Another Blog

Highlighting elements in a Webdriver automated test

2011-11-29T10:54:00.001+09:30

So, you use Selenium 2's Webdriver to automate some unit tests in your C# .NET enterprise web application? Me too. Our list of tests is growing longer and longer, and watching web pages fly by automatically can be amusing - but which element is being looked for, or clicked? Can you highlight the element before Webdriver clicks on it?

Unfortunately a Webdriver IWebElement has a GetAttribute() but not a SetAttribute(). Visual C# Kicks shows us how to extend IWebElement with a SetAttribute method:

public static void SetAttribute(this IWebElement element, string attributeName, string value)
{
    IWrapsDriver wrappedElement = element as IWrapsDriver;
    if (wrappedElement == null)
        throw new ArgumentException("element", "Element must wrap a web driver");

    IWebDriver driver = wrappedElement.WrappedDriver;
    IJavaScriptExecutor javascript = driver as IJavaScriptExecutor;
    if (javascript == null)
        throw new ArgumentException("element", "Element must wrap a web driver that supports javascript execution");

    javascript.ExecuteScript("arguments[0].setAttribute(arguments[1], arguments[2])", element, attributeName, value);
}

But how do you turn that into a highlight?

First, a couple of Click() methods in your base test class:

public void Click(string elementId)
{
    Click(By.Id(elementId));
}
public void Click(By by)
{
    IWebElement element = _driver.FindElement(by);
    element.Highlight();
    element.Click();
}

so we can click on elements a little more simply:

Click("some_id");

instead of

Driver.FindElement(By.Id("some_id")).Click();

and

Click(By.CssSelector("#mainContentContainer_someIdString > span"));

instead of

Driver.FindElement(By.CssSelector("#mainContentContainer_someIdString > span")).Click();

Now in my Click() method you can see element.Highlight(); which is an extention in addition to the SetAttribute() above:

public static void Highlight(this IWebElement element)
{
    const int wait = 150;
    string orig = element.GetAttribute("style");
    SetAttribute(element, "style", "color: yellow; border: 10px solid yellow; background-color: black;");
    Thread.Sleep(wait);
    SetAttribute(element, "style", "color: black; border: 10px solid black; background-color: yellow;");
    Thread.Sleep(wait);
    SetAttribute(element, "style", "color: yellow; border: 10px solid yellow; background-color: black;");
    Thread.Sleep(wait);
    SetAttribute(element, "style", "color: black; border: 10px solid black; background-color: yellow;");
    Thread.Sleep(wait);
    SetAttribute(element, "style", orig);
}

I've just used some plain garish black and yellow so I can spot the change quickly as the tests fly by! Now each element will flash a few times as it is "clicked" by the web test!

Sharing iTunes apps for free

2011-10-15T16:14:00.000+09:30

There are various instructions on sharing iTunes apps between different devices used by different people (linked to different iTunes accounts). I just discovered how to do it without manually copying files between computers, so long as you can enable "Home Sharing" between your various devices.

First, synchronise your device (iPhone, iPad, etc) with iTunes 10.5. Alternatively you can turn on "Automatic Downloads" in Edit > Preferences > Store.
Turn on Home Sharing (Advanced > Turn On Home Sharing) on the computer that has the apps. Enter the username / password (lets call this the "main" account)
Go to your other computer on the same network and turn on home sharing. Enter the credentials of the "main" account to authorise this computer. You will get a message showing you how many computers out of 5 have access to the main account.
Under the SHARED entry on the left you will see "main's library". Click once on this heading and wait for the drop-down arrow to appear, then click on the arrow and you will see Music, Films, TV, Apps, and Playlists. Select Apps and you will see a list of apps purchased by the main account.
Drag and drop apps from the list in the main window into your LIBRARY list on the left
Connect your secondary iPhone / iPod and sync. Now you have any apps purchased by the other user!

The SHARED list in iTunes

You can also share "bidirectionally" but you have to authorise the main account to the second account:

On the main iTunes account click on Store > Authorise this computer
Enter the credentials of the second account
Copy apps from the second account to this one, as above

Sometimes the SHARED entry disappears from the left-hand sidebar. I sometimes have to turn home sharing off and on again to get it back.

This is working between an iPhone 4 with iOS 4x and an iPhone 4S with iOS 5x.

Please post comments here.

Dennis Ritchie

2011-10-14T10:55:00.001+09:30

The tributes to Dennis Ritchie won’t match the river of praise that spilled out over the web after the death of Steve Jobs. But they should.

And then some.

http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2011/10/thedennisritchieeffect/

ASP DX GridView Command Column buttons per-row visibilty

2011-08-10T15:06:00.002+09:30

The DevExpress GridView used for showing a list of data objects has a neat Command Column in which you can put a delete button, or edit button (and others). On clicking this button the related data source event is fired, adding, deleting, or updating the required object.

Command Column showing the Delete button

<dx:ASPxGridView ID="GridView1" runat="server" KeyFieldName="DataObjectId" Settings-ShowFilterRow="true" />
    <Columns>
        <dx:GridViewCommandColumn ButtonType="Image">
            <ClearFilterButton Image-Url="~/Images/Icons/clear_filter.png" Visible="True" />
            <DeleteButton Image-Url="~/Images/Icons/delete.png" Visible="true" />
        </dx:GridViewCommandColumn>

...
    </Columns>
</dx:ASPxGridView>

You can hide the entire command column, or the entire column of delete buttons in your code-behind like so:

GridView1.GetCommandColumn().DeleteButton.Visible = false;

(where GetCommandColumn is a custom extention that searches for the GridViewCommandColumn).

And all the delete buttons are now invisible!

But what if you want to hide a button per-row? Lets say you only wanted to be able to delete Scheduled events, and not Completed ones. You could use the OnHtmlRowCreated event, then find the column index of the command column, then guess at the contorl index of the delete button, like this:

e.Row.Cells[indexColumn].Controls[0].Visible = someTest();

Or you can use a new (since 2009) event called OnCommandButtonInitialize:

<dx:ASPxGridView ID="GridView1" runat="server" KeyFieldName="DataObjectId" Settings-ShowFilterRow="true"
    OnCommandButtonInitialize="GridView1_OnCommandButtonInitialize"/>
    <Columns>
        <dx:GridViewCommandColumn ButtonType="Image">
            <ClearFilterButton Image-Url="~/Images/Icons/clear_filter.png" Visible="True" />
            <DeleteButton Image-Url="~/Images/Icons/delete.png" Visible="true" />
        </dx:GridViewCommandColumn>

...
    </Columns>
</dx:ASPxGridView>

Then create the function in your code:

protected void grdClientReviewsList_OnCommandButtonInitialize(object sender, ASPxGridViewCommandButtonEventArgs e)
        {
            if (e.ButtonType != ColumnCommandButtonType.Delete) return;
            var yourDataObject = (yourDataObjectType)GridView1.GetRow(e.VisibleIndex);
            e.Visible = yourDataObject.Status != StatusType.Completed;
        }

And now you have per-row visibility on command column buttons!

Gridview shoing selective Delete button

See community.devexpress.com for more.

Please go here to post comments.

If only all EULAs were this good!

2011-03-23T09:39:00.000+09:30

I installed some MS fonts in Ubuntu recently, and this is the EULA I was presented with:

If only all EULAs were this good!

A Call Centre for Security Software, Condoms, V, and a Melbourne Pharmacy!

2011-03-17T23:29:00.003+09:30

Wait... what?

I received a phone call today that went something like this. I've had these before, but this time I had some spare time to play. This is the best I can remember, the real phone call went on for nearly 15 minutes, and there was a lot more going around in circles!

Me: Hello?
(Indian) Voice: Good afternoon sir, may I speak with Mr Bootchernaan? [those who know me will recognise my name in there somewhere!]
Me: What about?
Voice: I am calling from Microsoft, and we have detected that your computer is infected with viruses from the information it is sending to us
Me: really?
Voice: yes sir, you computer is infected with viruses and trojans and ...
Me: how do you know this?
Voice: your computer sends us information...
Me: How?

Voice: From the applications installed on Microsoft Windows
Me: Windows? Are you sure?
Voice: Yes sir, your computer sends us logs and it is infected with viruses and trojans and you need to...
Me: Hang on, I'm not running Windows
Voice: What are you running?
Me: You tell me, my computer contacted you.
Voice: [pause] I know that you have a Mac.
Me: Do you?
Voice: Yes sir, you have a Mac.
Me: Are you sure?
Voice: Yes sir, I am sure.
Me: Are you 100% sure?
Voice: What are you running?
Me: You tell me, my computer is contacting you so you should know what I am running
Voice: Your computer is infected.
Me: How do you know?

Voice: [notice the change of tack here] Because I installed viruses on it.
Me: How?
Voice: I hacked into it.
Me: You hacked in? [never heard that one before!]
Voice: Yes sir, I hacked into your system.
Me: oRly? [one eyebrow up] How did you get passed my firewall?
Voice: [pause] Hackers can get passed any firewall and into any system.
Me: You hacked into my system?
Voice: yes.
Me: How? What did you install?
Voice: I installed a virus.
Me: On windows?
Voice: Yes.
Me: I'm not running windows, or Mac
Voice: You said you were running Mac.
Me: No you said I was running Mac.
Voice: No, I said I know you have a Mac, not that you are running Mac.
Me: Right. [struggling to contain the laughter]. What country are you calling from?
Voice: Melbourne.
Me: No you're not, what country are you calling from?
Voice: Victoria [pause] Australia.
Me: No seriously, where are you calling from? I know you're not in Australia.
Voice: I have an Indian accent, but I am working in Melbourne.
Me: Who for?
Voice: Pharmacy.
Me: What Pharmacy.

Voice: [change of tack #2] Do you want to buy some [mumbled]
Me: I beg your pardon?
Voice: Do you want to buy some condoms?
Me: [can't contain the laughter anymore] no thanks, I'm right [damn why couldn't I think of something funnier!]
Voice: Would you like to buy some [the little blue pill, to keep away the searches I'll refer to it as V.]?
Me: No thanks! I don't need it.
Voice: It will help you be more satisfied.
Me: I hope I don't need to use it for at least 30 years
Voice: [pause] 30 years? Did you know men as young as 18 use V?
Me: No, I find that hard to believe.
Voice: [pause - I think he's running out of things to say]
Me: What's a computer company doing selling condoms and V?
Voice: Forget about the computer, I'm not talking about the computer anymore.
Me: But you were talking about computers. If I believed you, how you change the topic to a Pharmacy?
Voice: I said I am not talking about the computer anymore.
Me: Yes, but you were 5 minutes ago. What if I believed you, how would you sell me something? [I assume by directing me to a website that installs nastyware!]
Voice: We just do that to get your attention, we say anything that might get your attention.
Me: Right, so tell me really, where are you calling from?
Voice: I am calling from Melbourne
Me: No you're not. I know you're not in Australia.
Voice: Yes, we use skype [probably referring to the "overseas" message on Caller ID]
Me: So what company in Melbourne?
Voice: Pharmacy.
Me: [what, there's only one?] What's the name?
Voice: [mumble]
Me: I beg your pardon? Could you spell that?
Voice: A-P-O-L-L-O
Me: Oh, Apollo. So if you're really from a company in Melbourne, you would have a registered business number. What's your ABN?
Voice: [pause] 03 [pause] 9018 2436 [sounds like a phone number! I put it into the ABN search but of course it's a fake]

[ok that's as much lies as I want to hear, time to ask some better questions]

Me: So why do you do this? Do you get paid well or just a little bit?
Voice: The pay is good.
Me: Are you paid per hour, or on commission?
Voice: On commission.
Me: Then why haven't you hung up on me? Are you not allowed to hang up?
Voice: You can hang up.
Me: I know I can hang up, why don't you hang up?
Voice: [something about buying condoms again]
Me: seriously, why don't you get a job in a Dell call centre or for some company that does some real technical support?
Voice: We just make the calls we are told to make by our boss.
Me: Don't you think it's bad karma?
Voice: No, we're not doing anything illegal. The company is based in the US, and the call centre is here in... [I swear I could hear him think "India"] Australia. We just do the job we're told to.
Me: Why? Why don't you work somewhere else?
Voice: They pay is very good, it helps support my family [who knows how true that is!]

[this was reaching the 15 minute mark, and I had kids to attend to so I had to go]
Me: Well, I'm sorry but I have to go.
Voice: OK sir.
Me: I hope you'll think about where you're working.
Voice: I will, sir. [yeah right]
Me: Bye.
Voice: Bye.

And that was it. I would have gone longer but I had to watch the kids. I don't really care if he thinks about it or not, but it was a bit of fun. Especially to hear him struggle when I pushed for details about my computer.

The sad thing is, so many people would be taken in by those first few lines...

Facebook readers, if you want to comment, please comment here. Thanks!

Customising Dates in Evolution

2011-01-28T09:14:00.000+09:30

Evolution is Gnome's official email, calendar, contact, & task management software. ie. I use it daily to check my emails.

I've always had a pet peeve with date formats that look like this:

It's fine when I'm thinking about mail relative to today. However, sometimes I have to check for certain emails with regard to the absolute date. For example, "What was all the correspondence to a certain customer on the 21st". I would quickly scan the date column for 21/01/11, and find there isn't any. However the 21st was last Friday, which is shown as "Fri 02:42 PM". There are various reasons why this is not a good thing with regard to efficient human-machine interfaces, however there are also good reasons for a fuzzy date.

Since Linux gives you so much choice (in the right places) it's gratifying to see the option to change the date column to any of a number of presets, or your very own format:

As you can see, I've selected a simple day/month/year format:

Note: the version of Evolution used here is 2.32.1

hop counter

2011-01-27T16:26:00.002+09:30

I was playing with traceroute and felt like "rolling my own" hop counter, so this is what I put together in a few seconds:

for ((i=1;i<21;i++)); do echo -n .; if ping -c 1 -t $i somehost.com >/dev/null 2>&1; then break; fi; done; echo " $i hops"

You'll reasonably quickly see a few dots (especially if the router in question doesn't respond to pings) and a final count. You can of course tweak the options to ping to make it more like traceroute (max wait time, max hops, etc). The output is something like:

.......... 10 hops

Now, for some reason `traceroute` needs superuser access for the ICMP option, and yet you can do the same with ping.

Internet TV... without the internet TV bit.

2010-12-28T00:40:00.000+09:30

So I bought a 32" LED backlit (not LED pixel) LCD Samsung a couple of months ago. It's hard to compare "Internet" TVs because each brand puts their own spin on exactly what "internet" means.

The Samsung series 6 has an Ethernet port, and by default Windows (Vista and higher) detect it and ask if you want to "trust" it or not. The TV detects DLNA servers you might have easily on your network too.

But what about this "internet" claim? When I first bought it, there were some simple internet "apps" that you can choose from and install. Mostly boring stuff from a TV perspective like Google Maps, Picasa, Facebook, Youtube, etc. This is all good but not exactly what I'd call internet "TV".

Today I noticed there were some internet app updates, including Bigpond TV and Twitter. After downloading and running the small updates I ran the Bigpond TV app. A nice video tells me I have to run a software update. About half an hour later the software on the TV is updated from 001014 to 003003. The first thing I noticed is the TV guide updates the screen when loading new EPG data, instead of waiting till the end.

Finally at almost half past midnight I'm looking forward to seeing what Internet TV channels are available, and I'm greeted with "Sorry, we are currently unable to retrieve Time Information. Please call us on ... for help." woot, is that it? No, it appears I can still load the channel list (albeit with no previews).

That is until it locks up because I scroll too fast. Yup, the whole TV has locked up. My faith is partly restored as the watchdog timer kicks in and reboots the TV. However, all Internet TV settings are reset, I have to agree to the copyright and disclaimer again, and now all my apps need updating again.

And now for the commentary: If you want Internet TV to be preferred over a computer, it should be better (easier, faster) than a computer to watch up to date, relevant, live content.

SATA disk beeping

2010-12-08T10:32:00.002+09:30

I've never heard a hard drive beep! Until yesterday.

I just yoinked a free second hand Inspiron 9400 laptop for a media centre, sans disk. I purchased the cheapest SATA 2.5" disk I could find - 320Gb for about $50. I started installing MythBuntu and then the drive started clicking and beeping, and the installation froze! It was the usual crunch of a failing drive with an intermittent "beep" (much like the electrical interference noise you sometimes get in laptops / desktops). The drive worked fine in a USB caddy.

At a complete loss, I turned to the oracle (Google) and found this. Strangely, some drives are sensitive to the 5V power supply (it was the cheapest drive I could find).

Up until then I had been working on battery, so I plugged in the power, rebooted, and the drive worked flawlessly. Hopefully it won't do the same when I loose power...

update: The problem seemed to be getting worse, so I returned the drive under warranty. With the Christmas break I'll have to wait until they get back to me...
update: The drive was returned, and Seagate replaced it under warranty. For the same price I purchased a 320Gb Western Digital Caviar Black 2.5". It is infinitely quieter (I can't hear it with my head pressed to the laptop).

Live and Learn!

WakeOnLan from your Pocket PC

2010-10-06T10:57:00.001+09:30

There are various programs and tips around for those of us who still use Windows Mobile (yes, I don't have an iPhone nor and Android phone...)

I've gathered some tips to set up "Wake on Lan" so you can wake any computer in your house from your mobile/PPC.
I'm assuming you've configured your computers to operate with "Wake on Lan". This is sometimes a bit of magic, so I'm not covering that in this howto.

These steps install a program called WakeOnLan.exe and set up shortcuts to it so you can just click on an icon to start each PC:

Install WakeOnLan from the xda-developers. Just unzip it and put it in "\Program Files\WakeOnLan\WakeOnLan.exe" on your device.
Browse to this location with explorer on your PPC. Select the WakeOnLan executable and click "copy"
Browse to where you want the shortcut to appear:
- "\Windows\Start Menu" will show in your start menu (I use this one)
- "\Windows\Startup" will be run when you reset or power cycle the device
- "\Windows\Programs" will apear in your Start Menu > Programs folder
- "\Windows\Settings" will appear in your system settings
Select on some empty space (not an existing file) in your chosen folder and choose "Paste shortcut"
Use a text editor on Windows / Linux to edit this new file, or one on your device (I didn't have any that would open on my device so I copied it to Linux, edited in emacs, then copied it back)
Edit the line that looks like:
```
40#"\Program Files\WakeOnLan\WakeOnLan.exe"
```
essentially this is a character count, a "#", the location the shortcut points to, and arguments. Add your MAC address like this and take note of the quotes:
```
58#"\Program Files\WakeOnLan\WakeOnLan.exe" AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF
```
count the characters of the shortcut, mac address, and space, then add one. This is your new number (in my case, 58).

An easy way to do this is to use "wc" on Linux:
```
echo "\Program Files\WakeOnLan\WakeOnLan.exe AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF" | wc -c
57
```
(remember to add 1!)

Now you can repeat the process and paste as many different WoL shortcuts as you like! I've made just one and called it "WoL MythTv" to wake up my media centre at home. Neat

Now, what if you don't want to repeat that process all the time? Well there's a program called "WoL Everywhere" that does it all for you. You'll need the .NET Compact Framework 3.5

Thanks to codekingdom and christec.

nvidia, opengl, compositing: play nice!

2010-09-08T10:32:00.001+09:30

I was pleased to see this in the ChangeLog for the nvidia drivers 256.53:

"Fixed a bug that caused extremely slow rendering of OpenGL applications on X screens other than screen 0 when using a compositing manager."

Well that sounds nice. Hands up who runs compiz on an nvidia card with two screens using xinerama? You might notice your GL screensavers run incredibly slow. Here's some examples, for testing I used glmatrix which you might be able to run directly via /usr/lib/misc/xscreensaver/glmatrix.

I have a Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T9500 @ 2.60GHz laptop with an nVidia Quadro FX 1600M, 1920x1200 screen and a second 1920x1200 LCD. I've loaded the new 256.53 nvidia module. Here are the results:

Compositing manager	screen 0	screen 1	Performance
none (gnome + metacity)	glmatrix @ 1920x1200	nothing	FPS: 29 Load: 12%
none (gnome + metacity)	glmatrix @ 1920x1200	glmatrix @ 1920x1200	FPS: 29 (both) Load: 12%
compiz & emerald	glmatrix @ 1920x1200	nothing	FPS: 29 Load: 12%
compiz & emerald	glmatrix @ 1920x1200	glmatrix @ 1920x1200	FPS: 4 (both) Load: 90%
compiz & emerald	nothing	glmatrix @ 1920x1200	FPS: 5 Load: 83%

As you can see, there is little difference between one or two full screen gl effects running without a compositing manager.

However, any effects on the second screen while running compiz is enough to drastically degrade performance.

As a second test, I ran six glmatrix hacks at their default resolution (about 640x480) on screen 0 with and without compiz. The results were the same:
FPS: 14 - 20
Load: 45 - 70%

The Principle of Least Surprise

2010-08-24T11:11:00.001+09:30

An oldie but a goodie.

When you write / design / create, be it a building, a program, a document or something else, try and think what reaction would cause the least amount of surprise to some input (eg. if you walked down a hallway and came to a dead-end, you would probably be surprised, ergo don't design dead-ends into hallways for no reason).

Why then, does the Windows XP "ctrl + alt + del, u" always shutdown straight away, unless there happen to be 50 updates waiting to be installed? Now I'm stuck waiting for half an hour with a dead computer, because the shortcut I always use to shut down has changed from "shut down now" to "install updates and then shut down".

Unable to mount USB

2010-05-04T17:52:00.005+09:30

We learn from history that we learn nothing from history. (You may have noticed my cynical side already).

Xorg is currently going through some changes (again). hal has been deprecated, with some small amount of confusion about what's coming next, especially if you're not running *nix, but some form of BSD for example, since udev is not for BSD'ers, unless I'm mistaken.

Also watch out for your USB media not mounting again in Gnome. If you get the error message "Unable to mount USB. Not Authorized" it may be because of the way you log in (gdm, xdm, nodm, startx) or some other random reason. Here's where to start looking to check it:

Of course make sure you're in the plugdev and disk groups
Check your lockdown editor for FUSE options (enable, ie. unlock them)
Make sure the output from ck-list-sessions is consistent across your log-in methods
Try replacing
/etc/X11/Xsession.d/90consolekit [ubuntu]
or
/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/90-consolekit [gentoo]
with the following:

CK_GET_X11_DISPLAY_DEVICE=/usr/lib/ConsoleKit/ck-get-x11-display-device
CK_LIST_SESSIONS=/usr/bin/ck-list-sessions
CK_LAUNCH_SESSION=/usr/bin/ck-launch-session

if [ -x "$CK_GET_X11_DISPLAY_DEVICE" -a -x "$CK_LIST_SESSIONS" -a -x "$CK_LAUNCH_SESSION" ] ; then
    if [ "$($CK_LIST_SESSIONS | grep "$($CK_GET_X11_DISPLAY_DEVICE)")" = "" ] ; then
        STARTUP="$CK_LAUNCH_SESSION $STARTUP"
    fi
fi

Of course, back up first. Then log out and back in again.

Try adding the following to ~/.xinitrc :
export XDG_MENU_PREFIX=gnome-exec ck-launch-session gnome-session

Thanks to bugs.launchpad.net and the Gentoo forums

Gentoo... improving?!

2010-03-25T12:19:00.002+09:30

There's been lots of talk in the past about Gentoo dying. I won't provide the links - they're (usually) useless and uneducated non-Gentooers trying to play fortune teller. From the "inside" perspective of a user, I still use Gentoo and it still works.

So following on from the comments on a previous post about some network control tools, a user commented on a Summer of Code project to improve Network Manager integration in Gentoo.

As I was browsing through the 2010 ideas, I realised there are some quite neat ideas here which will continue to keep Gentoo configurable, fast, and leading edge. Such as tags support for portage; Fastboot and Upstart for 5 to 10 second boot times; Dracut (the "distro-neutral initrd framework"); even an ebuild generator; and Visual Gentoo to graphically edit Gentoo configuration files. (OK this last one, it could be argued, was leading edge a long time ago, but then it could also be argued that text-based configuration files are the one true way!)

There's even some nice Council support goodness tabled. Anything to help the council, young Padawan!

Let's hope lots of you SOC young'uns get going and support these projects.

So I finish by saying Gentoo: "It's not dead".

Western Digital Passport - now with 50% less hackability!

2010-03-21T22:09:00.001+09:30

I have a Western Digital My Passport here from a friend. It's been dropped, and it's making clicking noises (uh-oh). I'm trying to see if it's recoverable, so I thought I'd remove the disk and plug it directly onto the motherboard.

After I read a couple of success stories I thought it would be simple. At least I'd have a free SATA to USB converter if all else failed. I removed the case and to my surprise WD is now manufacturing the drives with the USB port directly on the (non-removable) hard disk board.

Don't try and tell me this is necessary, the only reason I can see is to stop people (such as myself) re-using the drive in a computer, or using the enclosure with an upgrade / replacement.

I can't speak for your specific My Passport, but here are the details of this one for the Googlers:
P/N: WDBAAC5000ACH-00
S/N: WX80AB962763
R/N: C0B

The serial number is the same as the internal drive. This drive is stamped with the date 03 Dec 2009.

If you haven't bought a WD yet, don't expect to be able to replace the internal drive with a generic one!

NetworkManager vs wicd vs wpa_gui

2010-03-20T13:23:00.004+09:30

Due to some idle time* a couple of weeks ago, here's a quick comparison between a few network control tools for Linux.

These tools all give you some sort of network control from the Desktop - a service traditionally provided by daemons and initialisation scripts. The problem with that is roaming - it's much more common nowadays to have a laptop travel between multiple access points (Ethernet, 802.11, wireless broadband...) and many of the tasks can be automated. So what better way to use a point-and-click approach.

The three competitors, and here's how they compare by features:

Tool	802.11 (wireless) control	ethernet control	mobile broadband control	VPN control	dbus notification
NetworkManager	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes
wicd	yes	yes	no	planned for 2.0	no
wpa_gui	yes	no	no	no	no

Personally I use NetworkManager. I use all types of network control, and the dbus notification tells my mail client to go offline as soon as the network in not available. (Previously I would have to wait for my mail client to time out).

This is not saying that you should use NetworkManager too - find the list of features you require and use the appropriate tool.

Be warned: NetworkManager, while feature rich, is polarising the community - either it works and you love it, or it doesn't work and you hate it. There is a common wireless connect-disconnect issue which seems to be caused by various different problems. I see it at work but not at home. According to one dev, it's buggy kernel drivers, but that doesn't explain why it works for me in some places but not others on the same laptop. YMMV!

*My development laptop provided by customer A is locked out of their domain - stupid windows! My employer only has the this job for me right now, so I have to wait until they resolve the problem...

Electronically, my dear Wattson

2010-03-20T10:15:00.002+09:30

I just borrowed a Wattson Power Meter from a friend at work, and while there's nothing special about power meters, the good folks at DIY Kyoto have put a nice touch on this one. [Standard disclaimer: I don't work for them and I haven't received any incentives from them either!]

There has been a trend of wireless power meters for the home, so they can be easily adapted to the consumer market. They solve the problem of running wires around your house - you put the sensor (or current transducer or CT) in your meter box or on a specific appliance, and the display goes somewhere convenient. Wattson has the opportunity to connect 4 CTs: 3 for 3 phases and one for renewable monitoring, or in any other configuration.

But Why? Well there were numerous reasons for me, everyone is different:

Firstly I wanted to see how much my 60L camping fridge cost to run on electricity (it runs on LPG, 240V AC or 12V DC). It turns out it draws less than 100W continuous, which would cost about $160/year on our current tariff (if I calculate correctly). That's assuming the fridge is running full time, but it has a thermostat so the actual cost will depend on the ambient temperature.

Secondly, I have a "solar aware" dishwasher. Essentially it has a thermostat as well to measure the water temperature. If you have solar hot water, you connect the hot pipe (instead of the usual cold) to the dishwasher and it doesn't use it's internal electric heater. I wanted to see if it was cost effective to pay for a plumber to put in a hot feed (and a tap for those cloudy days so I still have warm showers).

I connected Wattson, and turned on the dishwasher (full of dishes of course!). It used about 50W at first, for the actuators I assume. Then about 200W as the water filled and the "sprinklers" started. Well, 200 Watts is nothing I thought. But about 10 minutes in the heater started. The power jumped up to 1.6kW!! That's more than my split system air-conditioner! Luckily it only ran like this for about 20 minutes, but still that's a decent heater!

I calculate about $54 per year just for the dishwasher heater (I can't save the costs of the other actions of the dishwasher - unless I have solar power too!). So it looks like a plumber wouldn't be very cost effective. I'm probably looking at an $80 call out fee plus an hours labour and parts. Close to $200, which would take four years to pay back!

The final stage is to connect Wattson to my meter box, and watch the total energy consumption of my home. Just from today (Saturday with the whole family home) we use about 500W without airconditioners on, and about 3kW with them on! It was interesting to see the different appliances turn on and off (fan - 80W, washing machine - 300W, microwave - 2000W).

Wattson provides a few weeks of storage built-in, and there is software called Holmes (yes, Holmes and Wattson). Holmes is flash based, for Windows or Mac only. Luckily Wattson uses and FTDI usb-serial connection, so it shouldn't be impossible to get some data in Linux. I'll keep you posted with my success!

Syslinux from Linux!

2010-02-05T14:33:00.002+09:30

This post tells you how to launch syslinux from a Master Boot Record (MBR).

Recently I was locked out of a customer-provided laptop with their development environment, and access to their source code repository via vpn. I suspect their domain controller propagated an update last time I was on the vpn which has locked me out.

They're overseas and about 12 hours flight time away, so with their permission I used ntpasswd to reset the Administrator password. The boot CD (downloadable as an iso) uses syslinux, which is fine, except that instead of wasting CD-Rs I like to use USB keys.

I copied the contents to a blank FAT32-formatted usb key, but it has no boot sector yet. I installed grub and tried to make a grub menu file from the syslinux.cfg with these tips for converting a syslinux .cfg file to a grub .conf file. I failed because the syslinux.cfg has the line:


 append rw vga=1 initrd=initrd.cgz,scsi.cgz

And I don't know how to append the two cgz's into one grub initrd line. Normally grub uses an initrd like this:


 initrd /initrd.cgz

So I decided to install syslinux from linux. The man page makes it look easy:


 syslinux [-sfr] [-d directory] [-o offset] device

When I ran "syslinux /dev/sdd1" and booted the laptop with this usb key, it just gave me a blank cursor blink. This is because the laptop is looking in the MBR of the usb key and finding nothing. The syslinux man page shows some hints:

Booting from a FAT partition on a hard disk
SYSLINUX can boot from a FAT filesystem partition on a hard disk
(including FAT32). The installation procedure is identical to the pro-
cedure for installing it on a floppy, and should work under either DOS
or Linux. To boot from a partition, SYSLINUX needs to be launched from
a Master Boot Record or another boot loader, just like DOS itself
would. A sample master boot sector (mbr.bin) is included with SYSLINUX.

Well, that's nice to know, but how do I put that on my usb key? Follow these steps:

1. Start with a FAT32 formatted usb key (it can have other data on it) and some syslinux-based boot image. I'm using the latest ntpasswd iso cd080802. Unpack the contents to the root of the usb key.

2. Copy a boot sector to the code image of the MBR of your to-be-booted usb key:
sudo dd if=/usr/share/syslinux/mbr.bin of=/dev/sdd bs=440 count=1

/dev/sdd is my usb key
Look at Wikipedia for an explanation of the MBR layout
your mbr.bin might be in a different location. It should come installed with syslinux

3. Run syslinux to make the partition bootable:


 sudo syslinux /dev/sdd1

4. Mark the partition as bootable (may not be necessary)


 sudo fdisk /dev/sdd

Select a, 1, w to make the first partition bootable. CHECK THESE OPTIONS FIRST!

5. Insert USB key to your PC / laptop and boot (so long as your BIOS is setup and capable!)

How dumb is Slashdot?

2010-01-29T08:12:00.001+09:30

OK that title is a bit provocative. I enjoy reading Slashdot as much as the next guy, and I'd always laughed at the comments about Slashdot readers being dumb, but this post got me rolling my eyes in frustration: "2 Displays and 2 Workspaces With Linux and X?"

The OP asks about buying a second monitor and setting up two screens - one large desktop or separate X screens. Firstly, I would expect a question like this from an Ubuntu noob, followed by lots of answers like RTFM, Google it, see this FAQ, etc.

However on Slashdot, there are so many people who still don't realise that one large desktop doesn't mean windows have to maximise to two screens. So few people seem to know about xinerama and yet they're still giving advice! Someone said that "Windows 7's easy dual monitor setup lets you maximise to one window - can Linux do that?" (sheesh, only for years now...)

Slashdot users have some fantastic, intersting, and informative posts. Unfortunately, unlike a regular email list where only the people who might actually know the answer reply, everybody on Slashdot wants to reply.

Quad Erat Rant-astrandum!

Firefox Personas

2010-01-29T00:42:00.000+09:30

Firefox Persona's - inevitable Bling Bling or worthwhile (but still Bling Bling)?

If you don't know what I'm talking about, I just upgraded Mozilla Firefox to version 3.6. The what's new? page is different this time. Instead of the usual congratulations, security notes and links, I'm greeted with "Thanks for supporting Mozilla’s mission of encouraging openness, innovation and opportunity on the Web!" and "Choose Your Persona".

If you mouse-over any of the "persona" thumbnails, Firefox's theme changes dynamically. Cool. Note only that but there's been quite a bit of design effort into making these personas look sleek, integrated, and elegant.

From This

To This!

I would be happy with the old Netscape look for years to come (why did they need to keep changing the logo anyway?) but I guess the iPod yungun's of today are attracted to shiny silver objects, and that goes for the software world too. In the age of "I'll buy anything new from Apple just because it's cool" it's inevitable that Firefox adds some chrome!

Emerge multiple packages at once

2010-01-28T15:28:00.000+09:30

You may or may not already know about this feature, but you can emerge multiple packages at once in Gentoo. If you have any semi-recent machine (2 years old or newer) you should definitely be using it.

Being source based - and hence compiling everything before you install it - any build time speed improvements are welcome. We already have the -j option which can be passed to make via make.conf:

MAKEOPTS="-j3"

Various sources say to set this number j = N(CPU) + 1 or j = 2N(CPU) + 1. I find the former is sufficient.

But what about configure? Before you compile a package, you have to configure it, which typically can only use one CPU. In addition there are other operations that are disk-intensive while not being CPU intensive (for instance, unpacking source code). And finally some packages are just "broken" and internally set -j1.

So it would be nice to build (unrelated) packages simultaneously. While one configure script is running, another could be compiling, further utilising those MeGaHurTz you paid so dearly for! Recently I tested this for the first time. I ran emerge like so:

$ emerge -vauDN --jobs=2 world

After looking through the output, this is how it proceeds:

Total: 70 packages (66 upgrades, 1 new, 3 reinstalls, 3 uninstalls), Size of downloads: 0 kB
Conflict: 23 blocks
Portage tree and overlays:
 [0] /usr/portage
 [1] /usr/local/portage

>>> Verifying ebuild manifests
>>> Starting parallel fetch
>>> Emerging (1 of 70) x11-libs/qt-xmlpatterns-4.6.1
>>> Emerging (2 of 70) sys-devel/binutils-2.20
>>> Jobs: 0 of 70 complete, 2 running               Load avg: 5.56, 2.53, 1.67

And just to prove that two packages are emerging:

$ genlop -c

 Currently merging 2 out of 70

 * sys-devel/binutils-2.20 

       current merge time: 1 minute and 27 seconds.
       ETA: less than a minute.

 Currently merging 1 out of 70

 * x11-libs/qt-xmlpatterns-4.6.1 

       current merge time: 1 minute and 28 seconds.
       ETA: less than a minute.

A little while later, my load average settles down around 4.8:

>>> Installing (18 of 70) dev-python/pytz-2010b
>>> Installing (16 of 70) x11-libs/qt-script-4.6.1
>>> Emerging (19 of 70) dev-util/subversion-1.6.9
>>> Emerging (20 of 70) dev-lang/python-2.6.4-r1
>>> Jobs: 17 of 70 complete, 1 running              Load avg: 4.84, 4.84, 3.94

You may come across some packages that are interactive, such as skype, which forces you to view and accept their EULA. In that case the concurrent jobs are disabled. If you wish to go ahead with all non-interactive jobs (a good idea!) run emerge like so:

$ emerge -vauDN --jobs=2 --accept-properties=-interactive world

Note this feature is not supported in older versions of portage. I tested with sys-apps/portage-2.1.7.16

Listing packages installed from overlays

2010-01-28T13:45:00.000+09:30

Gentoo provides an official package repository, and the mechanism for creating third-party repositories, called overlays. Overlays can be home-made, developer-made, community-made, you name it!

It occurred to me that I wanted to list all installed packages that come from overlays. (I'm doing some house cleaning, so I'm removing overlays I don't need anymore). There appears to be no way to generate this list via equery (the "gentoolkit" method of doing various package queries).

This one-liner should do the trick.

$ for i in /var/db/pkg/*/*; do if ! grep gentoo $i/repository >/dev/null; then echo -e "`basename $i`\t`cat $i/repository`"; fi; done

The output of which looks (only slightly messy) like:
revoco-0.5    Orpheus Local Overlay
synce-gvfs-0.3.1    SynCE
synce-serial-9999    SynCE
synce-trayicon-0.14    SynCE
nautilussvn-0.12_beta1-r2    Orpheus Local Overlay
evolution-data-server-2.28.2    Orpheus Local Overlay
gnome-hearts-0.3    Orpheus Local Overlay
nautilus-python-0.5.1    rion
nautilussvn-0.12_beta1_p2    Orpheus Local Overlay
mozilla-thunderbird-bin-3.0_beta2    Orpheus Local Overlay
libgii-1.0.2    Orpheus Local Overlay
grub-0.97-r9    rion
usb-rndis-lite-0.11    SynCE
xorg-server-1.7.4    Orpheus Local Overlay

You can see here that I have various packages installed from the SynCE overlay, the rion overlay and my homespun "Orpheus" overlay.

It assumes your overlay was set up correctly with the file profiles/repo_name containing the overlay name, at the time of install (not available in earlier versions of portage).

When Dell Doesn't Deliver

2010-01-27T15:26:00.000+09:30

I've never had a "bad" experience from Dell (Australia) with the exception of the outsourced sometimes hard-to-understand technical support. So it is interesting to watch what happens when Dell doesn't deliver the way they promise.

Here's the sequence of events. For the record, I do not and have never worked for Dell, nor do I receive any free or discounted goods or services from them.

14 April 2008

Ordered Dell Precision M6300 laptop including a Logitech MX Revolution cordless laser mouse with CompleteCover Guard and Next Business Day Onsite warranty.

November 2009

The mouse stopped charging (charging light flashes red when placed on charger). I didn't do anything at the time since I was busy.

12 January 2010

My first contact with Dell about the mouse. Was transferred from their usual warranty number (Indian speaker) to the "premium" warranty area (Australian speaker). Was told a new mouse would be here in 2 days.

18 January 2010

Received email from TNS requesting I complete a survey regarding my recent call.
Completed the survey on the same day. I noted in one of the survey questions that the issue was "unresolved" since I had not received the replacement part

<= 22 January 2010

Decided to call Dell again to find out about the mouse. Warranty told me that the part had not been sent, and it would have to be handled by Logitech. They transferred me to Logitech who took details of the mouse and told me to expect a new one up to two weeks later.

27 January 2010

Received a call from Dell regarding the survey I completed. The caller asked if I had received the part, and offered to get the original person ("Nick") to look into it. He asked if I had a mouse to use in the mean time (I said yes).

27 January 2010

Received a call from Nick from Dell. He asked about the part and said he would check with Logitech and get back to me.

27 January 2010

The mouse arrived in the afternoon! I called Dell to let them know they could stop looking for it!

So it took 9 days to respond to the survey. The replacement mouse was here in around one week, although not in the next business day as the warranty implied. But then, it was an accessory and not a typical spare component of the laptop.

And in case you're wondering about the Gold Phone Technical Support, apparently it's the difference between speaking to someone in India vs someone in Austrlia. The "Pro" warranty personnel even answers the phone "This is <name> in Sydney".

Unlocking Zimbra Advanced Searches

2010-01-12T14:37:00.001+09:30

Hi and welcome to 2010! This year I plan to blog more, read more, do more, learn more, and have more time left over...

This is a quick post to tell you how to do some nice advanced searching in Zimbra - the webmail client.

In your Zimbra interface, select Preferences then General.
Under the Searches heading, select Show advanced search language in search toolbar.
Save and go back to Mail.
In the Search box, select the Advanced link
Choose some options (my favourite is status:unread; status:flagged; and time is today)
By default this ORs some and ANDs the result with others, giving you a very small set of results:
((is:flagged) OR (is:unread)) date:-0day
Edit the search string and replace everything with OR, and change 0day to 1day:
(is:unread) OR (is:flagged) OR (date:-1day)

You will now have a very powerful search, that gives you a quick summary of all todays messages, plus any unread or marked message from the beginning of time!
Save the search, and you can access it at any later time. Note that other preferences such as the sorted-by column is also saved with this search.

Well that sounds easy enough! Why can't other email clients do the same thing? Evolution's advanced search folders were unmatched until I discovered this..

Claws has no advanced cross-folder search that is persistent across instances of the application.

Thunderbird 3.0b2 (the last I played with) has persistent search folders, but they can't pull in related emails (up or down the thread) like evolution can.

Evolution is equipped to handle my business and personal email accounts:

I have thousands of emails in multiple pop and imap accounts. I have no choice but to separate my multiple work and home accounts like this.
I have some folders with thousands of emails each, dating back years, which helps with long projects, contracts, and a bad memory!
I need some way to keep track of important emails, and at the same time see and sort new emails

Evolution can handle large folders with thousands of emails each. It can of course filter messages based on mailing lists, subjects, sender and even run an external application test over an email. I've mentioned it's search folder goodness, and it has powerful quick-searches too that can search the current folder or account.

Goodbye comment spam!

2009-12-03T13:31:00.000+09:30

I don't know whether to count myself privileged or unlucky, but spammers have now started comment spamming by blog! I guess this is one of those annoying rights-of-passage.

I noticed a trend where they first post something simple like "I really enjoyed reading this post about <random word from blog>, thankyou". Since allowing a few of thoses, I'm now getting 6 or so spams a day.

I first turned on comment verification for posts older than 14 days, but that just means I get the comment spam in my inbox.

So I've now turned on captcha's (or "word verification" as Google's blogger calls it) so let's hope that reduces the spam.

If you're interested, the setting is in "Settings > Comments" called "Show word verification for comments?". Choose "yes" and save.

Hallo from Germany!

2009-11-26T03:33:00.002+09:30

I'm in Nurnberg at the SPC/IPC/Drives fair this week! Great weather, great people, great service! Germany is the land of automation - from toilets to bars, there's some level of automation everywhere.

I also like the public toilets - €0.50 to get in (refundable on a purchase from the nearby shops) however the toilets are high-quality 5-star and CLEAN! (Of course with automatic taps, flushers, etc). And some pipe rainforest sounds as well... I'd happily pay 50c to use a clean public toilet in Australia.

Anyway, it's great to see all the manufacturers that I couldn't access in Australia, under one roof (or 10 roofs actually). I've been able to get access to some of the head developers for PLCs and IPCs and ask them detailed questions that Australian distributors have no clue about.

I even bumped into Manfred Werner (not realising it was him until we swapped business cards) because he happened to be standing at the CoDeSys front desk. I was able to ask him about the future of CoDeSys and the integration of a C compiler. Needless to say they're not considering it right now, but the Matlab code generation topic has been raised with them a lot recently, so they're thinking...

Well, the days are short, the weather is a refreshing "cool", and I'm looking forward to the Christmas Market (Christkindlesmarkt) on my only day off. So Guten Tag!

Extracting CAB files for Windows Mobile without ActiveSync

2009-08-26T21:59:00.003+09:30

I received an old bluetooth GPS that I write about here. To install the software, I simply had a Windows (not mobile) executable. I don't have Windows and ActiveSync installed, so how do I go about getting the contents out of the executable and onto my Windows Mobile phone?

In most cases it's quite easy! Here are some tips:

Try 1: Is a plain CAB alternative offered?

This may seem obvious to some, but check if the software is offered in two forms - as a Windows executable, and a plain CAB file download. Browse around the website or CDs for files ending in .CAB

Try 2: Is it a self-extracting zip file?

This is the easiest form of executable! Zip files can be made "self extracting" by containing both executable code and the embedded zip structure. To find out (from Linux, Unix, BSD etc) just run an incantation of zip that understands dos-based PKZIP archives, such as info-zip. (You may have this version of zip already).

info-zip comes with zipinfo which lists information about zip files. In my case, the TomTom executable is called navupd521.exe

$ zipinfo navupd521.exe
Archive:  navupd521.exe   4409856 bytes   5 files
-rw-a--     2.0 ntf  4762417 b- defN 16-Jan-06 13:17 setup.apk
-rw-a--     2.0 ntf       81 t- defN 23-Feb-05 23:28 cp.txt
-rwxa--     2.0 ntf  2498560 b- defN 16-Nov-05 15:49 setup.exe
-rw-a--     2.0 ntf        0 t- stor 24-Feb-05 11:05 TomTom Update.cid
-rw-a--     2.0 ntf       22 t- stor 11-Jul-05 08:54 ttn.txt
5 files, 7261080 bytes uncompressed, 4377788 bytes compressed:  39.7%

If you see a list of files, then the executable is understood by zip. But alas! there's no CAB files in here. Unless they're in that setup.exe...

$ unzip navupd521.exe
Archive:  navupd521.exe
inflating: setup.apk          
inflating: cp.txt             
inflating: setup.exe          
extracting: TomTom Update.cid  
extracting: ttn.txt            
$ ls
cp.txt         setup.apk  TomTom Update.cid
navupd521.exe  setup.exe  ttn.txt
$ zipinfo setup.exe
[setup.exe]
End-of-central-directory signature not found.  Either this file is not
a zipfile, or it constitutes one disk of a multi-part archive.  In the
latter case the central directory and zipfile comment will be found on
the last disk(s) of this archive.
zipinfo:  cannot find zipfile directory in one of setup.exe or
      setup.exe.zip, and cannot find setup.exe.ZIP, period.

And here's the end of the line! The setup.exe file is not a zip archive (even though they sometimes are called setup.exe).

Try 3: Temporary files

Use wine to start the install process, and look for temporary files.

In my case, when I run wine navupd521.exe:

While the TomTom installer is complaining that your computer does not support the device blahblah or somesuch rubbish, look for a directory in <>/windows/temp that wasn't there before. If necessary, create an index of all the files in your wine c drive before you run the installer. Then do it again with the installer running, then check for differences. There should be a temporary file or directory somewhere!
copy the entire directory (for TomTom that's "<.wine>/drive_c/windows/temp/WZSE0.TMP/") to somewhere safe
Exit the installer, and search for CAB files in the directory you just copied.
For TomTom you will find:
WZSE0.TMP/pocketpc/tomtom.cab
WZSE0.TMP/pocketpc/ttn.cab
WZSE0.TMP/palmos/navigator.CAB
Choose the right CAB file matching your device by name or directory. I'm going with the pocketpc directory for my pocketpc!

Now all that's left is to copy the CAB files to your device using bluetooth, USB, or storage card; then select them in Windows Mobile to start the install.

(This example is for the TomTom Navigator 5 December 2005 update. After installing your original TomTom Navigator, run these CAB files to update to the new version)

And that's how you can get CAB files without Windows!

What do do with a bluetooth GPS

2009-08-25T21:02:00.006+09:30

I received a bluetooth GPS, by TomTom, which came with TomTom Navigator 5.

It installs on my O2 Windows Mobile 5, it pairs, it works, but there are no maps for Australia. It is, after all, from 2005.

(I've made some notes on extracting and installing CAB files in Linux without ActiveSync, which you might be interested in).

I've searched for map downloads, but as far as I can tell, they're not available for Australia for this version of Navigator. Nor are TeleAtlas maps, which are supposedly compatible.

So the question is: What do I do with this bluetooth GPS? It works fine with my phone, and no doubt would work with my laptop. I don't want Google Maps, because it doesn't give voice guided directions, nor does it allow you to download maps. (You have to be within range of a 3G tower at all times).

I would have liked a voice-guided navigator for my mobile, but I can't find one. Nor do I want to hack or download the latest Tomtom Navigator, or equivalent.

Your suggestions please! The more unusual the better! Duct tape required! Perhaps a GPS-aware back to base alarm for my car? You think of something...

Ideas so far:

Download a compatible program and create data for OpenStreetMap. (OpenStreetMap is creating a royalty free and open GPS street map of the world, but they need GPS data). I could permanently mount my GPS and phone in the car, and upload the data from time to time.

The only problem is Yahoo has provided some free data already which covers most of the city I live in...
Sell it (no box, CD's, used condition, I might get $20USD...)
(Waiting for idea #3)

Dell Inspiron 9100 infra red port

2009-08-12T21:22:00.004+09:30

My old Dell laptop has a built-in infra red port on the front. In the 4 or more years that I've had it, I've had no need for the port.

Now that it is becoming my (MythTV) media centre, the infra red port becomes useful! Here are the steps I used to get it working. I had some small hassle with the built-in serial port driver taking over.

First, make sure it's enabled in the BIOS, and take note of the serial port it's attached to.

There are no other serial ports on this laptop, so anything that looks like a serial port is likely to be the infra red port.
I used lirc to receive and configure the port.

In Gentoo enable the lirc global USE flag (global means put it in make.conf because many programs can make use of it). Also add this line to make.conf:
LIRC_DEVICES="sir"

In other distros, you have to somehow build the sir driver.

Also add the lirc USE flags hardware-carrier and transmitter. You can do this in /etc/make.conf, or better use /etc/portage/package.use, or better still, make package.use a directory, and add the file /etc/portage/package.use/lirc-20090806 with the contents:
app-misc/lirc hardware-carrier transmitter

(You can of course make any-named file in /etc/portage/package.use)
(re)compile! This includes lirc, MythTV, mplayer and anything else that might be able to take advantage of your new lirc USE flag.

In Gentoo, you could use the command:
emerge --update --newuse --deep world
to find and rebuild all packages that have changed USE flags.
Now you need to load the lirc module. For com1, run this command:
modprobe lirc_sir io=0x2f8 irq=3 threshold=5

options lirc-sir io=0x2f8 irq=3 threshold=5
Also add this line to remove any conflicts:
install lirc_sir setserial /dev/ttyS0 uart none; modprobe --ignore-install lirc_sir

Make sure you run update-modules; then unload and reload the lirc_sir module after any changes to lirc.conf
Test your configuration with mode2. Run mode2 as root and then press buttons on a remote. You should see some output like
pulse 591 space 96900 pulse 9042 space 2277 pulse 591 space 96900 pulse 9042 space 2273 pulse 594 space 96901 pulse 9042 space 2274 pulse 593

If not, make sure you've unloaded any serial related module. Check dmesg after loading the lirc module to make sure your hardware is recognised:
$ dmesg | grep lirc_sir lirc_sir: I/O port 0x03e8, IRQ 4. lirc_sir: Installed.
You're almost there! Now you can download remote codes from the LIRC website, or make your own with irrecord. I made my own, since my remote wasn't there.

Copy the remote code file to /etc/lircd.conf

Leave the /etc/conf.d/lircd blank or all commented out if you have the same hardware

Start lircd: /etc/init.d/lircd

And that should be that!

Many thanks to:

The LIRC project website
The Gentoo wiki LIRC guide
This Data Current blog post by Boian Berberov

SynCE 0.14 updates

2009-08-05T16:51:00.004+09:30

SynCE 0.14 ebuilds are now available in the overlay for all SynCE packages. (See the instructions here for details)

You should have no trouble compiling and installing (of course, let someone know if you do!)

Most of the SynCE problems seem to come from configuring and using (or trying to). So before you report any bugs, please try these steps. Note: this is a short summary! Please read the SynCE wiki for full instructions.

First verify you have version 0.14 of everything, using eix, equery, genlop or whatever.
Backup all your Contacts, Calendar, Tasks and Files. (I use Sprite Backup that came with my Treo Pro). This is important as Windows Mobile 6 will delete all data associated with a deleted partnership.
Remove the multisync group (your command may vary)
$ msynctool --delgroup synce-sync
Remove the partnership
$ delete_partnership.py
Delete the ~/.opensync and ~/.synce directories (copy any local config files first)
$ rm -rf ~/.opensync ~/.synce/*
Create a new partnership (change the name and objects to synchronise)
$ create_partnership.py "TreoPro" "Calendar"
Create a new opensync group, and add members (alter members to suit your needs)
$ msynctool --addgroup synce-sync $ msynctool --addmember synce-sync evo2-sync $ msynctool --addmember synce-sync synce-opensync-plugin $ msynctool --showgroup synce-sync
If these steps fail, check the output from --listplugins
$ msynctool --listplugins Available plugins: evo2-sync synce-opensync-plugin testmodule

If you upgrade sys-apps/hal to >= 0.5.13 (which is now in ~x86) you will have to compile synce-hal again. This is because the hal scripts directory has changed, and synce-hal only detects this at install-time.

Errors similar to https://www.opensync.org/ticket/1131 were fixed for me by following the steps above.

Let me know of your success / failure. SynCE 0.14 will be in portage in the fullness of time!

Artec DVB USB in Linux

2009-07-28T21:19:00.004+09:30

So I unboxed my Artec TV tuner card, now I have to get it working!

You need firmware and kernel modules. You can download the firmware for it here:
http://www.wi-bw.tfh-wildau.de/~pboettch/home/files/dvb-usb-dib0700-1.20.fw

Use wget or some way of getting it. Then move the file to /lib/firmware.

You also need the v4l-dvb kernel drivers (compatible with kernel 2.6.16 and up). In Gentoo, emerge media-tv/v4l-dvb-hg. Other distributions have instructions here.

Now insert the card. udev will handle loading the correct modules. My syslog output looks like this:

usb 1-3: Product: ART7070
usb 1-3: Manufacturer: Ultima
usb 1-3: SerialNumber: 001
usb 1-3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
dvb-usb: found a 'Artec T14BR DVB-T' in cold state, will try to load a firmware
usb 1-3: firmware: requesting dvb-usb-dib0700-1.20.fw
dvb-usb: downloading firmware from file 'dvb-usb-dib0700-1.20.fw'
dib0700: firmware started successfully.
dvb-usb: found a 'Artec T14BR DVB-T' in warm state.
dvb-usb: will pass the complete MPEG2 transport stream to the software demuxer.
DVB: registering new adapter (Artec T14BR DVB-T)
DVB: registering adapter 0 frontend 0 (DiBcom 7000PC)...
DiB0070: successfully identified
input: IR-receiver inside an USB DVB receiver as /class/input/input7
dvb-usb: schedule remote query interval to 50 msecs.
dvb-usb: Artec T14BR DVB-T successfully initialized and connected.

Look for a line similar to dib0700: firmware started successfully. If you see Cannot find firmware file then make sure you downloaded the firmware properly, and check your system's firmware directory. Also check the firmware file name, as it might want a slightly different firmware file.

That's it! From there I plugged in an antenna, loaded MythTV, and watched some HD TV!

SynCE 0.14 in Gentoo

2009-07-28T12:33:00.002+09:30

I just tested app-pda/synce-gvfs-0.3 in Gentoo with gnome-base/gvfs-1.2.3. This is the first ebuild for the SynCE 0.14 release (announcement here), and it's available in the SynCE overlay.

synce-gvfs works without upgrading other SynCE components to 0.14. For me, it fixes a gvfs crash when trying to copy files off your device.

Comments welcome :) The rest of SynCE 0.14 will happen eventually :)

Artec USB DVB-T tuner card

2009-07-28T12:20:00.006+09:30

I just purchased the Artec T14BR HD DVB-T TV tuner dongle for turning my old laptop into a MythTV box. It cost $46.90 including GST and postage from Deals Direct.

I now have a High Def set top box, with 80Gb hard drive for (essentially) $46.90. And if I want to make it a twin tuner HD STB, it's just another $46.90.

Here is the picture of the box:

And here are all the contents (note, no aerial, but I knew that):

And finally a close up of the interesting stuff:

The dongle has a window on either side, presumable for the IR reciever in the middle somewhere.

Support for Linux is supposedly good (stay tuned, haha!). lsusb identifies it as "Bus 001 Device 025: ID 05d8:810f Ultima Electronics Corp." The syslog output when I plug it in looks like this:

usb 1-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 25
usb 1-3: New USB device found, idVendor=05d8, idProduct=810f
usb 1-3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
usb 1-3: Product: ART7070
usb 1-3: Manufacturer: Ultima
usb 1-3: SerialNumber: 001
usb 1-3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice

This isn't "the" laptop, so I don't have any drivers installed for it, hence that's all for now.

I'll let you know how it works in my next post.

Hey you! Follow my Blog! (please?)

2009-07-13T21:15:00.004+09:30

A huge thanks to the many visitors to my blog each month. I've made a few changes to my blog to make it a bit more interactive.

Now you can "follow" this blog and see an image cloud of other followers. Just click on the "Follow" button to the right.

Also, I've added "reactions" below each post. They're easier than comments, and it offers a way to give me some quick feedback (like "cool", or "shut up!").

So please try it out, For Great Justice. (or not, it's up to you :)

Broadcom BCM4306 wireless LAN without ndiswrapper

2009-07-11T12:52:00.003+09:30

I've been updating an old laptop as you might have read.

Last night I tried to start the wireless LAN, but too many kernel upgrades had obsoleted my setup! When I first got the laptop around 2004, ndiswrapper was the only option. By now I thought there must be a better way! I settled on the b43legacy drivers. Many thanks to that great site for all the specific details.

As I write, I'm using the wireless LAN with b43legacy without problems!

But how? I'll show you the details for the specific WLAN controller in the Dell Inspiron 9100.

According to wireless.kernel.org (wko)

If your card is a BCM4306 Rev 2, or only has 802.11b capability, it uses b43legacy. All other models use b43.

As you can see, I have revision 2, so I have to use the b43legacy driver. To identify your card, type `lspci -vnn | grep 14e4`. This is my response:


Subsystem: Broadcom Corporation Device [14e4:4d64]
02:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401 100Base-T [14e4:4401] (rev 01)
02:03.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:4320] (rev 02)

The 14e4 is necessary to use any b43 driver.

At wko, b43legacy is specified for revision 2, and b43 for revision 3.

Supported chip types
* bcm4306 (Rev. 2 uses b43legacy, Rev. 3 uses b43)

Now to configure your kernel. (This may be done for you). Check these options are set:

Networking support > wireless
Generic IEEE 802.11 Networking Stack (mac80211)
Enable LED triggers (MAC80211_LEDS) (if you have LEDs)

Also enable:

Network device support > wireless LAN

and the following options:
CONFIG_B43LEGACY=m
CONFIG_B43LEGACY_PCI_AUTOSELECT=y
CONFIG_B43LEGACY_PCICORE_AUTOSELECT=y
CONFIG_B43LEGACY_LEDS=y
CONFIG_B43LEGACY_DEBUG=y
CONFIG_B43LEGACY_DMA=y
# CONFIG_B43LEGACY_DMA_AND_PIO_MODE is not set
CONFIG_B43LEGACY_DMA_MODE=y
# CONFIG_B43LEGACY_PIO_MODE is not set

Now make, install, and reboot! The module b43_legacy was loaded automatically for my by udev.

I use wpa_supplicant to connect. Your config files may vary. Somehow you need to specify that wpa_supplicant should be started like this:

wpa_supplicant -iwlan0 -Dwext -c/etc/wpa_supplement.conf

In gentoo, edit /etc/conf.d/net:

modules_wlan0="wpa_supplicant"
wpa_supplicant_wlan0="-Dwext"
config_wlan0="dhcp"
dhcpcd_wlan0="-L"

There's one final step. The BCM cards need firmware which is loaded by the proprietary windows drivers. You must download this in addition to a firware cutter called b43-fwcutter. In Gentoo, emerge b43-fwcutter. Then run these commands (thanks again to wko).

export FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR="/lib/firmware"
wget http://downloads.openwrt.org/sources/wl_apsta-3.130.20.0.o
sudo b43-fwcutter -w "$FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR" wl_apsta-3.130.20.0.o

The output looks like this:

This file is recognised as:
ID         :  FW10
filename   :  wl_apsta.o
version    :  295.14
MD5        :  e08665c5c5b66beb9c3b2dd54aa80cb3
Extracting b43legacy/ucode2.fw
Extracting b43legacy/ucode4.fw
Extracting b43legacy/ucode5.fw
Extracting b43legacy/ucode11.fw
Extracting b43legacy/pcm4.fw
Extracting b43legacy/pcm5.fw
Extracting b43legacy/a0g0bsinitvals2.fw
Extracting b43legacy/b0g0bsinitvals5.fw
Extracting b43legacy/a0g0initvals5.fw
Extracting b43legacy/a0g1bsinitvals5.fw
Extracting b43legacy/a0g0initvals2.fw
Extracting b43legacy/a0g1initvals5.fw
Extracting b43legacy/b0g0bsinitvals2.fw
Extracting b43legacy/b0g0initvals5.fw
Extracting b43legacy/b0g0initvals2.fw
Extracting b43legacy/a0g0bsinitvals5.fw

You may need to specify a different firmware directory. /lib/firmware is correct for Gentoo.

Now you should be able to start your network script. In Gentoo /etc/init.d/net.wlan0 start. syslog shows:


b43legacy-phy0: Loading firmware version 0x127, patch level 14 (2005-04-18 02:36:27)
b43legacy-phy0 debug: Chip initialized
b43legacy-phy0 debug: 30-bit DMA initialized
Registered led device: b43legacy-phy0:tx
Registered led device: b43legacy-phy0:rx
b43legacy-phy0 debug: Wireless interface started
b43legacy-phy0 debug: Adding Interface type 2
b43legacy-phy0 debug: Radio initialized
b43legacy-phy0: Radio turned off by software
b43legacy-phy0: Radio turned on by software
/etc/init.d/net.wlan0[12885]: WARNING: net.wlan0 has started, but is inactive
wlan0: direct probe to AP --:--:--:--:--:-- try 1
wlan0 direct probe responded
wlan0: authenticate with AP --:--:--:--:--:--
wlan0: authenticated
wlan0: associate with AP --:--:--:--:--:--
wlan0: RX AssocResp from --:--:--:--:--:-- (capab=0x431 status=0 aid=2)
wlan0: associated
wpa_cli: interface wlan0 CONNECTED
dhcpcd[13080]: wlan0: dhcpcd 4.0.13 starting
dhcpcd[13080]: wlan0: broadcasting for a lease
dhcpcd[13080]: wlan0: offered x.x.x.148 from x.x.x.1
dhcpcd[13080]: wlan0: acknowledged x.x.x.148 from x.x.x.1
dhcpcd[13080]: wlan0: checking x.x.x.148 is available on attached networks
dhcpcd[13080]: wlan0: leased x.x.x.148 for 604800 seconds

I removed IP addresses, hostnames, and MAC addresses.

And that's it! Let me know how you go, especially if you have an Inspiron 9100. If not, be sure to check out the official site for more details: http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/b43

Dell Inspiron 9100 Internals part 3: CPU cooling assembly

2009-07-10T16:53:00.000+09:30

After removing the video card, the next step was to access the CPU fan. In the picture on the right you can see the Microprocessor Thermal-Cooling Assembly starting with the CPU fan at the bottom middle, running over the northbridge copper heat transfer pipe, and finally to the CPU heatsink. This Aluminium block has two copper pipes running to the left and right fans, for extra cooling.

Once I had got this far, I suspected the blockage was after the fan, but before the Aluminium block. I removed the video card (as you saw previously) and then the four screws on the block.

The block gave a bit of resistance, and then lifted. Experts would recommend you do this to a hot machine, and this is the reason why: There's the CPU nicely stuck to the block. oops! The CPU pulled right out of the closed ZIF socket! Note that you can't do this to a warm laptop, unless you're fast, as it takes time to get this far.

There's a great thread here about removing a stuck CPU. I think the dental floss is a bit over the top (and time consuming), so I used a heat gun. I placed the assembly upside-down so the CPU wouldn't fall off, and blew the heat gun (or hair dryer) on the two end fins. Stop when it's only just too hot to touch. Then only a tiny bit of pressure was required to lift the CPU. Don't apply pressure to the corner of the CPU with a screwdriver!

Here's the final shot showing no CPU or video card.
Make sure you cover the ZIF socket with something to keep it dust free. And don't touch the CPU or heat sink heat transfer surface, as your skin-oils can deter the heat transfer.

Here's the cooling assembly. You can see the thick dust covering the channel. There was also dust all through the fins. (Again, sorry for the bad photos).

Now I cleaned the CPU surface and heat sink surface with alcohol and a lint-free cloth, and applied a covering of Arctic Silver. The next two photos show why it needed cleaning:

And now it's time to reinstall! Follow the pull-apart instructions backwards.

Take careful note of where the screws go as some screws were different sizes to the ones listed in the Dell guide. Also make sure you take care with re-inserting the parts. I cracked the display bezel and one hinge because I couldn't fit the centre hinge cover properly. Nevermind, they're only about US$25!

On the right you can see a gcc compile at 100% CPU usage. The CPU has only just started to heat up at 43 degrees C. It didn't pass 58 degrees after compiling my system for hours, and the fans were all at low / medium speed.

Finally, at idle, it's now 40 degrees C. (woot).

Oh, and by the way: I suspended before taking out the CPU, and I resumed days later without any software issues!

Dell Inspiron 9100 Internals part 2: Video card

2009-07-10T08:03:00.002+09:30

Part 1 of pulling-apart my laptop is here.

In this part I'm showing pictures of the video card before and after removal.

Here is the exposed shot again:
At the top left you can see two sets of cooling fins with a copper pipe running diagonally to a daughter board. This board is my ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 M10 with 64Mb RAM (woohoo!). Other options are the Mobility 9700 with 128Mb RAM, and the Mobility 9800. (I wish I had the 9800...)

Below the heat sinks on the far left is a fan. One heat sink transfers heat from the video card (furtherest back) via the copper pipe you can see. The other heat sink transfers heat from the CPU via a copper pipe that runs under the video card. You can just see it running parallel to the back edge.

Follow the Dell instructions for removing the video card (and my disclaimer) in Post 1. It looks like this:
You can see the copper transfer pipe, and the cooling fins. Copper is excellent at transferring heat! You'll see why in Part 3.

The next photo shows what the system board looks like without the video card!
You can now clearly see the CPU heat transfer pipe, as well as a third copper pipe under the video card. The third pipe looks like its attached to the northbridge heat sink. This third pipe runs diagonally to the CPU cooler, and ends in a small aluminium heat transfer block under the black plastic cover you can see.

The video card slot is visible next the the fan. Kudos to Dell and other laptop manufacturers for making laptops almost as modular as desktops, however replacement video cards are hundreds of dollars! I can't find any cheap second hand parts. If you can, let me know!

Dell Inspiron 9100 Internals part 1: accessing the components

2009-07-10T08:02:00.001+09:30

So I've had my Inspiron 9100 since 2003 or 2004 - when they were quite new. Back then the 3.0GHz P4 was a super machine, and even now it beats most light laptops with boot-up time and performance.

Lately it's been under a desk as a remote server, so I haven't seen much of it. I pulled it out recently and noticed the fans were spinning quite a lot, and the CPU temp was quite high - 60 - 70 degrees.

I pulled out the two side ventilators (fans) and cleaned a large amount of fine dust from the fans and heat sink fins. This has massively reduced the fan usage, and the CPU temperature is now down to 40 degrees at idle.

However there's one more fan - the CPU fan - that I couldn't easily reach. I could hear it all the time so I assume its suffering from the same problem: dust. I finally decided to pull it apart and clean it, and here is my progress. This is also an interesting look into how a Dell laptop wears over time - not too bad in my opinion.

First, CONTINUE AT YOUR OWN RISK! The pull-apart starts easy and low risk, but as soon as you pull apart the display assembly, video card and CPU you're in the high-risk area. If you break your laptop, you can keep the change from selling the parts on eBay!

Second, follow the instructions from Dell - they're the ultimate pull-apart guide and I only found them lacking at the very last stage (CPU fan removal).

Here's a grainy shot of the left hinge cover - there's plenty of dust there. (sorry about the bad quality - it's my phone camera). See the dust near the display attachment:

Now I've taken off the keyboard and surrounds. There's more dust:

Here is a shot of the laptop from the top as you would sit at it to work, but without the display, keyboard, touchpad, etc. The CPU fan is at the bottom centre.

Here is just half of the screws I removed (I count 30 so far). Next to them is the hinge covers:

This got me to some of the system board components. In the next post I'll show the removed video card, CPU and heatsinks.

Enjoy!

The Twouble with Tcl

2009-07-03T14:10:00.005+09:30

From time to time I do a bit of tcl. Mostly as maintenance for existing tcl programs. I haven't made up my mind entirely about it yet - I've seen some very powerful programs in tcl, and yet occasionally I'm still "surprised" by a feature.

I spent a couple of hours today trying to figure out why a tcl program of mine wasn't running, and so I've made some notes:

Real languages don't have reserved words

In tcl, you can redifine parts of the language in tcl itself. For example if you wanted to redefine if, just write a new function:

proc if {cond expres} {
 puts "cond is $cond"
 puts "expr is $expres"
}

set a 1
if {$a == 1} {
 puts hello
}

Sounds neat. In fact proc itself is just a command that takes 3 arguements (name, arguements, and body). However, don't start using simple names in your tcl languages like this:

proc open {} {
 set ::alarm_socket [open_socket $::options(-alarm_host)]

 foreach host $::options(-hosts) {
  verbose "open $host"
  set ::sockets($host) [open_socket $host]
  # set up an event handler for when data is readable on this socket:
  fileevent $::sockets($host) readable [list process $host]
  # initialise socket timeout with open time
  set ::socket_t($host) [clock seconds]
 }
}

Because open is what you might call a reserved word. (I should have known with open, but should I really have to remember all the reserved words?)

The error looked something like this:

$ ./test.tcl
invalid command name "::tcl::tm::UnknownHandler"
while executing
"::tcl::tm::UnknownHandler ::tclPkgUnknown msgcat 1.4"
("package unknown" script)
invoked from within
"package require msgcat 1.4"
("uplevel" body line 2)
invoked from within
"uplevel \#0 {
package require msgcat 1.4
if { $::tcl_platform(platform) eq {windows} } {
if { [catch { package require registry 1.1 }] } {
..."
(file "/usr/lib/tcl8.5/clock.tcl" line 23)
invoked from within
"source -encoding utf-8 [file join $TclLibDir clock.tcl]"
(procedure "::tcl::clock::format" line 3)
invoked from within
"clock format [clock seconds]"
(procedure "alarm_timeouts" line 3)
invoked from within

... and so on. Yeuch! And it was encountered with this one line:

   puts "$::argv0: [clock format [clock seconds]]"

The problem? I redefined open, which was used internally by clock.

Real languages don't have types:

You can do lots of nice things in tcl without types, in a similar (but different) way to perl.

set a world
puts "Hello $a" ;# prints 'Hello world'
set a 1
incr $a
puts "$a + 2" ;# prints '2 + 2'

This looks normal to someone used to perl and tcl. Noticed how I don't need format specifiers or concat functions. You can also do this:

set a pu
set b ts
$a$b "Hello World"

Which prints:

Hello World

Real languages don't have comments

They have a comment command of course! And the comment command is a command that takes arguments (the comment itself) that aren't evaluated. Except that because of this, you can't have an unmatched brace in a comment:

# if ($sometest) {
 $somecode
#}

The tcl solution?

if (0)

blocks or the like...

Conclusion

So if you haven't yet learnt tcl, I encourage you to find a tcl hackers tcl program, and delve into it to see just how it works.

If you try to learn tcl only by writing it and not by reading others' code, then you'll learn tcl with the habits you're used to, and you will possibly miss some of the powerful features.

After all, C programmers can program C in just about any language!

Evolution 2.26 - scrolling performance improves (finally!)

2009-06-01T14:10:00.003+09:30

I recently upgraded to Gnome 2.26, and not noticing too many new features I just discovered this: Evolution 2.26.2 finally handles scrolling large mail folders effectively.

I have in excess of 1000 emails in some of my mail folders, and I have a Logitech MX400 Laser mouse which lets you disengage the "clutch" (the wheel that typically clicks in defined steps as you scroll it) so that you can do large freewheeling scrolls with one finger movement. This helps to navigate large documents, web pages, and folder lists.

Previously in Evolution, scrolling the wheel by a large amount meant that when the wheel stopped, Evolution would keep scrolling for some time as it tried to keep up with all the events.

Now, however, the folder stops scrolling as soon as my mouse wheel stops moving. Good stuff!

(For the record, Claws has had the nicer behaviour for some time, just in case you were thinking of telling me it was a new mouse driver!)

Another Password Generator

2009-05-21T01:12:00.006+09:30

So I wrote a password generator, why not?!

I had some free time recently, I was about to reset someone's password for a site I administer, and I thought it would be nice to have a small script generate semi easy to remember but semi secure passwords.

Firstly, I usually use either of these two one liners:
$ for ((n=0;n<10;n++)); if="/dev/urandom" count="1"> /dev/null | uuencode -m -| head -n 2 | tail -n 1 | cut -c-8; done $ for ((n=0;n<10;n++)); if="/dev/urandom" count="1" bs="8">/dev/null | uuencode -m - | tail -n 2 | head -n 1 | cut -c -8; done

The results are similar. You get a bunch of passwords looking like this:
zZqTqB23 Fh0qKx05 skhDDXPN GmToF0H0 yWieCLfu 6lmrPOm5 Tq+Tz/G/ ybYWDvXp u018CGWA 9FyV1zJq
Which is handy for setting up lots of accounts, which I do occasionally. However, people hate them because 9FyV1zJq is harder to remember than their cat's name.

The script I just wrote (in Perl) uses word lists and random numbers to generate passwords like this:
kagu757elf matt37spif hiss378gyro err410eyed zest957pirn twin452road czar210mum mors720cops floc684wok odor384hymn

Sure, these aren't as secure, but they're better than "tiggles".

Oh, and my wordlists come from wordlist.sourceforge.net

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

# A utility to create reasonable strength and semi-easy to remember passwords
# out of word lists and random characters.
#
# Copyright 2009 Iain Buchanan.  Freely redistributable and modifiable.

use strict;

my @lists = ('/home/iain/personal/ispell-enwl-3.1.20/altamer.0',
            '/home/iain/personal/ispell-enwl-3.1.20/altamer.1',
            '/home/iain/personal/ispell-enwl-3.1.20/altamer.2',
            '/home/iain/personal/ispell-enwl-3.1.20/american.0',
            '/home/iain/personal/ispell-enwl-3.1.20/american.1',
            '/home/iain/personal/ispell-enwl-3.1.20/american.2',
            '/home/iain/personal/ispell-enwl-3.1.20/british.0',
            '/home/iain/personal/ispell-enwl-3.1.20/british.1',
            '/home/iain/personal/ispell-enwl-3.1.20/british.2',
            '/home/iain/personal/ispell-enwl-3.1.20/english.0',
            '/home/iain/personal/ispell-enwl-3.1.20/english.1',
            '/home/iain/personal/ispell-enwl-3.1.20/english.2',
            '/home/iain/personal/ispell-enwl-3.1.20/english.3');

my @wordlist;

foreach my $list (@lists) {
  open (WL, "$list") or print "Couldn't open wordlist '$list': '$!', skipping.\n";

  while () {
     chomp;

     next if (length >= 5); # ignore long words
     next if /^[A-Z]/;      # ignore Nouns & abbvs.

     push @wordlist, $_;
  }
  close (WL);
}

for (1..10) {
  print $wordlist[int (rand ($#wordlist))];
  print int (rand (999));
  print $wordlist[int (rand ($#wordlist))];
  print "\n";
}

The results are in: It's Apathy by a landslide!

2009-05-12T11:44:00.004+09:30

Thanks to everyone who took part in my recent poll "What would you like me to post more about?" That is, all 6 of you, including myself. The results are as follows:

Votes	%	Post
3	(50%)	IT related technical articles
3	(50%)	Linux howto's, tips & tricks
3	(50%)	Renewable energy power station bio's
2	(33%)	Reviews of my electronics (phone, set top box, espresso machine, etc)
2	(33%)	Random thoughts & musings on anything
1	(16%)	Personal & Family events
0	(0%)	Dell Precision M6300 howto's for running Linux
0	(0%)	I can't stand reading anything you write!

There were 6 unique voters, including myself. The poll ran for most of April, 2009. Voters could select multiple entries.

Conclusions

So what? Well, there were nowhere near enough votes for me to make any drastic changes. Most of my visits are for the ever-popular Vmware keyboard page. I can safely say that the results can be completely ignored!

If you don't agree, comment!

Stumbleupon stumbles on

2009-04-14T14:10:00.005+09:30

Stumbleupon is the latest to make my whinge list. After registering eons ago, and never revisiting the site or hearing from them since, I just got this email:

StumbleUpon | Discover Your Web. Here are this
week's most popular bHistory, Music, Guitar/b
sites recommended by people like you on
StumbleUpon.
Your 5 Favorites

Followed by an email full of links, with this in the footer:

StumbleUpon sends these emails based on the
preferences you set for your account. Your use of
our service is subject to the StumbleUpon Terms of
Service http://www.stumbleupon.com/terms/ .
If you do not wish to receive weekly
recommendation e-mails, please login
[link]
and change the setting on your preferences page
Please note that it may take up to 14 days to
process your request.

Fourteen days? To process an automatic request? What are you doing Stumbleupon? Mailing the requests via Antarctica? Perhaps you're employing people to flip the bits manually to boost the economy...

Poll: What should I blog about?

2009-04-14T11:47:00.003+09:30

Now that I get a few hits to this blog, I thought I'd let you decide what you would like to read.

I've created a poll you should see at the top of every page, until the end of April '09. Let me know what you would like to read. Comment if there should be more options. So far I have four votes!

Blocking port 25

2009-04-03T21:34:00.004+09:30

I had a call from a friend complaining that they just purchased a wireless broadband stick (from Telstra using their Next-G network which is a HSDPA network using UMTS850MHz) and the could not send mail via their normal mail accounts.

A few minutes of checking found that Telstra and Bigpond block outgoing access to port 25 to anything other than their own mail servers.

The reasons are listed here [bigpond.custhelp.com] as well as at other pages. This post will list why their reasons are flawed, and how to get around them.

Flawed Reasoning

Bigpond claims they manage the use of port 25 to "to prevent spammers sending unsolicited email using [their] network." OK, that sounds fair enough at first glance, but when you realise how easy this is to get around (use a different port, for example) then this reason becomes redundant.

Bigpond claims that other ISPs are taking similar steps and that their changes have been "proven to prevent some types of spam activity". However spammers, like advertisers, attempt to stay ahead of the latest trends, and as soon as one method of spamming is blocked, they will use another. Also Internode (as an example) blocks port 25 by default, but lets you turn this feature off.

Furthermore, spammers are setting up real mail servers around the world. In conjunction with a tailored trojan that uses a different port to send mail, Bigponds efforts are useless. In fact Spam levels are back to 95% of all email traffic!

Finally, you could pay the extra money for a fixed IP address from Telstra, and they won't block the port. In my opinion, this is shameless money grabbing. Please explain why a user on a fixed IP address is not susceptible to a spam sending trojan or virus?

Perhaps the spam is purposefully malicious, and Telstra would like to know whose account to suspend? Telstra (along with most ISPs) keep detailed logs of traffic and authentications, so they can easily tell which user from a dynamic IP address was accessing which sites at any point in recent history, therefore static IP addresses are no easier to crack down on.

More Problems than Solutions

Bigpond says that you can use their Bigpond mail server to send mail, and thus get around the port block. You can in fact do this, and still have your email appear to come from you@yourhost.com (and not you@bigpond.com).

This solution is not ideal for two reasons:

1. Travelling
The frequent traveller, like my friend, is often on different networks. He must be able to use whichever network he is on and send / receive his normal email. To set up a different outgoing mail server, and perhaps a different profile (from whichever mail client he is using) for each network is both time consuming and pointless.

2. Your email looks like spam
When you send email where the FROM address is you@yourhost.com, but it goes through a different email server you@bigpond.com, the recipient's (him@friendsmail.com) mail server may block or mark your email as spam.

This is because exactly that technique (using a FROM address and mail server that do not match) is used by spammers to send spam. The recipient mail server checks the DNS records of the sender (yourhost.com), and if they don't match the originating server (bigpond.com), then your email may be deleted, rejected, or set aside.

Getting around it

OK, so what do you do to get around it? By far the best way is to authenticate with your mail server, and use a secure port. By using a secure port (usually not port 25) Bigpond won't block your outgoing mail. In fact this should work for many networks that block port 25.

You have the added advantage that your mail is probably encrypted, or at least your password will be (don't rely on this to encrypt sensitive emails though, as you can bet it will be transmitted in plain text at some stage of the process).

Is my mail server compatible?
The best thing to do is try! Different mail clients do this in different ways:

Evolution 2.24.5
Edit > Preferences > Mail Accounts > Edit > Sending Email > Use Secure Connection

Thunderbird 3.0b3
Edit > Account Settings > Outgoing Server > Edit > Connection Security

Outlook [including Express]
You have to edit your account settings from one of the main menus. You may have to then choose View or Change existing email accounts. Then select the account and choose Change; then more settings (I think) and then you should see a secure option. Note the SPA option is not what you're looking for here, although you can use it if supported.

If you get timeouts or errors sending mail, then try slightly different options (if you have a choice).

Ba-a-a Ha-a-a Ha-a-a

2009-03-30T11:45:00.004+09:30

LED's on sheep? Now this would have taken a long time to prepare...

This appeals to my nerdy nature! Thanks Bort for the link!

Linux is about choice (pt 2)

2009-03-27T13:28:00.005+09:30

So you've seen my hasty "Linux is about choice" post already. In all fairness to Zimbra, it's a great product, and I'm sure many people rightly swear by it.

Part two of my rant deals with another situation that is slightly different -

"Why then, do applications (or their developers) decide to take away [or keep] that choice?"

While the Zimbra example is easy to argue (and has been suggested already) as a "bug", my second example could be purely opinion.

Think about the great program gnome-power-manager. For those of you who don't know Gnome / Linux, gnome-power-manager is an all-in-one laptop battery monitoring tool. It has the standard battery icon showing charge level; a power history graph showing power history, voltage history, charge profiles and more; as well as LCD backlight, sleep and hibernate controls. And in my opinion, it does a a great job!

(Should any of the developers involved read this, my intention is not to pick on or make fun of you, I hope to purely use the issue as an example, not the people involved!)

Ok, so I was configuring gnome-power-manager to handle everything it is designed to handle, with the exception of power off / hibernate. I use ACPI to hibernate my machine when the power button is pressed, and when the battery power drops to below 5%. (Why ACPI? Because it works regardless of weather I'm logged into Gnome or not; or even if X is not running at all).

Here are the related power button options:
"When the power button is pressed", the options are (Ask me, Hibernate, or Shutdown)
"When the suspend button is pressed", the options are (Do Nothing or Hibernate).

There is no option to "Do nothing" when the power button is pressed. In fact, why are the four options not available for either button? (Ask, Hibernate, Shutdown, Nothing).

In my opinion, this would be the ultimate options offering the most flexibility, without overloading the user with a bulk of detail in the control panel. And yet it looks like my opinion is not understood. It appears the primary reason is because including the "Do Nothing" option would mean gnome-power-manager is doing "half a job".

Could you not forsee that parts of your application may be highly desired, and other parts not so? Given the large "roll your own" background of so many Linux users, why would that mantra not continue as far as possible? Why does Evolution (and Claws and Thunderbird), Firefox, and so on have a plugin framework? Or an external editor option?

Precisely because different people use Linux in different ways. And this is why Linux is about choice!

OK, I promise I'll get back to a technical blog post next :) And if you're interested, the bug is here.

22 degrees C, and light snow!

2009-03-27T10:16:00.006+09:30

A few weeks ago on a trip to New Zealand, I had some restrictive internet access, so my usual RSS feeds and news reports weren't working.

I set up iGoogle (which lets you customise your google home page) to keep me up to date.

One day I noticed the weather report: 22 degrees Celcius, and light snow! I would have liked to see the snow, especially given it was summer!

Here's the screenshot:

Linux is about choice (pt 1)

2009-03-27T10:15:00.000+09:30

I argue that Linux is about choice. You may argue that is about something else. I think that's fine, so long as we don't argue against each other, but for each other. Why? Because Linux is about different things to different people, and that's great! That's why it is so attractive and diverse.

Why then, do applications (or their developers) decide to take away that choice? Is it because they really don't see how other people may like to use their programs? Fair enough. Is it because they want to impose their ideas on how and why their program should be used? Not fair. What if you provide polite detailed examples of different use cases, and yet the response is "no thanks, we don't / won't do it that way".

You've guessed by now this is a rant. What sparked it off? Two recent applications are giving me grief. This post will look at the first, and why:

Zimbra webmail client

Zimbra makes a great webmail, calendaring (and others) suite. However, I noticed that since I set up my Zimbra calendar (and so did 20+ other people here) that any appointments people send me are being automatically accepted. So what? Well, from time to time I get a (usually pointless) meeting request that I don't want to accept, and yet I find Zimbra has accepted it, even when I'm not logged on.

No problemo, just find the preference and turn off "automatically accept meeting requests".

The only options that look close are in "preferences > calendar":

Permissions
Free / Busy:
[ ] Allow all users to see my free/busy information
[ ] Allow these users to see my free/busy information:
[text box]

Invites:
[ ] Allow all users to invite me to meetings
[ ] Allow these users to invite me to meetings:
[text box]

So first of all, I chose "Allow these users to invite me to meetings:" and left it blank. This didn't work, in fact the behaviour was exactly the same as before.

So secondly I kept "Allow these users to invite me to meetings:" but entered my email address in the text box. Surely this would work?

Well it kind of worked. Now when people send me appointments, they only show as attachments which I can do nothing with (in Zimbra webmail). I can't even add them to my calendar. I suppose I should be happy that at least they don't get automatically accepted...

So my next solution was to try Evolution. I shared my Zimbra calendar and loaded it into Evolution. Great! There's all my appointments! However, when people send me meeting requests, I can't add them to my Zimbra calendar from Evolution. Even though Evolution asked me for the user name and password.

Then I gave up. I've deleted my Zimbra calendar and gone back to plain old Evolution.

Your thoughts, gentle reader? Am I expecting too much? Is this such an edge case that no Zimbra developer could possibly have forseen it? I think not.

Thanks for all the visits

2008-12-03T00:40:00.003+09:30

Thanks to this post my blog has over 1,000 hits per month, bringing in over 6,500 hits in November 2008 alone!

Here's the stats to prove it:

	Page Loads	Unique Visitors	First Time Visitors	Returning Visitors
Total	14,430	12,505	10,066	2,439
Average	1,203	1,042	839	203

Month	Page Loads	Unique Visitors	First Time Visitors	Returning Visitors
Dec 2008	344	297	234	63
Nov 2008	6,593	5,773	4,547	1,226
Oct 2008	2,597	2,291	1,921	370
Sep 2008	1,213	1,044	811	233
Aug 2008	1,145	964	786	178
Jul 2008	1,652	1,371	1,096	275
Jun 2008	830	714	624	90
May 2008	49	44	41	3
Apr 2008	1	1	1	0
Mar 2008	2	2	2	0
Feb 2008	0	0	0	0
Jan 2008	4	4	3	1

But I don't mean to show off - this is only possible with you, the reader. And if my howto's were complete rubbish I hope that they wouldn't be linked to!

VMWare and the fubar keyboard effect

2008-12-03T00:39:00.001+09:30

Welcome to the Ubuntu community! See my note about this at the end.

Note:
As this is my most popular blog entry, it looks like a lot of people are suffering the same problem. I'm grateful for all the positive feedback - thanks! Feel free to continue to leave feedback, especially if you have more information (or something that doesn't work), or links to related pages. Thanks :)

For what seems like 300 years I've been struggling with the horrible effect of VMWare workstation on my keyboard. I have a perfectly good license for VMWare workstation 4, so I continued to use it regardless of the fact that version 6 is available. (I've since upgraded to version 6, and from the responses from others this fix still works).

This never used to be a problem, but it got successively worse: Once VMWare grabbed the keyboard, many function keys (ctrl, shift, alt, etc) would remap to nothing, or worse, some other key function!

Solution 1
I solved this out-side of vmware thanks to a gentoo-user thread:

Run `setxkbmap` from your terminal
(Ubuntu: install x11-xkb-utils; Gentoo: install x11-apps/setxkbmap). This fixes some keys, but not all
Then put your cursor over the VMWare menu bar somewhere, but not in the client window
(don't let the keyboard/mouse get grabbed automatically)
Press Ctrl-g
(this grabs the keyboard/mouse). You should see the cursor jump to the middle of the VMWare screen. If this doesn't work, focus a different window, and try again.
Press Ctrl-Alt
(This un-grabs the keyboard/mouse)

This solved the problem outside VMWare (on the host), but still didn't solve the problem where within VMWare (on the guest), my arrow keys, del and ins, etc. were still screwed. For a keyboard-shortcut lover such as myself, who uses the keyboard more than the mouse, this is very annoying.

Finally I thought I'd try VMPlayer (and wow, does the suspend / resume feature work fast!). The problem was even more evident - now every use of VMWare many non alpha-numeric keys were unusable.

Solution 3:
(no, you didn't miss the 2!)

Some readers have had success with the one line:

xkeymap.nokeycodeMap = true

in the file /etc/vmware/config. As the root user (sudo won't work in this case), this command should do it for you:

echo "xkeymap.nokeycodeMap = true" >> /etc/vmware/config

or:

echo "xkeymap.nokeycodeMap = true" >> ~/.vmware/config

If you don't have root access. See Solution 2 for more locations of this config file.

Solution 2:
This is the original Solution 2, and since many comments reference it I have left it numbered so. However, Solution 3 is much simpler (and newer) so I've put that first.

Apparently this issue arrises with the evdev input driver. Thanks to "doranikov", The solution is simple: Tell VMWare what your keyboard really does! Put this in either /etc/vmware/config, or /usr/lib/vmware/config if you have root access, or in ~/.vmware/config otherwise. (Do this in the host OS, not the client) If the file doesn't exist, just create it:

xkeymap.keycode.108 = 0x138 # Alt_R
xkeymap.keycode.106 = 0x135 # KP_Divide
xkeymap.keycode.104 = 0x11c # KP_Enter
xkeymap.keycode.111 = 0x148 # Up
xkeymap.keycode.116 = 0x150 # Down
xkeymap.keycode.113 = 0x14b # Left
xkeymap.keycode.114 = 0x14d # Right
xkeymap.keycode.105 = 0x11d # Control_R
xkeymap.keycode.118 = 0x152 # Insert
xkeymap.keycode.119 = 0x153 # Delete
xkeymap.keycode.110 = 0x147 # Home
xkeymap.keycode.115 = 0x14f # End
xkeymap.keycode.112 = 0x149 # Prior
xkeymap.keycode.117 = 0x151 # Next
xkeymap.keycode.78 = 0x46 # Scroll_Lock
xkeymap.keycode.127 = 0x100 # Pause
xkeymap.keycode.133 = 0x15b # Meta_L
xkeymap.keycode.134 = 0x15c # Meta_R
xkeymap.keycode.135 = 0x15d # Menu

done!

Getting keycodes

What if your keycodes are different? To get the keycodes, you'll need xev or xmodmap. Run xev and place your cursor in the xev window. Then press the key you want (eg, right Control).

You'll get output like this on the terminal:

KeyPress event, serial 33, synthetic NO, window 0x3200001,
root 0x1cb, subw 0x0, time 749698, (167,181), root:(1793,706),
state 0x10, keycode 105 (keysym 0xffe4, Control_R), same_screen YES,
XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes:
XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyRelease event, serial 33, synthetic NO, window 0x3200001,
root 0x1cb, subw 0x0, time 749810, (167,181), root:(1793,706),
state 0x14, keycode 105 (keysym 0xffe4, Control_R), same_screen YES,
XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
XFilterEvent returns: False

Look at the value after keycode. In this case 105. Change the xkeymap.keycode. to 105:

xkeymap.keycode.105 = 0x11d # Control_R

0x11d is the scan code.

For xmodmap, use:

xmodmap -pk

Further help:

Please read this VMWare article - it has the (very good) official description of the problem.
Also see the V-Scan Code Table from VMWare.

Where'd you come from?
P.S. hello to all the planet larry readers, and the Ubuntu community. Thanks to you guys (and some great linking from other bloggers, VMWare forums, etc) I now have over 1000 hits a month! In November 2008, I got over 6500 hits! blog on!

The Closest Book Meme

2008-11-27T15:30:00.002+09:30

(better late than never!)

Grab the nearest book.
Open it to page 56.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

The British party had hoped to leave their cold-weather clothes in Hong Kong; but their rapid transit had frustrated that plan, and Neill was still carrying his waxed jacket, which was fine for Yorkshire, but not entirely suitable for Brunei.

from SOS, a story about an army expedition to Borneo's "Death Valley" which went wrong and turned into a fight for survival.

Movember

2008-11-10T10:43:00.002+09:30

It's Movember!

During Movember (the month formerly known as November) I'm growing a Mo to help raise awareness about men's health issues and being proactive in the fight against men's depression and prostate cancer.

You can follow my progress on my Mo Space!

To donate to my Mo you can either:

Click this link https://www.movember.com/au/donate/donate-details.php?action=sponsorlink&rego=2049857&country=au and donate online using your credit card or PayPal account, or
Write a cheque payable to ‘Movember Foundation', referencing my Registration Number 2049857 and mailing it to:

Movember Foundation
PO Box 292
Prahran VIC 3181

All donations over $2 are tax deductible in Australia. Other countries may have similar benefits.

The money raised by Movember is used to raise awareness of men's health issues and donated to the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia and beyondblue - the national depression initiative. The PCFA and beyondblue will use the funds to fund research and increase support networks for those men who suffer from prostate cancer and depression.

Did you know:

Depression affects 1 in 6 men....most don't seek help. Untreated depression is a leading risk factor for suicide.
Last year in Australia 18,700 men were diagnosed with prostate cancer and more than 2,900 died of prostate cancer - equivalent to the number of women who will die from breast cancer annually.

For those that have supported Movember in previous years you can be very proud of the impact it has had and can check out the details at: [ Fundraising Outcomes ].

Movember culminates at the end of month Gala Partés. If you would like to be part of this great night you'll need to purchase a [ Gala Parté Ticket ].

Thanks for your support

You know you're using the computer too much when

2008-09-11T11:24:00.002+09:30

Last Sunday morning, I was actually trying to sleep in longer by dreaming something like --extend-sleep=1h. I am not joking *sigh*.

It didn't work - but for a good reason - my family was waking me up with a breakfast in bed for Fathers day :)

nVidia xinerama on a Dell M6300

2008-08-14T12:08:00.006+09:30

I wrote recently about my efforts to get two screens going, with the primary screen not coming off the primary video output. I used a neat trick, the option:

Option         "UseDisplayDevice" "DFP-0"

The downside with that method of separate X screens, is that you can't drag a window from one to the other.

Now I decided I should try using xinerama. The use should be almost identical, with the advantage that I can drag windows from one screen to the other. There are other subtle advantages such as better panel integration, and general WM goodness.

1. Firstly, compile everything with xinerama support.

If you use a binary distribution, this is probably done for you. For gentoo, add this the /etc/make.conf:

USE="... xinerama"

I prefer this to using /etc/portage/package.use in this case, because you want to catch all future installations that can support this USE flag.

Now, recompile everything that can use the USE flag:

# emerge -vauDN world

(v)erbose, (a)sk, (u)pdate, (D)eep, (N)ewUSE

It shouldn't be necessary to include nvidia-drivers in the recompile, but you will need them installed.

2. edit xorg.conf

You must start with a working xorg.conf, and you must have only one display set up or this step will fail:

# nvidia-xconfig -c /etc/X11/xorg.conf-20080728 -o /etc/X11/xorg.conf --twinview --dynamic-twinview --twinview-orientation=LeftOf --twinview-xinerama-info-order=DFP-2,DFP-0 --constant-dpi --use-edid --use-edid-dpi --damage-events --render-accel

The options are:

-c uses a specified input file. I do this so I can start from the same point each time, rather than a constantly changing xorg.conf file
-o writes to this file
--twinview enables twinview
--dynamic-twinview enables dynamically change twinview settings
--twinview-orientation=LeftOf sets the second monitor to be left of the primary
--twinview-xinerama-info-order=DFP-2,DFP-0 says that DFP-2 (DVI) is the primary display
--constant-dpi --use-edid --use-edid-dpi --damage-events --render-accel are other settings I play with to fine tune performance.

3. Restart X

You probably know how to do this. Logging off usually does the trick.

If everything worked you should have:

log in screen on one display only
desktop extended to second display
windows open completely on one display and not in the middle
windows snap to the edge of one display
windows can be dragged to the second display
both displays can be treated like one large screen (my geometry is now 3840x1200!)

TwinView with a Dell E248WFP

2008-07-28T14:46:00.002+09:30

So I received my Dell 24 inch LCD finally, after being told they were out of stock for a while... The colour is certainly more vibrant than my new Precision M6300 laptop screen, but I don't know if it's a good vibrant...

My setup is two X screens side by side. The laptop is on the right, and the LCD in the centre. You can use the real nVidia twinview, which should require xinerama support where available, but I didn't like the second display not having it's own gnome panels.

Both displays are 1920x1200. I used nvidia-xconfig and some manual tweaking to get it right. Note I backed up my xorg.conf file first to xorg.conf-20080728 so that I could run nvidia-xconfig multiple times from the same starting point:

sudo nvidia-xconfig -c /etc/X11/xorg.conf-20080728 -o /etc/X11/xorg.conf --separate-x-screens --no-constant-dpi --use-edid --use-edid-dpi --damage-events --render-accel

Now, this default setup creates an xorg.conf file that places the login screen on the primary display - the laptop. Annoying if you have the LCD in the centre. Simply swapping "Screen 0" and Screen 1" in the ServerLayout doesn't work, as the first screen will still be assigned to the laptop. You must force which screen is the primary screen by using UseDisplayDevice. In each "Screen" section, add:

    Option         "UseDisplayDevice" "DFP-0"

for the laptop LCD (or DFP), and

     Option         "UseDisplayDevice" "DFP-2"

for the external LCD. You may find yours is DFP-1. I use the DVI so perhaps DFP-1 is for the VGA.

Take note of the Identifiers for the two screens, and change the serverlayout to show:

    Screen      0  "DefaultScreen (2nd)"
    Screen      1  "DefaultScreen" RightOf "DefaultScreen (2nd)"

Then restart X. The 0th screen is the "primary" screen, which will have your log-in window and all your usual panels and applets. The 1st screen has a default blank Gnome installation (if you use Gnome), but with the same background.

You could rename the Identifiers to make them a bit more readable.

The resultant xorg.conf file is on pastebin.

poRblems:
So far, the EDID DPI detection doesn't work, so applications that support the DPI and resize themselves aren't doing so for me, depending on the screen. Emacs does look a bit wierd on a 24 inch monitor, when the DPI is set for a 17 inch LCD!

hibernate a Dell Precision M6300 with nvidia-drivers

2008-07-26T12:16:00.011+09:30

This is not a howto, just a collection of information that helped me.
$ uptime
22:05:42 up 9 days, 46 min, 1 user, load average: 1.78, 1.41, 0.91
Unfortunately, that will go back to 0, as I have to reboot for a new kernel!

So it appears there is some difficulty getting Nvidia's proprietary drivers to hibernate nicely. Had I known I might have stuck with an ATI video card for my next laptop (enter the Nvidia vs ATI flamewar. Of course, the whole argument is pointless, because everyone makes ultimatums like "I will never buy <brandname> again", based on one or two experiences, often with known old or buggy hardware.)

I have tried in the past to hibernate this laptop, but not succeeded. Common problems include:

Suspend ok, but resume locks up
Suspend locks up
Corrupted video, etc

Recently I decided to have another go. To my surprise, it worked without much hassle! Firstly, the specs:

Dell Precision M6300 (laptop!)
64-bit Intel core-2 duo
nVidia Quadro FX 1600M with 256Mb RAM
17" WUXGA 1920 X 1200 LCD

lspci identifies the video card as: 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation Device 040d (rev a1) with the id: 10de:040d.

Now for the software. I use gentoo, but you'll be able to glean the relevant version number from these names:

tuxonice-sources-2.6.25-r3 and tuxonice-sources-2.6.26*
v86d-0.1.5.2 (Note: so far hibernate is incompatible with fbcondecor)
hibernate-script-1.99
nvidia-drivers-173.14.09
gcc version 4.1.2 (Gentoo 4.1.2 p1.0.2)

Instructions for installing and configuring are all over the web. Google is your friend! Two useful links:

Note1: I think the results are quite version specific, so try a number of combinations before you give up (yes, it's time consuming)
Note2: I use the filewriter, because I don't use swap <boast Who needs it with 4Gb RAM?!/> Look at my kernel config for more details.
Note3: Make sure you can suspend successfully without the nvidia kernel module installed first, otherwise this info will be of little use to you!

Also, my config files:
[Note these will be paste-binned soon]

kernel .config
hibernate's suspend2.conf and common.conf

Problems:

on resume, GL actions all have a delay of a few seconds before operating. eg. a GL screensaver will show nothing for 3 seconds before starting. You can fix this by stopping X, reloading the nvidia module, and restarting X.

*2.6.26 works much better with resuming - no great pauses, however Intel Wireless WiFi 4965AGN (IWL4965) doesn't work...

I think that's all you'll need to replicate my setup. Let me know your success / failure with other versions / distros!

8bit paintball

2008-06-11T10:14:00.002+09:30

This is damn funny! Especially since my state has just legalised paintball (no-one has set it up yet though - I'm waiting...)

And now for the gratuitous ad. which I nicely didn't remove:

See more funny videos at CollegeHumor

For those RSS and syndicate followers, try this link!

Gentoo Linux Live USB key

2008-06-11T09:36:00.004+09:30

From live CD image, to bootable USB key in only a few minutes! I didn't believe my friend when he told me how easy this is, and yet he was right!

Here's what I did, you may need to tweak it a bit for your setup (especially your usb device - it could be /dev/sd[a|b|c|...]. Firstly I used one 1Gb USB key / thumbdrive / flashdrive / whatever, because I use the live CD image. You could use the minimal CD image and use a smaller key. It appears to me as /dev/sdb.

Your PC might need to be capable of treating the USB filesystem as a CDROM, otherwise this may not work for you. Tell me about your success!

0. dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=512 count=1

The reason I did this is because I had corrupted both the mbr and partition table of the usb key. fdisk simply told me "unable to seek on /dev/sdb" and wouldn't continue. Skip this step if you can fdisk ok.

1. fdisk -l; fdisk /dev/sdb; fdisk a partition!

I join these steps together, cause they're all related to creating the partition. Make one partition covering the entire device. Something like "n p 1 t 1 83 a 1 w" should do it. Note I made it bootable, and I'm not using FAT.

2. mkfs.ext2 -L liveUSB /dev/sdb

You'll notice I'm using ext2 here. Wait for the device to finish writing, then unplug and re-plug it, or mount it manually.

3. sudo mount -t iso9660 -o loop /home/iain/Desktop/livecd-i686-installer-2008.0_beta2.iso /mnt/tmp/

There are multiple ways to do this. This is the one I chose.

4. sudo rsync -avP /mnt/tmp/ /media/liveUSB

5. sudo grub-install --root-directory=/media/liveUSB --no-floppy /dev/sdb

6. reboot!

Remember to set your BIOS to boot from your USB drive. Now you have a live CD on a USB key. Much nicer than burning!

YMMV.

Edit: There are some more comprehensive and detailed howto's available with slightly different techniques:
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/liveusb.xml
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Gentoo_LiveCD_and_LiveUSB

GoogleEarth flight simulator

2008-06-04T14:52:00.003+09:30

Last night I was thinking "GoogleEarth imagery would make a great backdrop for a flight simulator"...

Start GoogleEarth (I have version 4.2.205.5730 on Gentoo Linux)
Turn on the "terrain"
Press ctrl-alt-a
Choose between an F16 jet fighter, or an SR22 4 seat propeller aeroplane.
Fly! The mouse works as the usual joystick controller (down=pull up; up=down, just as I like it!)

You have some other controls too: g (landing gear); up/down arrows (throttle); f (extend flaps); F (retract flaps). And yes - since you have landing gear you _can_ crash! Turn on the terrain option for a 3D view. I landed at my local airport! Not quite as smooth as my good ole Janes FA/18, but still very cool...

It may be a bit buggy - if it locks up just restart GoogleEarth, and choose from one of the default starting points.

Of course, I'm not the first to know - Google has fully documented the keyboard shortcuts!

Step 6... Profit!

2008-05-29T14:37:00.003+09:30

Them good 'ole spam messages are getting more cryptic! This is the latest one I just recieved:

1. Find a girl
2. Invite her to your appartments
3. Use subject product V (or C)
4. Have fun
5. Take her number
6. Profit?

Beats me what that means! Maybe it's really a secret code...

Logitech MX Revolution in Linux

2008-05-28T16:41:00.003+09:30

With my Dell Precision M6300, I was given a Logitech MX Revolution Rechargeable Cordless Laser Mouse. There's a review here. This is a great looking mouse with a good feel (if you're right-handed). It has the usual buttons and wheels. Compared to other laser mice, it has the same smooth flow and precision.

The greatest feature however, and it's stand-out point is the wheel. The wheel can change from a click-wheel to a free wheel. By default in Linux (no special drivers loaded) The wheel button itself changes this behaviour, which means you don't have a middle-button (button 2). If you use this for Firefox tabs, or pasting, you will find this a real pain!

Windows users get an extra feature: Depending on how fast you scroll the wheel, the click-scroll will automatically disable, allowing the wheel to free spin for quite a few seconds. When it stops, the click-feature automatically sets back in. You can hear this with a small "clunk". Logitech claims this is great for navigating very large documents quickly. I like it because I like watching shiny things spin :)

I assumed I would be left without this in Linux however, as weird Windows driver stuff is usually not available. Think again! Thanks to Some Guy there is a program called revoco to control it. Petteri Räty (betelgeuse) has created an ebuild for Gentoo. Follow his instructions, and be sure to read the comments, as you will find some useful info there. I had to do the following:

Edit revoco-0.3.c and change the value of #define MX_REVOLUTION to the value you get for you mouse from `lsusb`. Mine is c525.
The auto setting was a bit whacko by default - the solenoid was clicking on and off without even moving the wheel. This worked:
$ sudo revoco auto=10
Setting the manual click change to button "6" (find button) gives you the middle click (button 2) back *woot*
$ sudo revoco manual=6
and also gets rid of that annoying "search" keyevent which I have a keyboard for :)
But unfortunately, when I set the manual=6 option, the auto scroll feature turns off again :| But that's a small price to pay!

Now I can show off to my friends :) What fun!

No Mio P560 for Australia :(

2008-05-26T14:56:00.005+09:30

Earlier this year I enquired about the Mio P560 - a great looking PDA/GPS with windows mobile 6. At the time it was "due to be released within a few months". I just got an email saying it will no longer be released in Australia:

Dear Iain

You enquired about the Mio P560 a little while ago and this is to let you know that this model will not be released in Australia.

Sorry we are unable to assist you at this time.

Kind regards
mioEshop

I have looked through so many GPS models it's not funny - that elusive perfect handheld is proving to be very... well, elusive!

Compare the .com product list with the .com.au product list!

CeBIT, day 1

2008-05-20T23:07:00.004+09:30

I woke up early (strange bed, you know the drill) so I headed off for CeBIT early, and got there around 9am. The Sydney Exhibition Centre is built under part of the freeway:

The open wasn't till 10am, so I watched people turn up, people have trouble with the magic registration machine, booth babes wander around lost, crowds milling, etc.

The open source conference was interesting. I would like more guts and bolts, but it was aimed more at people slightly more unaware of open source. These photos were taken at the end during the "panel".
Speakers were (left to right) Mike Cannon-Brookes (Atlassian)
Don Christie (Catalyst IT)
Frank Feldmann (RedHat)
Matt Palmer (Engine Yard)

... Alex Lee (Lateral Minds)
Grant Allen (Google)
and...

Shane Owenby (Oracle)

I was mildly surprised to find Shane and Frank in the same room :)

After the conference I had about half an hour to check out the stalls. I saw a very big TV:

and a Stereoscopic LCD:

tomorrow I'll take two photos of it, so you can get the 3D effect!

That's all for now!

Hello from CeBIT

2008-05-20T00:41:00.004+09:30

CeBIT Sydney, that is!

Well, it hasn't officially started yet (that's tomorrow). I'm here till Thursday. Tomorrow I'm going to the open source conference.

Here's part of Darling Harbour from my hotel window (made from hugin on Gentoo:)

Dell Precision M6300

2008-05-12T15:42:00.005+09:30

I've just come back from a three and a half week holiday interstate to see my new Dell Precision M6300 has finally arrived! If it wasn't for a new toy to play with, I would have found it hard to get out of bed this morning (first day back after a great holiday is usually like that...)

Anyway, now to install Gentoo Linux on it!

The first problem I encountered was the classic install cd "no bootable medium found":

Attempting to mount media:- /dev/sda
No bootable medium found. Waiting for new devices...
Could not find CD to boot, something else needed!

I used the minimal install cd, which booted but couldn't "find itself" (after booting the kernel, the cd tries to mount itself so it can use the files contained on it). I tried all-generic-ide, acpi=off, playing with AHCI vs ATA in the BIOS and various options to no avail. In the end, I copied the install cd to a usb key, and booted from the CD. The install found the usb key media and continued to run! Thanks to here for this solution!

Now I've finished installing the basic system and I have the machine booted and logged in. I'm currently compiling gnome! I'll provide more details here soon...

Edit: 20/5/08
The system was mostly installed within a day. This is my success so far:

Processor frequency scaling works (2.6GHz, 2GHz, 1.6GHz, 1.2GHz and 800Mhz. Conservative scheduler works well)

LCD WUSXGA works (1920 x 1200 native resolution)

LCD backlight control mostly works (DPMS works, but I haven't got the lid to switch off the display yet)

Touchpad (synaptics driver) works

Hibernate to disk doesn't (resume properly yet!)

ACPI and power button works

Speakers / sound card works

LAN, WLAN works

MMC reader works

multimedia keys mostly works (Some issue with play, pause, etc buttons)

DVD burner untried (DVD / CD reader works)

firewire untried

USB works

VGA / DVI / TV out untried

modem untried

I'll post more details again soon!

SetiAtWork

2008-04-02T09:34:00.003+09:30

I got my hands on a nice Intel 64bit Quad-Core Dual-CPU Dell Poweredge the other day - not for keeps unfortunately! It is one of two new servers for work. The first one is being tested by the SysAdmin and I asked if I could play with the second. If I can get virtualisation working properly, then I may be able to administer it for it's final use (migrating a few old servers onto it), we'll see.

So what better way to burn it in, than to run SETI or something similar. It's been a while since I last ran SETI. In fact, there was no boinc way back then, and my old 2GHz Pentium 4 got me into the 2nd percentile in just a few months.

After struggling with various issues with the new boinc client not connecting, and not downloading anything, I finally got it all working. One trick was to use the full account key, not the limited key. I also had some problems with the amd64 binary. Apparently there's an even faster one out there, but I haven't looked into that yet.

I was suprised to learn that SETI now provides the source code - when I first used it they kept the source code closed so that they could verify the results were genuine.

I migrated my account from the "classic" to the new style and joined the Gentoo Linux Users Everywhere team. I was dismayed by my apparently slow "recent average credit" total, but after a few weeks, this gradually improved, culminating in todays effort: I'm now at the top of the ranking for this group, based on recent average credit :) I have a long way to go until my total credit gets me noticed however!

I wonder whether I should join another group, or even try out a different project. While SETI holds my favourite spot for being one of the originals, there are possibly more humanitarian efforts! We'll see.

Hopetoun, WA

2008-03-07T12:07:00.001+09:30

Edit: sorry about the broken links! Picasa has played up on me! I'll try to fix them soon...

I've travelled to Hopetoun 3 times now. Each time was for business - installing, re-installing, and maintaining part of the Hopetoun Wind Diesel project. I've gathered a lot of photos and stories, so I thought I'd share some of them.

The first visit was September-October 2004. Our objective was to upgrade the existing Power Station with an Enercon E40 Wind Turbine, two new "Low Load Diesels", and our high penetration control system.

The Enercon E40

is an inverter-connected variable speed drive machine, which means that it responds very nicely to our setpoint requirements - essential when aiming for high penetration.

The Low Load Diesels

are capable of running at low loads (0% - 40% load) for extended periods of time without glazing or damage. The control system controls setpoints, trends, alarms, remote monitoring, and all the usual stuff, to achieve wind penetration figures quite often up to 80% - 90%. (ie. 80% if the electrical load of the station is being generated from wind energy).

The intention was always to move the power station eventually, as the old power station was in the middle of town and too noisy for a growing place. The second visit in March 2007 saw a new power station with 8 Low Load Diesels (2 from the old power station), a second Enercon E40, and two 65,000L fuel tanks! The total capacity of diesel and wind is now about 3.7MW.

The third tip later in 2007 saw an upgrade to the control system, to provide more features requested by the customer, and more efficient operation. Here are some photo's we took during this third trip:

(left) Four of the six town feeders.

(right) The two wind turbines, as viewed from the power station. The small structure in the foreground is the water tank. The power station is self sufficient for water.

(left) Fill-er-up!

(right) Seven Low Load diesels all in a row, out to the garden they started to go...

And that's some quick info on the Hopetoun power station. I enjoyed the experience of the projects from design, through to implementation, and maintenance. We continually monitor the project remotely, however the power station is owned by Verve Energy, who provide the power to Horizon Power. Our main support contract is now over, which means we now only provide the warranty.

Nautilus scripts

2008-02-21T09:18:00.006+09:30

Here's a nautilus script that I find very useful! If you find yourself zipping or tarring a lot of files, this will save you lots of time!

I miss the right-click zipfile functionality that I used to get in Windows from the winzip add-on. With Nautilus, you can make up your own scripts and drop them in the scripts directory. They appear on the right-click context menu under "Scripts". You won't see this menu if you have no scripts yet.

It's easy to use:

Copy the following text into ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/tar-bzip2-here
make it executable: `chmod u+x ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/tar-bzip2-here`
right click a file / folder that you want to archive, or select multiple files and right click on one
select "Scripts > tar-bzip2-here"
If you've selected multiple files, you will be prompted for an archive name. Otherwise, the file name will be selected automatically.
A message appears saying "The archive should now be ready". You will find it in the same folder that your original files were in.

Easy and time saving! No more terminals just to tar -cf blah; bzip blah blah!

Here's the code. Copy it exactly (use cut-n-paste):
version 0.2, updated on March 7, 2008

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

#
# tar-bzip-here version 0.2
#
# This program is free for whatever use you want.  You break it you get to keep
# the pieces!  I would appreciate fixes / improvements being sent back to me.
#
# Changlog:
# 0.2: quote filenames so that certain characters don't confuse bash, such as
# "(".  Some more error messages.
# 0.1: initial release
#
use strict;

#my $logfile = '~/tar-bzip2-here.log';
# my @NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_CURRENT_URI   = split /\s/, $ENV{'NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_CURRENT_URI'};
my @NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_URIS;
if (defined $ENV{'NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_URIS'}) {
  @NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_URIS = split /\s/, $ENV{'NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_URIS'};
}
else {
  `zenity --error --text "Run this from nautilus!"`;
  die "Run this from nautilus!\n";
}


#`echo > $logfile`;

my @files = ();
foreach my $file (@NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_URIS) {
  next unless defined $file;
  chomp $file;
  if ($file !~ s|^file://||) {
     `zenity --error --text "I don't know how to handle the URI '$file'"`;
     #`echo 'skipped $file' >>$logfile`;
     next;
  }

  $file =~ s/(%..)/&unq($1)/ge;
  # `echo 'ok: $file >> $logfile`;
  push @files, "\"$file\"";
}


my $numfiles = $#files + 1;
my $fname;

#`echo 'files are @files'>>$logfile`;
# if mixed files and dir, then ask for archive name
if ($numfiles > 1) {
  $fname = `date +%Y%m%d`; chomp $fname; $fname .= '.tar.bz2';
  $fname = `zenity --file-selection --save --confirm-overwrite --filename=$fname --title="Select a name for the archive"`;
  chomp $fname;
  &end ("Cancelled by user") unless ($fname ne '');
}

# if single file or directory, then compress to dirname.tar.bz2
elsif ($numfiles == 1) {
  $fname = "$files[0].tar.bz2";
}

else {
  &end ("You need to select some files in nautilus to use this script");
}

# now tar a bzip2!
`tar -c @files | bzip2 > "$fname"`;
#`echo 'tar -c @files | bzip2 > "$fname"'>>$logfile`;

# done!
`zenity --info --text "The archive '$fname' should now be ready"`;

# functions
sub unq {
  my ($percent) = @_;

  if    ($percent eq '%20') { return ' '; }
  elsif ($percent eq '%20') { return ' '; }
  else {
     &end ("Don't know how to handle '$percent'");
  }
}

sub end {
  my ($err) = @_;
  `zenity --error --text "$err"`;
     die "$err";
}

Gentoo 2008.0

2008-01-25T23:29:00.000+09:30

So it's no secret that I use Gentoo. If you've been following the rumours lately you would think that Gentoo is in strife. Daniel Robbins made lots of people believe that there were project, legal, developer, and direction issues. Most of his facts appear to be correct, however I cannot agree with his conclusions.

The State of New Mexico NFP status is not a big deal - sure it's a little embarrassing, but papers got lost, people got preoccupied, and now the papers have been re-filed[1]. Sure the council has had a few resignations, but a new council will be instated, followed by elections, followed by a better process for ensuring it doesn't happen again.

Sure there wasn't a release in 2007 - but there were various security concerns and a breakdown in communication. What you may not realise is that Gentoo doesn't need regular releases, because the entire system of packages goes through a constant upgrade cycle anyway. For example, when I used to install Redhat and then Fedora, major releases would usually introduce a new major Gnome or KDE version. Without the new release CD, you wouldn't be able to get a lot of new packages. Even with the new release CD, Fedora would often blow away my filesystem anyway. With Gentoo, KDE 4.0 is currently in the tree, and people are successfully installing and using it.

Nevertheless, a new release is on the way[2]. Pencilled in for final release in mid-march, there are a lot of new features and processes. Including linux kernel 2.6.24[3], if testing goes well. A new security discussion has been set up, so that Release Engineering knows what the issues are directly.

The final issue, IMHO is the communication between devs and users. They will never completely agree on everything, but that's a fundamental difference that shouldn't be changed. At the least there should be some communication - and the releng looks to be addressing that too. There is a new mailing lists to help new developers (gentoo-dev-help), a user survey planned, and a call for comment on the new release[4].

So Gentoo is not perfect, nor is any distribution. At least from what I've seen over the last few days is they continue to learn from mistakes, which means the will continue to improve and grow.

[1] http://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-nfp/msg_01347.xml
[2] http://www.gentoo.org/news/20080123_releng_beta.xml
[3] http://www.gentoo.org/news/20080125-2.6.24-kernel.xml
[4] http://www.gentoo.org/news/20080124_releng-feature-request.xml

A new office

2007-12-18T15:30:00.000+09:30

Along the lines of my other workplace stories:

I work for a software, electrical and mechanical style company. My part has always been software related, so where I work is not always important. With the exception of the occasional PLC to program, or switchboard to test, I can work from home, work, plane etc. We've suggested before that the software "arm" of 3 - 4 people move closer to the city, freeing up some space for other employees that need to be near our workshop. This has always been knocked back straight away though.

Recently things have been looking up for the company in general, which is good news. However, I hear rumblings that the MD / GM type people want to open a new office close to the city - coincidentally in the same suburb that these people live... I wonder if there will be enough room for me, but then do I want to work there (given who will be in the same office...)?!

Dear Mum

2007-12-18T15:23:00.000+09:30

Here's a poem that I wrote (I think - I found it on my computer) for Mother's Day last year. One of the problems of having a bad memory is that I can't even remember my own blunderings... Anyway, I'll retain copyright on it until someone finds the original. I seem to recall putting it in a Mother's Day card. Feel free to use it (for non-commercial use :)

Dear Mum,
Today's a special day for you,
A day we tell you how much we care
For all the things you've done for use
From clean clothes to brushed hair!

So today let us look out for you
We'll clean up, wash up, smile
But it's not just Mother's Day that counts,
We'll do this every while!

Geek Code

2007-11-21T10:59:00.000+09:30

It's been around for a long time, but is it dead?  Well, maybe.  Anyway here's mine updated:

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GCS/MU d? s++: a- C+(++++) UL++++ P+++>+++++$ L+++$ E+ W++ N !w t@ tv++ b++
DI++++ G h r+++ y++++
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

Final Destination for Gnome?

2007-11-07T08:52:00.000+09:30

The Gnome 2.22 (and 2.24 - 2.x) roadmap has been released [1].

I wrote in July about the anti climactic release of gnome 2.18 [2] and I was hoping that Gnome would release some exciting features for the user and for the developer in the next few major releases. Well, I am once again disappointed. 2.20 seems add instability, and the outlook for 2.22 is grim.

According to the Gnome Footnotes RSS feed:

The roadmap is based on feedback from current GNOME developers and other community members.

We hope this roadmap increases the awereness about the future steps of the project inside and outside the community and helps us to look forward and plan where we want to go.

I find it hard that community member feedback has not included better gnome-screensaver management (Gnome still ships with only 4 basic screensavers, among other issues); or better evolution stability and usability (evolution 2.12 locks up for longer and more frequently than previous versions on simple actions like changing folders; it still does not show the correct account when sending mail, and so on).

Gnome, I still use you, but the reasons are becoming fewer and fewer. When the only remaining reason is "because kde takes too long to compile" then perhaps you will fall into the application graveyard, where we sometimes visit to pay our respect, wondering "whatever happened to ..." or "they were good once".

[1] http://live.gnome.org/RoadMap
[2] http://nthrbldyblg.blogspot.com/2007/07/gnome-218-prepare-to-be-underwhelmed.html
[3] http://www.gnomedesktop.org/node/feed

Zimbra + Evolution =

2007-10-03T12:57:00.000+09:30

... Zimbrolution?!

What the Zimbra am I talking about? Zimbra is "open source server and client software for messaging and collaboration - email, group calendaring, contacts, and web document management and authoring"[1] that we are trialling at work. Essentially for me that means its a neat web interface to my mail, calendar and contacts.

But the problem with all these webmail webcalendar apps is you may send an email or make a contact on the web interface, and you don't have it in your normal mail client. You may use exchange or something like that, but if you're a die-hard Linux user such as myself, you're often left high and dry.

Enter Zimbraevo[2], the Zimbra Evolution Connecter. It's an add-on to Evolution[3] that lets you synchronise your mail, contacts and calendar with Zimbra.

Installation

OK, so I've convinced you to use Zimbraevo, but how? Well, you could search for some elusive instructions on installing it, but I didn't find a complete set.

You can either use my Gentoo ebuild below, or follow these tips:

Prerequisites

Zimbra server. I'm assuming someone has already set this up for you to use.
Linux. There is a Windows version of evolution, so let me know if you have success installing Zimbraevo for it.
svn, gcc or another compiler, and evolution. You need it to get the source and compile it. If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's probably a good idea to go here or do something else with your time :)

Getting the source

from your favourite command line, type

svn co https://zimbraevo.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/zimbraevo zimbraevo

This will get you the latest bleeding edge source.

Make & Install

cd to the newly created zimbraevo/trunk/ directory.
type:

./bootstrap.sh
make
make install

Use

Now restart evolution. For mail, you can just use imap. If your sysadmin has installed zimbra on your normal mail server, then you may not even have to do anything! But for the other features, try out the Zimbra server:

Go to Edit > Preferences. You will see a similar preferences window to the one pictured here.
Select "Add". Enter your email address, click Forward.
Under Server Type, select Zimbra Collaboration Suite.
Enter the other details as required. For me, the mail server and password is the same as my normal imap account. Your situation may vary depending on your setup. If in doubt, ask your sysadmin.

After you apply the final screen, you will see a new entry in your sidebar (folder list). I called my account Zimbra, so that's what I see.

Not only that, but there are also new contacts and calendars! Add a contact or calendar entry in Zimbra, and it appears in Evolution! I'm very happy with the way it "just worked". And I'm using Evolution 2.10.3, which hasn't been tested by Zimbra yet.

What Else?

If you happen to use Gentoo Linux, here's a free ebuild for you that pulls in the svn source, builds it and installs it. Copy the following text into an overlay. I put it in/usr/local/portage/gnome-extra/zimbraevo/zimbraevo-9999.ebuild.

#
# Zimbraevo live svn ebuild by Iain Buchanan 
#
# $Header: $

inherit eutils subversion

DESCRIPTION="Zimbraevo - Zimbra Collaboration Suite Evolution Connector"
HOMEPAGE="http://www.zimbra.com/"
LICENSE="public-domain"

SLOT="0"
KEYWORDS="~x86"
IUSE=""
DEPEND="mail-client/evolution"

ESVN_REPO_URI="https://zimbraevo.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/zimbraevo"

S="${WORKDIR}/trunk/"

src_unpack() {
subversion_src_unpack
}

src_compile() {
cd ${S}/trunk
./bootstrap.sh
emake || die
}

src_install() {
cd ${S}/trunk
make DESTDIR="${D}" install || die
}

So there you have it. Please post your findings, I would be interested to hear what other brave Zimbraevo's are doing!

[1] http://www.zimbra.com/
[2] Introducing Zimbra Connector for Evolution
[3] http://www.gnome.org/projects/evolution/

Sending files in Gnome via bluetooth

2007-09-26T15:36:00.001+09:30

Gnome's bluetooth support is still a "work in progress"! To send files via bluetooth, you may or may not have a menu option. If not, heres a quick script to drop in your nautilus-scripts folder.

#!/bin/sh

TMPFILE=`/bin/mktemp`

hcitool scan | grep -v Scanning > ${TMPFILE}
if [ $? -eq 1 ]; then
 zenity --error --text="Couldn't scan for devices"
 rm ${TMPFILE}
 exit
fi

zenity --list --text="Choose a recipient" --column Address --column Name `cat ${TMPFILE}` > ${TMPFILE}

DEST=`cat ${TMPFILE}`

if [ -z ${DEST} ]; then
 zenity --error --text="No recipient selected"
 rm ${TMPFILE}
 exit
fi

for i in $NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_FILE_PATHS; do
 gnome-obex-send -d `cat ${TMPFILE}` "$i"
done

rm ${TMPFILE}

Make this directory, if it doesn't exist:
mkdir -p ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts
Save the text above into a file "~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/send-via-bluetooth"
make it executable:
chmod u+x ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/send-via-bluetooth
Now right-click on any file (or group of files) in nautilus, and you should see a scripts> option. Under scripts, select "send-via-bluetooth"

Notes:

You will need hcitool (part of bluez-utils)
You need zenity (a gnome package)
When sending lots of files, the "Sending" dialog keeps popping up under your mouse. Not ideal!

Feel free to email me if you have any questions or improvements.

Nigerian scam - with a difference!

2007-09-05T15:28:00.001+09:30

I get the odd hundred or so Nigerian scam emails per second, just like the next guy. Usually I just delete them, but this one warranted further inspection.

Major kudos to the guy/gal who did this - I presume they hacked the scammer's mass email system, and changed the text ever so slightly! Here is the source of the email, with some info replaced with ****'s once it hit our office mail server:


Return-Path: 
Received: from murder ([unix socket]) by **** (Cyrus v2.2.12)
   with LMTPA; Fri, 31 Aug 2007 09:56:22 +0930
X-Sieve: CMU Sieve 2.2
Received: from localhost (localhost.**** [127.0.0.1]) by
   **** (Postfix) with ESMTP id BBE9917DDA; Fri, 31 Aug 2007
   09:56:22 +0930 (CST)
X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at ****
Received: from **** ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost ****
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Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2007 07:23:29 +0800
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To: iain@****
Subject: Nigerians are retarded humans
From: Nigerian Scamer 
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Dont trust nigerians - Nigerians are the most idiot pice of shits in the world

I'm quite happy to get this email, if it means that this scammer has sent one less real scam. Hopefully this stopped thousands of scams, who knows? At least it made me laugh :D

emacs 22

2007-09-03T14:32:00.000+09:30

I just made the switch from emacs 21 to 22. So far, it seems much the same to the average user (me!)

I decided to write down a few settings for those finding it hard to get used to - you may or may not like them all, so change these settings as you feel like it.

You can add all of these to your .emacs file to have them automatically used.

highlight or fontify according to the syntax of the text you are editing
```
(global-font-lock-mode t)
```
get rid of the toolbar
```
(setq tool-bar-mode)
```
Show the column number
```
(setq column-number-mode t)
```
highlight matching parenthesis when the cursor is placed on one
```
(require 'paren)
(show-paren-mode 1)
```
when you paste / insert text over a selection, delete the selection first (otherwise you end up with the selection _and_ the pasted text)
```
(delete-selection-mode t)
```
auto-wrapping options. This binds the key sequenct C-x w to turn on "auto wrapping". It nicely understands comments, and automatically keeps them intact.
```
(setq fill-column 80)
(setq default-fill-column 80)
(global-set-key "\C-xw" 'auto-fill-mode)
```

main window geometry

(setq default-frame-alist
  '((height . 74)
    (width . 120)
    ))

Bind goto-line to 'C-x g' (I use this key sequence a lot!)
```
(global-set-key "\C-xg" 'goto-line)
```
this sets the amount of time to wait between each automatic scroll, when you select something and move the mouse out of the window. Unfortunately, it is ignored if you "shake" the mouse...
```
(setq mouse-scroll-delay 0.25)
```
this is too agressive, so turn it off. It's a nice idea, but it manages to scroll through a 4000 line file in just a few scrolls, and I have to move the mouse very slowly to get normal behaviour.
```
(setq mouse-wheel-progressive-speed nil)
```

Some general editing settings - set default indent level to 3, and no tabs! Useful if you like to stick to a particular style. Tabs are evil, because everybody uses a different tab width, making a nicely formatted text file on your system look unaligned on another system.

(setq standard-indent 3)
(setq c-indent-level 3)
(setq c-basic-offset 3)
(setq perl-indent-level 3)
(setq tcl-indent-level 3)
(setq pascal-case-indent 3)
(setq comment-column 40)
(setq sh-indentation 3)
(setq tcl-indent-level 3)
(setq c-indent-comments-syntactically-p t)
(setq c-default-style "ellemtel")
(setq-default indent-tabs-mode nil)
(setq-default tab-width 3)

show column numbers
```
'(column-number-mode t)
```
Use the control-c style cut, copy and paste commands (cua mode)
```
'(cua-mode t nil (cua-base))
```
Note that the superior rectangle support of cua mode has changed from shift-enter to control-enter (ie. C-enter)

Wild life!

2007-07-18T11:45:00.000+09:30

I just watched the coolest amateur wildlife video I've ever seen. A pride of lionesses attack a buffalo baby, only to have a crocodile attempt to steal it from them. Then along comes the rest of the buffalo herd and starts attacking the lionesses! You have to see it to believe it. Even the guide can be heard saying "I've never seen anything like this" over and over.

Watch it here

Also, here's another version with a voice-over from the lions point of view. Funny!

Flexible working hours

2007-07-11T08:59:00.000+09:30

I just received an email from "management" (to all staff), the first paragraph reads:

All leave is to be approved by your department manager and/or myself. This includes taking the morning off, ducking out for the afternoon, taking and extended lunch break or adjusting your working hours.

This is a divergence from our previous "agreement" where we could be flexible, within reason, so long as we completed our 40 hour week. (Which is quite easy, given everyone generally works - and is even expected to work - a few hours more per week).

Of course, I don't agree, and in my usual fashion, I am composing a reply stating as much. However, I'm giving this one a "count to 10" before I reply.

The point of this post is to see if our "flexible agreement" is one of the last, or if there are still many workplaces operating successfully this way. I understand this gets harder to manage as a company grows, but we have an efficient time sheet system, so I don't see the reason (nor was one given) for this email.

I personally think it's an affront to the effort we've shown in the last few months - given lay-offs and cutbacks, everyone has been working hard to try and keep the company profitable, and yet random emails like this come through from time to time.

I leave you with an excerpt from "The Tao of Programming":

A manager went to his programmers and told them: "As regards to your work hours: you are going to have to come in at nine in the morning and leave at five in the afternoon." At this, all of them became angry and several resigned on the spot.

So the manager said: "All right, in that case you may set your own working hours, as long as you finish your projects on schedule." The programmers, now satisfied, began to come in at noon and work to the wee hours of the morning.

-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"

Internet Banking Security - feel-good fuz or the real-deal?

2007-07-10T11:16:00.001+09:30

One of my banks recently upgraded their website. Apart from some issues with plug-ins, session timeouts, and secret questions, they also now use an on-screen keyboard to enter passwords.

I would like to say first that On-Screen keyboards are simply a waste of time and frustration for the user, and they are an unnecessary and costly implementation for the organisation. I will tell you why soon.

"Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for antivirus company Sophos ... argued keylogging software can beat on-screen keyboards. Any keylogger is likely to be part of a more complex piece of spyware. That allows the hacker access to everything on your PC, such as monitoring the screen and mouse clicks. Similarly, drop-down boxes are not immune to hackers grabbing information from them." Original story here.

These are the steps that I have to take to get a new username and password, or if I've forgotton it:

Enter credit card number and pin
Select a username
Select a password with an On-Screen keyboard that has minimum 8 characters; not more than 2 of the same character in a row; at least one number; etc.
Re-enter the password in a second input box, with the On-Screen keyboard with the numbers jumbled in a different order
Select three secret questions from a drop-down list, and enter three unique answers

Then to log in, I have to enter the username and password, again with the On-Screen keyboard with the numbers jumbled; and I have to answer one of my secret questions.

A small price to pay, you might be thinking, to provide an extra level of security and make my password invulnerable to attack! Wrong. Firstly, forget the idea that just because someone can make a good argument sound convincing, that it is actually a good idea. Secondly, forget the idea that just because every bank in the world is taking steps to implement such devices, that "thousands of banks can't be wrong". I believe on-screen keyboards (and similar devices) are simply ways that web hosts make money. "Criminals are getting more sophisticated, therefore you have to pay us to upgrade your web site with an on-screen keyboard. Besides, Bank of Universe did it. Do you want to be held legally and financially responsible when someone breaks into your bank, and we show that it could have been prevented?". [Answer to rhetorical quetsions: "What? Banks financially responsible? Horror...] Thirdly, let me tell you why they will fail in any real attempt:

I would like to separate criminals interested in getting your account details into two groups:

Those who are doing a dedicated attack on an individual
Random script-kiddies exploiting worms / trojans / security holes who install a keystroke logger.

Now let me say that you have no hope of avoiding the first type of criminal. He could steal your wallet and credit card; he could install a hidden camera over your computer; he could tap your phone conversations; he could simply beat you up at night time for your money. No on-screen keyboard will stop this. (OK, to allay your concern, you do have a hope: that your criminal is not smart enough, dedicated enough, or willing to do any of these things. And in most cases, he is not.)

It follows therefore that the only criminal you can protect yourself from, is the opportunistic criminal, who downloaded some 1337 Warez, and who thinks he is a hxr.

Let me convince you that this type of criminal, for maximum yield, will most likely target the largest number of people he can. He would tire very quickly if he only targeted one person at a time, only to find Grandma's secret chocolate cake recipie; or a letter from Joe Taxidriver to the President on why children need more discipline. This means that his data will be thousands of pages long. "cool" he says, eyes glowing at all the random text, and then realises how much time this is taking away from Second Life, and very quickly your logged keys get forgotten.

Let's assume that his internet connection is down, and he has nothing else to do. He would still have to:

Randomly target your computer, exploit a vulnerability, and have the logger installed and running while you log into your bank.
Get the data back from the logger on your computer. Usually this is not sent straight to the criminal in question (unless he is dumber than usual) as the police would then be able to find where his computer is. So he sends it to another (perhaps compromised) machine that has no relation to him, but that he can log into and download the data from. This machine also has to be up and running, and the owner must not close the security hole before the criminal returns.
Randomly pick one out of the thousands of results that might be yours.
Find your username and password in a lot of text. This is not as easy as you think. The more data, the harder it is to find. Remember that you may type a few words in an email, enter a web address in your browser, make some notes on your toenail clippings, then enter your username and password, then go back to your email, etc.
Know where you used this username and password. If you use your mouse to click on a shortcut, then he can't get it from the keylogger data. He either turns to the next person, or tries to find out what your shortcuts are. Remember he is probably not logged into your computer, he is most likely analysing results, so he would have to get back into your computer and look through all your shortcuts, desktop icons, etc, until he found the right one. And just because he downloaded a program to automatically install keyloggers, doesn't mean he can a) get back to your computer and b) see your shortcuts.

It is highly unlikely that a great series of consequences would lead our criminal to this point. And if you want to make sure, there are some simple measures you could use to thwart him at the start:

Make sure your computer is up to date with the latest operating system updates. Whether you're using Windows, Linux, BSD, or anything else, they are all vulnerable to the programmer's mistakes. Update regularly.
Make sure you have installed a good firewall. Unfortunately, at the time of writing, Microsoft has never had a good firewall. If you can't afford one, at least use AVG Free [http://free.grisoft.com/] oh, and KEEP IT UPDATED!
Install Spybot Search and Destroy [http://www.safer-networking.org/] This will take care of worms, trojans, etc., that don't technically fall into the "virus" category. (and guess what? update it!)
For an extra level of security, make sure your computer isn't even directly accessible from the "big wide world web". Use NAT (Network Address Translation, look it up on google or wikepedia). If you have an aDSL router, that attaches to your computer with ethernet, then you're probably here already. If you have a dialup modem, or internal aDSL / ISDN card, then be careful.
Change your passwords regularly. And make them secure. This one gets bolded and italicised, because it is one of the easiest and most straight forward measures to take, and yet only the technically savvy seem to do it. How many of you use some combination of part of your name, birthday, city, or pet in your password? Even if your bank enforces on-screen keyboards, use some random words, or phrases, and characters (like !@#$%^&*;.,<>? etc.)

If this is too much for you to remember, then write it down and put it in your purse / wallat. Remember, the dedicated criminal will be able to steal your purse with your money in it anway, so he won't care about some random words on a piece of paper. Make it look like a shopping list if you must.

Well here ends my rant about unnecessary security measures. I hope that you will petition your bank to remove farcical security, and let you get on with your life, instead of spending most of your time logging in.

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

-- Benjamin Franklin, 1759

controlling ATI LCD output when laptop lid is closed

2007-07-06T22:48:00.000+09:30

A little while ago, I overwrote my custom acpi scripts by mistake, (I don't keep backups just to keep myself on my toes...) so I spent some time today redoing them.

These are fairly hardware specific, for my Dell Inspiron 9100, so take what you like. If you break it, you get to keep the pieces. Also, I've taken from examples on the web that should be in the public domain.

Firstly, I keep /etc/acpi/events rather empty, with only one file /etc/acpi/events/default:

event=.*
action=/etc/acpi/default.sh %e

Secondly, default.sh (on a lid button event) calls lidaction.sh. Yes I know I could call lidaction.sh directly from /etc/acpi/events/default, but I like to have all my event decisions in one file.

lidaction.sh looks like this:

#
# uses xset to blank / unblank any X displays when lid is closed / opened.
#

getXuser() {
      user=`finger| grep -m1 ":$displaynum " | awk '{print $1}'`
      if [ x"$user" = x"" ]; then
              user=`finger| grep -m1 ":$displaynum" | awk '{print $1}'`
      fi
      if [ x"$user" != x"" ]; then
              userhome=`getent passwd $user | cut -d: -f6`
              export XAUTHORITY=$userhome/.Xauthority
      else
              export XAUTHORITY=""
      fi
}

setStates () {
  for display in /tmp/.X11-unix/*; do
      displaynum=`echo $display | sed s#/tmp/.X11-unix/X##`
      # logger "/usr/bin/xset -display :$displaynum dpms force $1"
      /usr/bin/xset -display :$displaynum dpms force $1
      /usr/sbin/radeontool light $1

      getXuser;
      if [ x"$XAUTHORITY" != x"" ]; then
          export DISPLAY=":$displaynum"
          su $user -c "/opt/bin/aticonfig --set-powerstate=$2 --effective=now"
      fi

  done
}

# this "highlevel" makes us more hardware independant.  Thanks to http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/7243.
highlevel=$(aticonfig --lsp | grep ":" | tail -1 | cut -d':' -f 1 | sed -e "s/\*//g" -e "s/ *//g")
[ -z "$highlevel" ] && highlevel=3

grep -q closed /proc/acpi/button/lid/*/state
if [ $? = 0 ]; then
  lid_closed=1
  # echo "Lid Closed"
else
  lid_closed=0
  # echo "Lid Open"
fi

if [ ${lid_closed} -eq 1 ]; then
  logger $0: lid just closed
  setStates "off" 1
else
  logger $0: lid just opened
  setStates "on" $highlevel
fi

That's it! I hope you see something useful. The three important bits are radeontool, xset, and aticonfig.

This has the advantage over gnome-power-manager, because it will work regardless of who is logged in, and even on the console.

Gnome 2.18: "Prepare to be underwhelmed"

2007-07-03T14:49:00.000+09:30

So gnome 2.18 is released with the slogan "prepare to be underwhelmed" [1]. OK, perhaps this is a bit harsh, but not for invalid reasons...

I'm not going to bore you with a full review, for that you can just google your heart out! Instead, I'll list a few things that I like (or not) after my first few days of usage:

There is a nice disk usage analyser, with a great pie-chart-on-steroids view of where your data is. This will definitely beat hands-down my old du analyses.
When you unmount a drive, you're asked if you want to empty the trash first (trash from removable media is stored on said media in a .Trash folder)
Ala windows, you get a "drive ready to be removed" after you've unmounted a drive.
The annoying power messages telling you your power has been unplugged no longer stay up when power is returned. (Instead they use the notification popup).

And the bad:

There is still no gnome-screensaver customiser like the goold ol' xscreensaver-demo. Instead, gnome-screensaver-preferences has added a "power management" button. Great...

Executive summary: Don't go to the big screen, wait for the TV release!

I know there are valid excuses for these and other criticisms, but the point is Gnome is aimed at a simplified user interface, and a simplified user isn't going to understand complicated reasons about why they can't customise their screensaver, for example.

In My Humble Opinion, this looks like 2.16.4. But I'd rather some release than no release at all.

[1] http://www.linux.com/articles/61210

Original or not?

2007-05-23T14:51:00.000+09:30

I can't remember where this comes from - it was on a backup of mine from 2003:

You think I'm hot
I think you're even hotter
You say "I'm not"
I say don't even bother
To argue with me
What I say is truer
Just love me cause
I'm a thinker not a doer.

Just thought it was neat!

Whinging

2007-05-21T23:26:00.000+09:30

The first rule of whinging:

Don't whinge unless you are prepared to do something about it.

[Whinging = whining for those who don't know what I'm talking about]

Recently at work we've had a few people complain about various things. When we show them the rules of whinging they are often silent. Unfortunately, they might be able to achieve something if they both whinged and acted.

Microsoft is killing the handheld PC market

2007-05-15T15:25:00.001+09:30

In my opinion, Microsoft is killing the handheld market. Ever since getting my (expensive, but thankfully a gift) pda/phone I can't believe how badly the OS is implemented. I am constantly frustrated with annoying features that can't be changed.

Until a better option is available for consumers, PDA's will continue to die. And so long as the PDA market is going down, there won't be a large uptake by users, and hence developers, who want to improve or add features.

Why isn't there a push by manufacturers for a better OS? (I know there is linux, but I haven't got to installing it on my PDA yet :)

You would think the specification for a "Windows" phone would be simple: take the most popular Nokia, Ericsson, etc. and copy their features. But this hasn't happened! Instead Microsoft have developed their own wheel, and it turned out square!

If you're still reading, I'm taking this chance to list some of the most annoying features:

You can't turn it off!
The handful of PDA's I've seen don't turn off. And by "turn off" I expect that when I hit the power button (or hold it down, or whatever), the mobile, wireless, bluetooth, screen, etc all switch off. Just like a normal phone. I didn't realise that the "on" button only blanked the display until I was in a meeting, and my phone rang!
EDIT: Of course there's "flight mode" but this has it's own problems. Firstly why is it called flight mode? While in-flight isn't the only time you want to turn your phone off completely. What about sleep-mode, meeting-mode, etc? See the profiles section below.
It's hard to actually disable incoming rings.
Once my phone rang, I had to hit the hang up button. But it rang again! So I have to pull out the stylus, go to some tiny wireless symbol on the top, and select "flight mode". WTF is flight mode?! Perhaps you use this feature when your PDA is about to take flight out the window! Where's the big red off button?!
There is no way to silently ignore incoming rings.
With all mobile phones I've had, you can press a key when your phone rings, and it is instantly silenced, without actually answering / hanging up. This is handy when you're in eg. a library, and you want to answer the call but not until you've walked out of the area. Or if you want to let the phone ring as if you weren't around to answer it (handy if you don't want the caller to know you're screening them). I've just discovered that you can make the ring silent by pressing the down volume button. Perhaps this in "intuitive", but I've had my XDA for nearly a year, and I only just discovered this feature!
No "profiles" exist.
With Nokia, and others, pressing the "on" button shortly, displays a list of prifiles - silent, outdoor, car, etc. This changes all features on the phone from brightness, theme, ring tone, volume, vibrate, etc. To do this with my PDA/phone, I have to go to each setting individually and change them one by one, with the stylus. This takes time, and quickly becomes annoying. I should be able to change such a simple feature without even touching the stylus.
Entering WAP keys is painful!
When entering the key, there are a number of things that aren't right:

The "new wireless" notification that brings up a small key entry area disappears after a few seconds - EVEN IF I'm still writing the key in it!!
Key's are shown as **'s. Why? Is someone looking over my shoulder going to remember 26 hexadecimal digits? Text recognition is bad already, so the chances of making a mistake are high. There is no way to check that you've entered the right digits.
Key's cannot be copied and pasted in to the text entry. Why? I have a key in a file that I bluetoothed to my PDA. I copied the key in pocket word, but the paste option was grayed out in the key entry box. EDIT: What if I have a 128 character WPA-PSK key?
The no-screen keyboard shows numbers, or letters, but not both at the same time. This means I have to constantly change between keyboards when entering a long key - especially if it is composed of "number-letter-number" etc. EDIT: I have finally found out how to enable this feature! Go to Start > Settings. Select the Input icon, select Input method: Keyboard. Then Select "small keys" and not "large keys". This makes the keys slightly smaller, but adds the number keys to the top row.
When I changed a key on one WLAN, the PDA forgot all the other key's I had entered!

Every different PDA/phone running the SAME OS looks different. They all have different options, different programs, etc. This suggests to me that manufacturers recognise the problems with WM5, and try their own way to get around it.
There is no easy way to "stop" programs.
I opened a music file in windows media player. I then clicked the "x" to close media player. I then tried to delete the file. I was told I couldn't delete it because it was being used. The only way to get around it was to find the deeply hidden "running applications" option in the memory settings somewhere, and close media player.
The PDA / phone can't be used without the stylus.
I work in the R&D department for an engineering company. We develop our own touchscreen software for full-size panel PC's. It takes effort to make sure that the whole PC can be used with one finger. The PDA should be the same. To do simple things like make a call, bring up a contact, read an SMS, I shouldn't have to get out the stylus. (Even for PDA/phones without a real keyboard). But all the buttons on the LCD are too small. Why? Buttons should take up the entire real estate available, so you can use a finger. But instead, the whole display in some cases, is just two small buttons down the bottom, and one line of text. Why? there is nothing else to show, so use the space! EDIT: Whether or not you like Apple, the Ipod Touch and the Iphone are the best examples of how this is done right.
Cell info isn't displayed.
In Australia at least, the suburb of the tower you're connected to is shown on the display on mobiles. But not on my windows mobile!
Working with contacts.
Microsoft has made it hard to delete multiple contacts, or send multiple contacts. Perhaps this is because they want to force you to use outlook and activesync. There is an add-on called PPCContactsMgr v1.6 that I highly recommend if you want better contact handling features.

Well, thanks for listening! There are more, but you probably think I'm whinging by now. I would send this to Microsoft if I thought they would listen. Unfortunately, I now have an expensive phone that has less features and is harder to use than my first nokia I bought years ago.

Since writing this, Apple has released the new iphone. For the one-fingered use, it looks like they've done something right. Time will tell how good it is - it's not due in Australia until the end of 2008.

Also, Windows Mobile 6 has been released, which is really a small update to Windows Mobile 5. A small amount of these issues have apparently been addressed, so far as I can tell from online reviews.

I first wrote this post to the synce mailing list and since then I have discovered some third party applications that make some of these tasks easier. I've also edited this post from my original.

2007-05-15T15:13:00.000+09:30

A blog is born. Thanks for reading.