So You Think You're Smart

Times that I Wish I Were a Software Guy

2011-09-07T23:43:00.000-07:00

This would be a no-brainer for a CS type :

Firefox sucks - you go to a directory (i.e., no index.htm(l) file, so you get the listing of files) and you see all files are image files.

You click on one of the files and it displays the image. Good.

But, it could be better (think of Windows). A smart browser can see that the majority (maybe all) the files are image files and give you a thumbnails, and, when you're viewing one, depending on its position, give Previous and Next buttons to let you navigate easily.

How?

Why Linux Can Only Try

2010-11-14T19:11:00.000-08:00

Someone said Java swing is worth considering for building GUIs. Here's how my fair trial went :

~/LEARN/swing/ 67> java HelloWorldFrame
Exception in thread "GtkMain" java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: gtkInit
at _Jv_LookupJNIMethod (/usr/lib64/libgcj.so.5.0.0)
at _Jv_JNIMethod.call(ffi_cif, void, ffi_raw, void) (/usr/lib64/libgcj.so.5.0.0)
at gnu.java.awt.peer.gtk.GtkMainThread.run() (Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Thread.run() (/usr/lib64/libgcj.so.5.0.0)
at _Jv_ThreadRun(java.lang.Thread) (/usr/lib64/libgcj.so.5.0.0)
at GC_start_routine (/usr/lib64/libgcj.so.5.0.0)
at __clone (/lib64/tls/libc-2.3.4.so)

IOW : Utter crap!

Insert a Tree Object Into Your Word or OOD Document

2010-09-27T08:38:00.000-07:00

Is this possible? Where the reader sees the first (settable) few nodes and branches and has to click on nodes to make other nodes/branches visible. Maybe this is one place OpenO can leapfrom M$.

Die Meister sagt es ist moeglisch, but probably takes some VB hacking even in a Word doc :

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.office.tools.word.controls.treeview(VS.80).aspx

I say, OOD should make this much easier.

At the end of the day, OpenO still sucks in LAF compared to M$ Office. You get what you pay for. Fair enough. For $25, you can't beat what you can get from M$.

Why You Should Not Buy the Samsung EPIC 4G Phone from Sprint

2010-09-06T23:41:00.001-07:00

1) After searching, I could not find a way to capture Audio. With my Moto W490, it was 2 menus and about 5 button presses in all, and I thought THAT one was a crappy phone

2) I don't know how to terminate an application. There doesn't seem to be a way.

3) This whole idea of a gmail phone is a bit risky. On gmail, you enter a strong password each time. But, with your phone, once you've set your account up, anyone can get into your gmail if they know the 4 digit pin to unlock your phone. Nuts!

4) You send 2 emails each time you send one from your phone. Go figure. Obviously the geniuses at Google don't work in the marketing department.

5) I could not find a way to use the "Call phone" feature that gmail has. Obviously, the geniuses at Google don't work in the marketing department. If the phone is being marketed as a gmail phone or a google phone, you'd expect them to delight the customer with this thing up and ready. Go figure.

6) I cannot select text (like a phone number) in the Email application or the gmail app.

7) When using the gmail app, you don't get email address completion - which is ridiculous - on the PC, if you're using gmail, that's one of the best things about it. WTF? Really? WTF are they trying to prove to the world?

8) In the mail application, the delete button doesn't delete the email. Go figure. Should you make your stuff intuitively easy to use or what?

9) Sprint cannot import your contacts from your SIM card you used with an older phone.

10) After umpteen attempts, this phone has failed to pair with my Plantronics 233 bluetooth headset. With my Moto W490, it takes about 5 seconds. Also, the EPIC SPH-D700 doesn't find my Moto when looking for devices. It looks like it can only pair with Sprint devices. WTF?

11) It's not clear how to sign out of the email. I've got gmail and Email running and now, each one has an orgasm when a new email arrives.

12) With the gmail app, you can't zoom in. You can with the Email app though.

13) The phone is delivered to you (if you're as unlucky as me) with the USB Debugging enabled. Somehow, this doesn't prevent Linux from accessing the SD card. But, Windows has no clue what to do unless you put on your geek had and go into Notifications and turn USB Debugging off, so that, next time you plug in the cable, you can select the Mass Storage option.

14) There is no way to rightclick. With the advanced technology available, you'd expect they'd have figured out a way (like Apple) to use multitouch to implement this, but no. In fact, it seems like multitouch only applies to zooming.

15) Blogspot does not work cleanly. I could not tap in the post area and start entering text. It was terrible.

Go iPhone guys! Go iPhone!

Gnome Keyboard Shortcuts

2010-09-06T23:21:00.000-07:00

Anyone know how to configure Gnome to send send Alt-V, O, down,down,down with a keyboard shortcut? Or, is there a way to fire up kghostview from the command line in landscape mode? :)

On Windows, you'd use Autohotkey.

How to Backup Phonebook from a Motorola W490

2010-08-29T17:06:00.000-07:00

Looks like you can access video, music and audio wihout trying very hard, but the contact list - no. I'm surprised the open-source community hasn't figured this one out yet.

BTW, 1-800-937-8997 is the T-mobile customer support line.

Why Linux Failed

2010-01-21T20:41:00.001-08:00

Because it assumes the user is root on his system and most stuff people design isn't Lite. You need to do a heavy, full-fledged install of everything. So, if you're not a super-genius, goodbye.

RealPlayer Woes

2010-01-10T21:07:00.001-08:00

VLC Media Player gets RealPlayer to display video. Who would guess?

http://tersamgt.blogspot.com/2010/01/when-realplayer-wont.html

Why Linux is For Geeks

2010-01-06T22:16:00.000-08:00

If you want to use Autokey :

First of all, this is a very old version. You should get the latest one from the home page at autokey.googlecode.com

On the home page there is also a link to the users group ("Help for users"), please consider joining this group and posting there for any future help you need, rather than contacting me directly.

Some people have had success installing on Mandriva (redhat-based). First you will need to install the dependencies. The following packages are needed, install them with whatever package manager is in your distribution (probably yum):

python-gtk2, python-gtksourceview2, python-glade2, python-xlib, python-notify, wmctrl, python-setuptools

Then once you have extracted the tar file, cd into the directory created by the extraction process, then:

python2.6 setup.py install
cp debian/autokey.init /etc/init.d/autokey
chmod a+x /etc/init.d/autokey
chkconfig --add autokey

service autokey start

This last command starts a daemon that does the keyboard monitoring. With any luck you should now be able to start the program using the shortcut in your main menu.

Bottom line - Linus Torvalds did something good, but we need someone to do better - make linux accessible and edible by the masses. User experience is the key. Until then, Apple, Google and Microsoft will keep getting your money without being evil.

Reverse Proxying

2009-09-13T22:56:00.000-07:00

Whatever that means:)
Here's what needs to be done :

Install a piece of software on one machine on which you have administrator rights. This is a daemon of course - runs all the time as a server.
Know the IP address of this machine, which has internet access.

Enter this IP address in some field of your Mozilla Firefox browser setup/preferences/options/etc and access the internet through the first machine.

How?

Tell me and see your name in big lights - or get another equivalent reward in the case of identities that need to be protected:)

Processing's Serial.available()

2009-09-05T09:46:00.000-07:00

How do they do it? They use java of course - and there's an input.available() in their source. But how do you do with Win32 C++ DLLs? I only see CreateFile, ReadFile and WriteFile.

Dear RealTerm

2009-08-21T00:23:00.001-07:00

Is it possible somehow to run realterm from the cmd line on a one-shot basis

realterm -hidden -com28 -baud9600 -hex f3 0 f3 1

that is, have it run like a command line program - do its job and exit?

if not, can you suggest a way I could write such a program?

Missing printf()

2009-08-20T17:08:00.001-07:00

What the world needs is a simple program that can be run from the MS-DOS command prompt like this :

writeCom -id com28 -parity none -baud 9600 -stop 1 -data 8

Apparently, even with millions of smart people loose out there, we don't have something as simple as this that people can use. !$@!$#!$#!

The google search that finally got me somewhere was :

dos command line com port writing

Here are some resources :

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Programming/Languages/C/Q_21148982.html

http://electrosofts.com/serial/index.html
( conio.h outportb bios.h bioscom )

Available ports?
http://electrosofts.com/parallel/

As it turned out later, all of this stuff is utter crap if you're on WinXP. Why don't people update stuff?

Autohotkey on Unix?

2009-08-18T21:33:00.001-07:00

Anyone know what the equivalent of AHK is on Unix? How would you do hotkeys dependent on the Window name, etc?

Guruspeak :

http://autokey.sourceforge.net/

Went there; my reaction - it's for supergeeks only. AHK was lighter - if you're not a god at package installation, you're looking at sleepless nights here.

FTDI USB

2009-08-17T22:48:00.000-07:00

Windows says it can't find the drivers - this, despite my explicitly downloading them and telling it where they are, and then, using FTDI's executable to install them. Problem could be that it's seeing the CMAXQUSB command module and looking for something else.

If I try writing to the serial port, it asks for FTD2XX.DLL. If I place that file in the same directory as the program I'm running, it stops asking for the file, but it says Open Failed, FTDI write Failed. Well, WinXP still doesn't see it as a serial port. Hmm...

USB Minimum Pulse Width

2009-08-09T18:46:00.000-07:00

Simple question, you use USB and nothing else. (With a one-shot timer chip, this would be easy). What is the minimum pulse width you can generate writing to a serial port?

Enhancing KDE Window Behaviour Actions

2009-07-23T08:21:00.000-07:00

It was trivial in TWM and CDE - you would edit your .twmrc or some config file in ~/.dt/C or something like that. For some reason, KDE needs a jailbreak

Here's what I'm looking to do :

If you go into Control Center and then Desktop and then Window Behavior and Actions, you can set, for example the Window behavior for Titlebar Doubleclick to be Maximize instead of the default Shade.

But, under the modifier section, not only do you have a limited selection (left mouse, middle mouse, right mouse and just one modifier), but you don't even have all the window actions available. For example, I don't care for raise/lower though mouse (and how the hell do I set ALT-ESC to do that?) and I can't set Alt-Middle to do a Maximize. Congrats KDE, you're really blown it this time. Looks like I'm going with TWM.

iPhone NSUserDefaults and UISegmentedControl

2009-06-30T17:02:00.000-07:00

Alright, iPhone forums mostly suck - very technically unfriendly - it actually reflects poorly on Apply - no cool factor here.

Anyhow, here's the prob:

NSUserDefaults is what you use to save some app state data to non-vol memory when you exit. I have a switch that toggles the display of an advanced options form. I save the state of this switch successfully. When the app is relaunched, the state is right, I'm able to display this form okay. But, the segmentedcontrol thing is not enabled. I have to cycle the switch twice before it gets enabled.

One line here is not working - the "YES" line :



 if( [myDefaults boolForKey:@"advOpts"] ){
   advOpts.on = YES;
   lineStyleCtrl.enabled = YES;
   [self advOptsToggle:nil];

 }

Kundert Explains

2009-04-27T20:36:00.000-07:00

spectre gurus speak - kudos to ACWWong of the UK as well.

How do you use spectre (and Cadence) to do a .stb analysis on your fully differential loop?

In unix, spectre -h stb
is a start - gives you something to read - which is not super helpful if you want to get stuff done, but, something's better than nothing.

The magic stuff is - use the cmdmprobe cell from analogLib and set the CMDM parameter to -1 if you want to measure the differential loop gain. Leave it at 1 for the common-mode loop gain.

Couldn't be simpler. Job well done folks.

And here's one time-saving tip when working on M$ Windows and needing to make screen captures - do a Windows-S key combo - now you get the option of doing a selective snapshot of a portion of your screen - eliminates on step - you don't have to do PrintScreen->Paint->Select. Now you can go straight from X-Windows to Windows app.

Go Figure - TWM and .twmrc

2009-03-14T12:11:00.001-07:00

When you have a .twmrc, even if it's blank, you're exterm title bar looks like this:

And, when you don't, it looks like this :

What gives? Tom LaStrange said it best in his reply to me:

Sorry, I can't help you. I haven't used twm for 20 years.

--
Tom L.

What Desktop Environment Are You Running?

2009-03-11T18:12:00.000-07:00

Simple one, but I don't know how to fine out. The top right of the windows look like this. If I know which desktop environment this was, I could google for some keyboard+mouse shortcuts. This particular one doesn't seem to have any - really sucks.

Answer :

You are using twm http://xwinman.org/vtwm.php It is configurable but it is an ancient unmaintained version!

You really need to be using KDE especially KDE 4.1. Download and install Kubuntu 8.10 - it comes with KDE pre-configured. It's very very nice (like Apple's OS X). :-)

Resources :

The author's desk : LaStrange himself.
UWO.CA

Foreach on Cygwin

2009-02-28T16:45:00.000-08:00

Not only does my cygwin not have a manual entry for foreach, but it doesn't work.

foreach dir (*)

gives

bash: syntax error near unexpected token `(`

Any clues?

Yes. use:

for dir in *
do
whatever
done

Programs from G:

2009-02-10T22:07:00.000-08:00

Simple one, but not for me.

I've installed some programs on my 80G HDD G:/ProgramFiles because my C: tends to fill up quickly.

Win XP is installed on C:

Question - now, if I reinstall XP on C:, is there anyway I can tell windows about the wonderful programs that I have on my G: and get them in my Programs list accessible from the Start menu?

Aus gurus:

Some may work out of the box. The ones that need registry entries won't and will require a reinstall. For the ones which work, you can drag shortcuts onto the start menu.

CPAN Bugs

2009-01-13T19:05:00.001-08:00

Cockroaches and Pests Associated Network. Bugs for short. This page seems to have some useful help on this error :

cpan> i Term::ReadLine
Going to read /home/perl/sources/authors/01mailrc.txt.gz
Can't call method "value" on an undefined value at /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8/IO/Uncompress/RawInflate.pm line 64.

What idallen says is :

I ran an "install Bundle::CPAN" without first doing "apt-get install
build-essentials", and that was a mistake. Many things didn't build
fully, and CPAN wedged itself into a state where RawInflate.pm was
broken and nothing could be done. Make sure you run "apt-get install
build-essentials" first. It would be nice if CPAN would know this
somehow so that it didn't let you fail and wedge itself.

Running "apt-get remove libcompress-raw-zlib-perl" got CPAN un-wedged and
allowed "install Bundle::CPAN" to complete; but, when I did "apt-get
install spamassassin", it brought back the broken old version of
RawInflate.pm and CPAN was broken again! Looks like the Ubuntu package
for the compress library is too old for the current CPAN, and of course
CPAN and APT don't share version information and get along nicely.

------

Unfortunately, no one seems to have messed with this on Cygwin - so I can't find any non-guru-level stuff. Hmmm...

Here seems to be a helpful page that details how perl can behave differently on cygwin. Fascinating stuff if you don't have a life:

http://www.xav.com/perl/lib/Pod/perlcygwin.html

Email with Cygwin

2009-01-03T18:50:00.000-08:00

How? If you don't have mail or exim or mutt (last two I haven't heard of) ?

I want to hook up a motion-detector and a webcam to my PC. When the motion-detector fires, I want the PC to cature a picture from the webcam and make it available online - say on a blog, and send an email to my cellphone.

OLPC(s) Will Go

2008-12-12T20:36:00.000-08:00

I'd rather cash in on the $400 potential dollars than keep these cutting edge icons of Nincompoop's inefficacy in my living room. Here's a guy who seems to know what to do about the passwords (really, any decent linux guy - i.e., not me - would probably know)

http://thoughtsbyclayg.blogspot.com/2008/09/olpc-default-no-password.html

Where There's a Will

2008-09-26T20:27:00.001-07:00

There's a way to rig up your computer so that, when you get an email from a certain address to your gmail account, it sounds a bell. How?

Better CDE

2008-09-13T15:34:00.000-07:00

Being able to iconize open windows onto the desktop or an icon manager - or if so chosen, onto the taskbar is a key component of productivity. Currently, X-windows CDE supports the first two and M$ Windows supports the last one. There's some software available commercially that can provide a "workspace" functionality for M$ Windows - but as it's not open-source, I don't trust it - but, it's probably worthwhile.

Now, for those who have to sink so low as to use CDE on a regular basis, they might be aware of the dtwmrc file that can be customized to provided user-specific key bindings.

Here are some defaults that you'll see in your ~/.dt/C or ~/.dt/ dtwmrc file:

Alt window f.minimize

Now, here's what I'd like to see: Where is the f.minimize defined? And, is there a way to add f.desired functions? For example, I'd like CTRL-ALT-Btn1 to reduce a window's x-size by half, and ALT-SHIFT-Btn1 to reduce it in half vertically. How?

OLPC Teardown

2008-09-01T19:59:00.001-07:00

http://www.planetanalog.com/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=XBYJSUFEJASUUQSNDLPSKH0CJUNN2JVN?articleID=208401731

XO Open Firmware Prompt

2008-08-31T13:53:00.000-07:00

To get to the open firmware prompt you press the X in the upper left hand corner of the keyboard immediately after booting the OLPC. Really? What does immediately mean?

1)Type "4c000014" and press
2)Type "rdmsr" and press
3)Type "u." and press (a hex number will be displayed)
4)Again, type "u." and press (a second hex number will be displayed, write it down)

According to

More XO

2008-08-31T13:44:00.000-07:00

Saw something online that said - XO overclocked, so I dusted this crappy piece of equipment. Will make one last ditch effort before trashing it....

first, it runs around me trying to connect to the wireless network. I have to fish out my old post that says use HEX and Open Access for putting in the SSID. Then, I have to get into the router to see what's going on - and the DLink won't let me in - I wonder if I've forgotten the username - but online I find admin is correct - but, this is new - you can use "user" and leave password blank to enjoy in read-only mode. That works.

Back to the XO - you're tired of using that tiny screen - I remember my post that tells me how to get in using cygwin. That works - except, I'm root. I'd rather get in as olpc. Only, it doesn't take my password when I try SSH -X olpc@192.168.0.101 . So, I find something online that says how to be root and change the password - use "passwd username".

Now, as you might know, one of my goals to accomplish before I abandon computers completely is to reach a level of competence with linux and perl where I can quickly leverage the work done by others - use their packages and modules. That's where I'm going with trying to hack this XO thing.

There actually seems to be some worthwhile reading on the OLPC forum:

OLPC Hacks: XO Laptop Spy Camera or Motion DetectorOLPC Help: How to Install Ubuntu on the XO Laptop!
OLPC Help: Replacing the XO Laptop Keyboard
XO Accessories: XO Camera Two Mirror Periscope

The Motion Detection guy uses python to capture and filter images and uses motion detection setting posted by this guy. If it works, this is awesome - why - because, once it's done on the OLPC, it can be easily done on the ASUS thing - and that's something that you buy from a company - as in, it's guaranteed to work - so, now, you're giving people a configurable home security device. This could change the future of crime in a big way. I'm really excited about this.

Resolved! Special Mention Saurabh Jang (MOT)

2008-08-30T14:52:00.001-07:00

The problem was that dtwm was always looking at my ~/.dt/C/dtwmrc and I was always editing my ~/.dt/dtwmrc. I saw on some page on the net by the man whose is the word of honour on this page that dtwm looks at ~/.dt/C/dtwmrc before it looks at (if at all) the ~/.dt/dtwmrc and that was what clinched it.

Thanks Theresa, thanks Kannan, thanks Sun.... for nothing.

Wuenschlist CDE WM

2008-08-23T21:55:00.000-07:00

Okay, in Solaris-CDE - you can double-click on the titlebar of a window and it will be maximized. Question is, is it possible to tell the window manager that there are really two monitors and that you only want the window to occupy one screen when maximized? Or, can you control what the Maximize function will do? Can you tell it to only increase the window geometry to 1280x1024? That would help my productivity a lot.

Hier'st what goes on:

CDE through Citrix - crappy windows management ->
Exceed - Cadence hangs after the property form ->
Seamless windowing through Citrix -> crappy windows management ->
back to Citrix -> doesn't give me good pointer precision when I use the wireless mouse ->
back to a cheap wired optical mouse - which is so cheap that it sometimes sends double clicks ->
I'm still out of the psych ward. But for how long. I should probably sue M$ and Hummingbird and Sun and Novell for damages. What a set of *ds. Can't they get basic technology like this to be user friendly? Or are they serving a different set of masters than we think - all being paid by the Japs and Chinese to keep America's productivity down?

Configuring CDE

2008-08-23T20:58:00.000-07:00

If you haven't figured it by now, yes, I've given up on the XO laptop completely. I don't even _look_ at it anymore unless I'm searching for something that might be under it. I've got two left. If you need them, please just ask.

Anyhow, now my predicament is that Solaris-CDE doesn't respond when I try to do stuff like:

AltTab root|icon|window f.next_workspace

It retains the old definition of the Alt-Tab combo which is f.next_key. Why is Solaris out to get me now? I have to give it to CDE - it's one of the crappiest window managers ever created. You now know why Sun's stock never recovered. Khosla probably wrote the code for this.

Mathemagica

2008-08-10T11:47:00.001-07:00

Stuff I didn't know you could do. This is what happens when you have so many smart people looking at something.

Mathematica puts out a symbolic expression that you can read. Now, you think about publishing that - using LaTex. Luckily for you, all you have to do is:

In[3]:= TeXForm[%]

Combine that with Tex's fault tolerance and you have a big time-saver here.

Another thing I didn't know you could do - but, being a shell guy I thought I'd try:

The % in the above refers to the output of the previous submission. But, can you refer to the nth output? Sure can, just use %n. That's a handy one too. Good job Steve.

Build Your Own Blackberry

2008-06-30T17:43:00.001-07:00

With some help from my outfit:

http://beagleboard.org

HOWTO No Extra Cost Dual Monitor Setup

2008-06-30T13:56:00.000-07:00

if you have a Dell docking station and a Dell laptop.

Use Fn-F8 to go to dual monitor mode - this is trivial - but this isn't what most people want because the laptop screen is so small and so high-res that 1400x1050 is very hard on the eyes. You want to connect two external LCD monitors to your docking station and then get 2560x1024 using the two of them:

1) Connect one monitor to the VGA connector, the other to the DVI connector
2) Use Fn-F8 to go to dual monitor mode - only one LCD will be used and the laptop screen will be used as the second display
3) Close the laptop. The system will go into standby mode and the displays will go blank.
4) Press the power button on the DOCKING STATION. There are two buttons that the rest of the world has never noticed since the last ice age.
5) The system will now use both monitors.

Wish I had got this with my Google search "how to do dual monitor using a docking station VGA DVI". But I didn't.

Linux and NTFS

2008-06-24T20:06:00.001-07:00

Apparently, the battle has been won. But, the war - not yet. We need a way to take Windows apart piece by piece - be able to look at it as components and see how they can be used so we can decide what to keep and what to throw away and what to modify/replace. That's the holy grail. It'll take another Torvalds to pull that off - this time from Brazil.

Anyhow, a simple search throws up ntfscat, libntfs, ntfsresize.

Where linux failed - in making it's stuff easy to use. The problem is that though the majority of people in a company don't need hardcore computing - they would faint if they looked at a linux screen. This should be a simpler problem to solve, but you know how computer scientists are - it's not appealing enough to go after.

HOWTO Migrate Programs Between Win Installations?

2008-06-24T19:55:00.000-07:00

So you had your favourite programs on one hard drive that seems to be going bad. Is there a way to salvage them onto a new Win installation?

HOWTO Prevent a Corrupt Program from Starting

2008-06-22T10:48:00.000-07:00

automatically and holding WinXP hostage. If you know, please tell me.

Es gebt manche helpfulle suggestions hier :

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

HOWTO Use Cygwin to Record Radio Shows Onto Your PC

2008-06-15T18:32:00.000-07:00

If you know how, tell me and get a link on my blog to your site. I tried a search for "use cygwin to record radio shows onto your computer" with dogpile and got some frontier gibberish.

Windows is so unfriendly you can't do a damn thing without buying something from someone to do it - or accepting malware.

I have a DSL connection that lets me listen to radio through the internet and I want to record 1 hour of KERA.org every Saturday starting 11 AM (for example).

Answers :

If you mean online radio, then the tool is StreamRipper http://streamripper.sourceforge.net/ It's open source and multi-platform including Windows.

HOWTO Control Devices with the Serial Port and GUIs

2008-06-15T11:29:00.000-07:00

One of the best and most concise pages you'll ever find:

http://www.pololu.com/docs/0J4?view_all=1

I'll probably use perl, but that's just me.

PC - windows - cygwin - gcc - Tcl/Tk

doesn't have to be a PC surely - linux ought to work. Except, then you have to be a guru to even get on the internet.

HOWTO Get a Perl Tk Widget to Behave

2008-05-25T17:19:00.000-07:00

All my other X-Windows behave okay on my multiple monitor system - if you do the double-click on the title bar, they'll only take up one monitor. Not the hello world widget I get with this :

use Tk;
my $mw = MainWindow->new;
$mw->title("Hello World");
$mw->Button("-text" => "Done", -command => sub { exit })->pack;
MainLoop;

Anyone know what's missing?

The World's Greatest Hacker

2008-02-16T15:41:00.000-08:00

What makes a great hacker - the ability to takes someone else's work, find out what modules it has, and then use those modules to create something you want - or an extension of the original work. Here's an example :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daZjEy7-QCo

Das ist Moeglisch

2008-02-11T20:14:00.000-08:00

With a linux guru's help:

use about:config in the browser to get some possibly useful info.

Install nmap on your other PC to find out stuff about your XO.

ps -u olpc
will give you some useful information as well.

We found that su directly gives you root access. They should atleast ship it out with the default password being something you picked at payment time or something.

> yum
can do stuff for you - Yet another Update Manager

> yum check-update

To reboot, you can do
> reboot

During reboot, you can try CTRL-ALT-F11 or CTRL-ALT-F12 to look at the boot sequence. We found all of CTRL-ALT-F1 to F4 give you something useful.

Even though we upgraded the kernel, it was still booting with the old kernel.

I had put a password on the olpc account that I'd forgotten, but as the root account didn't have a password, I could use the SSH client on my PC to get into the XO. Use the router to find out what IP address has been assigned it - my case was 192.168.0.101. Username root, port 22.

They do have a remote desktop client available. nxclient or etwas.

But, what I did, that I hadn't read about was use my cygwin install to do

> ssh -X root@162.198.0.101

and then, I could launch an xterm, and, the best part - CTRL-rightclick gave me the large font - and I could get the xterm to take up the whole screen. Thus, we have gotten past the tiny screen. One small step fur mich. Eine giant leap fur mankind.

Cornucopia

2008-01-20T13:41:00.000-08:00

This dude looks in so much pain from being a geek.

http://www.geek.com/feature-hacking-the-xo-laptop

Redeeming Features

2008-01-06T21:47:00.000-08:00

Okay, managed (plug-n-play) to get a regular USB keyboard connected - looks like my USB/PS2 adapter might have a problem. I wouldn't expect the XO to mess that up. Keyboard is the Mi Internet Elite keyboard from WM for $20. Will look online for a cheaper one.

Then, managed to do an "xterm &" and get a new xterm with microscopic font. So, atleast I did manage to launch an application from the command line. Not sure if it's possible to get full-fledged windowing - resize windows, etc. That's not so important. Next order of business is to hack in and increase the processor speed at the expense of more power of course. If someone tells me how to do that, I'll pay!

Aus der meister :

Can you get access to this directory: /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/
If you do, cat these files - scaling_available_frequencies, scaling_available_governors, etc. - to see what's available.
If the application cpufreq is available, you can alter these settings.

Unfortunately, cpu0 only contains a file called crash_notes and a directory called cache. Looks like I'll have to import cpufreq from somewhere else.

But, I can confess that the beast feels an order or magnitude faster just from being able to use a regular keyboard.

XO Recalibrating Touchpad

2008-01-06T17:01:00.001-08:00

Hope this helps someone:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Recalibrating_Touchpad

Evidence

2008-01-06T16:41:00.000-08:00

of people actually having success with a USB mouse on the XO. Unfortunately, they don't post linx to instructions.

http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/12/review-olpc-xo.html

Adding a Windows Style Ctrl-Scroll Zoom In/Out Features

2007-12-26T20:18:00.000-08:00

Freaking XO doesn't respond to the Grab keys. Anyone know how I can get it to zoom in and out of when viewing docs if I do something like grab key and rub up/down on the touchpad? Please.

HOWTO Connect a Regular USB Keyboard to the XO

2007-12-26T20:16:00.000-08:00

"Connecting" physically is simple. How do you get the XO to respond to it?

Opening an Arbitrarily Located File on the XO

2007-12-26T20:13:00.000-08:00

Let's say I put the file in ~/docs. How do I look at it? Please inform.

Viewing a PDF File on a USB Disk with the XO Laptop

2007-12-24T18:15:00.000-08:00

Plug the flash drive in.

From the welcome screen, click the Journal icon to the bottom of the XO icon in the middle.

Now, in the new screen, at the botom left, you see the journal icon again, and to the right of that, you see a flash drive icon. Hover on that.

You will see a menu pop up. The lone option is "Unmount" and the name of the menu is the name of the media. In my case, it happens to be "USB DISK".

Click the icon.

This brings up a new view where all the files are listed. The look is really slick and simple.

You can click the icon corresponding to your file. Of course, extensions are not available - so the type of the file is hidden - which actually is the way things really should be.

This brings up a preview screen. Then, at teh top right, you will see the solid-rect-in-circle button that you can hover on to generate a menu opton to read the file.

Simple - in about 20 steps, you can admire your PDF file:)

Be warned, the OS seems pretty bug ridden, so even after you take out your flesh drive, if you didn't "unmount" it, Journal still thinks it exists and lets you try and open the files it's seen before - so those new Apps that start up will remain in the "Starting..." mode and can't even be shut down. Yuck.

XO Laptop Wireless Networking

2007-12-24T11:16:00.000-08:00

Anyone have a clue which 802.11 protocol the laptop is capable of? Is it b or g or n? I've heard 's' mentioned. But what else? The information they've put on the website is so crappy I can't find a darn thing.

HOWTO Install Java on the XO

2007-12-24T10:48:00.000-08:00

Some know I prefer to call it the OX laptop since it's pretty stubborn. Anyhow, try this:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/RestrictedFormats#Sun_Java

Add a USB Port to Your Car

2007-12-23T16:53:00.000-08:00

Then, you should be able to stick a stick in, and the computer (which is a stripped down laptop - to which you connect a monitor when you want to debug) that runs off the battery scans it and looks for the newest file called directions*.txt and prompts you with the first direction. You've set up some arrow keys somewhere within reach - either on the steering wheel or the dashboard and when you click the right arrow, you hear the next direction and if you press the left arrow, it takes you back to the previous one.