Friday night, right before heading out to pub with friends, I sat on the couch, armed with a laptop, USB keyboard, RGB cable and a USB memory stick. Trial and error reminded me to

1. use bittorrent to download the image since our flaky Belkin-powered Wifi cuts off the connection every few minutes and thus corrupts direct downloads, and
2. do the boot script magic of pnpbios=off noapic acpi=off like with our earlier Xubuntu installation.

In contrast to the experience of installing Xubuntu on the Viglen MPC-L, the Debian installation was easy from here on. The installer seemed to not only detect the needed kernel and install the correct one (Linux wizzle 2.6.32-5-486 #1 Mon Mar 26 04:36:28 UTC 2012 i586 GNU/Linux) but, judging from the success of the first reboot after the installation had finished and a quick look at /boot/grub/grub.cfg, had also set the right boot options automatically. So the basic setup was a *lot* easier than it was with Xubuntu!

Some things that I’ve gotten used to being automatically installed with Ubuntu weren’t pre-installed with Debian and so I had to install them for my usage. Tasksel installed ssh server, but rsync, lshw and ntfs-3g needed to be installed as well which I had gotten used to having in Ubuntu, but installing them wasn’t too much of a chore. As I use my Viglen MPC-L as my main irssi shell nowadays, I had to install of course irssi, but some other stuff needed by it and my other usage patterns… so… after installing apt-file pastebinit zsh fail2ban for my pet peeves, and tmux irssi irssi-scripts libcrypt-blowfish-perl libcrypt-dh-perl libcrypt-openssl-bignum-perl libdbi-perl sqlite3 libdbd-sqlite3-perl I finally have approximately the system I needed.

All in all, the experience was a lot easier than what I had with Xubuntu in September 2010. It definitely surprised me and I kind of hope that this process wasn’t as easy and automated 18 months ago…

1. Pick a song of your favorite artist. It has to be a song with lyrics.
2. Pick a passage you remember by heart, even when drunk, feverish, sleepy
   

   I don’t wanna be your friend
   I just wanna be your lover

3. Mangle it with any means you can think of, using a pattern you’ve decided, for example:
   • shorthand words, “love” = <3
   • randomly capitalize words that you think should be emphasised, like Your and Friend
   • pick n-th letter of each word, “IdwbyF,IjwbY<3″ (a password generated from the passage picked above)
   • use maths to break repetition, “Your ears should be burning” = Yes2b or quoting The Who – Our love was is: (Our love was famine, frustration We only acted out an imitation) “O<3wf,fW2(oa)i”
   • remember to use punctuation, “Denial, denial” = D,d
4. check the resulting password can be typed with all hardware you use and to all applications (for example, if you use mobile phone, use an application that saves your password in xml etc)

Use and enjoy :-)

• Ubuntu Fridge Events
• Facebook friends birthdays
• Facebook event invitations
• Finnish Open source events
• Finnish public holidays and events
• My friends travel schedule

I also hate Evolution, and have a dislike for Sunbird after using both for several years. Currently my desktop calendar system is mainly Google calendar, my phone and for quick looks while offline, orage. Orage doesn’t currently come with an option of subscribing to online calendars, but that can be easily solved.

What I don’t like is synchronizing these by hand. Things should be automatic, easy and happen without me noticing a thing. Here in picture comes my home server, bluetooth dongle, crontab, msynctool and wget.

Most important part of this setup is msynctool. I use it to synchronize my phone with Google cal automatically with cronjobs.
53 */8 * * * msynctool --conflict n --sync google-phone 2>/dev/null 1>/dev/null
msynctool needs configuration:

1. first of all, you need multisync-tools and some plugins for opensync, and of course software for bluetooth. My pesky Dell Optiplex GX50 running as my homeserver runs with Ubuntu Hardy 8.04.1 LTS, to which I’ve installed multisync-tools from a PPA:
   deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/debian-opensync/ubuntu hardy main
   and have installed atleast opensync-plugin-file opensyncutils opensync-plugin-google-calendar opensync-plugin-irmc opensync-plugin-syncml multisync-tools
   In Intrepid the needed tools are available from the normal intrepid repositories.
2. figure out your phone settings. Make sure your phones bluetooth is visible to outside queries, and do a scan to acquire the bluetooth MAC address:
   myrtti@kengu:~$ hcitool scan
Scanning ...
00:1C:D4:4C:93:AA Nasu
   and check the channel for SyncML:
   myrtti@kengu:~$ sdptool search --bdaddr 00:1C:D4:4C:93:AA SYNCML
Searching for SYNCML on 00:1C:D4:4C:93:AA ...
Service Name: SyncMLClient
Service RecHandle: 0x1000b
Service Class ID List:
UUID 128: 00000002-0000-1000-8000-0002ee000002
Protocol Descriptor List:
"L2CAP" (0x0100)
"RFCOMM" (0x0003)
Channel: 10
"OBEX" (0x0008)
Language Base Attr List:
code_ISO639: 0x454e
encoding: 0x6a
base_offset: 0x100
Profile Descriptor List:
"" (0x00000002-0000-1000-8000-0002ee000002)
Version: 0x0100

   In this case the channel is 10.

3. Try if the connection to your phone works with:
   syncml-obex-client -b 00:1C:D4:4C:93:AA 10 --slow-sync text/x-vcalendar Calendar --identifier "PC Suite" --wbxml
4. you need to configure the synchronization group. As stated in man msynctool, this is done by:
   msynctool --addgroup <groupname>
   in this case, let’s do two groups, google-phone and file-backup.

   After creating the groups, you need to add members to them:
   msynctool --addmember google-phone google-calendar
msynctool --addmember google-phone syncml-obex-client

   msynctool --addmember file-backup syncml-obex-client
msynctool --addmember file-backup file-sync

5. Now that you have members added, you need to configure them. For the first group we added, google-phone, the configuring happens with commands
   1. msynctool --configure google-phone 1
      which will open up a file in your favorite editor that looks roughly like this:
      <config>
<url>http://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/USER@gmail.com/private/full</url>
<username>USER@gmail.com</username>
<password>PASSWORD</password>
</config>

      Replace the USER and PASSWORD with your own.
   2. msynctool --configure google-phone 2
      which will open up a file in your favorite editor that looks roughly like this:
      <?xml version="1.0"?>
<config>
<!-- (Only for bluetooth) The bluetooth address if the bluetooth mode is selected -->
<bluetooth_address>00:1C:D4:4C:93:AA</bluetooth_address>
<!-- (Only for bluetooth) The bluetooth channel to use. `sdptool browse $MAC` to search for the correct channel -->
<bluetooth_channel>10</bluetooth_channel>
<!-- (Only for USB) The usb interface number of the SYNCML-SYNC target. use syncml-obex-client -u (you will need access to the USB raw device) to find it. -->
<interface>0</interface>
<!-- The string that the plugin will use to identify itself. Some devices need a special string here. -->
<identifier>Google Calendar</identifier>
<!-- The syncml version to use: 0 for 1.0, 1 for 1.1 and 2 for 1.2 -->
<version>1</version>
<!-- if the plugin should use wbxml -->
<wbxml>1</wbxml>
<!-- The username to use. Leave empty to not require a username -->
<username></username>
<!-- the password for the username -->
<password></password>
<!-- sets the connection type to use. 5 means obex over usb, 2 means obex over bluetooth -->
<type>2</type>
<!-- If wbxml is enabled, defines wether the wbxml should use string tables -->
<usestringtable>0</usestringtable>
<!-- Never send ADD command, but send REPLACE (not needed normally) -->
<onlyreplace>0</onlyreplace>
<!-- Workaround around for mobile phones which only use local timestamps and _no_ UTC timestamps! -->
<onlyLocaltime>0</onlyLocaltime>
<!-- Sets the maximum allowed size in bytes of incoming messages (some device need this option set). Example: 10000 -->
<recvLimit>0</recvLimit>
<maxObjSize>0</maxObjSize>
<!-- The name of the contacts db. Must be the same as the phones sends -->
<contact_db>Contacts </contact_db>
<!-- The name of the calendar db. Must be the same as the phones sends -->
<calendar_db>Calendar </calendar_db>
<!-- The name of the note db. Must be the same as the phones sends -->
<note_db>Notes </note_db>
</config>

      Save this file to your home directory or somewhere else accessible, because we’ll need this for configuring the file-backup group!

   and for the second group, file-backup, with

   1. msynctool --configure file-backup 1
      which will require the exact same configurations as google-phone member 2 did, so now just replace the dummy file with the one you saved in the previous step WITH ONE EXCEPTION:
      <identifier>File Backup</identifier>
   2. msynctool --configure file-backup 2
      which will be a XML file a bit like this:
      <?xml version="1.0"?>
<config>
<!-- directory path for file-sync -->
<path>/home/myrtti/.phonebackup</path>
<!-- should care of subdirectories (TRUE or FALSE) -->
<recursive>FALSE</recursive>
</config>

      Note that you need to create a directory for the filesync, in this case it would be /home/myrtti/.phonebackup
6. To configure your phone, go to Menu – Tools – Sync and add:
   1. Synchronization profile for File Backup
      1. 
      2. 
      3. 
      4. 
   2. Synchronization profile for Google Calendar
      1. 
      2. 
      3. 
      4. 
      5. 
7. now you should be able to synchronize your phone using the commands
   
msynctool --conflict n --sync google-phone
msynctool --conflict n --sync file-backup

   and add it them to your cronjobs as in the example in the beginning of this entry.
8. As the final touch for those of you who use Orage, do a cronjob:
   10 * * * * wget -O ~/.personal.ics http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/USER%40gmail.com/private-eaq193204802357106916067/basic.ics
   where the URL fetched is the private iCal URL that you can get from your Google Calendar sharing settings. Similar procedure can be done with other iCal’s you find on the web, after which you can import them to your Orage with the foreign file import:
   

   those of you who use Gnome and have evolution-data-server installed, but don’t use Evolution itself for your calendar events (and use Sunbird/Lightning or some other calendar application instead) and still want to make the events to show up in the Gnome clock when you click it, try and enter on your terminal prompt:
   /usr/lib/evolution-webcal/evolution-webcal http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/USER%40gmail.com/private-eaq193204802357106916067/basic.ics
   where the URL is again the one acquired from the Google Calendar settings (thanks to topyli for this one!)

BWUH! I’m fairly sure this HOWTO contains more than one mistake, so you might need to fiddle around with your phone and computer more than this lets you assume. I’ve managed to make mine work though with this. A word of warning, though! Keep a good copy of your stuff elsewhere too, and study the meaning of the
[--conflict 1-9/d/i/n] Resolve all conflicts as side [1-9] wins, [d]uplicate, [i]gnore, or keep [n]ewer

The theme I currently use on my phone is Glamurv3

And in the end, the process was very painfree. With some google-fu the settings were found – all I needed was to ask a friend how the network connection should be handled as mine didn’t seem to work because of the NAT in my home network. And the answer to that problem was obvious – use 3G instead. The sound quality is astoundingly good with even the lowest bandwidth provided by my mobile phone service provider, Saunalahti.

Anyway – here are the settings and the steps documented in a nice neatly fashion:

1. navigate to: System/Tools –> Settings –> Connection –> SIP Settings
2. Create a new profile:
   • Name it as, for example, ekiga.net
   • Service-Profile: IETF
     Public Username: sip:$YOURUSERNAME@ekiga.net
     Compression: no
     Proxy: none
   • Registrar:
     Registrar-Adress: sip:ekiga.net
     Domain: ekiga.net
     Username: $YOURUSERNAME
     Password: $YOURPASSWORD
     Transport: UDP
     Port: 5060
3. stop and think how do you want to be contacted:
   • about all the time – Registration: Always on; only when you call or want to be contactable on your phone – Registration: When needed.
   • On the move – Default access point: Your (hopefully cheap / monthly subscribed / unlimited) data transfer plan access point*; Mostly at a known wifi hotspot – Default access point: Your wifi hotspot.**

Here be the disclaimers:
* I tried with my own 3G connection provided by Saunalahti – 384kbit/s (lowest speed there is), and the sound quality was sufficient.
** for me my home network is configured in a way with NAT that using wifi doesn’t work. It would require fiddling with some ports, if you have access to your router and know what you’re doing, this page might give you some hints what to do – it also may not. I’ve not tried.

I tried these settings with calling to the echo service (that’s sip:500@ekiga.net for those of you who didn’t already know) and ended up giggling at my own voice like a maniac – and then tried it twice more just for the giggles. As a friend hadn’t tried his settings (the same as mine) on his E51, I called him to get confirmation on the sound quality, which was amazingly good.

These settings were found from here, if you’re wondering what theme I’ve got on my phone, it’s found from here, and the programs that are in the first screenshot as quick launchers are BusWatch, Enhanced Calculator for s60, alarm clock, synchronisation and mirggi, s60 IRC client I use to connect to my irssi-proxy handling my connections to IRCnet, freenode and my bitlbee, which in turn handles my connections to MSN, ICQ, jabber.org- and GoogleTalk- XMPP connections.

Unfortunately I don’t have that much time or inspiration in me left anymore. I don’t remember the last time I’ve actually painted something, even less remember painting something as elaborate as the butterflies, some of which took three days to do. But having the tools for water colours can be handy at times. And having vivid imagination and a knack in making silly inventions.

I bought a used Acer Aspire 3100 from a friend in March. He needed it for a while, and I was really busy doing work stuff so I told him it would be ok if he used it until Hardy Release Fest, since, me being a geek and all, I’d end up wasting my time playing around with the laptop instead of doing paid work.

The laptop, though not being top notch in all the possible ways, was cheap and had more features that I could have imagined. I’ve never owned a webcam, widescreen, even less a DVD-RW drive. The only gripe about the laptop is the Wifi, which I’ve later managed to work with ndiswrapper with not-encrypted access points. Still, the laptop is great. Laptop allows me to work in my own couch (yes, the horrible mustard coloured abomination bought from a recycling centre for mere 14€s) which is far better in comfortability than my awful desk and awful office chair (yay for piriformis syndrome and sciatica!). The laptop allows me to work at my own balcony.

But alas, the laptop had a problem. It heated up badly when I ran my script building up a 600 page PDF document with lots of pictures, table of contents and bibliographic references. I had to work, so I took the easy way – first installed nfs server to my home server (a puny used Dell Optiplex GX50) after upgrading the hard drive of it to 160GB from 20GB and installing an encrypted Ubuntu LTS server to it, shared my backups and media files on it with nfs, installed ssh on my desktop computer (Dell Optiplex 755 or smthn, Core2duo and 4G of RAM) and simply just ran the PDF conversion on the desktop computer over ssh commandline and checked the outcome over nfs shares mounted on the laptop. Now atleast the laptop wasn’t heating up as bad, didn’t reboot itself and I didn’t have to juggle with it when working.

Last week the crashes started again, more randomly. I shrugged them off as being caused by the heating for a few times. Then as I was doing a bug report that took ages to write and the thing crashed (but only X did, which got me thinking later on), I got fed up, took out my toolbox (Dad, I love you, you gave me the best Christmas gift of Christmas 2007) and started to carefully open up the laptop.

Here’s where the teenage hobbies come into the story – I had my trustworthy sobel brushes at hand. I don’t have compressed air, but I do have my watercolour brushes. To be honest, I don’t think compressed air would have done anything to the dust clots I had in the laptop fan. Now the idle heat of my laptop is as I write this at mere 39Cs compared to the 50 or 60 I used to have before cleaning up the fan. I can actually feel the air blowing out the laptop, and it doesn’t feel as burning as it used to was before. YAY \o/

The crashes this week were apparently caused by the combination of fglrx, hardy-proposed and 64-bit. I’ve now switched to mesa (yes, mesa), and the crashes seem to have stopped.

Nokia N95 is a LOVERLY phone. I couldn’t have picked a better one to serve my needs. It has a great camera, excellent screen, wifi, 3G and what not. The only things that I’ve got problems with is the battery life (which I’ve deteriorated myself by using the phone for four months as a 3G modem a minimum of 8 hours a day, being attached to the charger all the time) and the position of the audio/video outlet.

Anyway, Nokia N95 comes with a software that allows you to send your photos DIRECTLY to Flickr. Since I’ve used Flickr before and even paid for it before buying my phone, I couldn’t be happier. Now that I don’t have to worry about when I’ll be able to take the pictures from the memory card to put on the net or worry about backups, AND now that I carry my camera (5Mpix Carl Zeiss optics, thank you very much) … err phone around all the time, the amount of my photos has multiplicated since I bought it. There’s only one problem – I’d like to have the pictures on my own computer too.

For a while I had problems with this, and I simply ignored the issue. But since I got flickrfs (yes, it’s FUSE) to work, things have gotten a fast solution. Of course, I could import the whole flickrfs stream to my computer, but that would be

• very slow
• waste of time
• plain awful

So. As I got bored (ie. procrastinated paid bash scripting) I whipped up a script that

1. checks which files you’ve got already in your collection
2. downloads only those missing
3. checks that the files you’ve downloaded aren’t exported to flickr from f-spot (by checking the EXIF Software)
4. sees that it doesn’t import files that might’ve been saved with a different name (by checking the EXIF DateTimeDigitized)

Ain’t that grand or what?

Now you must be seething with anxiety to download the script. HERE IT IS.

I hope it will offer you as much fun as it did to me while hacking it up. If you find bugs (eeek) or preferably, if you find bugs and have fixed them and want to send me a bug fix, please contact me.

Those of you who’ve managed to read this far, here’s a picture of the coding guinea pig mascot, which tried to assist in making of the script.

day=`date '+%Y-%m-%d'`
for dir in $HOME/podcasts
do
echo "doing directory: ${dir}"
cd podcasts
for file in $( ls *.mp3 ); do
obexftp -b ff:ee:dd:cc:bb:aa -c Memorycard -C Podcasts -C ${day} -p ${file}
mv ${file} ${file}.bak
sleep 5
done
gammu --nokiaaddplaylists
sleep 5
gammu --deletefiles d:/predefgallery/predefplaylist/predefringtones1.m3u
sleep 5
gammu --deletefiles d:/predefgallery/predefplaylist/predeftones.m3u
sleep 5
gammu --deletefiles d:/predefgallery/predefplaylist/predefmusic.m3u
sleep 5
gammu --deletefiles d:/predefgallery/predefplaylist/predefalerttones.m3u
sleep 5
gammu --deletefiles d:/predefgallery/predefplaylist/predefringtones.m3u
cd ..
done
exit 0

sudo nano /usr/bin/procmdstat

#!/bin/sh
while true
do
clear
date
cat /proc/mdstat
sleep 60
done

sudo chmod a+x /usr/bin/procmdstat

Add a program to launch at session startup:

xfce4-terminal –hide-borders –hide-menubar –hide-toolbar
–title “RAID-monitor” –geometry 70×20-30+30 –execute
/usr/bin/procmdstat