If you can spot what I find annoying about the following screenshot of an advert I keep seeing whilst browsing around, then you are fabulously geeky (like me):
Google is trying to teach me to suck eggs. They obviously know what Operating system I’m using so I thought they would be clever enough to detect what browser I’m using and serve me something more targeted? What scares me more is that I suspect they are actually paying someone for me to see that advert.
A friend of mine is planning to write 52 songs in a year.
It sounds extremely challenging but I love the first three. He’s releasing them under a copyleft license.
Go for it Rob!
Yes – I went outside bare foot in the snow. I saw the cat catch a Robin in the garden and rushed to the rescue. The nice thing about working from home is that you don’t need to wear any shoes.
I need to remind myself that there’s no point whining about a shortfalling in a piece of software unless I can be sure the author is aware of it. To that effect, I filed a bug with the Chrome team: #31833. I also submitted a tiny patch for the Jodometer JQuery plugin.
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I recommend the new Ubuntu 9.10 release (Karmic Koala), it works well on a Sony VGN-AR51E. |
Karmic Goods:
Karmic Bads:
The Sony VGN-AR51E laptop comes with a integrated Ricoh webcam. The webcam model number is 05ca:1839 as seen via:
> lsusb
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 05ca:1839 Ricoh Co., Ltd Visual Communication Camera VGP-VCC6 [R5U870]
Current kernel info:
> uname -a
Linux psyduck 2.6.31-16-generic #53-Ubuntu SMP Tue Dec 8 04:02:15 UTC 2009 x86_64 GNU/Linux
Useful commands and logs that give info about the problem:
> dmesg | less (or less /var/log/kern.log)
[ 19.367070] uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device <unnamed> (05ca:1839)
[ 19.367573] uvcvideo: UVC non compliance - GET_DEF(PROBE) not supported. Enabling workaround.
[ 19.367786] uvcvideo: Failed to query (129) UVC probe control : -32 (exp. 26).
[ 19.367789] uvcvideo: Failed to initialize the device (-5).
[ 19.367824] usbcore: registered new interface driver uvcvideo
[ 19.367828] USB Video Class driver (v0.1.0)
The problem seems to be that the webcam drivers were not packaged for Ubuntu 9.10. In the previous version (Ubuntu 9.04) the webcam used the r5u870 V4L2 driver but it was deprecated and replaced in Karmic by a kernel module called R5U87x. R5U87x should be better because it is a set of userland tools that loads the firmware for all UVC compliant devices and makes them work with a more standard uvcvideo driver. Unfortunately, the R5U87x tools were not packaged in time for Karmic because the firmware images contained in the package didn’t have a suitable license to allow redistribution. i.e. the original working r5u870 driver was not packaged but nor was the newer R5U87x driver! This is all documented in Bug 120434.
Current (Dec/09) fix:
sudo emacs -nw /etc/apt/sources.list
add:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/r5u87x-loader/ppa/ubuntu karmic main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/r5u87x-loader/ppa/ubuntu karmic main
gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv 9711AB5F
gpg --export --armor 9711AB5F | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install r5u87x
sudo /usr/share/r5u87x/r5u87x-download-firmware.sh
In Skype, audio works but video still doesn’t until you add yourself to the “video” group (the file permissions of /dev/video* is group read and writtable for the “video” group):
sudo usermod -a -G video tom
The Ubuntu splash screen is nice but I prefer to see what the computer is doing. To turn off the splash screen do:
sudo emacs -nw /etc/default/grub
and change
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
to
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""
sudo update-grub2
Wii, Duck hunt (Light gun), 6/10
When you buy this game you know what you’re going to get. And you get it. And yes, they went overkill on everything, especially the gore and the clichés and the bad language. The story is entertaining if you like Shaun of the Dead.
I like the gun shop – it makes the game have a bit of variety when you can choose a different gun for the level.
My main bone to pick is that it is extremely difficult to calibrate the light gun. I was trying to calibrate the official AMS Hand Cannon through the in-game calibration settings. Why is it so hard? It was way off on the first million attempts. However after 30 mins of trying, I managed to get it spot-on. It was just a random success. So I suggest you patiently re-try and re-try until it just works (for reference, the TV was a Samsung UE40B7020W).
  
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I get annoyed at the branding of these new “LED” TV’s – they are not fundamentally new technology, they are simply LCD screens lit up via LEDs.
However it’s branded, it is brilliant! |
What’s Good?
What’s bad?
Our TV came with a free Blu-ray player (Samsung BDP1600XEU). I don’t recommend this player. Blu-ray movies often freeze and it takes ages to connect and disconnect with the TV. If you pause the movie and switch to watching TV for even a few seconds, when you come back, you’ll find the movie stopped and your position lost.
I used to have a neighbour who did photography as a hobby. It was really interesting seeing him set up little things to entice animals so he could get some photographs and I always found it amazing the creatures he could find in and around our houses.
There was one particular shot he had been trying to get for the last 2 years – and he finally did it:
Good one, Doug!
XBox360,FPS,4/10 – Sep 2009
I loved the TV series called “Firefly” and always thought it’d make a good computer game, so it seems Christmas had come early – Mal (Nathan Fillion), the Firefly captain is in the latest Halo game together with Jane (Adam Baldwin), and Wash (Alan Tudyk). I found the trailer REALLY exciting:
It was a massive let down. I played co-operative mode and we seemed to be wandering dark gloomy streets the whole time. The story line is set as a prequel to Halo 3 so I was expecting a Spartan to show up at some point, perhaps even Master Chief, but no. It was really short too – I think half the total gameplay time was spent stuck looking for a object which turned out to be a broken rifle caught up in some overhead telephone wires.
By the way the “ODST” stands for Orbital Drop Shock Troopers – don’t you just hate non-obvious acronyms that aren’t clearly pointed out?
We gave Fred (my father-in-law) a hand-me-down computer because his one is suffering from Windows rot and is unbearably slow. Our one comes with a catch… It has Ubuntu instead of Windows.
How do you make a Ubuntu computer easy to use?
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We have a cool new cat accessory. It’s a battery powered microchip activated cat flap. It works extremely well and I like knowing that other cats can’t get in and eat Cypher’s food. |
Actually, you are wrong – The internet does need another cat picture.
We got some furniture for our Dining room. We now have a drinks cabinet 
(and a table, sideboard and book shelves):
| Before: |
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| After: |
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Although, it’s more of an office than a dining room now.
The sight of a frog makes me feel sick so Kix found it funny that we had to edit a blog post that contained a real frog photo for a client of ours. Good phobia therapy?
I have a new machine. He’s called “Butterfree”, he’s German and I rent him for £45 per month from http://www.hetzner.de/en:
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Our first site as freelancers is more-or-less finished. It should hopefully look clean and simple? |
