Software's whipping boy

New Laptop

rslomkow — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 17:04:26 +0000

Both my laptops died within a week of each other. The bottom keys of Dell Vostro keyboard died. I tried ordering one a week ago but still don’t when or if it will arrive. I started using my MacBook again, got everything setup and working, then the hard drive started acting up, then the logic board died and I was left once again without a personal computer. I went to the local shops and looked around then looked online.

I decided on an Asus EeePC 1201n Mine is actually the red (well really wine) one. It isn’t quite a netbook it is more of a small laptop. But the 12 inch display is nice bright and crisp (1366×768) no CD, and good keyboard, also a nice bumpy touchpad. The Nvidia Ion chipset is enough to do 3D graphics fairly well and the Dual-core atom CPU at 1.6Ghz is enough for good multi-tasking. 2GB of RAM.

I installed the Ubuntu netbook remix, which worked pretty well. Performance is horrible before I enabled the Nvidia proprietary drivers (via the UI), but after that it plays HD video just fine. Audio, Video Camera, Ethernet, X-Server, blue-tooth all work straight after install (though video was slow, until I went to System -> Administration -> Hardware Drivers .)

WiFi did not. I needed the driver for rtl8192se chipset (from launchpad bug 401126), which has broken Makefiles so I just made a shell script to install it, when I upgrade the kernel.

After that the laptop works great. I like the:

size
keyboard
screen
weight
heat
battery life (around 3.5 hours of real usage)
power adapter (small and light)
video performance (outside of fullscreen flash video, where 420p is as high as works well, avi’s xvid and whatnot work great at 720p)
the UI on netbook remix is well done for a small factor screen

One note it will not hibernate if bluetooth is turned on. You can just right click on the icon and turn it off and then hibernate works just fine.

Closing note, now that Microsoft has dropped the motto Best Version of Winows Ever. Windows 7 does qualify (Vista did not), it worked fine, I have it dual booting, but I spend most of my time in Linux. It did come with Windows 7 Home Professional, which is a usable version of windows for when you need that.

Buddycloud Mobial Social Location

rslomkow — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 10:47:37 +0000

Simon and Ross (and other whom I haven’t met) have a public release of Buddycloud. It is a cool little app for your Mobile (Nokia Smart Phone or other Symbian) that keeps track of where you have been and lets you update your status and even hooks into Facebook. It uses special black magic from the Mobile phone network to know when you get back to the same place or suggest new places for you. Also it works as a living phone book that your friends can update and you can know, where they are, where they are heading, what they are doing, and how to get in contact with them.

I need more friends on this to make it more usefull!

Blogged with the Flock Browser

How to make Flock work a bit better for long time users

rslomkow — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:46:25 +0000

Reality is Flock has had some upgrading problems if you have been a long time Flock user, you may
find some instability in 1.0 if you have upgraded multiple times. There is a way to trash your profile without losing everything (saved passwords, cookies, …) WARNING you will still lose some of your profile data and potentially extensions and search-plugins.

1) Open Feeds -> Feed Options -> Export Feeds
Remember where you saved this. “flock-export.opml” is the name I will refer to it as later.

2) If you have been using firefox (as you probably have if flock has been crashing on you)
in these examples “USERNAME” needs to be replaced with your username on the system.

2.1) quit firefox

2.2) Rename your firefox profile directory

2.2a) Windows

C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox

Rename Firefox to Firefox-lkg

2.2b) Macintosh

/Users/USERNAME/Library/Application Support/Firefox

Rename Firefox to Firefox-lkg

2.2c) Linux

~/.mozilla/firefox

Rename firefox to firefox-lkg

3) quit both flock keep this blog post in a text editor or something

4) move your flock profile aside

4a) Windows

C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Flock\Browser

Rename Browser to Browser-old

4b) Macintosh

/Users/USERNAME/Library/Application Support/Flock

Rename Flock to Flock-old

4c) Linux

~/.flock/browser

rename browser to browser-old

5) Copy your old flock profile to the location for a Firefox profile

5a) Windows

copy C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Flock\Browser-old to C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox

5b) Macintosh

copy /Users/USERNAME/Library/Application Support/Flock-old to /Users/USERNAME/Library/Application Support/Firefox

5c) Linux

cp -rp ~/.flock/browser-old ~/.mozilla/firefox

6) Start Flock

6.1) tell Flock to import information from Firefox

7) Fix your feeds.

7.1) open feeds

7.2) delete all feeds

7.3 in feeds -> feed options -> import feeds
now select the file you saved earlier! flock-export.opml

7.4 WAIT, at least 10 minutes. If you have lots of feeds it will take a while for them all to load.

Quit flock gracefully

9) Start Flock again and you should be ready to go with a new more stable, faster peppier flock.

10) Restore your Firefox profile

10a) Windows

1) delete C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox

2) rename C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox-lkg
to Firefox

10b) Macintosh

1) delete /Users/USERNAME/Library/Application Support/Firefox

2) rename /Users/USERNAME/Library/Application Support/Firefox-lkg
to Firefox

10c) Linux

1) rm -rf ~/.mozilla/firefox

2) mv -i ~/.mozilla/firefox-lkg ~/.mozilla/firefox

This should clear out any corrupt rdf files, or clucene indexes, remove any outdated files. It will also wipe out any extensions you have installed so be warned! But my experience is it give a far less buggy flock experience.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: flock, repair

test of alternate keyboards

rslomkow — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 20:11:36 +0000

This is a test of öpüäß

but as this is a mac I suspect all the characters just work even when using a silly third party keyboard.

Blogged with Flock

Test alternate keyboard bugs

rslomkow — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 20:08:27 +0000

ö as in ä § ß

do these come out OK

Blogged with Flock

Tags: ümlauttest

Test alternate keyboard bugs

rslomkow — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 20:08:24 +0000

ö as in ä § ß

do these come out OK

Blogged with Flock

Tags: ümlauttest

Test alternate keyboard bugs

rslomkow — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 20:04:45 +0000

ö as in ä § ß

do these come out OK

Blogged with Flock

Tags: ümlauttest

Test alternate keyboard bugs

rslomkow — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 20:04:33 +0000

ö as in ä § ß

do these come out OK

Blogged with Flock

Tags: ümlauttest

Blogging from Tantek’s

rslomkow — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 14:28:17 +0000

Blogging from Tantek’s

Welcome to the Barcamp/Podcamp Berlin II-Network. The event will be held in Berlin, Germany at the weekend of the 3rd to 4th of november. That is the weekend right before the Web2.0 Expo.

Blogged with Flock

In the conference displaying a feature

rslomkow — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 12:26:27 +0000

This was a nice sunset

Blogged with Flock

Tags: barcampberlin2