A recent series of changes at Yahoo have made the Yahoo Messenger portion of Pidgin misbehave. There have been various workarounds (such as using some of Yahoo’s non-converted servers), but finally the ‘proper’ fix is in the pipeline.
I just did an Ubuntu update, and it included the patch that has been working through various versions. Thanks bigtime to the Pidgin team and the Ubuntu maintainers for backporting the fix into Ubuntu Jaunty.
For full details on the patch, see this page which discusses the issue and gives good suggestions.
Category: Geekitude
NASA Moon Landing Tapes – A Tech’s Perspective.
With all the bruhaha going on about finding the ‘lost’ NASA moonlanding tapes, a conversation came up on a tech list I’m on regarding some of the misinformation floating around. Scott Dorsey, a man who has been involved in audio tech for many many years, sets the record straight:
Continue reading “NASA Moon Landing Tapes – A Tech’s Perspective.”
Heavy Metal DVD – Awesome Documentary
One of the fun things about being settled into the new house is going through all my old movies and watching them again. I’d been putting off watching Heavy Metal for a while – through no other reason than “I want to wait until I’m in the right mood.” Last night was that Mood.
While exploring the DVD, I came across a sort of ‘making of’ documentary that I hadn’t seen before. It was Fantastic.
It was an ongoing interview with all the animators, as well as chats with Ivan Reitman and other folks involved in the film.
I found hearing the stories behind each segment, and the unabashed forwardness of everyone associated with the production (“It’s all about breasts!”) absolutely fascinating. One of the more intriguing bits was seeing the original model for Taarna going through the motions that were film-captured and animated over, including a sort of ‘half and half’ film clip – with Carol Desbiens acting out Taarna’s motions, and half of the animation filled in over her form. Absolutely riveting to watch.
It was intriguing to listen to the folks who worked on the film not making it as a ‘stoner’ film or anything of that ilk. It was science fiction fantasy material, very male oriented, targeted directly at the audience the Heavy Metal magazine was targeted at – adolescent and post-adolescent boys – particularly us sci fi geeks!
I highly recommend picking up the DVD release and watching the interviews. Really brings another level to the movie.
Tech Tip: Muting loud Hardware Beep under Ubuntu Linux
Posting this one for the masses of humanity out there that are just slobbering for a quick fix to this problem.
There’s a twitchy problem in GTK under Linux regarding sound that sometimes lets the ‘bell’ sound get handled by the motherboard beep – a sound that is INSANELY LOUD, and no amount of muting, volume adjustment, or sound board fiddling will silence it.
The beep can happen during ‘vi’ sessions, in Eclipse when ‘search’ fails to find something, in X-chat when backspacing to the beginning of the line, or in Pidgin during the same situation.
The fix is remarkably simple. Tell the X-server to mute the hardware beep:
xset -b b 0
To check to see if it’s set, use the ‘xset -q’ command:
dbs@clipper:~$ xset -q Keyboard Control: auto repeat: on key click percent: 0 LED mask: 00000000 auto repeat delay: 660 repeat rate: 25 auto repeating keys: 00ffffffdffffbbf fadfffefffedffff 9fffffffffffffff fff7ffffffffffff bell percent: 0 bell pitch: 400 bell duration: 100
That’s it! If you put this in your ~/.bashrc or whatever you use for a startup, this will mute the hardware beeping sound, but leave normal soundsystem stuff working.
“Free Memory” iPhone app Saves The Day
So I’m sure ya’ll are sitting on the edge of your seat wondering how my iPhone upgrade has gone after the the other day’s fun. Seems this wasn’t a problem limited to just me, which is cold comfort, but it is what it is.
In the end I did get the phone re-activated, and carried on with my day. After a bit I noticed that the phone was ‘hot’, and the battery was draining at an alarming rate (full to 1/4 in under a half hour). This is a sure sign of a stuck thread or process. A quick reboot is usually all that’s necessary to clear it.
Three reboots later, and a phone that wouldn’t stay charged overnight, the problem still persisted. There was obviously a problem – but I had no way of telling what was going on.
Enter “Free Memory” – an iPhone application available in the AppStore that lets you not only do a little ‘cleanup’ on cached data on the phone, it includes a process list, showing what processes are currently active. Apple is very stingy about releasing ‘utility’ type applications through the appstore, so this is a rare find.
After installing Free Memory, I watched the process list, and noticed two applications bouncing back and forth regularly in the top slot. One was ‘ReportCrash’, and the other was ‘Mail’. Things began to fall into place pretty quickly. I have a split mailbox setup, where the iPhone reads not only my IMAP folders on my personal mail server, but is also coupled to the Exchange server at work, which is set up to ‘push’ content into the phone (I get realtime meeting invites, etc directly on my phone – rather nice actually). It was obvious that there was something ‘out of sync’ here, and the push update was causing Mail to crash, which would try to update via push again. Wash, rinse, repeat.
So now I had something to focus on – Mail. Initial tests were showing that my IMAP connections were not completing successfully. I’d try to sync the 40-50 messages in my queue, Mail would crash, and it’d try again. I was having regular mail crashes under 2.2, but it was always a matter of just restarting Mail, and it would complete successfully. This time it wasn’t.
Some magic combination of changing back to my ‘view inboxes’ screen, going into Exchange, back out again, then back to IMAP seemed to clear whatever condition was causing this. My iPhone ceased eating it’s battery in half an hour, and is now nice and cool to the touch.
What do I think of the 3.0 release? It’s good. There’s nothing that completely rocks my socks off – I’ve used the cut and paste, which works fine (but as many others have said… a lot…. this is a feature that should have been in from day 0), and Spotlight is pretty nifty as well. I’ve noticed some other small things, like the SMS app no longer ‘wedges’ during a send – it backgrounds the sending so you can work on something else (like another text) while the first one is sending, etc.
My new Bluetooth headphones should be here in the next day or two, and that’s when I’ll explore the feature I most want – A2DP enabled playback. Booyah.
Apple iTunes Store failure during 3.0 update.
Well this isn’t going so well.
I’m all excited about the iPhone 3.0 update. I docked my iPhone, started iTunes and saw it download the update pretty quickly. This is good, I think – that means the servers are handing out the updates just fine.
Not so fast. The update appears to have gone just fine.
The problem is there’s another step that is apparently hammering the bejeezus out of the iTunes store, and is failing to allow the phone to be re-activated after the update. My phone currently has the USB->iTunes connection graphic on it (“Connect me with iTunes!”), with an emergency-use-only slider.
Until the iTunes store gets unpaniced, I have a useless phone.
Thanks Apple.
(**Update**: Apparently I’m hardly the only one seeing this.)
(**Update again**: It appears to be the activation server that is getting hammered. Not sure if this is an Apple problem or an AT&T problem)
(**Update the third**: I made it. You just have to keep trying on the activation screen. Eventually it’ll get through, and things look fine now.)
The Language Umbrella
What happens when there’s a rampant conversation going on on a geek channel? It’s time for Umbrella Metaphors.
“If a language were used to make an umbrella, what would it look like?”
Naturally, there were several suggestions for certain languages.
– PHP umbrella is made of ragged pieces of duct tape
– VB umbrella is old and kids-size
– C++ umbrella requires a 15-digit code to open
– Java umbrella is sold with the handle and material seperately, and you need to match them up, and you have to download it from github
– Ruby umbrella is shaped like a cube, but if you stand in just the right place, it keeps you try
– ASP umbrella is large, but has big holes cut into it
– Fortran umbrella is made of iron, and is rusted shut 😉
– haskell umbrella is inside-out.
– .net umbrellas are a range of colour-matching umbrellas, but they only work with certain types of rain.
– lisp umbrella is old, but still works, and all the new umbrellas coming out look like it more and more
– lisp umbrella is incomprehensible as a functional umbrella. but pushing a button appears to keep the water off you, just have no idea how.
– lisp umbrella is patterned with a bunch of images of other lisp umbrellas on it, which are in turn..
Thanks to Avatar-x, ojacobson, the_goat, Optic, elmood, and the other happy geeks at the Toronto Hacklab
Azureus / Vuze under Ubuntu FAIL!
I’m not sure who to blame here, but someone should get drawn and quartered.
I’m working on setting up Azureus Vuze to run headless on yawl while I’m not around. To test it, I decided to install and run it on clipper.
Things were going quite well – with aptitude installing Vuze fine. I had to run java-update-alternatives to make sure I had the right JVM:
dbs@clipper:/usr/bin$ sudo update-java-alternatives -l java-6-sun 63 /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun dbs@clipper:/usr/bin$ sudo update-java-alternatives --set java-6-sun
Then, Vuze wouldn’t start:
dbs@clipper:~$ vuze exec: 11: /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/jre/bin/java: not found
“Oh no, they didnt….”
They did. The vuze script starts up the azureus startup script, which is hardcoded to the java-6-openjdk java path:
dbs@clipper:/usr/bin$ head -5 azureus #!/bin/sh JAVA='/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/jre/bin/java -Xmx1024M'
This isn’t hard to fix, it’s just a quick edit to the startup script – but cmon package maintainers. Get a grip here. The whole java-alternatives stuff is specifically made to avoid this sort of crap. Get it together!
Say hello to ‘Nimitz’
It’s been no secret that the computing power in our friendly server cluster has been falling behind demand. We have 30-40 users and dozens of websites being driven by a pair of 1U servers that, to their credit, are doing a bang-up job.
‘boomer’, our main server, is but a poor Sempron 2400+. It has performed beautifully for 2+ years, but during the day, it’s showing signs of needing some relief.
We added ‘guardian’ about 6 months ago to handle front end mail loads (greylisting), DNS traffic, web proxies, and basic firewall duties. It’s a single 2.4gig Xeon box, and has done a great job.
I’m now deploying several Java applications for customers to use, and I really need some more CPU/Ram to run with.
Welcome ‘nimitz’. Thanks to a long term loan from Alex, we’ll be able to put some rockin dual AMD Opteron action in place. This box will act as an application host, primarily using Tomcat to serve up CONGO installations.
As I type, it has rebooted to it’s ‘nimitz login:’ prompt, and is ready to go.
Oh, why is it called ‘nimitz’? Upon powering it up for the first time, I was nearly jolted off my seat by the sheer noise level of the machine’s 6 internal fans. When it’s running, I can hear it all the way downstairs in the kitchen (2 flights of stairs). It’s flat, noisy, and powerful. So, ‘nimitz.’
Feeding the Tweets
I find myself doing a heck of a lot of twittering lately. The updated version of Twitterrific has an excellent interface, allowing me to post pictures, follow threads, do things like like “show me tweets that are coming from nearby me physically” (which has led me to make some new friends!).
This unfortunately has meant I don’t blog as much. When I see something I want to talk about, I just throw out a twitter post – which may include a picture of something I’ve just seen.
I understand that many of my readers don’t log into Twitter at all, and that’s fine. There is, however, a nice RSS feed of my postings available.
To read my tweets via RSS, use my RSS feed link (which is available on my twitter home page). My tweets are also forwarded into my Facebook page.
Last but not least, there’s a cute widget on my blog home page that shows the last couple tweets I’ve posted.
Twitter, for all it’s buzzwordism, is an interesting medium. I’ll stick with it for a while.
TechGripe – iPhone Mail app
First and foremost, I still love my iphone. It’s become my internet-in-your-pocket device. When I’m not carrying it, I feel like something’s missing.
But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have it’s faults – and today’s itch is with the Mail app.
I have Mail configured to chat with the Exchange 2007 server at work (which works remarkably well – I get meeting notifications, etc). I also have it configured to talk to my Homeport mailbox over IMAPS. This works… well, but has some quirks.
First, Mail crashes like clockwork on startup. My guess this is due to a large inbox (frequently I’ll update and see 50-75 messages waiting to download. It’ll get 2/3rds of the way through the download, and BOOM). A restart usually completes the update.
I’ll do my mailbox cleaning, removing a bunch of spam, checking notices, etc… and then go on about my daily business.
When I sit down at my desk and run up Thunderbird – which connects to the same IMAP server, I see that all the messages I deleted or marked as read are still in my inbox.
I can’t find a way to tell the iPhone to sync it’s view of my inbox with the server. It does happen eventually, during some dark and sleepy period when I’m not watching it I’m sure, but I can’t figure out how to make it happen on my time – like, say, after I’ve updated my inbox during a boring meeting, and before I sit back down at my desk.
I know OS 3.0 is right around the corner, and will be a monstrous update. Perhaps there’ll be some Mail app tweaks?
The Portable Stack – Is there a place for the EeePC?
Recently I was successfully marketed to by Woot.com and aquired an Asus EeePC 900 Linux netbook. For those who are not familiar with these puppies, they’re hyper-small fully functional ‘laptop’ computers, scaled down to be the size of a hardcover book. The Netbook article on Wikipedia is a good summary of these devices.
The Asus EeePC 900 is an ‘older’ version (hence the reason I got it for only $149) with 512meg of RAM and a 4 gig SSD drive. It has all the basic features you’d expect for a laptop – wifi, decent screen, touchpad, USB ports, good battery life (about 3.5 hours), etc. In all respects, it should be a geeks dream. A fully functional Linux box that is only a few pounds, and can run for hours.
So why am I considering handing it off to my son?
The main problem is that in the current portable computing environment, the ‘slot’ that Netbooks like the EeePC can fill is narrowing rapidly. On the ‘full laptop’ side, there’s a trend toward longer battery life, lighter designs, and stuffing all the functionality of a full desktop machine into a portable form. Many people don’t even have desktop machines anymore, they use their laptops for all work (that’s my situation). On the other side we have the emergency of smartphones like the iPhone (which I have). The iPhone is an enormously capable device. I can read my email, chat online, browse the web, play games – all the things I’d likely do on my laptop if it were small and light – the space that the EeePC and others are shooting for.
Even in the face of all this, I really did give the EeePC a try. I carried it around for a week, trying to see where I’d use it and where I wouldn’t. I never ‘clicked’ into it in any particular fashion, due to a number of obstacles that were either filled by my iPhone or by my laptop:
- Very small keyboard
The EeePC has a very small and somewhat wobbly keyboard. I have quite large hands, and though I could ‘shrink’ my hands down to type away, it took some serious concentration, and really only worked when the EeePC was flat on a desk and I was sitting in a proper chair. If I were in that situation, I’d just use my laptop. - Wireless twitchy
This is probably a fault of the Linux distribution the EeePC uses, but I had all sorts of problems with the machine waking up and not reassociating with any available wifi (it wouldn’t even show networks available). - No LEAP support
The wireless also could not use LEAP authentication on wireless. This meant I could not use the EeePC anywhere at the office. Total loss there – I was hoping to be able to bring the machine with me to meetings so I didn’t have to undock and haul my normal laptop along. - Update failures from Asus
ASUS has broken their updater. The EeePC will not software update properly from ASUS’s servers. This is a real problem. There are workarounds, naturally, but it likely means there won’t be OS updates from the manufacturer anytime soon. The answer seems to be to use Eeebuntu, a version of Ubuntu linux designed specifically for the EeePC netbooks. - Touchpad
I don’t like the touchpad. I don’t know why – I just can’t get comfortable with it. The two-finger scrolling is cumbersome and prone to ‘pausing’ (this compared to the two-fingered scrolling on a macbook, which is smooth as silk). - Yet Another Power Supply
I have a problem with power supplies. If I’m going to carry another laptop, I have to have another power supply with me. So now I have 2 laptops, 2 power supplies. This is not saving me anything in weight in my backpack.
Given all these issues, I find myself either picking up my iPhone to twitter or check something on wikipedia, or get out my laptop if I’m going to do any real work.
So what to do? The current plan is to reload the EeePC with Eeebuntu and evaluate that. If it’s stable, is able to browse youtube, run Python’s IDLE environment, and play nethack, then it will be a perfect upgrade for my son, as he’s outgrowing his XO laptop.
Kingdoms Live – Army Invite Codes!
Oh, and I also appear to be playing Kingdoms Live on the iPhone. It’s a lot of fun, pretty straightforward play, and enjoyable. Limits moves so you don’t spend your entire life on it. Not sure how far it’ll go, but if you’re playing, and you have an invite code, comment here, and expand your army!
My code is VNS22
My next project: Fibre Channel
There are times I realize there are big holes in my tech-savvyness. In particular, my experience with more enterprisey storage systems, while it exists, doesn’t have a lot of ‘hey wouldn’t this be cool…’ to it.
Recently a friend asked if I’d be interested in a fibre channel disk array and associated accessories that he was disposing of. After a few seconds deliberation, I said ‘sure’ and a week later, here it is.
This is a 10 slot fibre channel chassis, hub, and a pair of HBA’s to round it out (the rackable box on top is a different project). The array has a mere 7 18 gig drives in it. In modern desktop drive land, it’s pretty pitiful. But FC drives on eBay are going for $30 for 73gig, so I can kit out this box with some pretty fast storage for very little.
For now though I have to learn about HBAs, GBICs and all the other tech that slipped by me.
This should be fun.
Firefox trick of the Day – Deleting History
Ever have that link show up in your history list that you just don’t want to have flash up in the middle of a demo with a client? You know, the one about fuzzy bunnys and jello? Right, that one. You don’t have to clear your entire browsing history just to avoid embarrassment…
In Firefox, when you start typing something in the address bar, and the history appears, use the arrow keys to highlight the offending history entry, and just hit Delete – voila! No more bunny-related distractions. At least for now.
Firefox’s URL history is pretty nifty, and I like how it will ‘bubble up’ frequently used URL’s toward the top, but I also like that you have detailed control over what gets displayed there.