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Stephen O'Sullivan

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Internode Usage Meter for GNOME - modified version for Ubuntu 9.10

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For those interested, I modified the pixmaps in Sam Pohlenz's Internode Usage Meter for GNOME, a Gnome panel applet that displays internet usage for those with the Australian ISP Internode, so that it better integrates with the new panel theme in Ubuntu Karmic.

In removing the colour from the applet, I also made it thinner and removed the Internode logo. The applet itself is, apart from the modified pixmaps, completely unchanged. The modified install file can be downloaded here. The applet is released under the GPL.

Album art as folder icon in Gnome, Take 2

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I have found a very simple app here that installed with a .deb file in Ubuntu Karmic, and worked automatically by hooking into the GNOME thumbnail factory.

From the site:

"Cover thumbnailer is a small Python script which displays music album covers in nautilus, preview of pictures which are in a folder and more.

The script fits in nautilus like any other thumbnailer of the GNOME thumbnail factory; so you don't have to run it manually to generate thumbnails.

Cover thumbnailer is free software under GNU GPL v3+ licence, you are free to modify and redistribute it under the terms of the license."

I just installed it in Karmic, logged out and back in, and it worked immediately for all folders with images. My music album folders (all with folder.jpg in them) come up as cd jewel cases; picture and photographs come up as photo albums. Other folders with folder.jpg in them come up as an image with a flip fold on the bottom left corner. I assume that all folders with a cover image in them in the "Pictures" folder in Gnome, come up as Photo Albums; and all similar folders in "Music" come up as jewel cases.

Because it hooks directly into the Gnome thumbnailer, it is dynamic. Add a new album folder to your Music folder, and it immediately transforms into a jewel case picture of the cover.

So far, a very nice addition to Nautilus.

Climate Change

I don't think anyone is denying the fact of climate change, the issue has always been the impact humans have on effecting climate change. At the same time, it must be conceded that human beings have had a profound impact on the planet - building cities and damming rivers, farming the land and either introducing non-indigenous animals or significantly increasing the numbers of animals in a given area, and of course, pollution.

The debate around climate change, as far as I see it, centres on the connection between these two givens. It is easy to jump to the conclusion that they are linked, but logic dictates that we do not leap to such conclusions: if A and if B, it does not necessarily follow that A caused B.

Climate change in South East Australia, where I live, has taken the form of severe drought for over a decade, and a recent article caught my eyes. The article (link here) suggests that "SCIENTISTS studying Victoria's crippling drought have, for the first time, proved the link between rising levels of greenhouse gases and the state's dramatic decline in rainfall."

It seems the science is supporting that (not entirely) common sense view that humanity cannot have such a profound impact on the surface and atmosphere of the earth without affecting interconnected systems such as climate.

www.blogactionday.org

Setup Huawei E169 USB 3G Mobile Broadband in Ubuntu 9.04

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Setup Huawei E169 USB 3G Mobile Broadband in Ubuntu 9.04

The Huawai E169 is the USB modem of choice for 3G mobile broadband for my ISP, Internode. As they advertise it, the device requires a USB 2.0 interface, and either Windows 2000+ or Mac OSX 10.3.7+. No Linux!

I don't have a Mac, so can't talk to setting it up on a Mac, but on Windows XP the device is recognised as a drive, and installs automatically. As with Windows XP, Ubuntu 9.04 immediately recognised the modem upon plugging it in, and asked for details. I assume that if your ISP is on the wizard list it will automatically connect, but the three issues I have identified may help if you do face connection problems.

There were for me three issues. The first issue was that I wasn't entirely sure what data the wizard needed. The other two issues I needed to clean up: fix the APN to that of my ISP, and fix the DNS servers, and both of these are in the Network Manager settings.

In summary:

1. Ensure the settings for your connection in the "Mobile Broadband" tab of Network Manager shows the number and the APN
2. Ensure the DNS servers in the "IPv4 Settings" tab are correct
3. Do not enter any other numbers (usernames, passwords etc.)

In detail:

1. The first issue was that my ISP wasn't on the list of ISPs identified in the connection wizard, as per this bug. The solution I used was to use Optus 3G and then edit the settings for the connection changing the APN to splns333a1.

So, in my case, after selecting Optus 3G from the ISP list in the wizard, I finished the wizard, then:

> Right-click Network Manager tray icon, choose "edit connection", and select the "Mobile Broadband" tab
> Double-click on "Optus 3G" (the connection name based on my designation in the wizard)
> Ensure that the number is *99#
> Change the APN to splns333a1 (for Internode, other ISPs are obviously different)
> Leave everything else blank (do not enter your username or password etc)

2. The second issue was that the DNS servers were incorrect (presumably it Network Manager was using the Optus DNS servers).

So, still in the settings for the connection in Network Manager:

> Select the "IPv4 Settings", and edit the DNS Servers entry to your ISPs servers.

Now my new HP Mini 2140, running Ubuntu 9.04 (UNR, but using the desktop interface), has NodeMobile 3G broadband working!

Hp Mini 2140

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I recently bought an HP netbook, the brushed aluminium Mini 2140. I am currently triple-booting XP, Ubuntu 9.04 (the netbook remix, but I have switched to standard desktop) and Moblin v2 Beta.

I love the machine. It looks beautiful, the keyboard is sensational, the screen looks great, and it has features I like not found in other netbooks, such as a standard VGA out. Ubuntu Jaunty runs perfectly on it (with the exception of a bit of trouble getting my Internode 3G USB broadband working on it). Moblin also works perfectly, but given it is still in early development, it is missing some vital features I want, such as a word processor. Nice interface though.

More details later.

NYC photographs

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Photos of Day 2 - Central Park and the Met - uploaded.


New York City photographs uploaded

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I have uploaded 20 photographs of day one (September 15 2008) of a three week trip to NYC, documenting a casual walk from our apartment on W17th near 6th Avenue down to Washington Square; then up to Union Square; then further to the Flatiron building and Madison Square Park; then across to Gramercy Park and back down to Union Square.

NYC

I'm heading over to NYC in a couple of days, for three weeks. I've never been to the USA (or either of the American continents for that matter), and can't wait to spend a few weeks living in the most famous city in the world...

SanDisk Cruzer Micro 8GB - Issues with Linux

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I have recently purchased a SanDisk Cruzer Micro 8GB, and have had serious (i.e. data destroyed!) issues with it. I would be interested to know if anyone else has had such issues, but I think I have also found a solution.

This USB disk is a work tool for me, and given my work environment, means it has to work with MS Windows; my home PC runs Ubuntu 8.04 Linux. I need my portable drive to, among other things, reliably move data from work to home and back. I had a 1GB micro Cruzer that worked perfectly, but I wanted more space.

In short, the issue has been that the drive has ceased to be recognised both by Windows and Ubuntu, regularly. The only way to fix this issue has been to reformat the drive. The problem has occurred so frequently, until recently, that I raise it here!

The drive comes with a load of crapware under the title "U3", which apparently makes the drive "better". I hardly have to tell the reader, but I don't want SanDisk's idea of "assisting technology", I want a bloody portable hard drive I can carry in my pocket!!! I obviously unstalled this rubbish immediately using the (admittedly convenient, though in the past, apparently not so, uninstall process). Needless to say, this rubbish was Windows only...

However, the issues I have had have been, apparently, not entirely related to this - though looking at the Windows registry its very hard to tell (Registry persists in refering to U3 - it appears that U3 is somehow inextricably linked to the drive). I found that the drive would become unrecognisable, both in Windows and Linux, after use, for some unfathomable reason, but most often, after use with Linux. And the key here was after unmounting the drive in Linux. There was no consistency, though - sometimes it would cease to be recognisable as a drive irrespective of whether I had: a) used it with Linux; or b) unmounted it or just yanked it out!

There are many comments in the net about issues with this drive (e.g. link)

My solution, which so far (a couple of weeks) has worked, was to reformat the drive to NTFS. That doesn't seem to make sense, but it has worked (remembering I have to use it with Windows as well). I suspect, without evidence, that it changes the drive as it is recognised by Windows.

I did this in Windows, but had to (of course) jump through some hurdles. It would have been easier just reformatting in Linux but, it is, for me, primarily a Windows tool, so...

Right-clicking on the drive in Windows Explorer and choosing "format" only allows, by default, FAT32. However, in Device Manager (right-click "My Computer" > "Properties", choose the tab "Hardware" and click on "Device Manager") you can go into the properties of each of your attached drives. Choose the Cruzer in the "Disk Drives" section, and in the "Policies" tab, change it from "Optimise for quick removal" to the only other option, "optimise for performance". This will allow you to reformat the drive to NTFS.

Irrespective, I no longer unmount the drive in Linux - once I am more than sure all the tranfers have occurred, I just pull it out...

Additional applications for Ubuntu Linux

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Ubuntu comes with a very good selection of applications, but it is not exhaustive and, in my opinion, does not always include the best examples. In most cases there are very good reasons for this, nevertheless, my preferred additional applications include:

  • OGMRip, "an application and a set of libraries for ripping and encoding DVD into AVI, OGM, MP4, or Matroska files using a wide variety of codecs", this application is extremely simple to use, and the results, I've found to be excellent.
  • Mirage, "a fast and simple GTK+ image viewer" with some simple image editing capabilities. This application has a clean interface, and the ability to make minor adjustments, such as crop, resize and rotate is really useful.
  • Comix, "a user-friendly, customizable image viewer. It is specifically designed to handle comic books, but also serves as a generic viewer. It reads images in ZIP, RAR or tar archives (also gzip or bzip2 compressed) as well as plain image files." Designed to view .cbz and .cbr file (.zip or .rar archives of images with the extension changed to .cbz and .cbr respectively) this is a clean and simple application and a very good image viewer much in the vein of Mirage, but with the added ability to view archived images.
  • Avidemux, "a free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks". I can't remember if it is installed with Ubuntu by default, but don't believe so. An excellent video editor that is also available for Windows and OSX.
  • SMPlayer, a complete frontend for MPlayer, it is, in my opinion, by far and away the best video player available.
  • pyRenamer, a very simple a mass file renamer (after initial install, I right click on the folder containing files that I want to mass rename and choose "open with other application" and from the list choose pyRenamer. After that, it will remain an option for opening a folder.) Very nice mass renamer.
  • GPRename, another batch renamer, which doesn't have as well integrated appearance, but has the added functionality of mass directory renaming. Another excellent program.
  • Xarchiver, "a desktop-agnostic GTK+2 frontend to various command line archiving tools". A very nice graphical archive tool for when the built in Nautilus options of "create archive" and "extract" are not enough.
  • EasyTAG, "a utility for viewing and editing tags for MP3, MP2, MP4/AAC, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, MusePack, Monkey's Audio and WavPack files", a very easy to use music file tag editor with all the fetures you need, tagging by album and embedding of cover art, and much more.
  • Deluge, "a lightweight... cross-platform BitTorrent client" that is intuitive, well layed out, has all the features you could want and a nice plugin system so you can pick and choose the features you want. In my opinion much better than the default Transmission, and compared to Azureus it uses almost no system resources.

In addition, music playing applications I like include: Listen and gMusicBrowser, both mentioned in an earlier post, the new version of Banshee, and Songbird, which is developing very quickly, the latter two with very good iPod management systems.