Of all my feeds, two are clearly my highest rated. I can’t pick between them, they are too different. One is Dans Data, which is by far the first blog I read. If you like gadget with intelligent review, you should have a look around. Anyways, the other is Planet Ubuntu - which isn’t so easy to explain why I rate it. I have a huge bias / hardon for Ubuntu, but also posts like this with gratuitious use of the word Twat which traps my heart.

This IBM x40 Thinkpad (hello Google) has an atheros based wireless card, which seems to be far better than anything I’ve used before. Off my balcony it sees no less than 30 different AP’s (a whole page in Kismet), compared to about 10 with other cards. Woot.

By the way, to get kismet running in ubuntu dapper, just apt-get install kismet, then enable your local loop back with ifconfig lo up …

How I remapped those other keys on my new computer…

Make a file ~/.Xmodmap

keycode 233 = Next
! XF86Forward
keycode 234 = Prior
! XF86Back
keycode 178 = XF86HomePage
keycode 229 = XF86Search
keycode 236 = XF86Mail
keycode 230 = XF86AddFavorite
keycode 231 = XF86Reload
keycode 232 = XF86Stop
keycode 227 = F35

I hate the position of the Fn key, in the bottom left. That’s where the Ctrl key goes. The Fn key is assigned a keycode of 227 as reported by xev. Unfortunately, xev also tells us that the key pressed event is only reported when the key is released, with a key release event straight after. In case the developers of this particular quirk are wondering - that’s not quite right. Grrr.. So instead, I’ve set the evil Capslock key to be ctrl, and now I’ll do mental gymnastics for a while to get in the habbit of pressing it.

When I upped our Iinet account to “thrillseeker” it definitely became a bit more unstable. I’m keen to quantify that feeling. Using the nifty mrtg tools which come included with Ubuntu, it’s a pretty straight forward operation.

Here’s my mrtg.cfg which goes in /etc/

######################################################################
# Multi Router Traffic Grapher — Sample Configuration File
######################################################################
# This file is for use with mrtg-2.5.4c

# Global configuration
WorkDir: /var/www/mrtg
WriteExpires: Yes
RunAsDaemon: Yes
Interval: 5

Title[iinet.ping]: Round Trip Time for ADSL to iinet.net.au
PageTop[iinet.ping]:

Round Trip Time for ADSL link

##################################################################
# We set MaxBytes to the time in ms that we consider “normal” for
# an unused link, so that the per-cent values show how much you
# are off when the line is used more heavily. you also have to
# set AbsMax, otherwise values greate than MaxBytes would be
# ignored.

MaxBytes[iinet.ping]: 180
AbsMax[iinet.ping]: 10000

Target[iinet.ping]: `/usr/bin/mrtg-ping-probe -o -n 203.59.24.221`
##################################################################
# We have to change all labels of the graph.
#
YLegend[iinet.ping]: round trip time
ShortLegend[iinet.ping]: ms
Legend1[iinet.ping]: Maximum Round Trip Time in ms
Legend2[iinet.ping]: Minimum Round Trip Time in ms
Legend3[iinet.ping]: Maximal 5 Minute Maximum Round Trip Time in ms
Legend4[iinet.ping]: Maximal 5 Minute Minimum Round Trip Time in ms
LegendI[iinet.ping]:  Max:
LegendO[iinet.ping]:  Min:

This guy predicted the race riots… worthy of a read.

http://www.quadrant.org.au/php/author_letter_list.php?author_id=262

This one is going on because I’d like to keep doing what I do while I install my usual stuff. Fortunately it’s an easy one..

apt-get install bittorrent-gui 

I should be able to do a keyword search for bugs on the frontpage of Launchpad. And if not the frontpage, definitely when I click on bugs. Why do I have to go to a third level to do searches? Is nobody learning from how we all use google?

I really shouldn’t have to approve the Launchpad certificate - I think this is a definite bug.

Well, not only am I going to reinstall and blog, but apparently I’m going to bug catch as well. After installing a server distro, then upgrading straight to dapper from the iinet repo’s (800kB/s  it’s really not that long the first problem is not being able to install ubuntu-desktop. To avoing mucking around, I’ll just install xubuntu-desktop for the moment.

Hmmm - I usefully destroyed my server this afternoon, and was a bit too lazy to iron everything out, so I went with a reinstall instead. Super! In order to find the positive spin to this stupidity I’m going to blog as I reinstall / configure all the stuff I need.

I had some fun compiling Amarok SVN using the amarok-svn.sh script (formerly known as get-amarok.sh)… Among the packages I was missing was python-qt3. All good now - waiting to see if my Ipod Nano plays nicely.

Fingers crossed!!

Update - Oh yeah!! The combination of Amarok w/ an Ipod is clearly better than Itunes with an Ipod. Linux is definitely a step in front here.

If you want your ipod to eject properly so you can let it charge, yet still listen when it’s in the dock, you need to give eject suid priveleges…

sudo chmod +s /usr/bin/eject

Usual lack of guarantees apply - I wouldn’t do this on a server or something, in case eject has security holes

My sexy new Ipod Nano has arrived (see Dansdata for why I capitalise it this way, and not the “official” wankfest way) http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?studlycaps

Anywho - the Nano is fully supported in the Breezy version of Ubuntu… However, it gave me hickups until I set up the Itunes database. To do this, install and run gtkpod with the nano plugged in. There’ll be an option to created the database. Voila, you’re done! Just connect in Amarok now…

Update:

Nothing is, of course, this easy. The nano detects, but crashes Amarok 1.3.1; it plain doesn’t detect in Amarok 1.3.5… Caan Apple, no need to play silly buggers.

In all the fun I’m having fighting these old laptops, I almost forgot to blog;

Here’s a nifty trick if your laptop is too old to boot from the CD-ROM, but you want to reinstall ubuntu… and of course your floppy is long dead. Not a completely unreasonable place to be.

You’ll need to (as root)

$ apt-get install syslinux

$ cd /boot

$ wget http://slackware.at/data/slackware-current/rootdisks/sbootmgr.dsk

now add a new entry to /boot/grub/menu.lst along the lines of…

title		SBM

kernel 		/usr/syslinux/memdisk

initrd 		/boot/sbootmgr.dsk

 and voila!

Now figure out why your Ubuntu installation has stalled... 

Not sure about this upgrade to the latest Wordpress. With the computer currently umm, reviewing a movie, it’s a little sluggish. (Read as, like writing on a keyboard in a jar of treacle). Ah well, that’s progress for you.

This is one of those gaa-gaa about Ubuntu posts…

Just installed http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/ so I can have dual monitors on my main box. Ok, so it’s not quite dual monitors, but when you think about it, it’s actually more powerful. This way, I have access to two processors just by moving across screens, and if I want to run a program on the server but display it on the lappy, I can just use tunnel X over ssh.

The installation under Ubuntu was simple:

On the server, singular, which has the keyboard and main display…

$sudo apt-get install synergy

$echo “section: screens
yamaha:
turtle:
end

section: links
yamaha:
right = turtle
turtle:
left = yamaha
end” > ~/.synergy.conf

where turtle is the server, and yamaha is the laptop. Then add ’synergys’ to your Sessions under System, Preferences, it shouldn’t matter what number it starts at. To start it now, in a terminal run

$synergys

Client:

$sudo apt-get install synergyc

$synergyc

And that’s it!! Enjoy…

Used all our bandwidth with four days to go. It’s a little easier to burn 10GB at 8Mb than 20GB at 1.5Mb apparently.

Next period we should - schedule *ahem* larger downloads in the off-peak section. But we won’t…

When I tried to get support from Telstra in making my brothers ADSL work, I had a very poor experience. What was most frustrating was knowing that the advice they were giving was wrong, and systematically so. The modem wouldn’t connect to Telstra, and their best advice was to call Tech support for my network card. I know that was just complete bullshit, but would most Telstra customers out there??

So I tried whirlpool. First attempt . Well that was a mistake. Then I tried the iinet forum. Second attempt with more success, or maybe just less bone-headedness.

Ah well. Guess I’ll have to figure this one out alone.

Fuck I’m hopeless - missed gym *again* this afternoon.

And this plugin for Mambo is hard to make work.