free tracking

Arsenal V Liverpool - 2008-03-14 12:36:18

Arsenal V Liverpool

Well, it might not have been the easiest route, but I'm pretty confident we can beat Liverpool... and yes we can do it 3 times in 1 week. Would have liked to see more foreign teams to play. After we beat Liverpool, we could well have to play Chelsea and then even Man U. I'm looking forward to the Roma game. Don't fancy another Barcelona final either. Getting exciting now!!

NSLU2 - SLUG - 2008-03-12 10:56:12

NSLU2

The NSLU2, sometimes lovingly referred to as the slug is a handy piece of kit from Linksys that's designed to provide network storage for your home or business network via USB. Basically it's a box smaller than your router with a network port and 2 USB2 ports. But it's what's inside that's really special.

Under the hood

The system runs on an Intel IXP420 ARM 266 processor. It has 32MB of ram and 2 USB ports.... so we can add hard disks easily too. With a quick reflash of the default firmware, within 5 minutes we can have an up and running Linux box here. Smaller than a router, no fan, VERY low power consumption, silent.... you can see why I'm so happy. Plus, mine cost me £35, so cheap too.

Which version of Linux?

You can run a modded version of the original Linksys firmware that maintains the web based interface. This can be found at http://www.nslu2-linux.org/ or you run a full blown Debian install: Debian on the NSLU2

Pros/Cons

Basically, the modded version (Unslung) is quicker to install and more lightweight. It's compiled specifically for the SLUG which has low memory. It's doesn't have all the features of full Debian though and runs on a rather old kernel. Debian is a little bit harder to install, does not have a web based interface and its packages are designed for systems with higher ram. I removed openSSH and replaced it with beardrop to save memory. There's a number of other tweaks you need too. Having said that, I found that the extra packages and documentation for Debian made it my choice.

What can you do?

Well anything really. My little box acts as a home file server, irc channel operator, webserver, torrent downloader etc... It's especially good for applications that require to be on all the time. I don't want my main PC running 24/7 because it's noisy and will use up lots of power. This box on the other hand can provide my presence on the internet silently as I sleep. And all for £35!

SCIM and XIM - 2008-03-12 10:53:16

SCIM and XIM

After a long time struggling with SCIM and XIM in Ubuntu and finally switching to UIM, I managed to solve my headache. It seems the reason some Americans were not suffering the same issues I had finally lead to a locale issue.

en_US or en_GB

SCIM will by default support en_US in Ubuntu, but for anyone outside of the US, we have to add manually this support by editing the ~/.scim/global file. This isn't a problem, but what gave me a one year headache was the way that SCIM interprets this file. Just adding your local is not necessarily enough.

Beware the space

You see for whatever reason, I had: "/SupportedUnicodeLocales = en_US.UTF-8, en_GB.UTF-8"

And no luck. What I needed was:

"/SupportedUnicodeLocales = en_US.UTF-8,en_GB.UTF-8"

Note the lack of space after the first locale. Annoyingly, is SCIM finds a space here, it will them proceed to ignore everything else on the line. This is a shame as most other systems are more forgiving in their config file parsing and the space certainly make the file more readable.

What should I add?

If you're having the same problem, run the "locale" command at the terminal, find the line that starts with LANG=, in my case it's LANG=en_GB.UTF-8. Then add that locale into your global file (in homedir/.scim). Should sort the problem of SCIM not working in non GTK or QT apps.

Avant Window Navigator - 2008-02-18 22:05:12

Mac Style Launcher Bar

For all those people who've used gnome and never been truly satisfied with the look of the task bar... there is a solution. Avant Window Navigator.

AWN

Basically, AWN is a handy little application that sits at the bottom (or anywhere for that matter) of your screen and provides not only a launcher space, but also a task (window) list for running applications. It has all the cool effects that you'd expect in a modern OS and looks a hell of a lot better than the default gnome taskbar.

More Space

For a start, windows are displayed using their icons and not their names, you you have space for more of them. Hovering over causes a cool effect (choice of many)

Launcher / Tasklist

One of the greatest things is that when you launch an application, the task it represents sits behind the launcher, but with a small triangle to show it is activated. This is a really nice touch that saves space.

Extras

There are also a number of extras that you can add like a popup terminal and application menu. More modules are being written as we speak.

Installation

For instructions on installing AWN in Ubuntu, please see my guide: AWN in Ubuntu

Acer Aspire 5630 (5633) - 2008-02-13 17:28:46

Acer Aspire 5630 (5633)

For all those using the Aspire 5630 series and also Ubuntu (gutsy in my case), I thought I'd point out a couple of things that might be helpful.

No microphone input

Please see: Mic Info

Static IP problem

Please see: Static IP Info