helpful stuff

chrome & windows profile space

2012-06-22T10:00:00.000+01:00

This is a bit like the problem I had with netbeans; chrome default installer puts a lot of stuff - including the executable - in your user directory. On my work laptop, that's profile space. And some genius decided to put a quota on profile space... therefore, merely installing chrome will fill the quote, and result in a million and one pop-ups and errors.

Google provide a nice alternate installer - and there they describe how you use this to install it for multiple users. If you're not a machine with multiple user accounts, you may not consider the need... In fact, the alternate installs to Program Files (sensibly), so every account can use it, but as a side affect, it stops filling up your individual profile.

HTC Desire Z, strange keyboard shortcuts

2011-09-13T14:19:00.000+01:00

So, latest HTC Desire Z update (to 2.3.3) seems to cause weird issues on the 'real' keyboard, and the behaviour is intermittent.

For example, you'll be typing an SMS, and when you press certain keys, other apps will open. Which is annoying. Curiously, rebooting the phone solves it, until a few days later and it'll start doing it again.

First off, it's not in the Settings->Keyboard shortcuts preferences!

Look in Settings->Applications, and choose 'Quick Launch'. A handful of shortcuts are defined - b, e, g and s - by default. You can clear the assigned ones by long press on the row. Solved...

Android must haves, July 2011

2011-07-13T18:12:00.003+01:00

Righty, time for a quick update on what's being used. All change since February.

In no particular order, and no links cos i'm lazy...

zeam - first thing to be added!
google+ - and we'll see how that goes
facebook - for the rest of the time, not liking new version, too much unclickable whitespace
gtasks - lovely, syncs with google tasks
flick note - also lovely, syncs with simplenote
advanced clock widget - since you can customise it
circle battery widget - for it is simple (although use previous mostly)
blue skies [live wallpaper] - nice and subtle effect, not too garish nor distracting
google goggles - for the occasional 2d barcode or price check
national trust - for the occasional 'what shall we do now?' moment (good work Martin!)
sms backup - the one by Christophe Studer, very nice - SMS into a gmail folder
wifi analyser - for rare occasions finding hotspots
free english dictionary - by oeri, which is most useful (top work Neil!)
google translate - helps with my french, a lot

Besides that, the normal handset core apps are good enough. I tend to change phones quite often, and can't be dealing with the hassle of changing too much everytime. So, gmail, native exchange capable mail client, calendar, native messaging, native browser, google maps (love this) - they all tend to be daily use. Replacing the stock apps for core functions is a bit of a faff just now to be honest - particularly as the native ones are very good indeed.

Other things I don't bother with - kindle, I just take my kindle... Ebay, well, can't be bothered. Games - on occasion, but bored of Angry Birds (and it's related Seasons, Rio) a while ago. Google Reader - same really. Nowadays, I prefer to keep things simple.

xp, excel and scroll lock

2011-06-02T16:05:00.000+01:00

I still don't know why it does this, but it does it rarely enough for me to forget how to fix it.

Excel decides scroll lock is on, and won't allow cursor navigation of cells. The little box on the bottom says "SCRL" in it.

The scroll lock key on the keyboard (with or without any combination of alt, ctrl, etc) does nothing.

Open up the on-screen keyboard, and click the 'virtual' scroll lock key.

Programs->Accessories->Accessibility->On-Screen Keyboard

Android must haves, Feb 2011 edition

2011-02-10T20:36:00.002+00:00

In alphabetical order...

Abduction - a firm favorite with the kids, mostly because it's got a broad range of difficulty levels, and since it's very nice
Android System Info (by ElectricSheep) - handy on occasion
Angry Birds / Seasons - I play this a fair bit, and it's very good - which goes without saying... [and the valentines update for 'seasons is good...]
Ansta - nice call log manager, simple interface to sort and slice call logs
Bubble Popper - for the kids, I can't stand it...
Circle Battery Widget (by Cedric Depoortere) - a circle with a number in it, which changes colours sometimes and tells you how much battery you have left, sorted
Ebay - official app, which is useful on occasion
Etherophone - wibbly wobbly noises to keep kids amused for 5 minutes
Free English Dictionary (by oeri technology) - nice & simple dictionary & thesaurus, written by my mate Neil
Google Chrome to Phone - handy on occasion, since I use chrome on home pc
Google Reader - official app, which gets weekly use, although sometimes it's a bit slow imho
[Google] Shopper - useful sometimes, nice to have image and voice search
Jewels - see Bubble Popper
Mahjong (by Magma Mobile) - I do like this, needs a large screen
Message Scroller - which I think I downloaded during a rather long and boring meeting so I could send rude messages across the room
mNote - which syncs nicely with SimpleNote; together they're absolutely essential for taking text notes (I gave up on Evernote a while back - too complex)
National Trust - written by my mate Martin - I do like this a lot, expect a lot of use over the summer
NinJump - kids like this too, all rather simple
Paper Toss - it's ok, one for the kids
Rocket Bunnies - kids like it, i'm not so sure... very professional game though
Slice it! - bit too complex for the kids, but professionally done, really well presented
SMS Backup (by Christophe Studer) - is the simplest, easiest and thus best SMS backup app i've found (essential imho, couldn't get Jan Berkel's SMS Backup+ to authenticate with Google...)
Street View on Google Maps - pretty much standard part of navigation toolkit
Tricorder - another old favourite that gets installed on new phones, handy for wifi
Zeam Launcher - it's very simple and I like this a lot, particularly removing apps without faffing in settings menu or with market

updated list here.

Motorola Phone Portal

2010-11-25T11:51:00.001+00:00

Ok, so this is weird, but a neat idea. I was browsing for a bit of software to connect the two, a data suite in the olde parlance.

Motorola Phone Portal - as opposed to Motorola Phone Tools - works differently. You connect up the phone, usb or wifi, and the android app gives you a URL to connect your browser too. That is, the phone runs it's own mini web server, from which you can browse & change things. See here.

Problem #1: the USB on my PC doesn't know it's a Motorola, so time for some drivers. Go and download the 4.7.1 driver with MotoConnect and install that. Search for USB and PC charging drivers, although that page doesn't say it supports android - it does.

How to make it work then:

install charging and pc drivers
plug in usb, wait for PC to sort itself out (ready?)
on android, change the usb connection mode to "Portal and tools"
on android, run the "Phone Portal" app
with luck, that app will give you a URL to connect to (and you'll see a notification in the status bar, "Moto Phone Portal Running on USB @ http://192.168.16.2:8080")
[optionally] unplug LAN cable so it's just PC & phone together
[if you're lucky] your default browser will automatically open the phone's page (i.e. fetched from http://192.168.16.2:8080)
view stuff... you need to run IE to operate File Manager, it basically kicks open a Windows Explorer window.

On second go, it happens a lot more smoothly and automatically. When you plug in, the USB mode is defaulted to portal and tools, the web server starts, the PC connects and browses to it. Easy.

I particularly like the phone reporting it's signal strength as "Awesome".

Motorola / Motoblur, Flipout and photo upload to Picasa

2010-10-25T19:04:00.000+01:00

Ok, so it's not exactly rocket science: you take a photo, and choose to either 'share' it or 'quick upload' it. This is on the Moto Flipout (sure my old Dext worked ok).

Try #1: choose "quick upload", which seems to use the Motoblur social thing to kind of proxy it out to Picassa (i.e. picasaweb). That doesn't seem to work, since it says there's no data connection available after rumbling away for a while. It lies. The forums suggest it's a size issue, which, if true, is stupid.

Try #2: try to share, then choose Picasa (I have a Picasa account setup). The goes through the motions of uploading - a nice red bar in the notification bar, but also fails. With no real error.

The way to make it work is to go in Galllery app, open Menu and choose 'More', then 'Settings'. In there is an item called "Quick Upload Album". Choose that, and choose email.

In the meantime, head over to Picasaweb and it's settings. In there, enable upload via email; where you need to give a secret word. It gives you a nice email address of the form user.name.secretwork@picasaweb.com Save the settings!

Go back to your phone, and add that address for the quick address album. All quick uploaded photos nicely appear in your picasaweb dropbox. Without comments, and without a choice of another album. And it probably sends via your default email account (i.e. probably not your google one). But, it works.

(the alternative of course is to 'share' via email, and you have to compose the email, but can choose the subject line to relate to the album. 'quick upload to email' is a one-click operation)

[sort it out eh Motorola? firmware update would be nice...]

Acer laptop / notebook not powering on...

2010-10-06T09:18:00.000+01:00

Kind of went and didn't like working. Screen backlight would come on, nothing else. Eeek.

Had a quick look (via another machine...) and easily found this, after searching for 'power' in the Acer support site.

Which sorted it. Who knew static electricity could be so sneaky?

Android Must-Haves, Sept 2010 edition

2010-09-20T22:38:00.003+01:00

Ok, so moving to the dark side, albeit temporarily I suspect. So, an update, in case I need to install a load of stuff again. Can I have 2.2 on Wildfire please?

This past few months, i've mostly been using:

Abduction - for the nippers; one of the earliest games i'd played which actually looked good and played well too.
ActionComplete - go sign up here - the web / android bit is what makes it (although, web is a bit slow updating imho...) But, better than Google Tasks... And uses Google sign in. Nice.
Dropbox - of course! It's on all my machines, so now on my phone, sorted... (go here)
ebay - for those odd occasions. Nice enough app for watchlist viewing, but searching is dreadful; same for big screen
Evernote - which is used on all machines and all browsers, so mobile access is perfect (go here)
Facebook - pretty much a no brainer, but android app has improved a lot in recent builds
Goggles - although I never use it...
Kindle - i'm still undecided on this, the idea is sound, and syncing to a (real) kindle is good; alas, I don't have one. So another ebook reader would probably do it just as well (see Aldiko)
Paintjoy - which is fun for the kids, I like some of the effects on it, and the 'replay' of you drawing is really cool (shame you can't save the replay, just the final image)
Prey - as anti-theft solution. Wish I had this when I lost the [HTC] Desire. Bah!
Shopper - perhaps i'm just a google junkie, but used once or twice
SMS Backup+ - which is great. It syncs all your SMSs in a gmail folder. Instant SMS backup. And free.
Talking Tom - for 5 minutes... (why is this still on my phone? oh yeh, kids...)
Tricorder - yay for geeky wifi scanning and useless other stuff too!
Voice Search - which seems to come built in more and more, but, don't bother imho; my fingers are more accurate than google's speech recognition (and I speak the Queen's English too doncha know..?)

That is all.

updated list here.

soft reset ipod nano

2010-09-17T20:26:00.000+01:00

And I always forget this, and my 2nd gen is playing up more and more... Grr..

As aide memoire;

Switch hold on, then off.
Hold Menu (up / 12 o'clock) & Select (centre / circle) keys.
For a long time. 5 or more seconds.
Apple logo appears, reboots.

Exporting Blogger blog

2010-06-10T22:16:00.000+01:00

Ok, so I wanted my blog in a 'sane' format, for complete offline re-edit, and no republish. That is, a whole bunch of content is in the blog and got there because it was easy. And now it's complete. Oh, and nicer (er, more appropriate) things like Evernote are around.

Anyway, I wanted to export it all. It's all text, no images.

Blogger export does a rather heavy atom / xml document, which to be honest isn't really usable. I thought about hacking up / reusing some java sax/dom nonsense, but i'm too lazy and it's too late.

One suggestion which like (and which works well enough) is:

view all the posts on one page,
e.g. goto http://yourblog.blogspot.com/search?max-results=100 (as appropriate)
use the browser's 'save as' function, I chose "text"
edit the file...

Worked ok for me, got a nice text file which needs a bit of a hack, but much much less than faffing with atom...

reflashing custom firmware on HTC dream / G1

2010-03-25T19:44:00.001+00:00

Ok, there's a lot of pages out there about how to do it, and cyanogen is perhaps the best (only?) place to start. And xda is, of course, rather handy - but too many cluttered threads imho...

Why? My G1 has been stuck on android 1.1, and as much as I like G1, I "needed" to have Evernote, Facebook and a couple of things that need 1.5+, and of course basic G1 doesn't have exchange sync. The cyanogen page details all the other goodies, a fair few are nice to haves too. So...

I'd recommend heading over the wiki, and following the instructions there - to the letter. It's 4 simple steps really:

downgrade - this takes you to a low level (ie hackable) version of android, that is, putting you in a position to do what you want
exploiting the loophole (what they call 'rooting' it) and then installing a custom recovery program (i.e. cm_recovery), which essentially allows you to install the 'proper' firmware image (i.e. the android bit)
installing the new (custom android) firmware image(s) - at least 3 of them
installing audio pack - the basic firmware image only has 1 or 2 ringtones...

What requires some digging is the following...

In step 1, when you're trying to downgrade to the hackable firmware, what you may find is that you get the mysterious error "00028002 not allowed" just after your G1 verifies the image.

[in a nutshell, format microsd card as FAT32, copy either RC7 (UK) or RC29 (US) image onto it, ensure it's called "DREAIMG.nbh", stick it in G1, hold camera and power button and off you go...]

The problem is the SD card isn't 'trusted', so the G1 rejects the firmware image. What you need to do is similar to how you create a pandora battery on a PSP. First things first, work out how to get the card's CID - either via the G1 (before you brick it), via the card in a Windows Mobile device and using QMAT (now PSAS, $$$) or some other black magic. (I suggest using G1 itself, but see here).

Then, head off to here with that CID and do as it says.

What you need to do is (using a hex editor) copy the bytes in the image you get via email over the first bytes of your SD card. (see here)

That makes your card 'magic', and in step #1, your G1 will quite happily work.

If you find out you're getting that weird error, and your G1 always returns to the rainbow screen (with error RUUNBH on top right), that magic card will sort you out...

Steps 2 & 3 are easy enough with cyanogen's instructions.

Step 4 requires a quick look here. Installing the HTC android dev kit comes in useful.

[edit]
Afterwards, noticed standard HTC headset (usb one) didn't work, but also killed all audio - requiring a reboot. Repeat steps 3 & 4 magically cured it...

Android apps list 2010 edition

2010-03-22T16:38:00.001+00:00

Spookily realised last post on this was March 23rd 2009, which is almost 1 year ago.

This year, i've mostly been using:

whichever exchange client comes with the phone - and they're all clunky (moto's is ok, se/// is pish, htc is ok, dataviz roadsync is ok too)
google maps - a lot. buzz enabled? meh...
facebook - while clunky sometimes (and tends to freeze on some posting), it's become my primary facebook interface
evernote - except it's not in marketplace on current phone... grrr. it's good.
etherial dialpad - fun, kids like it...
tricorder - fun fun fun... (and useful for wifi finding...)

That's probably it for essentials, not many I guess. Other stuff I like, and use sometimes:

beebPlayer - when i'm desperate for TV
compass - never sure why I bother though...
[google] finance - if I can't bother finding out how bad my portfolio is elsewhere
goggles - cos it's fun sometimes (works well too..)
[google] sky map - for entertaining the kids on occasion
linkedin - it's pish
last.fm - very nice indeed, but don't use it much
layar - dunno why I bother...
newsrob - but always forget to sync it up (very good though)
pkt auctions - for when I have ebay on the go
tv guide - nice, but seems slow

Can't say i've paid for anything yet, my phones tend to be rather spartan / utilitarian.

UPDATE: Sept 2010 right about here.

Windows XP rebuild, minor annoyances

2010-03-09T12:16:00.001+00:00

For me to remember for next time... to turn off all the sliding, popping, animating pish on the default UI, and set things back to 'normal'...

System Properties->Advanced; sort out all the other visual nonsense in Performance (click Settings)
Taskbar right click ->Properties; sort out all that stuff too (like grouping, hide inactive, etc..), including customising start menu
Usual stuff on control panel, but be sure to get Locale in Regional & Language panel for UK & French, and fix proxies in Internet Settings panel (if not done from IE)
Tools->Options from Windows Explorer, notably uncheck "Automatically search for network folders", "Launch folder windows in a separate process" and stuff about hidden/system files as needed.
office suite, Tools->Customise->Always show full menus (check box)
internet explorer, Tools->Internet Options->Advanced->Enable Personalised Favourites Menu (uncheck box), plus fix the ton of crap in there too
oh, and stinking autocorrect options...!
fix outlook so it looks normal, in Tools->Options mostly, making sure cached exchange mode is on (in accounts), fonts done, sig added, maybe find old dictionary/lookups?, spelling is set to something sane, reading pane works as expected, turn on enterprise vault pish too.
run firefox -profilemanager from cli to point to old profile
sort out synctoy and syncmycal
configure up google desktop
map network drives
move application caches to somewhere normal (Java, IE)
remember VPN client too..
er, that's it..?

USB NAS and Windows 7

2010-02-14T16:20:00.001+00:00

Ok, i've got one of those cheap little USB NAS devices, it's probably an Addonics or something, branded GigaNas or Sumvision but they all look the same, mine came with a CD with SyncQuick software (which I never used).

Edit: it looks identical to this WANSER-R thing - same colour too...

Anyway, besides the normal LAN IP setup - easy enough, my router handed out a nice IP - it needs a tweak in Windows 7 (and perhaps Vista).

The answer universally seems to be to heading off to Control Panel, Administation, Local Security Policy and then... oh, hang on - i've got Home Premium - it doesn't exist.

(the fix is to change the network settings such that lan manager authentication level is allowed to handle both LN & NTLM, and not just NTLMv2 which is the default. Also advised to drop the need for 128bit session security)

So without the security manager panel (secpol.msc), I need to open up regedit.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Contrl\Lsa\LmCompatibilityLevel
and change it's value from 3 to 1. Exit, NAS starts to work.

(not sure about the lack of '128 bit' went but it seems to work now)

Vista, adding ram and weird wifi consequences....

2010-02-09T19:18:00.001+00:00

So, i'm being tech support for my mum, not a great hassle. She's got a relatively simple Fujitsu Siemens Esprimo machine, and it's ok. Bit slow, so I ordered another 1gb stick of RAM (from Crucial, as always). Windows Experience Index of 3.0.

Fitted it easily enough (tinkered with paging file), and seemed ok. Except wifi was dead. Completely dead as in "can't see any wifi hotspots".... Ok, so I know about Vista and AES, so was careful there on the router - nothing, deaf as a post. Other devices - even my phone! - could connect to wifi, so not router side... Assume I may have knocked wifi card when doing memory - nope, nothing there.

Take it home and try with my router. It works!! Haha, must be that crappy Asus router. Then, 2 days later, it stops working... I even booted Ubuntu from USB and that couldn't find wifi - it didn't exist...

Then noticed start up and shut down issues. It would only boot every other go, and would never shutdown properly... Curious. And this fault was pre-startup, before BIOS appeared... Hmmm... A Windows memory test reported no problems - so it seemed the stick was ok.

Now, I suppose it's not curious - you've added memory! you changed something and it went bad - take it out! Yes, obvious, but this is meant to be the 21st century - can memory clashing really be it...? Can bad memory really cause weird boot issues and knock out wifi?

Yes, it seems so. So, removed 2nd 1gb stick, and left it with 1gb original. Went to BIOS and reduced memory used for video card down to 64mb (from 256mb), on the basis that my mum doesn't play 3d games and the like... So, i'd rather give memory to Vista than graphics card. And - seems better.

And Windows Experience Index? Despite being a rather crude measure, it's now 3.1, RAM performance leaping from 4.2 to 4.3 thanks to higher allocation of memory. So, more memory is better, particularly if you give it to Vista, but not so much if it's bad sticks...

Rule number one though, if it goes bad - get rid of what you just changed... even if it makes no sense whatsover why it should be related.
(and yes, it needs getting rid of Vista)

Thomson TG585v7 wifi adsl router & Windows Vista

2009-11-30T22:16:00.000+00:00

Ok, so I got me a nice new laptop, and Acer 7735Z (I wanted something cheap-ish, with as large a screen as possible - for browsing, moves and maybe some freeciv. the 17" screen clinched it, vista didn't - it won't last long)

Anyway, I digress. The main problem I had was with getting Vista talking to perhaps the worst router i've ever ever had the misfortune to use; the Thomson TG585v7. Setup wifi easy enough, too few options to see what's actually happening, but nevertheless - Android/Moto Dext works, Dell D420 / XP works, old linux boxen with really old PCMCIA card works, so looking hopeful.

I'll spare the long winded explanations - suffice to say, it doesn't. Something about the passphrase being incorrect (er, no, copy & paste from wifi config screen - connected via LAN first, disconnect, try WLAN). I think the Thomson tries to be clever with WPS (button on the front seems disabled, at least on my Plusnet one) and Vista tries too - both of course failing.

There's a million and one posts about
a) Vista not liking WPA2/AES (use TKIP)
b) Thomson being pish (upgrade firmware if you can find it - mine was on 8.x.x.x, newer than most posts from years ago)
c) updating to latest Vista drivers (from Atheros)
d) avoiding Vista anyway (booted Ubuntu 9.10 from USB - very nice, waiting for Windows 7 upgrade disks before doing Ubuntu)
e) slinging it in the bin...

I couldn't be arsed with diagnosing it, and dug out an older - but slightly more trusted Siemens Gigaset SE572. I say trusted, it itself is truly nasty cheap pile of crap, but, after 5 minutes rejigging the DSL, it's up and working with WPA2, and everything works just right.

Moral of the story - don't waste your time with a Thomson 585.

ffmpegX & OS X 10.4 PPC

2009-09-24T20:14:00.000+01:00

Ok, ffmpegX is a fantastic tool. But it's a bit of a pig to install.

The instructions are fairly clear and are here. The ffmpeg dmg is easily done (it's here)

The mencoder and mplayer binaries were odd. You need this file.

I downloaded that zip file, but it wouldn't expand. BOMArchiveHelper kept saying that it was not possible, with a non-descript (-1) error. Double checking file sizes, I realised it wasn't complete. Now, I normally use Camino, so tried Firefox - same problem. Safari 4 seemed to download the whole 14.4mb - and it unzipped normally, with mencoder and mplayer binaries in the resulting directory.

The third mpeg2enc needed - be careful that the link on the download page is towards the Intel, not PPC. As a result, you'll get the binary as text - i.e. gibberish - on the webpage instead of a prompt to download. So, navigate 'upwards', and you'll end up here. Down the page, you'll see some text and a link for osx.cvs.tar.gz - so go get that (it's here in fact). That'll unzip/untar itself nicely to a directory called osx.cvs.

Now, I couldn't be bothered to copy ffmpegX to /Applications, so ran it from desktop. YMMV.

When it starts, it'll ask for locations of the three components, so browse for each with mencoder, mplayer both in same directory called ffmpegXbinaries20060307, and then mpeg2enc in the other directory called osx.cvs. Type password and press install. Sorted, choose file, choose options, and you're off...

The final problem comes when you start a job. It'll pop up and ask for the location of Progress.app. A quick google suggests you browse and choose the ffmpegX application itself.

And you're done.

Google Chrome, Google Desktop & corporate proxies

2009-08-25T12:26:00.000+01:00

So, my work internet proxy configuration (c/o Windows control panel..) doesn't allow localhost access. Which means Google Desktop doesn't work with Chrome, since Chrome uses the Windows internet configuration.

Solution#1 - simply update the Windows proxy configuration to ignore the automatic config (via PAC file) that work gives me, and manually configure the same proxy but add an exception for localhost. That works.

Then some BOFH decides to push out the proxy configuration (somehow - XP profile?) much more frequently than they were. Such that every hour or so, my lovely manual configuration of Chrome (ie the Windows one) is reset to use the automatic (no localhost!) proxy configuration.

Solution #2 - use Firefox as default browser, since this (in a sensible fashion) lets me manually set the proxy configuration just the way I like it.

Oh, and the Chrome command line switch (--proxy-server=proxy:port) doesn't work either - can't manage the exception for localhost, and thus Google Desktop.

Nokia N97 how-to, hard reset

2009-07-14T13:02:00.000+01:00

Ooh, no. Don't like that. Aah, nasty. Like using a handset 5 years ago. Where's my HTC Magic?

But, instructions for Nokia N97

take out of box, charge it up
start using it
become frustrated
become annoyed
hope it'll get better
realise it won't
type *#7370# on dialler
type in 12345 as lock code
be happy all data is removed...
send device back to dark hole from whence it came
use nicer phone

Mac blue screen on boot, OS X 10.4 on mac mini

2009-06-12T12:58:00.000+01:00

So, something stuffed up. Software update chimed in and did it's download (new itunes & security update) and asked the usual shutdown/restart. Knowing my wife was logged in - with perhaps unsaved work - I went to switch users and save it all off.

Except it didn't let me. So, did a log off, thinking I could login as her and save. Er, nope. Blue screen.

Power off, reboot. Er, nope again. Grey apple logo, spinner, blue screen. Sometimes spinner, sometime mouse pointer, sometimes none. No luck, even waiting for 20 minutes...

There's lots and lots of results if you google the problem. Nothing really worked. Booting install & repairing HD fixed some problems, but not the blue screen. Removing assorted files from the depths of /System and /Library didn't help. Booting off external firewire backup helped, but only to copy a couple of essential files to a (third) backup.

Solution: archive & install again... only took a few hours, and user data preserved. After a tense first reboot, software update required 100's of megs of updates (from 10.4 to 10.4.11, and assorted others). Still, fixed.

I'm glad I keep regular - bootable - backups!

Ubuntu netbook remix 9.04 & aspire one 110 / zg5

2009-04-23T18:21:00.000+01:00

I rather like this. Did a test dtive off a usb memory stick, boots quite quickly; no doubt faster from SSD...

What I liked most; it's the first distro that i've had - easily - my network printer (Samsung CLP-310), remote samba, and bluetooth working... The amount of hassle getting those three working on linpus lite is not believable. And yet Ubuntu NBR (beta!) works, just like that. Off the usb stick.

I'll wait til final release (tomorrow?) before I think i'll go for it...

Impressed...

Aspire One BIOS reflash, ramdisk on usb freedos boot

2009-04-23T17:32:00.000+01:00

First thing to do is a quick google for it, and you should find this very helpful page .

At time of writing, latest version is 3309, so go get that. I used the windows version of unetbootin, which makes life easy.

I'd used unetbootin to try out moblin and ubuntu nbr (jaunty) on me old aspire one, and it created the boot disks perfectly. But, this was flashing a previously downloaded img, not choosing a distro at the top.

I've got a set of 5 identical 2gb usb sticks (dane-elec, from 7dayshop about £15 for now, right here ) so I knew it wasn't the usb sticks.

Anyway, part of the reflash instructions are basically to create a FreeDOS boot stick, by choosing FreeDOS from unebootin, booting it, and using that DOS prompt to run the batch file that Acer gives you. Easy.

But... every time I went to boot the usb drive, it started, but gave an obscure "Could not load ramdisk image: /ubninit" Curious.

A whole bunch of googling came up with some crazy ideas, none of which worked. On the way, I discovered macles blog , which is very useful also, so gets a thumbs up. But still, no luck.

Then I thought; i'm running behind a VPN, which has a proxy connection out the internet. So, close all that down, and allow my XP machine to reach the internet raw, i.e. directly via my ADSL.

This time, unetbootin spent a good few minutes - with a nice progress bar - actually downloading FreeDOS. The memory stick had a few more files than before... And after all that, it booted, and I could run the firmware update. (for interest, bios reflash took about 5 minutes, although I wasn't timing it - it's really easy and you can see it progressing...)

So, unebootin isn't proxy aware; instead, it will fail the download, and create a partial usb image, which won't boot. Make sure you have direct internet connection before using it to download distros.

Java deployment cache, XP

2009-04-06T10:00:00.000+01:00

Default deployment cache is
C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Sun\Java\Deployment\cache\
which is right in the middle of my XP profile space...
So, every time I do something java-ish, it'll eat up loads of space, and I get XP profile warnings.
Change location in control panel / Java, to somewhere not in profile space. Delete old space using that panel too.
(to be honest, i'm sure it reset itself to Application Data when I wasn't looking...)

Phillips transcription kit LFH 7277 & mac OS X

2009-04-03T10:32:00.000+01:00

Found an old one on ebay, comes with USB foot pedal.

In fact, it's USB -> license dongle -> socket -> pedal via 3.5mm? jack & 3.5mm earphones.

Works a treat under XP with the supplied software, but not luck whatsoever getting it to work on the mac. Can't find any drivers.

Express Scribe is meant to be very good, and has lots of Mac transciption advice.