MindSuburbia » Uncategorized

Catena moderna: tenta la fortuna!

MindSuburbian — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 20:14:44 +0000

Sembra assurdo, ma grazie al fatto che i mezzi di comunicazione internet sono gratuiti, le catene di sant’antonio proliferano a dismisura.
Eccone una magari non troppo fresca, ma di sicuro effetto su Librigialli.org
Vuoi vincere un iPad WiFi? No? Steve sta volta ha superato se stesso? (sono ironico!)
Vabeh, è sempre un aggeggino di moda, fintanto che la concorrenza non si sveglia con qualcosa di più sensato (poter telefonare, no? slot per schede di memoria, neanche morti?)

Partecipa anche tu! Sì, proprio tu che leggi basito questo post! Tanto che ti cambia? Catena più, catena meno…
Ecco il link per esteso:
http://librigialli.org/vinci-un-ipad-di-apple-16gb-wifi-con-librigialli-org-scopri-come-fare/

Samsung E700 finally working

MindSuburbian — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 18:08:02 +0000

Oh my! This cell phone is driving me crazy!
In the past years I started a kind of war to make it work again: the flex got broken and I tried everything i could…
I ended up buying a new fully featured display board: with time passing, the price has become quite cheap and mounting the spare, was a 5 minutes job.
Here’s a sample picture.

So with less than 15 Euro and 5 minutes job, I’m using the cell phone again!!!

Update: …but it’s not over yet! After some days the display started working like at 16 colors (instead of 65k). I’ll keep posting updates!

Samsung E700 final repair: flex switch failed! (0)

Clone your Ubuntu server 8.04 LTS disk

MindSuburbian — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:27:26 +0000

It always happens: your HD fills up and you have to move everything to a new, bigger one.
Well, yes there are clone tools, but sometime you just want the damn thing and of course you don’t need to install software or find that special CDROM or DVD-R with what-was-that-program-name? ….

Moreover if you have a virtual machine you want to clone, you probably wouldn’t need a 12GB disk for everything, so you start minimal with a 1GB disk for little apps and you want to use the basic setup for all your VMs, keeping vmware-tools and stuff like that.

I know everybody who has done that once in his/her life, knows the procedure, but sometimes you forget a command and thigs just blow up!

So here is a list of commands – for my own convenience – everybody may use.

1. If you are cloning to a new machine, you may want to have your sshd get a new key pair, so just run

rm /etc/ssh/ssh_host_* dpkg-reconfigure -plow openssh-server

2. Then change hostname, check DNS, hosts, etc

pico -w /etc/hostname ... pico -w /etc/resolv.conf ... pico -w /etc/hosts ... /etc/init.d/hostname.sh

Also check for your fstab for wrong mounts (or add new if you plan to add a separate partition) and change the static ip if using one
pico -w /etc/fstab ... pico -w /etc/network/interfaces
…but if you do those, be sure you check software configs like Apache and stuff like that, before asking “why that doesn’t work anymore?”

3. Now setup the new disk (you have properly installed as secondary)
fdisk /dev/sdb
And create your partitions (don’t forget to add the bootable flag)

Here we’re assuming there are only a primary and a swap partition.

4. Setup filesystems
mkfs -t ext3 /dev/sdb1 mkswap /dev/sdb5

5. Copy everything
mkdir /mnt/second mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/second/ cp -ax / /mnt/second/.

6. Now set up GRUB and fstab
blkid /dev/sdb1 cd /mnt/second/boot/ cd grub/ pico -w menu.lst blkid /dev/sdb5 pico -w /etc/fstab

7. Next init the grub setup
grub-install --recheck /dev/sdb umount /mnt/second
…just to be sure the device.map is updated

8. If you need to configure anything, just run
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/second/ mount -t proc none /mnt/second/proc mount -o bind dev /mnt/second/dev chroot /mnt/second

9. Ensure the new device map is ok (this is the command after chroot, but you don’t need to chroot to edit device.map)
pico -w /boot/grub/device.map "(hd0) /dev/sda" shutdown -h now

10. Now let’s do the trick with the Grub console:

Boot
Press ESC at the Grub prompt
Press c to enter console

Then write
root (hd0,0) grub> find /boot/grub/stage1 setup (hd1)

11. Now shutdown and swtich the hard drives: yes, I know this sounds strange, but I always get “Grub Hard Disk Error”, so just do it

12. Boot again and enter Grub console again, then:
root (hd0,0) find /boot/grub/stage1 setup (hd0)

13. Now you may shutdown and remove the old hard drive and you’re done

14. If you use this HD in a different VM, be sure either to set the correct MAC address as the original (not recommended) or make Ubuntu use the new MAC address as eth0. Just
pico -w /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
And search and change eth1 to eth0
Usually it’s the last line

16. Don’t forget to check for changed things like
/etc/resolv.conf
/etc/mailname (postfix)
/etc/postfix/main.cf

17. Ubuntu 8.04 seems to hang on the resume device: to speed up the thing you’ll have to
blkid /dev/sdb5 pico -w /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume
insert the correct UUID of your swap and then rebuild initramfs
update-initramfs -u

18. End

Kodak Zi6 first impressions

MindSuburbian — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 21:22:52 +0000

I’ve done a couple of tests on this ultra portable video camera, and I’d like to report them here.

First of all I was right in my previous post: the video is not high quality in poor lighting conditions.
The clips are quite fluid at 60fps, but there’s a lot of noise.
On the other hand, there’s a big jump in quality, when being outdoor in the sunshine: noise becomes very little and one may appreciate the 720p 60fps on a big screen (I tested the Zi6 on my 37” Samsung).

One thing that left me helpless is that my T5600 notebook can’t handle correctly the 60fps stream: VLC just shows a couple of still images every 2-3 seconds. All fine if you connect the Zi6 directly to the TV set.

I also wanted to use the macro switch on the lenses and it turned out that you have to be really close to stay on focus: so I just took a picture on a still object. It was something like 2cm close.

It takes nice 2048×1536 (3Mpixel) images, but the sensor has still the same noise problems of the video function (it seems like it interpolates, as the picture is not very sharp)

My conclusion is that this is a very nice gadget, because has HD and 60fps, it’s really handy and portable, so that you can bring the Zi6 with you all the time and be ready to shot in a couple of seconds from extracting to being operational: you’ll never loose a face expression or a sudden event.
On the contrary, the Zi6 cannot be used as a professional video camera because of the noise and the poor quality in low light conditions, does not shows important information, like remaining recording time and space on the display and does not have advanced settings like shutter and color (white balance) adjustments and zoom lenses (only fixed focus).

Anyway, the price around 100-150 euros puts the Zi6 in a mid-low end user level and so, perfect for a pocket video camera!

Apple App Store restrictions

MindSuburbian — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 22:04:15 +0000

A couple of weeks ago i had this nice idea of making an iPhone app that could run DHTML in a self contained form, comparable to a standalone app (with local storage).

Now it turns out Apple does not allow apps to run external (unapproved) code, as happened to the soon to be released C64 emulator (which includes a BASIC intrpreter).

Here is the excerpt from the iPhone SDK Agreement:

“3.3.2 An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise. No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Published APIs and built-in interpreter(s).”

Well, now the remaining options are that either this hypotetical app becomes a tool to build unmodifiable apps to be submitted to Apple like the cited NimbleKit by VolnaTech, or it must claim that the app would only store actual websites that would be anyway be available thru Safari (online only).

I guess something could be done. But this is only an hypothesis

Storytelling rewards

MindSuburbian — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 17:30:58 +0000

This winter Kodak released a nice idea called Kodak SnowStories.
They wanted to celebrate snow, while promoting their brand (and products), asking for stories from all around the world.

Well, since i had already created my story on the snow, I decided to put it in a better form, select a couple of pictures and post everything in the SnowStories website, along with a link to my YouTube video (see my post).

Well, it turned out that I eventually won the 2nd prize for the March competition: a Kodak Zi6 pocket video camera!
I now have a better way to record my videos!

The Zi6 only arrived last friday, so no more snow stories for the moment.

This little device is everything but complicated:

2 buttons: record/playback mode and play on the right, stop or delete on the left
a mini-joystick for changing mode (still, vga, HD, HD@60) and zooming or forward/rewind and vol up/down when in playback mode
a macro vs landscape switch
an SDHC card slot
and of course the power switch

It starts in less than a couple of seconds and it comes with a soft pouch and a wrist lace: you can keep it in your pocket, ready for every situation.
You also get a couple of rechargeable AA 1200mAh batteries and a mini AA and AAA charger.
Fully featured for the TV set too: an HD component output and a composite+audio cables… no need to buy anything else, though a big SDHC is recommended

A nice trick is the retractable USB connector, so that you don’t need an SD card reader nor a cable to connect the Zi6 to the nearest computer: just push the front button (a reflecting button useful for self recording!).
Of course the full set of accessories will save you some battery charge vs some more pocket space used, but you can just buy one of those direct SD to USB readers for a couple of bucks (China-made of course! ).

The direct USB connection will show up in your computer with two removable disk partitions: one for the videos, another for the windows software (yes, only windows, but at least you won’t need drivers for copying the videos). And yes the 128MB internal space will become unavailable when the SD is inserted, though will be sufficient for a couple of minutes video at most.

The resolution is 720p (half-hd) and there is no focus nor zoom (it’s a fixed set of lenses), but a nice option is to capture 720p@60fps, which gives an extremely smooth video (H.264 format, .MOV files).

The setup is flash-fast. Only three options: date, sounds on/off (for poweron/off and recording start/stop), output mode (NTSC, PAL).

The only downside is that there is a lot of noise in dark conditions (and there’s no night light), so I guess it’s not good at all for professional use, but it will become very useful when nice smooth recording is needed for a smaller format (capture in HD and post-produce SD videos).

Another little note is that you can’t see the remaining space nor recording time left (only battery level), but you should be able to record almost two hours with HD definition on a 4GB card, plenty of clips for an HD gadget!

After all, not that bad for a snowman story

P.S. The SnowStories website has locked the contents right after the end of the competition (don’t know why), anyway I guess I’ll start writing some stories from time to time, just in case…

Get Presto… not so ‘presto’.

MindSuburbian — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 17:10:44 +0000

Read this in Italian

Well, Presto is a lightweight OS.
This because it is based on a minimalist Linux distro, made by Xandros with a couple of tricks, like an App Store and an easy install.
The story is not even new: see Puppy Linux (the most famous) and a lot more…

The (not very) new thing is that it installs directly into your Windows partition as a standard software and it modifies your C:\boot.ini to start as a second OS (Windows will start as default after 30 seconds timeout).
So it jumpstarts your PC with Linux in seconds (yes, for Windows you’ll have to reboot).

Here is what a classic boot.ini will become:
[boot loader] timeout=30 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect C:\grldr.mbr="Xandros Presto"

The other nice thing is that Xandros has acquired the old Lindows/Linspire CNR service and integrated it into its distro, making it just another package manager (with its unique motto One Click Install), with purchasing functionalities (yes, there you’ll find both free and pay software).

A plus is that it auto mounts the Windows partitions and you may read and write them without any problems.
(You also get a full user partition, so that you may have separate files from Presto/Linux and Windows)

The thing is, it’s so minimalist that even the basic functionalities may result a little bit odd.

First note: it launches in 15 seconds from the OS selection. Quite remarkable on my P4 1Gb RAM. Unfortunately it’s exactly the same as my Windows XP fresh install (well, yes, Windows takes a little bit more space, it takes a lot of time to keep drivers and updates up to date, costs a lot more and it gets slower and slower when you install more and more software)

Second note: there is a left lanuchbar which is way too big on my 1024×768 monitor, so that even the Presto home page gets horizontal scrollbars.

Third: yes, the launchbar is nice, but it’s not a fully featured application toolbar. You only have the bottom space for the resident programs and a link to open windows. And no, you can’t reduce apps to icons.
Even the old dear Alt-Tab works, but it doesn’t highlight the application thumbnail: it just shows the window borderline and displays the currently selected app name…. mmmh not very useful (is that skype?). You’ll have to get used.

Fourth: ok, now let’s rock with one click installs! Go to the app store and… yes it’s a web page
Ok, i want this screen capture nice GPL software because it’s just 160kB.
But no! You have another 73MB of dependencies

Yes I know, I know: you can’t have a 15 seconds-to-go OS and 160kB apps all in one shot

Conclusion: well, the idea is nice and very interesting, but I’ll wait for the next release…

Clic per Italiano

Dunque, Presto è un OS superleggero.
E’ così perché è basato su una distribuzione Linux minimalista, fatta da Xandros con inclusi un paio di trucchetti, come l’App Store e
l’installazione facilitata.

La cosa non è nemmeno una grossa novità: vedi per esempio Puppy Linux (il più famoso) e tanti altri…

La cosa nuova (non poi così tanto) è che si installa direttamente sulla partizione di Windows come un normale software e modifica
semplicemente il file C:\boot.ini per partire come OS secondario (Windows parte automaticamente dopo 30 secondi)
In questo modo permette di avviare il PC con Linux in pochi secondi (sì, per Windows devi riavviare).

Ecco come diventerà un boot.ini classico:
[boot loader] timeout=30 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect C:\grldr.mbr="Xandros Presto"

L’altra cosa carina è che Xandros ha acquisito il servizio CNR del vecchio Lindows/Linspire e l’ha integrato in questa distro,
creando uno dei tanti package manager (con in più lo speciale motto One Click Install), con tanto di
funzioni di acquisto elettronico (sì, ci sono sia software free che a pagamento).

Una buona cosa è che monta automaticamente le partizioni Windows, così che si possano leggere e scrivere senza problemi.
(C’è anche una partizione utente da poter essere usata per salvare i file Presto/Linux separatamente da Windows)

Il fatto è che è così minimalista, che anche le funzioni base sembrano un po’ tarpate.

Prima nota: parte in 15 secondi dalla schermata di selezione OS.
Non male sul mio P4 con 1Gb di RAM. Sfortunatamente è proprio lo stesso tempo che impiega Windows XP appena installato.
(beh, sì, Windows occupa un po’ di più, ci vuole parecchio tempo per tenere i driver aggiornati,
costa un bel po’ di più e si rallenta sempre di più, man mano che ci si installa del software)

Seconda nota: c’è una barra di avvio sulla sinistra che è un po’ troppo grande per il mio monitor da 1024×768,
così grande che anche la home page di Presto ha le barre di scorrimento orizzontali.

Terzo: sì, la barra di avvio è bella, ma non è una barra delle applicazioni completa.
C’è solo lo spazio inferiore per i programmi residenti in memoria ed un link all’elenco delle finestre aperte.
E no, non si possono ridurre le applicazioni ad icona.
Anche il vecchio Alt-Tab funziona, ma non evidenzia l’icona dell’applicazione selezionata:
mostra solo il bordo della finestra selezionata e il nome dell’applicazione….
mmmh non proprio utilissima (è skype quello?). Bisognerà abituarcisi.

Quarto: ok, adesso spassiamocela con le installazioni in un clic!
Andiamo nell’App store e… sì, è una pagina web
Ok, voglio questo software di screen capture GPL perché è soli 160kB.
Ma no! Ci sono altri 73MB di dipendenze

Sì lo so, lo so: non puoi avere un OS pronto in 15 secondi e applicazioni da 160kB tutto insieme

Conclusione: beh, l’idea è carina ed interessante, ma credo che aspetterò la prossima release…

Clone your Ubuntu server 8.04 LTS disk (0)

Nuova Polo Siepe!

MindSuburbian — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 19:48:22 +0000

Metti una siepe che è cresciuta in altezza per 2 anni.
Metti che non hai il giardiniere, né il camioncino per i rami.

Soluzione?
Beh, per prima cosa devi dotarti di un attrezzo taglia rami (il taglia siepi non ce la fa con dei rami grossi).

Per portare via i resti, usa la nuova Polo Siepe: con le ultime tecnologie porta rami, il risultato è assicurato!

Sì, sto scherzando: abbiamo semplicemente montato il porta pacchi e fissato un piano di legno con le corde.
Notare che anche il baule è pieno zeppo!

Un paio di viaggi alla piattaforma ecologica ed il gioco è fatto

The Snow

MindSuburbian — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 11:41:26 +0000

Sì, prima che la befana portasse via tutte le feste, si è ricordata di lasciarci un po’ di neve… e noi ne abbiamo approfittato per un bel pupazzo!

The Snowman

P.S. E questo non è tutto: il giorno dopo ha nevicato ancora di più! Purtroppo il lavoro ci chiamava, quindi niente pupazzo

VMware tools for Ubuntu made simple

MindSuburbian — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 11:30:21 +0000

Yes, there are thousands of pages about VMware tools and Ubuntu as guest OS… well, but nobody ever wrote what do you do if the tools do not have precompiled modules for your kernel and want to distribute your pre-compiled VMware tools to many VMs!
Nah, I don’t really want to recompile the tools on every machine!

We should all know the typical way of installing the tools on Ubuntu:
mount /media/cdrom cd /tmp tar -zxf /media/cdrom/VMware-x.x.tar.gz cd vmware-tools-distrib sudo ./vmware-install.pl

Now, if you have the latest tools you’ll probably manage to install them under Ubuntu 8.04 without compiling a single line of code.

What happens with a newer kernel? Well you get asked if you want to compile the module and where is the GCC compiler… and all that stuff.

Ok, suppose you’ll have to do this on a lot of VMs and suppose you can’t install the build-essential, what do you do?
Ok,

first do a uname -r and write down the version of the target kernel
second, go to one Ubuntu machine with the build-essential installed, or run sudo apt-get install build-essential
Now retreive the kernel headers for the target kernel version (even if that’s not what is installed on the compiling machine) with sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`
Remember to change the `uname -r` with the target VM kernel version.
For example I upgraded my 7.10 servers to 8.04 and got 2.6.24-21-server
now go to vmware-tools-distrib/lib/modules/source and untar each of the tar files
run in each directory a make VM_UNAME=x.y.z-t where x.y.z-t is the target kernel version (make VM_UNAME=2.6.24-21-server in my case)
after compiling all the modules, you’ll get the .o files in the vmware-tools-distrib/lib/modules/source directory, make a subfolder under vmware-tools-distrib/lib/modules/binary with name bld- (I used bld-2.6.24-21-server-Ubuntu8.04.1) and a subfolder of that bld- called objects, then copy the .o files in there
create a new file properties under vmware-tools-distrib/lib/modules/binary/bld-custom and copy the contents from another one in a different folder. It looks like:
UtsRelease 2.6.24-21-server UtsVersion #1 SMP Wed Jun 18 14:43:41 UTC 2008 UtsMachine i386 ModVersion yes SMP yes PageOffset C0000000 Comment Ubuntu8.04, 2.6.24-21, i386, server

Remember to change the values according to your kernel version!
re-tar the vmware-tools-distrib tree (you may clean the /lib/source folder if you like)
copy the tar to your target machine or make an NFS/SMB share
untar in the target VM(s) and run the sudo ./vmware-install.pl command: it should install the modules without asking for a compiler
Repeat the above step for all the VM(s)

Well, one final note: please make sure you have the latest VMware tools, before compiling all that stuff: I read in the VMware forums that someone found a bug in the older versions (I’m currently using VMwareTools-6.5.0-118166.tar.gz and found no probs under Ubuntu 8.04)

So… have a very happy VMing!

Clone your Ubuntu server 8.04 LTS disk (0)

Bosch Day – il ritorno

MindSuburbian — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 19:30:46 +0000

Vi assicuro che non lo abbiamo fatto apposta! Ma per un fortuito caso, come due anni fa al Bosch Day, ci siamo ritrovati da Chiesa al ChiesaDay!
Ma ovviamente, quali clienti affezionati – praticamente capitiamo lì solo quando c’è qualche manifestazione – , abbiamo approfittato dell’aperitivo (che per noi è stato pranzo).
E per di più questa volta non abbiamo nemmeno trovato il pezzo di tubo che cercavamo! Quindi questa volta non abbiamo nemmeno contribuito con i nostri acquisti!

Beh, che dire? Anche questa volta ci è andata bene

Unboxing a go go

MindSuburbian — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:44:50 +0000

E’ sempre un piacere aprire un regalo costoso

… oltre al fatto che ne devono arrivare altri!

Unboxing Mania!

MindSuburbian — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 19:30:52 +0000

Stasera abbiamo ricevuto il primo regalo di matrimonio… e se cominciamo così!
Un TV LCD Samsung LE-37M86BD

Abbiamo ripreso l’evento principalmente per mostrarlo al nostro benefattore

Casa dolce casa

MindSuburbian — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 17:51:23 +0000

Oggi Luna ha ricevuto la sua prima casa!
Sfortunatamente era abituata alla cesta e si è presa una paura pazzesca, forse anche perché la cuccia rimbomba.
Abbiamo dovuto posizionarla dove si trovava la vecchia cesta (orma mangiata tutta), altrimenti sarebbe rimasta ignorata.
Un po’ alla volta imparerà a dormirci dentro, tanto più che la posizione è anche più riparata per l’inverno in arrivo…

Brodo di tartaruga

MindSuburbian — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 21:38:28 +0000

Sfortunatamente oggi il cane è riuscito a rompere la recinzione della tartaruga ed ha cominciato a masticarla
Operata d’urgenza, è sopravvissuta, ma ora non potrà più stare all’aria aperta e dovrà rimanere nel suo terrario al coperto in casa, in condizioni controllate, con tanto di fasciature e medicazioni, finché il guscio non le ricresce completamente.
Pericolo scampato, ma se lo ricorderà per tutta la vita!

MindSuburbia » Uncategorized

Catena moderna: tenta la fortuna!

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Samsung E700 finally working

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Clone your Ubuntu server 8.04 LTS disk

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Kodak Zi6 first impressions

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Apple App Store restrictions

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Storytelling rewards

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Get Presto… not so ‘presto’.

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Nuova Polo Siepe!

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The Snow

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VMware tools for Ubuntu made simple

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Bosch Day – il ritorno

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Unboxing a go go

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Unboxing Mania!

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Casa dolce casa

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Brodo di tartaruga

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