus. Learned a little about bluetooth and got bluetooth file sharing to and from my phone working.

Next phone project: Bluetooth Sync.

The greatest peripheral of the season!

On December 13th (great number for future bday parties) our first grandchild(daughter) was born. Welcome to the world, future Linux Chick, Jordyn Taylor.

NJ Lan Party - Games DO Rock!

Ok, so the NJ Ubuntu LoCo was having their Lan/BBQ party in two separate locations; Cherry Hill and Butler, New Jersey; connected by a server setup in Butler.

Having the opportunity to attend for a few hours, I headed over.

I had no intention of playing any games. Rather, I thought I could pursue some technical stuff while there.

My feeling had always been, computers are for computing and game consoles are for gaming. That's it. Done.

I had played games when I was younger, and was very obsessed. Hours spent with the Nintendo Entertainment System and Mario Bros. Even took my photo with the Endgame screen and sent to Nintendo Power magazine! (Still trying to find the photo to scan as proof)

Well, upon my arrival, Randy, Dave, and Joe were already there, and game playing was the only thing on their minds. What the heck, I'll give it a shot. Urban Terror. It was a BLAST. I sucked.

Then, things started to change. The Quigley clan arrived; Bryan and his two brothers. After a brief setup period, the air in the room thickened. Joe became non-responsive, as all his attention and focus was dedicated solely to his laptop. It was on!! The Quig clan was running, jumping, shooting, and sniping; Joe was murdering me from all angles and distances. I sucked worse. Even Harding, who I had only credited with the powers of bash, sed, and awk was fragging the hell out of me. Shit, I was getting killed by a Teddy Bear.

Then we started to play different games modes. The bomb game. I was on the blue team, find and defuse the bomb. At some point, we switched sides; I was so focused on killing RED people that I didn't realize I WAS A RED PERSON. Dossy I am truly sorry that I shot you, my teammate. Repeatedly. Then came the knife fight. Someone called knife fight for the next number of rounds; by the time I figured out how to choose the knife as my weapon, everybody was back to guns. That was like 6 rounds.

Somewhere in all that Lyz and Matt arrived; but honestly the gaming was going too fiercely at that point to really acknowledge their arrival. Plus time was flying, and I had a limited opportunity to play, as I had to get home to help care for my Maltese recovering from knee surgery. Four hours gone in no time.

On the ride home, I connected to the server from the van so I could spectate. As soon as I arrived home, I re-setup, got on irc and tried to entice others to join. Bstempi joined, Bts was still at work. They switched to Armegatron for a bit, so I had to download that and play that also.

Then I put on the headphones. DOH! I could hear footsteps and gunshots and other things that would help me play the game. It didn't. I still sucked. But now I know that sucking does have a sound associated with it! It sounds like bleeding to death.

FOSS - open source - open mind - have fun - I had a BLAST! Thanks everyone.

Ekiga DOES work!!

Wonk wonk wonk. Can you hear me? Wonk wonk wonk. R2? Is that you? Can you hear me now?

Giggles from my wife across the room. Strange looks from my daughter. Welcome to the wonderful world of Geekdom.

For a long time now, off and on; more off, I have been playing with Ekiga for sip Internet calls. It has been terrible. The audio quality has been inaudible.

It all started when I took my wife to the Berlin Mart in Berlin, NJ. She loves marting, and I was passing time in one of the mart stores and noticed the Auvi usb Skype Phone selling for $9.99.

Couldn't pass that up.

Get home, set up Ekiga, plug in the phone and find a victim. See the first two paragraphs of this post; repeat the same for 30 minutes.

Being the hard headed techno fool that I am, I can't let it die there, or admit that new technology can be flawed, so on I push to make this work. Hmm, through diamondcard.us and Ekiga you can purchase time to use your sip phone to call landline phones.

Ahh, that must be the catch. That will make it work better. Get that setup, call my answering machine, my giggling wife across the room, and my own cell phone. That sounds pretty good. Sure it does. :-/

A couple of months go by. Joe Terranova is all bragging about his asterisk system. Not to be out-geeked I pull the usb phone out of the laptop case and ask Joe to hit me up at jedijf@ekiga.net. See first two paragraphs of this blog; repeat for thirty minutes.

Do I need another phone solution? No.

Fast forward to today. Kejava is working on his webcam. Don't know how it happens, don't want or need a webcam solution. I do own 3 webcam devices though. Cheap ones, the dollar store types (at least 2 of them). In the spirit of advocacy, and believing, or being made to believe, that newcomers may want webcams to work in Ubuntu, I begin a new endeavour. Finally, I realize that the my Jazz Digi-Stix does work in Ubuntu. It just has a bad proprietary usb cable. (That's why I have a third, not dollar store type of webcam. My son purchased that one when the cable broke on the Jazz.) At least now I figured out why he bought that webcam, he would never buy anything when he could use my stuff.

Tell Kejava that the webcam is working and the next thing I know, I am getting a sip call on Ekiga from Kejava. After fiddling with the cable and inaudible convo, and much irc chat typing of said non-conversation, Kejava and I have a brief dual video conference call!! Success. Sort of. The sound was still horrible.

Since both of us are relentless geeks, we continued; my video froze, but still, with a usb phone to my ear, typing into irc what I was saying, watching Kejava do the same, we continued this high tech conversation,

Then suddenly, Kejava's sound changed; it sounded normal. "Hey, I turned off 'echo cancellation, you try."

Voila. To make Ekiga work, I mean really work. No more 'wonk, wonk, wonk.'

TURN OFF ECHO CANCELLATION
in the audio codec section of preferences.