Since then, I’ve been running it on all my machines, on linux, Windows and the Macbook.   Quite frankly, I love it, although I’m not sure whether the iPhone client would work very well, especially not with multi-lists and complicated layout, though I could be wrong (and have been before, obviously).

Recently however, I wiped my Ubuntu laptop recently, and after a fresh clean install and subsequent install of the right libraries, Adobe Flash, Air and finally TweetDeck, I was greeted with this:

Uh oh…

Unfortunately, most of the search results pointed back to Windows issues with an incorrect link back to the user’s home directory (thus, TweetDeck not being able to find the data), but obviously this wasn’t a huge help in the situation.

Running TweetDeck from a console gave the answer away pretty quickly: “libgnome-keyring.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory”. After making sure I had libgnome-keyring and libgnome-keyring-dev installed, which it was (installed by default, the keyring is used everywhere), I remembered having an issue with installed libraries and Flash on a 64 bit install previously, a problem which is fixed by installing 32bit libraries for the apps that need them.  

A quick Google search, (which resulted any many more relevant results this time), a quick fix, and I was back up and running happily seconds later.

The Deck

The iPad

Note: I should note that this article contains nothing new, it’s just my thoughts on my new toy, the machine itself is 1-2 years old now and i’m sure has been blogged/reported and talked up for much longer than that.

Hardware – The Macbook Pro 15″

Having pretty much never laid a finger on one apart from selecting a new song in iTunes I often appreciated the Macbooks beauty from afar and snubbed any notion of getting one due to the price, lack of real customisabilty and every non-Apple minded person’s plight to escape from Apple wankery and the mindless drones that mill around the orchard at release time talking about the new iBrain that will revolutionise the way we think.  All that aside, it’s an amazing piece of hardware,  I am truly blown away by its shape, build quality, colour, weight and its uncanny ability to make you feel like you’re slitting your wrists every time you type on it, because the front edge is so sharp.

The Touchpad is far and above the best point device (that’s not a mouse) that I’ve ever used, and in most cases replaces all need for a mouse anyway, the two, three and four finger actions are amazingly useful and even though basic support for two finger scrolling is available in Windows 7 and can be enabled in *nix, the rest of the industry is years behind.

The new Macbook Pro

The biggest down side on the hardware side is the lack of a 1920×1200 (or 1080p) screen, which I’ve had in my last four Dell laptop’s (15.4″ and 17″), and the stunted keyboard is very annoying.  I can get used to the swapped ‘@’ and double quote key (even though its apparently a UK keyboard combination), and the Apple Command key takes normal functionality away from the Control key while adding an extra layer of complexity to normal/standard key combinations.  For instance:

• In a web browser (any normal web browser anyway (Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc)
  • Ctrl + W is close, Ctrl + T is new tab, Ctrl + L is open link/focus address bar, Ctrl + Tab is cycle between tabs
  • On the mac, the Ctrl key is replaced by the command key, except in the case of cycling between tabs where it’s still Ctrl + Tab (as Command + Tab selects windows in the OS).  Now to move between tabs I need to be alternating between the Command and Ctrl keys to perform functions that required no effort before.
  • Not just that, I’ve been much more prone to pressing Cmd + Q whilst changing thumb positions and quitting the browser completely, a few seconds wasted , but a common occurence.

The thing that annoys me most is the removal of the Delete, Home, End, PgUp and PgDn keys which are admittedly available through Fn + (Backspace, Left, Right, Up, Down) respectively.  This is poorly implemented and supported across applications within MacOS though, for instance going to the Home position on the start of the line in 3 different programs (Fn + Left (Normal behaviour), Command + Shift + Left (Eclipse, Don’t say a word!), Fn + Ctrl + Left (Terminal).  Really, it doesn’t take all that long to learn the combination for a different program, or situation, but I think it should have been standardised int he first place.

All in all, I shouldn’t bitch though, it’s a very nice machine and I’d much prefer to carry it around than my 17″ Dell (the behemoth), a task that is neither easy as its quite bulky but also quite painful on the back after a while.

Software – MacOS

Those who know my geeky side know I get around when it comes to OS’s, distributions and user interfaces, apart from the 50% of my time I usually spend in a console window, I’m never content without tinkering on a platform wether that be something like Gnome, something more lightweight like Fluxbox or Windows.  I’m 100% certain when I say this, a proper Linux Window manager setup like Gnome + Compiz + appropriate keyboard shortcuts, is absolutely the most efficient and productive interface I’ve used (apart from maybe the lack of a good word processor, if and when it’s needed )

MacOS on the other hand (whatever its Window Manager is called Aqua.. not Aero ?!?!), is made for idiots, and while it’s very beautiful I’ve found performing certain tasks a complete pain:

• I use terminal for more file operations as Finder is twice as interactive as Windows Explorer or Nautilus, but with the cost of reduced efficiency whilst choosing what display type you want or getting a few levels higher when browsing in column mode.  Coverflow is useless for anything but browsing through Cover art in iTunes or an iPhone/iPod (funny that…)
• Window location and traversal when you have loads of windows open is difficult as minimise isn’t the same.  (ever tried using expose when you have 20 text/code windows open?)
• The standard System Preferences seems to hide useful settings (to stop idiots doing what they’d do, I guess)
• The taskbar is cute and all, but can also get confusing with lots of apps open (though this is a mindset thing I’ll change over time)

I’ve been using linux in some form or another for well over ten years now, and I’ve (at least in my mind) been past the n00b stage for the better part of that time period. Of course, in my case, it doesn’t matter if I was an occasional user or the Grand Pu-bar of Gentoo-vian I’d still make mistakes, and this week I embarrassed myself terribly.

My beloved home NAS (QNAP TS-409 Pro that I wrote over a year ago) has been customised in many different ways and although underpowered when compared to the rest of the computers in the house has taken over responsibility of many things that my laptop(s) previously did, such as:

• Headless Transmission (Bittorrent) client
  • Auto downloading based keyword searches from RSS feeds
  • Scheduled speed changes (off during business hours, 1/3 speed during the evenings, then full speed at other times)
  • Daemon controllable web client (clutch), Android app (Transdroid) or one of the many transmission remote clients for Windows, Mac and Linux
  • Automatic seed ratio checking to stop seeded downloads at a certain point and unpack/move the downloads their area (Music/TV/Movies — all legal of course)
• Automatic remote backup
  • Rsync backups from the hd911.com server
  • SVN mirror for remote development SVN server, and a primary personal SVN server which is replicated elsewhere
• UPnP server for my XBMC PC, pushing all available media content, photo collection to any UPnP client
• Subsonic Media Server –  mainly so I can stream my music collection to my phone, or when I’m out or at work
• and all the other features that come with the device as standard

Needless to say, I use it for everything, and now I can’t due to a momentously stupid change to /etc/passwd, where I altered the root account (the only one accessible remotely) login shell from /bin/sh to /bin/bash, which ashamedly isn’t accessible until after logging in (some magic in .bashrc) to link the bash from the optware/NSLU2 installation in /opt/bin back to it’s normal place /bin. Now unfortunately, I can’t login at all (except via the web client), but I can’t for the life of me figure out how to change the value in /etc/passwd so I can fix it.

Links to an article that seems somewhat relevant

The things I’ve tried so far are:

• Basic telnet/SSH login attempts, running a command as part of the SSH statement (i.e ssh admin@qnap.****.local cat /etc/passwd)
• Issue chsh to attempt a login shell change (ssh admin@qnap.****.local chsh /bin/sh)
• Writing a dodgy web script (total failure)
• Writing one of the QNAP installable packages (a QPKG) which appear to have elevated system privileges during install (can’t find enough information)
• I can’t take the drive(s) out to replace the file easily as its 4x drives in RAID-5 and I don’t have a PC to load them into
• I also can’t wipe the device as it (to my knowledge) deletes all data off the drives in the process.

The way I see it, I’ve now got two choices, either to buy a large HDD and move all the shared stuff off before wiping the device and starting again although this is not perfect as I’ll lose all the scripts and configuration that aren’t accessible via network share.  My other option is finding someone with a PC and 4x SATA ports and attempting to re-mount the array, this is probably the best/most reliable the way, but I believe it or not don’t know any one with such a machine, and we’ve all got Macbooks at the office.

Any ideas, anyone?

I needed to send a friend an SMS back home (Australia) the other day, and my phone had run out of batteries, again, though I did forget to charge it the night before.  That was when I remembered Web2Msg.com, which allows you to send free SMS messages to any Australian mobile phone (or cell, if you roll like that).  The best thing is, there’s no signups required, no annoying popups, and no forced advertising in the sent messages.

So, if you’re a bum, and you can’t afford a mobile phone battery, or credit for your prepaid phone, give it a go!  And best of all, it’s a feat of .NET programming.

As laid back, easy going and carefree that I am (most of the time, I’m realising more and more that I really like routine.  I like looking forward to an event in the future when I know the exact day in which it will occur.  Like Christmas, or a Birthday, I know exactly when it will occur, but I don’t always know what to expect at the date in which that event occurs.  And much like getting socks when you were hoping for tickets to the Superbowl (err, no), the ritual release of Ubuntu can bring both joy and/or dissapointment.

But unlike a Birthday, Ubuntu’s release cycle is biannual, so it’s twice the fun, if of course that’s the kind of thing that floats your boat.

Wind back 6 months to my previous posts on the last release, Gutsy Gibbon, I can remember being especially excited about the new release due to the hype surrounding the major release at the time, and I was by no means dissapointed.  It was incredibly nice to use a system in which everything just worked, no stuffing around with device drivers or compiling kernel hacks to get hardware working.  It really impressed.

Hardy Heron should be no different, though admittedly I haven’t heard near as much hype about its release which is surprising seeing as it’s an LTS (Long Term Support) release, in which a major release (once every 18 months) has long term support from the developers, three years on the desktop and five for the server release.  When Gutsy Gibbon (7.10) was released it included a lot of features which had been added, such as 3d/Compiz Desktop features, adding something significant to the user experience.

With the next release however (8.04), efforts have been made to make the system itself as solid as possible, obviously to make the job of supporting it easier over the next 3-5 years.  There does seem to be some changes to look forward to however:

• A new theme (yes, Human is finally getting a face-lift)
• Better support for compiz desktop effects
• A complete redesign/refactor of the restricted drivers profile
• Far better support/integration for dual monitors

My excitement got the better of me though, and I jumped the gun and updated my installation to the pre-release beta, and I felt like I’d taken a full step back. About 1 or 2 years back, that is.  Unfortunately my wireless card was unrecognised and I couldn’t even boot into GDM as my display settings (which worked only minutes before) didn’t work at all.  It took the better part of an hour to get things back to normal, but oh well thats what I get for installing pre-release software.  The new theme is far easier on the eye though, thank goodness.

Look out for this release!

“Gutsy” the Gibbon

People pondered about issues with the release of Ubuntu 7.10 – Gutsy Gibbon, it’s been going on for months now. Some said they’d gone against the cause of Ubuntu and tried to cram too much, too quickly into this release, and that this move could be a disaster, creating bugs, and instability and put a stamp of disapproval on it’s name.

Some were wrong…

I’m a manual man, manual transmissions (yes, I’ve had mostly Auto’s, this doesn’t matter), manual labour (err), manual sex, manual manual, etc. I’m a manual, get your hands dirty kind of guy when it comes to linux too. I’m well seasoned with the fact that there’s a bunch of stuff that hasn’t worked automatically in the past, and chances are won’t be perfect in the future.

The fight… No more

Upon installing the latest instalment of Ubuntu, I completely expected to have to:

• Spend an hour installing, configuring and automating wpasupplicant and my wireless drivers, so that the wireless would just work, when and where I needed it.
• Trawl through countless google pages and config settings to setup dual monitors just perfectly.
• Stuff around with different video card drivers until I found one which compiz (the flavor of 6 months ago, with effects similar & better than Vista’s Aero or MacOSX’s visuals) would function correctly, then spend more time setting up and getting compiz right.
• and so on…

That’s the way its been for me for at least the last few years, and I was prepared for the worst. To my surprise, Everything just worked, no more manual configuration on Wireless, its finally up to a level of Windows XP or there abouts where you select the network you’d like to connect to, supply a password and bam, your on, all the time. No problems.

A simple task, but being missing/broken for so long

In fact, since installing it three hours ago, in which the whole process took at most 30 minutes, I’ve been sitting here ever since twiddling my thumbs wondering what I can break just so there is actually something for me to do.

At this rate, I might actually get stuck into some of this work I have to do….

As I said in my previous post, this version is a keeper, when I installed Feisty, nothing really jumped out on me, it was up to date, and had a few more features, but still had the same problems as the last few years where not everything worked, quite as well as it should. This is definitely proof of a move in the right direction, stabilty, integration and ease of use and install are paramount in allowing non-savvy users to be able to use and enjoy it if they so please.

Now, if only I still had access to a Gentoo Box…

Those Spanish?! have far too much time on their hands!

This will probably not interest a lot of people, so I won’t keep you for long, but the guys at Canonical have almost completed the next installment of Ubuntu ver 7.10 (yes, that’s October ’07), codenamed Gutsy Gibbon. This follows on from the previous (and equally odd named) releases that were Feisty Fawn, Edgy Eft, and more. What this means for those who don’t know, don’t care, is that the world renowned Ubuntu Linux distribution has just reached its next major release point, an LTS (Long Term Support) release, with a full support schedule for desktop (< 18 months), and server (<2 years), I think anyway. Who’s going to be using the same peice of hardware in 2 years that they’re using now, you may ask, and I have no answer. It baffles me too, however, like that old Telemarketing ad on Late night TV (No, not Timothy Tony Robbins), just “Set it, and forget it”, remember that old gem? In some way the same logic can be used here, in that you can set up a system like a file/web/mail server, or a home theatre PC, and with occasional maintenance, it should work as is until support stops, and a new version comes out to start the process over again.

Of course, the crucial difference is, we’re talking about a computer, not a rack of lamb, but seriously, its the same thing. Think of it as a really slow cooked lamb, that cooks away nicely after you’ve forgotten about it for 18 months, and then without a thought, dissapears, and a whole new lamb takes its place… Mmmm.. Slow roast lamb.

After 120 minutes, the sheep was looking nice, not so after 24 hours. Unrecognisable after a year.

However, jokes (yes, for a split second I thought it was funny, no I could not find a picture of a burnt sheep) aside for any linux/Ubuntu users out there, this release should be a good one to get your mits on, due to release of new Gnome/KDE and better integrated Aero/MacOS style graphics bliss, that being Compiz/Fusion, as well as large improvements (once again) in hardware support in the kernel itself.

Exciting stuff, for some at least.

I just remembered this weird joke I used to find hilarious as a kid:

A teacher asked her class to write an essay for homework on the topic of Agnostic Apathy, to her surprise a student came back with one line stating: “I don’t know, and I don’t care”.

What the hell?? Was I a tree hugging hippy? I’ll admit its amusing, clever at best, but no where near the comic genius I once gave it credit for.

Times change Shannon, times change.