Regensblog

I had high hopes for Kubuntu 8.04 (the Hardy Heron) with regard to bluetooth transfers from our mobile phones to our computers. Apparently it got better for most of the world from 7.10 (the Gutsy Gibbon) to the current version, but not for users of Symbian-based phones like our Nokia E50 and E61i models.

Then I noticed apparently receiving bluetooth file transfers from our Mac mini to our Kubuntu Linux machine running 8.04 worked just fine — so why not from our phones? Was it related to our phones or to the software on our Linux machine?

It’s apparently related to the bluez-utils package in the Ubuntu repositories. A user posted on launchpad.net (original post here) that using the bluez-utils package from the Debian “sid” (unstable) repositories worked for him.

So, get the unstable bluez-utils package from here, install it with

sudo pkg -i bluez-utils_3.30-3_i386.deb

reboot, and that’s it…at least, that’s how I did it. I hope I’ve saved someone some self-hair-pulling and googling.

Ooh, snap. They totally nailed it in the article “An Amazing Mind: The REAL reason we use Linux.”

I have a very cluttered desk. In addition to the two monitors, two keyboards, two pointing devices (that’s what you call your mice if at least one of them is a trackball or trackpad), two webcams, two microphones, and two iPods, there is a ton of garbage, loose cables, photo paper, a CD spindle or two, post cards we bought and never sent, CDs awaiting import into iTunes, etc.

I don’t have a lot of room for all my stuff. For that reason I like my trackball. I got The Man™ to pay for my Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard and also Trackball back in the day in Troy, but the stipulation was that I couldn’t take them with me when I left (why the hell not? I can’t imagine anyone else being happy to inherit them) for Regensburg four years ago.

No matter, I asked Den Mann™ replace my keyboard here in Germany with the Microsoft Ergonomic keyboard after a couple years, but I was still missing my trackball. I coughed up for a used one on eBay and am pretty happy with it, but until today, I hadn’t been able to get the little midget buttons to the left and right of the main buttons to work. I mostly wanted them to work as surrogate browser Back and Forward buttons like I remember from MSIE 4 or 5 back in the day.

Some quick googling revealed that I am not alone! Turns out it’s not a fix that has to happen in Firefox at all, but rather an X11 tweak. I found it on launchpad.net:

Don’t forget to save a copy of your xorg.conf file first, in case you have to revert to it later!

Currently this can only be made to work in firefox and not in nautlis, yelp, ... with the following workaround:
1. Open a terminal and enter the following command:
$ sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf
2. Change the "Configured Mouse" protocol to:
Option "Protocol" "Auto"
3. Add the following following line (this maps horizontal scrolling to your back and forward mouse button, horizontal scrolling by default has back and forward actions in firefox):
Option "ButtonMapping" "1 2 3 6 7"
It should look like this:
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "Auto"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "ButtonMapping" "1 2 3 6 7"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
EndSection
4. Restart X (Ctrl-Alt-Backspace).


Good news and bad news!

You want the bad news first? OK, here it comes.

I couldn’t get Skype 2.7.0.257 for Mac OS X to work. I used the built-in uploader thing to look for a new version and download and install itself. Then, when trying to log in afterwards, it never worked. The “Signing in…” rotating graphic thing just kept spinning. I tried a couple different approaches:

• rebooting (sorry — reflex holdover from my Windows days)
• dragging the Skype application icon from the Applications folder out onto the desktop, and then dragging it back into the Applications folder (this helped, amazingly, with the iSync application after upgrading to Mac OS X 10.5.2 — it was just a shot in the dark)
• Doing a fresh download of Skype 2.7.0.257 for Mac OS X from www.skype.com and overwriting the previous installation

None of that stuff worked. In the end, I found a copy of version 2.6.0.184 for Mac OS X that I downloaded from www.netzwelt.de which I installed. It appears to work better, since I can log in properly, but I must confess, I haven’t actually tested it yet.

Now for the good news!

I was poking around for an updated version of Skype for use on Linux, and I noticed they’d released a beta version of 2.0 for Linux — including video support! I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. Downloaded the Ubuntu package and with sudo dpkg -i skype-debian_2.0.0.43-1_i386.deb on the command line it was all installed and ready to go. Even better (or actually worse, financially) news: I didn’t need to buy those USB microphone and camera for use with the Mac after all — audio works great on Linux (like it always has) and even my ancient Intel Create & Share CS330 webcam (I remember paying like $50 for it at Costco back in the day) seems like it will work. Haven’t tested it yet directly. Those who know how to reach me on Skype, please do so to take the 2.0 beta on Linux for a spin with me.

Ugh. Our desktop PC running windows won’t turn on. I turned it off normally last night, and this morning, it just won’t come on. I suspect a blown fuse or something in the power supply. I really don’t want to have to deal with that loud Aldi-branded hunk. But I *do* really want to make further use of at least some of its components; not the least of which are its twin 250GB SATA hard disks. I found a nifty-looking housing for taking two SATA drives and making them into one big or two separate external USB drives.

If it weren’t for our iTunes investments over the past few years, I would probably have finally been able to completely forgo licensed operating systems (except at work, where I don’t have that option). We’ve already got a Linux-based laptop and desktop here (the desktop box serves as a…uh, server). But iTunes, our dealer of habit-forming audio narcotics, doesn’t offer to hawk its wares to those would turn their noses up at paying for software (note well: I’m not advocating piracy!).

So, I’m thinking really hard about how to proceed here. The cheapest way to go (especially if that hunk is still under warranty) is to get the PC fixed. But it’s big and clunky and especially loud. Hate that. Also hate all the dust its multiple fans collect (uh, perhaps that had something to do with its untimely demise?). I can’t just build a new computer, cannibalizing the old one, and downloading an open source OS like Linux or one of the BSDs and expect it to play the music we bought through iTunes. So we’re still going to have to rely on Windows or Mac OS X (row row, row!)…at least until I slowly and painfully record each track purchased from iTunes into Audacity and re-code it back into plain-old-MP3 or some other non-DRM’d format. And that’s not going to happen any time soon.

Any opinions out there on the Mac Mini, particularly as a home desktop system in use mostly for multi-media applications (iTunes, Skype, general surfiness)? I’m looking at one for 700€. And then getting far away from iTunes.