Fragments of Memories

Repeat dammit repeat!

I tweaked xkb files till I got something like Arkku Dvorak available for KDE through it's keyboard switching interface. The patch for (K)ubuntu Dapper will probably be on these pages somewhere, at some point.

Being the person I am, I wanted to try something else too, and mapped the capslock key to do backspace (in the style of Colemak). That was nice and lovely for a person with small hands like I have. BUT the damn key does not repeat. So, unlike with the original, one keypress removes one character, no matter how long I'm pressing it. Infuriating. And despite putting hours into this, I haven't been able to find a way to get it to repeat. (It does not help that most custome keymaps are for xmodmap).

If you happen to know a way, tell me and I'll be grateful.

21:00 - /Bits and PCs

Thanks for the upgrade!

Seems that the recent CUPS upgrade in Ubuntu Dapper fixed the printing problem with HP LaserJet 1022. Now I just need to figure out whether I'll want a really long usb cable for a usb-to-netprinting device.

09:41 - /Bits and PCs

HP LaserJet 1022 in Ubuntu

HP Laserjet is not that easy in Ubuntu. Installs seemingly fine, but prints nothing. I'm suspecting a slightly older hplip version (0.9.7 vs 0.9.9 on my old machine). I'll try compiling the newest one to see if it helps.

13:56 - /Bits and PCs

Moving to Treo, the wrong way

The wrong way to move to Treo 650 is by taking the backup card of TungstenE and restoring the backups onto the Treo. a lot of unnecessarily files will end up moved, causing annoyingly much of the Treo memory to be used.

10:08 - /Bits and PCs

Mute Palm Tungsten E, all silent

Today my Palm Tungsten E was all quiet. No matter how I made it beep, no sound came out. I got a bit worried. After all this is my schedule and notebook, all wrapped in one. Reboot did nothing. Sound was on high, but nothing could still be heard. Eventually I plugged in headphones and got beeping through that. I thought the speaker had broken. Damn!

But stubborn as I am, I unplugged the speakers and tried again. Sure enough, there was sound now. I'm a happy camper again.

18:02 - /Bits and PCs

What do other kubuntu users have in their debfoster?

If you are a kubuntu user and use debfoster, I'm really nosy about what you have in your /var/lib/debfoster/keepers file.

I have found that with Ubuntu (compared to Debian) I am often wondering whether I want to keep something the distriution pushes as me. Today I unkept some braille stuff as my laptop is unable to do braille anyway. And some reiserfs stuff, which I'm not planning to use.

12:38 - /Bits and PCs

HP LaserJet 1022

As printers go, HP 1022 is nice! Up and running in linux within couple of minutes, cheap and lasery. What else one can wish for?

10:35 - /Bits and PCs

Nännihiiri / Nipple mouse

The nipple mouse that is so lovely and handy on laptops is called Trackpoint by IBM. Because it's trademarked by IBM as well, other companies have theri own names: pointstick (HP), accupoint, stick mouse, touchstick (Fujitsu). In Finnish one searching for this better google for paikannustappi than nännihiiri.

22:53 - /Bits and PCs

Moving to workpress?

I'm considering moving to Wordpress but it does not seem very easy to secure.

10:59 - /Bits and PCs

KPilot goodness

To someone who has been using jpilot for years, KPilot is a huge leap forward. Synching is actually effortless in comparation! Plus it is cute.

And, of course, free!

20:32 - /Bits and PCs

Apache2 000default

I had a weird proglem where .cgi didn't work at lynoure.net but did work at www.lynoure.net. Turned out this can be caused by overcomplicated default virtual host configuration file, even if there doesn't seem to be anything related there. Tuning it down to just have NamedVirtualHost * solved the problem for me.

Thanks for Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho for help!

10:27 - /Bits and PCs

Maintenance windows for your desktop computer

Lots of suffering can be avoided by choosing maintenance windows even for your own home desktop computer or PDA.

Have you ever been in hurry to leave but just wanted to update your computer? Or thought that some improvement would make your weekend of leasurely gaming so much nicer? And then that update didn't go quite right.

I'm battling this urge right now. I'd like to install Energy Dimmer for my LifeDrive so that it will have longer battery life during the weekend I'll be away. Unwise. If the upgrade does badly now, I won't have time to fix it to my satisfaction and maybe even will not have a working LifeDrive to use during the weekend.

08:50 - /Bits and PCs

Lifedrive with Debian

I'm trying to get LifeDrive to work with Debian. However, with jpilot I just keep getting

dlp_ReadSysInfo error
Exiting with status SYNC_ERROR_PI_CONNECT
Finished

most of the time and sometimes it just works...

03:01 - /Bits and PCs

IPodder not starting

If you are using IPodder (aka. Juice) on Linux and have a nasty problem of it suddenly refusing to start, try setting LC_TIME="en_GB.UTF-8" or some other value that does not have special letters in the month or weekday names. This helped me with 2.1.9 on sarge. Thanks for yomguy for packaging.

19:21 - /Bits and PCs

IAudio players

IAudio players look good, especially as they officially support linux. I'm drooling at IAudio X5(L). IAudio U3 would be yummy too, but even harder to find for buying. However, Audible still continues to be a dilemma for me. I really like audiobooks but Audible still ignores linux users and uses it's nasty format.

20:42 - /Bits and PCs

Silencing efforts

I know my computer silencing efforts have worked because now my hard drives sound noisy.

21:45 - /Bits and PCs

Gimme purple!

People don't seem to like purple GDM themes. I'd still want one.

17:23 - /Bits and PCs

Will Optimus keyboard change how GUIs work?

Last night I realized that the Optimus keyboard has a good chance of changing how GUIs work. Why have a menu on the screen when you can have the menu on the keyboard? You do not even have to give normal keys to be pressed unless the user is in a text field.

19:46 - /Bits and PCs

Kohtuulliset kuulokkeet halvalla

Kaipasin toisia kuulokkeita, nyt tällä hetkellä töihin mutta ehkä myöhemmin kannettavan musiikkisoittimen kaveriksi. Päädyin Philipsin valmistamiin HL145 sankakuulokeisiin, jotka ovat paketin mukaisesti keveät päässä. Äänessäkään ei ole näin maallikolla suuremmin valittamista, ja hintaa 9,90 euroa.

Alunperin ajattelin että haluaisin nappikuulokkeet, jos vaan löytyisi sopivan kokoiset pieniin korviin, mutta en kyllä maksa 45 euroa sellaisistakaan nappikuulokkeista, varsinkaan Sonylle!

19:39 - /Bits and PCs

Linux copy paste rules supreme!

Why is it that not even so-called user-friendly Macs have such a nice copy-paste as commonly available in X in Linux? I want to be able to just paint and then press the center mouse button! I don't want stinking menus for something that could be so simple!

17:33 - /Bits and PCs

OS X, Terminal and alt key problems

Today was my first day with OS X. When I finally tried ssh from it, I noticed the backspace didn't work, Scandinavian letters produced a mess, backspace just didn't work and either did alt. An irssi hell, I tell you.

Following steps offered a cure. Terminal-->Window Settings... then from drop menu Keyboard and check Delete key sends backspace and Use option key as a meta key. Then choose Emulation from the dropdown menu and uncheck Escape non-ASCII characters. After that is just works.

17:25 - /Bits and PCs

Something better than Freedom Keepsafe

I'd want something like Freedom Keepsafe but with several (at least two) smaller units for my devices.

01:38 - /Bits and PCs

Tab completition in Irb

According to The Tiger's Vest tab completion should work right off in Linux but at least in my Debian unstable I had to use

irb --readline -r irb/completion

14:15 - /Bits and PCs

Galeon bookmarklets

I just now discovered the joy of Galeon bookmarklets. At least the in-page bookmark bookmarklet is handy when reading long web pages. I haven't yet tested whether it survives Galeon being shut down meanwhile. I hope it will.

Later: It seems the in-page bookmarks do not survive galeon being shut down. Pity.

14:03 - /Bits and PCs

XMMS and symbolic links

When playing a directory, XMMS will not play the files that are symbolic links.

Yes, I know XMMS is ancient.

11:57 - /Bits and PCs

Quickcam Express II

I got my Quickcam Express II working with spca5xx drivers. That was easy. Gnomemeeting now shows video. Unfortunately the video is a bit yellowish and the gnomemeeting controls for adjusting colour/brightness/contrast seem to be rather nonresponsive and always revert to the old settings if I move away from the video screen. There is probably some trick for this.

10:59 - /Bits and PCs

Displaying laptops without the batteries

It annoys me that laptops in the stores are displayed without the batteries and thus they seem much lighter that they'd actually be. Maybe someone could invent a battery lock to make it harder for people to steal the batteries... or maybe the stores could just stick their regular alarm triggering stuff on the batteries of the display laptops as well.

14:20 - /Bits and PCs

Sound recorder silence

So, Skype works fine, but I cannot get the Gnome Sound Recorder to record even a puff. I was planning to torment myself by recording my singing to see how it sounds to my biased ears.

10:08 - /Bits and PCs

Skype Echo123

If outgoing sound does not work nearly at all when testing with Skype Echo Sound Test Service, don't despair before you test with an actual user, too. In my case it worked just fine!

20:08 - /Bits and PCs

X doesn't start

After a late night upgrade of Debian unstable yesterday, the X on aeonflux no longer starts, and there is nothing at all (and I mean nothing, that's 0 size for you doubtful) in the logs. I'm a bit busy now, so I'm happy I have the laptop on the side.

08:35 - /Bits and PCs

Suomalainen näppis

Suomalaisessa näppäimistössa on jotkut asiat kyllä ihan tyhmästi.

Muutama parannusidea:

• Ä:n ja Ö:n paikkojen vaihto päittäin
• Enterin vieressä olevaan aksenttinäppaäimeen normaaliksi tulokseksi tilde.
• Koko näppiksen muuttaminen dvorak-pohjaiseksi, niin että perusrivillä on enemmän vokaaleja

17:13 - /Bits and PCs

No .avi

Updating the Debian unstable on my desktop machine caused Totem no longer being able to play .avi. I should look into that at some point.

22:54 - /Bits and PCs

Trusted computing animation

There is a well made animation about trusted computing. Worth seeing, though it might be puzzling if you do not know much about trusted computing. They do have a strong point, however.

21:07 - /Bits and PCs

Bookcrossing usability annoyance

When releasing a book on bookcrossing.com, I can choose one of my earlier release zones. If I want to release the books somewhere else, the site forces me to go through country, region and city selection instead of letting me jump directly to the city or cities where I have recently released books.

10:57 - /Bits and PCs

Sfnet juhlii

SFNET juhlii 20-vuotistaivaltaan 15.10.2005. Lisätietoja SFNET20 blogista.

20:15 - /Bits and PCs

Error about start-stop-daemon

An error such as "Stopping web server: apache/etc/init.d/apache: line 59: start-stop-daemon: command not found" can also result from forgetting to use sudo.

12:39 - /Bits and PCs

20 uudelleenasennusta

Törmäsin ircissä tänään tyypiin joka sanoi asentaneensa Debian stablen uusiksi 20 kertaa koska oli saanut sen jotenkin juntturaan kerta toisensa jälkeen. Öh. Windows-maailma opettaa selvästi ihmisiä suhtautumaan kummasti tietokoneisiinsa.

17:06 - /Bits and PCs

Blank keyboard with 105 keys

I would like to try a blank 105-key keyboard to see what's it like to type Finnish on it. Any idea if such thing exists? I didn't find one with googling.

11:25 - /Bits and PCs

Salesform

A friend of mine, Tanda has written a small script currently called Salesform that produces invoices with the kind of reference number Finnish banks accept. I should take it out for a spin someday and maybe after that see if it can be turned into a payment module for OSCommerce.

20:09 - /Bits and PCs

Non-random randomness

I'm suspecting my irssi random away messages are not even nearly random. I should look into it.

11:36 - /Bits and PCs