guh guh guh GEEK!

I've been running an extreme beta of Google's Chromium OS on my Acer Aspire One [aao] for the last day or two, and I have to say apart from a few niggles it's actually pretty decent...

You see, I bought this netbook for 3 reasons: web stuff while sat on the sofa, light tinkering with USB connected things (arduino, beagle, etc) and light media stuff...It's been great at all of these things, except the arduino thing since the upgrade to Ubuntu Karmic (of course, I have workarounds)...but...The main thing I use it for is web stuff...for this, Chromium seems ideal!

Booting off a 4Gb USB drive takes about 10 seconds, time to desktop is about 3 more...The Atheros wifi worked OOB (Broadcom doesn't apparently), it's uber simple (a chromium start page and time/date, network manager, power indicator and options icons up top)...annoyingly it's set my keyboard layout to US, has Hulu & Pandora (only work in US) on the home page and no way to customise that page...but I've not really gone under-the-hood yet....that's what I'm about to do....

Anyway. The current plan is to partition the SSD into 2 4gigish partitions, stick this on one and rethink my linux install on the other....hmmm.

Oh yea, didn't get killed by piglung....all is cool...

[EDIT] Oh yeah...HIBERNATE WORKED OOB!!! This is a new one on me!

Show n Tell

I'm doing one of these here Freeskilling things tomorrow evening.

I'm really looking forward to it, but hoping it doesn't just turn into me ranting about closed/pay software (OK, I'll say it....MICROSOFT & APPLE), where Linux/FOSS lets us down (because it does in places)...I have some (hopefully) cool shit to show off and for people to use though:

• Chumby (FOSS/OSH, not got wifi in locale so showing "local" widgets + Quake)
• BeagleBoard (FOSS/OSH, just to show as no HDMI output)
• Neo1973 (FOSS/OSH, boots to screen of doom thanks to me)
• Sony Vaio found through "justfortheloveofit", booting FOSS 'live'
• Acer Aspire 1 booting Moblin2 (lame, i reckon) + my own Ubuntu + Kuki
• Lenovo C100, the laptop that will not go away. Is now running Jaunty with all the requisite plugins for browsers & music, etc ready to donate to someone.

A very welcome email from Tom G has prompted some extra software checkin'...I'd forgotten Gloobus for you Gnome peeps...

And FYI I have ~3 desktop PCs (no monitors) if anyone wants them....what is it about monitors?

Levels

oh shit...fuck this post!

I just remembered I can apparently run Doom on Chumby! Need to look into various FLV transcoders and I would LOVE to get BBC iplayer chumby widget!

Focus!

EDIT: Got Quake running on the Chumby last night :D

Guri 2 : Fuckheads 0

So. I cheered twice today. I literally shouted "Hooray" involuntarily on 2 occasions...

Remember the really sweary post from Friday? Well, guess what happened today? Well...

The agency sent someone round to look at the freezer. Yep, it is broken! But, they accepted my argument that rather than go through the long-winded process of me asking them to ask the landlord to get a new one (and the commensurate weeks without a freezer) I could by my own (probably better quality) and they'd amend the inventory.

Yay!*

Also, the fucktard that wouldn't increase my timeout? Seems that if I threaten to use a different proxy service, they can suddenly increase the timeout!! Who'd a thunk it?

On the minus side whatever the fuck was stuck under my P key of my AAO is now stuck under the O key...but that's just another reason for me to buy an Eee Keyboard PC when they come out next month. Which I'd be getting anyway because it will become the HTPC for the front room (streaming media off the NAS to the TV using it's wireless HDMI (how fucking cool is that)) so the Mini can replace TehBehemoth server...and TehBehemoth can go into the PC Recycling project stream....the upshot of which is my electricity bills should go down (not that there mental or anything).

This means "the gurinet" will get a general overhaul and should then be:

• Linksys WRT54G running DD-WRT (Firewall, VPN, Routing, etc)
• with 2TB NAS
  
• Mac Mini running Ubuntu 9.04 running Asterisk (I'm experimenting with this), Motion (Home Security), some 'bots, "internal" webserver and anoth 1TB of NAS
• AAO running uBen2 (this is my custom built linux distro based on Ubuntu with tweaks from Kuki plus a few nifty things of my own**)
• Eee Keyboard hopefully running Moblin, but if necessary Windows 7***
  

/END_GEEK



* Except they'll probably not update the inventory and then there will be a massive argument when (someday) I move out.
** More on this in another post I think
*** I'm no fan of Microsoft, it's true, but I do kinda like Win7 despite myself...

Cloudy!

Using Wordle!

Mental

I'm starting to get it....

Twitter is beginning to make some sense (and boy oh boy have the mobile operators missed this one, or at the very least only just getting it....believe me!). What you need is GPS and a camera (and it helps to have wifi). Get that in your device, hopefully get yourself a G2 or an iphone (suckerz), get Twidroid or Twitteriffic and you're fucking laughing....That said, if I got off my lazy ass and looked at BrightKite properly, I'd probably be spouting about that ;)

Anyway...

I give ye the Gurinet....

My eyes.....

They burn.....the orangeynessnessss.....but 1st....

Mac Mini running Ubuntu 9.04 + XBMC....fuck you Apple!


Flo's in love with the iPod....fuck you Apple!


Moshi's in love with my bag.....fuck you, Apple....oh, wait....


Orange!

Who said a fixed-wheel bike in a city built on 7 hills is madness...probably me after my 1st proper cycling sesh tomorrow....

Off to Derby for the weekend...peace.

Mac Mini OS X 10.4 Dropping Wifi [updated]

OK, so this has been bothering me for a few weeks now, but the front room mac mini has been incredibly flaky with wifi lately. Like, proper flaky...maybe up 1 minute, 1 hour, 1 day and then drop for no reason whatsoever, refuse to reconnect....but then sometime later mysteriously connects.

It seems that the solution is to delete the AirPort preferences file in /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration (com.apple.airport.preferences.plist) and let it be regenerated.

Shall try that tonight...fingers crossed.

[UPDATE: This does not work]

This happens to you too, right?

So. I was meeting a mate in a bar I rarely frequent last night. Just for a quick pint on the way home from work. As my steaming cold pint of Staropramen was placed in front of me I casually asked if they had wifi. "Oh yes," the barman replied, "let me write down the password for you."

He came back with a piece of paper with the place's phone number (the password) and asked if I knew anything about computers....

"I look like I do, don't I?", I replied. "Errr, a bit", he said.

Anyway, it transpired that because they'd previously had the network open and it had been severely hogged by neighbouring students, they'd stuck a simple password on and subsequently anyone in the bar could connect, but not the mac mini behind the bar they used to play music.

Sigh. "Hang on, then". 10 minutes later and it was sorted. Channel 6, WEP, non-broadcast SSID....ideal bar parameters if you ask me.

Also, 2 free pints...

FYI: Bar Humbug, Whiteladies Rd, Bristol = "humbug", "12345" :)

You can call me...

...sheeple.

I finally capitulated and bought me an ipod. Not just any ipod, the 32 gig Touch.

Holy fuck! It's awesome....I've only about half-filled it! 6 days (Days!) of music, 8 hours of video, 1200 photos and about a gazillion applications.

I'm in love. And that's why I didn't post this last night; I was too busy collecting album art, playing with Bloom (Brian Eno's generative music app) and converting files from DivX/AVI to MP4.....

A Title Goes Here

So. I've done something a bit ostentatious. Nothing major...but y'know between the taxman, the govarmentals, doomsayers, naysayers, yaysayers and the fact that the TV I bought on the cheap a couple of years ago has no decent inputs (other than SCART), weighs a solid metric ton, and thus is both harshing my eyes when using it as a "desktop monitor" and requires a "box o' tricks" adapter to work with the-mac (which is my media machine), Bro is off to Sumatra and is lending me his Wii...wait....there's a justification in there somewhere.

I bought a new TV....now the-mac gets DVI->HDMI (yay...HD!), the Wii can have whatever it wants, it's got built in freeview (for what that's worth....they all have them these days apparently), it's bigger (32 of her majesties inches), and not made by Tesco. I think it weighs 1/4 of the current dude.

Also, I fucking love re-arranging all my wires and stuff. I'm an optimisation freak...this is going to be my most exciting Friday night for a while!!...the-mac, amp, tv, usb things, audio cables...it'll be very minimal compared to now.


[mum, close your eyes...]






Even with my 32 Gig-I-FUCKING-POD!*





[ok, open them]



I might even post an "un-boxing".

You lucky, lucky people!


* Sorry for the swearing mum (i'm very excited)...

Cat Jealousy

I am jealous of the mosh.

She just got chipped...21st Century FTW!

In other news...

Actually, they got along rather well...

...but, can you say Cheeeeesssse?

Procrastination 101

I came up with this idea. You'll love it!

It's fucking awesome...but I strongly suspect (there's negative for yer) I'll never get round to even starting it:

• Beagleboard connected to a webcam and the Neo over usb
• 32Gb SD storage
  
• Neo acts as input device (keyboard, which could be customisable based on function...qwerty, "ipod mode", browser, etc)
• Neo can also do GSM Modem, Wifi, Bluetooth, GPS?
  
• Visual output (DVI btw!) to either LCD or "wearable display"
• Beagle's got audio in and stereo jacks so why not Voip too?
• I have this novelty "strap to a finger" mouse...
• Those car cigarette lighter adapters are nifty for power smoothing...
• ...old laptop battery...

Yeah?

Then I went a bit overboard dreaming up a wearable computer with some kind of Minority Report style real-time desktop overlay HUD (imagine you can see a brilliant conky/enigma style desktop wherever you look....but your desktop background is provided by your webcam!), gesture recognition (I already have a "mouse" you can strap to a finger) and integration with Google Maps (GPS for walkers FTW!), Facebook (facial/friend recognition, photos), Twitter ("@shitsack am walking...oh hai!") etc....Srsly, this is gonna be fucking brilliant!

Then I woke up.

Realised I have 60% of the components, probably 10% of the know-how, 90% of the desire, 2% of the gumption, and....no. Maybe not. I believe the military are doing this :)

One day though. One day...you'll see me walking down the street wearing a ridiculous attachment to my glasses, tapping randomly on a screen attached to my right sleeve, while seemingly talking to nobody, nodding randomly and muttering under my breath. I may, or may not, acknowledge you...

I hereby name this project: Black Coffee Dave.*

* He won't let me take his photo because he is still convinced I have something to do with "the government"**

** To those who don't know him, BCD believes that aliens have, and still do, visit our planet, that they run many of our institutions, that there are friendly "spirits" (of which he is in touch with the only current one on Earth). He is also, apparently, able to influence those barriers you see in multi-storey car parks because "he has a 3rd eye on his hand that affects infra-red"....I don't know where to stop with this...***

*** He has personally told me that he has a self-made tin-foil hat and that mobiles do not work if he uses them because he is overly electromagnetic.

Twatter

Yes. I are on it...for better or worse...the internets keep wedding me.

See all the bullshit I can't be arsed with by following @guriben, but don't typo it and end up here...

Yoikes!

Apart from Flo refusing to settle down (and then immediately settling down following my instigation of the "ignore" button), wondering if I can become a _god_ by figuring out how to get un-DRM'd (there's no other kind ;) Spore to run under Wine with Intel graphix (and custom yadda-yadda), and dealing with some (lazy?) slovaks, I have little esle to do/ponder...

Except...If someone adds somebody to their twitter feed, has the twitterer twatted the twitteree? If someone tweets something they later wish to take back, have they retwacted? Fuck it, it's like glorified SMS...with bragging.

Maybe I've spent too much time on irc...

BTW, anyone on a Wine/Spore tip, other than Colas on Nahaboo... don't be shy!

SNAFU

From BoingBoing:

"Windows 7 allows application developers to write DRM that bypasses your firewall, refuses to let you modify or disable DLLs, and to block you from mixing your audio inputs (to prevent you from recapturing DRM'ed music, presumably)."

I came this close . to recommending it to someone the other day...should've known it'd actually be a skanked-up pile of shit.

More...

Source...

Also, if anyone has any tips on getting a cracked version of Spore to run under Wine (other than here, which seems my best bet so far)...let me know.

Could it be?

The best week evar?

Snow stopped physical attendance at work on Wednesday, Thursday I was off anyway....but it snowed like a muvva, Flo stayed an extra night and we had the most awesome snowball fight this morning in the street...physical attendance at work snowed off again today...and to cap it all off the VPN has died under the strain of the 1000s of people trying to connect from home. Someone stuck 20Mb of crap in my inbox so webmail is dying on its arse...

So, I made my acer pretty.


I've stolen the HP Mini theme (for their netbook) which is quite nice....need to tweak a thing here or there (it'd look very good on the blue acer (hint)). I'd like to be running Gnome-DO with Docky enabled, but for some reason it won't let me...so that's AWN down there on the bottom. "Show Desktop" is slaved to the "House" key, and Ctrl+"House" yields the lovely window-picker...


I've been toying with the idea of something revolving around Conky, but as yet a bit dubious/lazy.

If you ever get your hands on an Acer Aspire One (the 8Gb Linux one), drop me a line and I'll maybe package it as an ISO and post instructions on how to Unetbootin it with a USB drive... ;-)

5 Geek Things

Tek laid down the gauntlet...5 geeky things I resolve to do this year (in no particular order...also note, most of these were on last year's list ;)

1. Build a mini-media centre using the Beagle Board
2. Fix the server and re-build the NAS
3. Sort out the workroom with decent part bins, shelves etc (and better lighting)
4. Flash the Linksys router with DD-WRT (or maybe Tomato)
5. Learn to weld

Why, hello there!

Happy New Year (or as Flo said: "Happy New Zealand")...

I can't be arsed to write much about Xmas etc, it's all a bit historical now and besides I was struck down with a cold yesterday...great!

I'm also tinkering around with a new netbook configuration (which, for now is codenamed "Tinx")...and I bought a Beagle Board (google is your friend remember) which I'll be experimenting with this year....until I get round to buying me a 32Gb iPod Touch (yes, I know).

So I introduced Flo to one of my "tastes of childhood" this weekend. Bacon sandwhiches with a cup of tea...

...and Flo wanted to show you her puzzles (which, by the way, she is fucking excellent at)...


h

So. I'm content with a 45 second boot, loads of module customisation and some desktop shenanigans. It seems others aren't, hence KukiLinux (apparently pronounced "cookie linux"...personally I prefer AAOLinux (Ow! Linux)). It looks like this:

Aweseome no?

My card reader has mysteriously vanished (it's an fstab thing) but all is cool. So why would I mess with it?

Why not. We'll see what an Openbox + kustom kernel thing looks like...

Esmae's kid-happy phat-icon version is nearly sorted too, I went for the linpus +mod mode with a hacked local rc script (which'll hopefully ensure any updates wont break the good hacks).

I'm off to paint something...