The Digital Blue Wave

Great News and Bad News for Wizardpen Linux driver

2010-04-11T19:53:00.000+08:00

It's been more than a year since I posted any updates on the Wizardpen driver, and I have both good news and bad news in relation to that.

First, the bad news is that: I'm now on the Mac == any breakage of the driver with the latest release of Ubuntu will not be captured or spotted by myself.

But! Here's the good news: the Wizardpen Linux driver is now more actively maintained at Launchpad. I have been subscribing to their code commits for the past year and the code base and configuration files have been cleaned up significantly. And the best part is that they are currently maintaining a list of supported devices the FDI rules so that make using the Wizardpen almost a plug-and-play experience. (well, if PnP doesn't happen, do file a bug report there :))

So, in many ways, I'll be officially stepping down from the responsibility of maintaining the build documentation (which has been pretty stable since 0.7) as well as tracking code updates (as, hopefully, Launchpad will be its permanent home and there's will always at least a code maintainer there to assist).

In case you'd still like to update me on the progress on the driver so that I can post it up here, feel free to email me at seh_hui@yahoo.com.

What the Linux Wizardpen driver needs right now

2009-09-13T11:46:00.000+08:00

To be honest: I don't really check this site often - I am quite used to only log into Blogger when I had something new to say about the progress of the Linux Wizardpen driver. And only recently I found out a lot of comments that was pending moderation and I was completely flooded by old comments, so greatest apology to everyone who had left their questions unanswered, unpublished and unnoticed for the past three months =.=.

Such experience points to a fatal functional flaw: that the driver does not have a functional project structure. Currently here's a few items that the driver need, in order of importance:

A support forum
Package the driver to make it user-friendly, which includes the following:

Precompiled packages (DEB, RPM) - I'm aware that there are a few people who had already done so and a couple others working on making it PnP. We need some way for these package maintainers to collaborate with each other
Generic FDI rule that could allow PnP to be possible
A graphical calibrator program - Similar to what has been done for Aiptek (Or would it better for us to use the gAiptek software and make it more general purpose?)

Choosing a project home for the driver. Currently there's two that has been setup, which I'm aware of:

Google Code: http://code.google.com/p/linuxgenius/
Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/wizardpen

Feature request and bug fixes, e.g.

Better mouse support (i.e. the Genius tablets that came with the stylus and mouse)
Correct detection of screen in driver and removal of ScreenX and ScreenY parameters
Lines drawn on GIMP/Inkscape not as smooth as what that could be drawn on Windows (workaround: Modify the ScreenX and ScreenY parameters that doubles the current screen resolution)
Etc.

Personally I have to admit I couldn't do it by myself: I really needed a lot of help. Both in terms of building a community site and the programming effort. If anyone is interested, please comment on this thread (with the e-mail followup checkbox checked :), so you get the latest updates on who has the same interest on this project as you do).

Wizardpen driver 0.7 series compatible with Ubuntu Karmic Koala

2009-09-12T21:36:00.002+08:00

Just upgraded my machine to the Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala Alpha 5 and I'm happy to say that Wizardpen would work seamlessly with the next version of Ubuntu. So when October comes, you don't need to worry about the upgrade breaking support for your creative pursuits. (I'll keep you updated in case it breaks some time before the actual launch occur in October)

Recently there isn't any progress on the driver due to a lack of a active maintainer for the code. Currently there are a few project pages being setup for the driver, currently the one with recent activity was the one at the Wizardpen project in Launchpad: which they are taking up an ambitious goal of setting up the appropriate FDI rule to have it auto-detect most (hopefully all) supported tablets. Greatly appreciate that you'll be able to submit the appropriate `lsusb` output for them to maintain a database of sorts ;).

Anyway, it is to be noted that Ubuntu 9.10 introduced a lot of major changes in packages: e.g. SCIM input to iBus, utilizing GRUB2 and Ext4 and eventual migration to DeviceKit in replacement for HAL in the future (meaning that the setup guide will need to be updated as soon as Xorg deprecates HAL as well). So I do greatly suggest that you prepare for the release by reading these new changes up.

wizardpen-0.7.0-alpha2 DEB package now available

2009-04-21T12:02:00.004+08:00

First of all, all thanks to Giorgo Enrico who made the package! I have personally tested it and find it to be working, so I suppose it'd be of great help to those who aren't too comfortable in compiling :).

Anyway, here's the place to download the packages:
Driver: http://www.mediafire.com/file/nyzyynygiyy/wizardpen_0.7.0-alpha2_i386.deb
Calibrator tool: COMING SOON!

I'm not particular sure about whether it does support 8.10 or not, so if somebody had tested it, please let me know ;)

Driver Update: wizardpen-0.7.0-alpha2

2009-04-17T09:43:00.003+08:00

Hi all, I've just made a quick bug fix in relation to the compilation issues with Ubuntu 9.04 and (reportedly, from what I read from the linuxgenius project page) Fedora 11. The code fix should allow the compilation of the driver for both Ubuntu 8.10 and Ubuntu 9.04, however I do need someone to help me test to compile the driver for Ubuntu 8.10.

The latest driver is available here:

Till then, have fun!

Wizardpen, Ubuntu 9.04 and Everchanging Xorg APIs

2009-03-30T22:01:00.003+08:00

Here's the good news: I'm announcing that Wizardpen is compatible with Ubuntu 9.04! Apparently it was a quick fix actually as the reason the driver isn't compiling is due to the fact that Xorg had tinkered the argument list of one of its functions (specifically InitValuatorClassDeviceStruct, which it removed the motionProc argument). Doing so created a clean compile and a working driver.

However, the fact that all this while I was never involved in maintaining the driver nor had any knowledge in Xorg module programmer. Therefore it'd take me a while to test to make sure that there wouldn't be any side effects. But my guess is that I shouldn't take me more than a few days, so I think I'd be able to come up with a quick patch for that.

For now, I had the feeling that Xorg is starting to become more of a moving target seeing the API changing from time to time. With that in mind, I'm in an opinion that we'd probably need to catalogue the versions of Wizardpen drivers and to which release of Xorg it'll still work. From memory:
9.04 - 0.7.0-alpha2 (?)
8.10 - 0.6.0.2 to 0.7.0-alpha1
8.04 - 0.6.0.2
7.10 - Probably 0.5? Can't quite remember that one...

Would probably figure out a time to quickly sort it out, probably merging the new code over to project at Google Code or SourceForge. I'll see to it then.

P/S: For those who's confident in patching their own code, you can refer to this page.

Wizardpen on Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope): WORKING

2009-03-26T20:31:00.002+08:00

UPDATE: I got it to work now, please see my latest blog announcement for the details

Seeing that Ubuntu 9.04 is coming up and I had installed Alpha 6 of the release, it is fair enough for me just to forewarn you that the ~~Wizardpen driver will not work with Ubuntu 9.04~~... for now, at least. (UPDATE: It works now)

So for those who really needed the compatibility with Wizardpen in Ubuntu, hold your horses, stick to 8.10 (Interpid Ibex) for a while and wait until a patch is up.

OR... if you had done a fix, do share it out ;).

Updated Wizardpen Driver (0.7.0-alpha1? :p)

2008-11-26T20:08:00.005+08:00

Out of the blue I received an updated source file in my mailbox for the Linux Wizardpen driver from a very nice guy called Mike. The driver itself addresses a significant amount of improvements including optimization for performance, which I was completely astonished and blown away by it as I previously have to deal with sluggishness when painting in a maximized GIMP window.

You can download it from the link below:

(*Note: Yeah, I'm being a stupid dumbass for plugging a version number myself... but I suppose the improvement warrants a major number increment ;)

List of features: (*Note: UNTESTED means I was never able to test it myself, please feedback if you had problems with it)

Major performance and reliability improvements
(UNTESTED) Support for bundled scroll-wheel mouse (I know a lot of people wanted this, hence bolded ;)
Pressure sensitivity now configurable (Xorg param: TopZ and BottomZ; range: 0-1024)
Reliable button press/release event mechanism (using pressure thresholds)
(UNTESTED)Support vertical tablet orientation (useful if are using stacked dual monitors and want the tablet layout to the vertical orientation) (Xorg param: Rotate90 - "0" or "1"
[UNTESTED] Ability to tell driver your screen size in case gets confused (xorg param: ScreenX and ScreenY)
Debug mode (Xorg parm: debugyn - "0" or "1")

Do have to iterate the fact that Mike should be credited fully for his work and I'm just disseminating this piece of good code :).

Have fun experimenting and post any bugs or issues found!

P/S: The installation steps are already outlined here

(*NOTE: My webhost is acting stupid again, so have to exploit the resources of the "empire" from now :p)

Winamp: It's 1999 all over again!

2008-11-07T06:26:00.001+08:00

I have a confession to make: Firewire on Linux sucks! >_<

Despite liking Linux and open source software in general, the only thing that irks me is Firewire/IEEE1394 support: which they never seem to get along with each other at one time or the other, like dysfunctional couples. Or probably it's just the Draconic Apple Empire which decided to screw their firmware so to vow to cause inferno to Linux users (but damn I worship their idol: the iPod).

OK, probably that's a bad joke :p.

Either way, what I used to be able to do it in Hardy (8.04) is to manage my iPod library. What I'm unable to do now with Interpid (8.10) is exactly that: Interpid refuses to mount my humble 3rd-generation iPod. Apparently it is reported that it can be "fixed" by recompiling the kernel without EFI support, but that's something that I'm not willing to do at the moment (mainly due to laziness - I know how long the process would take, coming from a Gentoo background).

So at the moment, it's back to Windows again and having tried out quite a number of players that wasn't iTunes, I find myself using WinAmp. It's sort of a surprise to me and it felt as if I'm back to 1999 (which at that time WinAmp *is* THE player). The few things I liked: support direct drag-and-drop from Explorer to my iPod, read my tags properly and does automatic transcoding (jackpot!). What I don't like about other players: Crashes on me on first run (read: Floola and Froddle Pod), chokes and bloats itself with memory leaks (Songbird), forces me to use a non-intuitive library feature (MediaMonkey) and sluggish UI experience (YamiPod).

Until I can get Intrepid to talk to my iPod and happily reuse gtkpod, guess I'm happy to stick with WinAmp for quite sometime.

And it feels good to feel like you are 17 again :lol:.

No more shitty Chinese/Japanese display font

2008-11-02T01:30:00.006+08:00

This is sort of a follow up to my previous blog post on fontconfig, and also part of my efforts in making the EeePC a simple-to-use and pretty (in my own view) PC.

With such a small screen and fonts, complicated Chinese characters will be rendered as unintelligible white space with black dots when using Sung/Ming fonts (宋体，明体). In this case, Gothic/Hei fonts (serif equivalent to East Asian font) are very readable as it is capable to be rendered even with small font sizes. In this case, WenQuanYi's Zen Hei is the best open source Gothic/HeiTi font (and I even highlighted it in one of my post).

For this setup, I make it more simplistic: Copy a good template which specifies preferred Latin fonts (e.g. /etc/fonts/conf.d/60-latin.conf in Debian) to ~/.fonts.conf. Once that's in place: paste <family>WenQuanYi Zen Hei</family> in each <prefer> section.

Once that's in place, execute `fc-cache -fv` and restart your applications, and TADA! browsing Chinese sites on Firefox has never been more enjoyable with unified and readable text :D.

EeePC Wireless Toggle Fn+F2 - Quick Troubleshooting Note

2008-11-01T22:17:00.001+08:00

Just installed Debian Lenny to my EeePC 701, after screwing my eeeXubuntu over.

One of the most common Linux gripes about EeePC is the wireless chipset it's using (probably Asus should choose a more compatible from the start ^^||).

Have been spending the whole day trying to get the wifi toggle to work, finally I got it to work. Checklist being as follows:

Check whether ath5k is blacklisted or not
Check whether "options pciehp pciehp_force=1" was set properly
Ensuring pciehp was loaded (best way is to add it to /etc/modules)

With the latest custom, EeePC Lenny installer, item 1 and 2 has been addressed (but no harm double confirming it). So should it not work, try to perform Item 3 and see whether that works for you before you ask the mailing list ;).

Genius Wizardpen with Intrepid Ibex

2008-10-23T20:41:00.016+08:00

NOTE

The tutorial currently still works with Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope)

NEWS UPDATE

An updated (though not thoroughly tested) driver is available thanks to Mike! Please find full details by clicking on this link.

UPDATE HISTORY:

21 October 2008

Original, adapted from my tutorial for Hardy Heron

Obtaining the driver

Option 1: Using a precompiled driver - UNTESTED!!

Miriad have provided a precompiled driver for Hardy and can be obtained from http://specificcrap.arbitrarycrap.com/wizardpen_drv.so. Just download the driver and put it in /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input/.

Once that's done, follow the steps outlined in "Configuring and using your Wizardpen".

For the latest version (0.7.0-alpha2): Alternatively, you could use the Debian package done by Giorgo Enrico, which you can download it here http://www.mediafire.com/file/nyzyynygiyy/wizardpen_0.7.0-alpha2_i386.deb

Option 2: Building from source

Download the source package: http://specificcrap.arbitrarycrap.com/wizardpen-0.6.0.2.tar.gz
(or the latest, untested driver here:
Unpack it somewhere with following command: tar -zxvf wizardpen-0.6.0.2.tar.gz
Grab the necessary packages:sudo aptitude install xutils libx11-dev libxext-dev build-essential xautomation xinput xserver-xorg-dev
Change directory to where you unpacked the source code: cd wizardpen-0.6.0.2
Compile and install the driver: ./configure --with-xorg-module-dir=/usr/lib/xorg/modules && make && sudo make install
Verify that the driver is installed correctly (Check for wizardpen_drv.la and wizardpen_drv.so): ls /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input/wizardpen_drv.*

Configuring and using your Wizardpen

For Xorg7.3, the recommended way to configure your input device is by adding HAL fdi files, which in turn allows you to hotplug your Wizardpen. This step is not only recommended, it's essentially CRUCIAL in the case of Intrepid Ibex as the xorg.conf method used in my Hardy tutorial WILL NOT WORK.

This new configuration method may be supported by Hardy Heron, but I greatly appreciate anyone who is able to confirm this to me :).

Connect your Wizardpen tablet (if you haven't already done so)
Find out the name of your tablet : grep -i name /proc/bus/input/devices
Double confirm that HAL captured the name of the tablet correctly as well: lshal | less
Create a new file with the name /etc/hal/fdi/policy/99-x11-wizardpen.fdi
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
<device>

<match key="info.product" contains="NAME OF YOUR TABLE OBTAINED FROM PREVIOUS STEP">
<merge key="input.x11_driver" type="string">wizardpen</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.SendCoreEvents" type="string">true</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.TopX" type="string">5619</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.TopY" type="string">6554</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.BottomX" type="string">29405</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.BottomY" type="string">29671</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.MaxX" type="string">29405</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.MaxY" type="string">29671</merge>
</match>
</device>
</deviceinfo>
Reboot your computer (*Note: Thanks to Ociosu for the update)
If X fails to start up, or that the cursor runs amok with unpredictable and unacceptable behaviour (e.g. button mapping screw-ups), I greatly recommend that you start to debug your configuration.

TROUBLESHOOTING - IMPORTANT STEPS:

Should you find your Wizardpen not working yet, check out the /var/log/Xorg.0.log to see what went wrong (Search for "EE" and "WW" would give you some important hint). Google and the UbuntuForums are always your friend when it come to troubleshooting things ;).

Calibrating your tablet

Execute the following command: lshal | less
Search the section with the name of your tablet, as obtained from Step 2 in the configuration step. The line should read something like: info.product = '[Name of your tablet]'
Scroll down until you find the following line: linux.device_file = '/dev/input/eventN' (N will a number)
The source package contains a program called 'wizardpen-calibrate', which is in the 'calibrate' folder, which actually echoes the appropriate X11 calibration settings
Using a terminal/console, execute the calibration program: calibrate/wizardpen-calibrate /dev/input/eventN (*Note: Subtitute /dev/input/eventN with the one obtained from Step 3)
Follow the instructions issued by the program, which will ask you to touch the top-left corner and bottom-right corner. Once completed, the program will echo the corresponding xorg.conf setting
Edit the FDI file (/etc/hal/fdi/policy/99-x11-wizardpen.fdi) and subtitute the Top/Bottom/MaxX and Top/Bottom/MaxY values to the one obtained from the wizardpen-calibrate command
Once done, restart your computer and test your tablet (UPDATE: Noy noted in the comments that you don't have to restart, but rather unplug and replug the tablet for the new settings to take effect. I'm pretty sure it'd work but I haven't tested it yet)

Till then, good luck and have fun!

FAQ - Draft, TODO

Wireless mouse for Wizardpen support is only available in the latest wizardpen-0.7.0-* driver.
Pressure sensitivity not working in GIMP: Check your GIMP preferences at "Edit > Preferences". Under the "Input Devices" menu item, click on "Configure Extended Input Devices...". Choose the WizardPen device and MAKE SURE YOU SET THE MODE TO SCREEN/WINDOW (not "Disabled"). Without that setting, it won't work ;)

[REFERENCE AND RESOURCES]

NOTES:

Thanks to Pedro for his unexpected email and helping me out to test out my HAL fdi policy file.
TODO: Add stuff to the FAQ (Contribution appreciated)
Wishlist:
1. Someone helping me out to test whether the HAL fdi rule method works with Hardy Heron
2. Have the tutorial posted in Ubuntu Community wiki (too lazy to bother doing it myself :lol)

PC vs Mac: Breaking Advert Placing Barriers

2008-06-24T17:11:00.002+08:00

I'm always amused when Apple comes up with their quirky "PC and Mac" video advertisements. And apparently their creative team seem to know how to utilize traditional online advertisement place holders in a creative way.

As you can see from the image on top, they utilize TWO advertisement spaces: the top banner and side panel ad space and orchestrate a situation in which PC touts their own "PC Newwire" which pipes through the coolest PC news. And instead of what he hoped for, what we see are news of Vista bashing and people downgrading to XP and an agitated PC. And then we'll get to see a Mac after the punchline is delivered.

What I really liked about the ad is how Apple's advertising team are willing to experiment and think outside the box. In fact I didn't really get the joke until I notice they used two online advertisement space. Typically my eyes were "trained" to "overlook" those typical (yet effective) ad placement areas. So in effect it really got me curious and trying to play that ad video again and again until I found out their creative trick.

Apple may have paid the cost of having two ad impressions and this unusual "two ads working as one" act may not work that effectively. But I had to say that this concept is very impressive and I would applaud them for being creative :).

(*Note: This ad is not sponsored by Apple in any way, and I didn't intend to publicize what blog that sports the ad :p)

Comment Moderation :: OFF

2008-05-20T13:46:00.002+08:00

Having recently receiving quite a number of comments when I disconnected from the web (mainly on the Wizardpen post) and the nature of comments received were genuine, I have switched off comment moderation for this blog. However, I do expect readers to have a Google account (i.e. no anonymous commenting... at least it'd be only *slightly* helpful to prevent spam comments ;) ).

Till then, enjoy reading!

Hello world, Nokia

2008-04-16T21:43:00.002+08:00

That goes without saying ;)

Don't underestimate this simplistic program though, getting it compiled is hard enough without official Linux support from Nokia and there's no concrete and definite community documentation that outlines how to use the Nokia SDKs in Linux (after Nokia dropping the Concept SDK for Linux, that is). It took me quite a lot of obscure googling to get that working.

I'm still working out a simpler way to get this done instead of a very hack-ish bash script that I assembled just now. From the steps that was needed, I'm pretty sure that I could do somthing about having it to work with EclipseME (hopefully I'm right at the fact that it'd only involve modify some files that Nokia supplied in their SDKs ;) ).

Will post a follow-up on my progress while I tinker with it.

Swinging Preferences

2008-04-13T22:34:00.005+08:00

Having more time for myself, I'm back into the continuous effort in tuning my Ubuntu installation to match my usage preferences and making it more pleasant and efficient to use.

Two of the most interesting switches in my own preferred software: namely favouring Quod Libet over Rhythmbox; Emenese over Pidgin (previously GAIM). What's more interesting that both Quod Libet and Emesene were written in Python and were fairly new players in the open source universe.

Now, as we know it, the beauty of software in general is all about choice: there's a lot of different implementations of any application domain and users are free to choose any alternatives that were available to them. However, what kept me thinking is that: what had me making the switch from more established open source projects (Rhythmbox and Pidgin) to newer projects instead.

To think about it, Rhythmbox and Pidgin have served me very well indeed to a point I didn't see the need to change: afterall, it does what I wanted and probably more. But then came Quod Libet and Emenese that not only does everything plus the "killer feature" that I wanted badly:

Quod Libet: The "Random by album" plugin (Implemented as a plug-in)
Emesene: MSN personal message feature

Now, looking at the two features above, it's not hard to notice that these two features were never "essential" features; but rather, they were "highly desired" non-critical features. Granted, both of these software doesn't do everything their similar counterparts does, but the thing is that they position themselves as a promising alternative by not only providing all the essential features while being stable but also being able to adapt to more "minor" but "highly desirable" features.

So really that begs the question: how high such small but highly desirable features be in terms of development priority? On one hand, you need these new features to be in to attract a larger user base (especially if the feature is perceived to be important to a large number of users); on another hand, the feature may as well be a fad that lasts for a short term and devoting too much time with such "features" spells disaster for any projects. I suppose in the end, it's important to have an extensible infrastructure (the plug-in infrastructure?) and a means for users to install and uses these features in a prompt and user-friendly manner (either by bundling them with the main package like Quod Libet, or provide an easy way to obtain them like Firefox).

Sync'ing Nokia 3500 classic with Ubuntu

2008-04-12T21:00:00.003+08:00

It's been about a month or two since I got my Nokia 3500 classic and have had whined a lot about Symbian S40 with it:

Unable to do full phonebook backups on the phone itself
Unable to restore a vCard File (.vcf) that contains multiple phonebook entries on the same file, which is considered a common means of doing backup (at least I'm aware that Sony Ericsson and LG phones does that)

But at least it supports SyncML, which provides a platform-independent means of information synchronization. So with some effort, I got OpenSync and MultiSync setup to have Evolution and my mobile phone to sync with each other. At the moment I'd say that using these tools made me feel like such information sync'ing architecture is still quite in its infancy stage: mainly due to a lack of user-friendly graphical frontends and seamless integration with the desktop environment. Which is quite a pity really, especially the rise of handheld devices, I'm currently looking forward to more development with such a capability.

But anyways, for those needing a working syncml-obex-client configuration for the Nokia 3500 classic (via Bluetooth), here's the configuration that I'm using at the moment:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<config>

<bluetooth_address>[The Bluetooth address for your Nokia phone]</bluetooth_address>


<bluetooth_channel>11</bluetooth_channel>


<interface>0</interface>


<identifier>PC Suite Data Sync</identifier>


<version>1</version>


<wbxml>1</wbxml>


<username></username>


<password></password>


<type>2</type>


<usestringtable>1</usestringtable>


<onlyreplace>0</onlyreplace>


<onlyLocaltime>0</onlyLocaltime>


<recvLimit>10000</recvLimit>

<maxObjSize>0</maxObjSize>


<contact_db>Contacts</contact_db>


<calendar_db>Calendar</calendar_db>


<note_db>Notes</note_db>
</config>

Genius Wizardpen with Ubuntu Linux (8.04 only)

2008-04-12T17:09:00.014+08:00

NOTE

AN UPDATED TUTORIAL FOR INTREPID IBEX IS AVAILABLE! Need someone to check whether that tutorial is compatible with Hardy Heron
[Compatible with Hardy Heron (8.04) ONLY]
[TODO]
- Add a FAQ section (especially the fact that only realized that recently the original forum was down x_x...) -- main proof that I have been neglecting this blog and WizardPen progress these days
- Any update if necessary

UPDATE HISTORY:

21 October 2008

Verified that steps are compatible with Intrepid Ibex (using compile by source method),
Added draft FAQ [Big TODO item, help needed]

27 May 2008

Added a troubleshooting step in the setting up section which recommends you to regenerate a fresh xorg.conf

27 April 2008

Updated link to download the driver source (Contributor: zack)
Included instruction on how to using precompiled driver
Modified xorg.conf on where to put the "CorePointer" option

As Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) was released end of April 2008, one of the major change is XOrg 7.3, which sports hot-plugging, auto-configuration, better support of multiple input device and other powerful features. However, with those features in place, the existing Genius Wizardpen driver was not compatible with the latest XOrg.

Currently, Miriad (whom participated in the original Wizardpen driver forums) have updated the driver to make it compatible with XOrg 7.3 (rejoice!). Here are the instructions to configuring your Wizardpen:

Obtaining the driver

Option 1: Using a precompiled driver (Recommended)

Option 2: Building from source

(*Note: I haven't tested this with completely fresh Hardy system though ^^||)

Download the source package: http://specificcrap.arbitrarycrap.com/wizardpen-0.6.0.2.tar.gz
Unpack it somewhere with following command: tar -zxvf wizardpen-0.6.0.2.tar.gz
Grab the necessary packages (UNCONFIRMED! Let me know if I missed out an important package): sudo aptitude install xutils libx11-dev libxext-dev x-dev build-essential xautomation xinput xserver-xorg-dev
Change directory to where you unpacked the source code: cd wizardpen-0.6.0.2
Compile and install the driver: sudo ./configure --with-xorg-module-dir=/usr/lib/xorg/modules && make && make install
Verify that the driver is installed correctly (Check for wizardpen.la and wizardpen.so): ls /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input/wizardpen.*

Configuring and using your Wizardpen

Connect your Wizardpen tablet (if you haven't already done so)
Find out the name of your tablet : cat /proc/bus/input/devices | grep Name
Edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and type the following (or to verify against your last working xorg.conf with the Wizardpen in Gutsy):
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "vmmouse"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "WizardPen Tablet"
# Paste the name of the tablet as found in the previous step
Option "Name" "UC-LOGIC Tablet WP5540U"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Driver "wizardpen"
Option "TopX" "5619"
Option "TopY" "6554"
Option "BottomX" "29405"
Option "BottomY" "29671"
Option "MaxX" "29405"
Option "MaxY" "29671"
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen "Default Screen"
InputDevice "WizardPen Tablet" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "Configured Mouse" "CorePointer"
EndSection
Restart your X server: sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart (*Note: It'd be better for you to logout, press Alt-F1 to go into the command prompt screen to execute this command)
If X fails to start up, or that the cursor runs amok with unpredictable and unacceptable behaviour (e.g. button mapping screw-ups), I greatly recommend that you execute sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg to regenerate a new working copy of xorg.conf and reattempt to configure the Wizardpen again (i.e. repeat Step 3-4 in this section). It may be helpful to read the IMPORTANT NOTE I had below.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The "SendCoreEvents" option is mandatory to prevent focus stealing between your mouse and Wizardpen, which would lead to a jerky pointer which is not what you'd want when you're drawing ;). It may be required to have your mouse being set with the "CorePointer" option (Reason I'm setting this option for the mouse is because without the actual mouse configured with "CorePointer" would give X11 an option to select the Wizardpen as the core [read: main] pointer and royally screw the button mapping of my mouse).

Till then, good luck and have fun!

[FAQ - DRAFT]

Wireless mouse for Wizardpen is not working: From my understanding is that support for the wireless mouse that comes with Wizardpen is NOT IMPLEMENTED yet. Therefore it won't work.
Pressure sensitivity not working in GIMP: Check your GIMP preferences at "Edit > Preferences". Under the "Input Devices" menu item, click on "Configure Extended Input Devices...". Choose the WizardPen device and MAKE SURE YOU SET THE MODE TO SCREEN/WINDOW (not "Disabled"). Without that setting, it won't work ;)

[REFERENCE AND RESOURCES]

New Gadget! Asus Eee PC :D

2008-01-16T22:16:00.000+08:00

Here's a new addition to my list of gadgets: say hello to my Asus Eee PC! :D

This ultraportable is definitely a god-send in my opinion, not only it's small, light-weight and most excitingly, it's really inexpensive! (with UMPCs carrying a much higher price tag) Despite being slightly underpowered, it's already powerful enough for most office applications, which makes it really suitable for myself to lug around should I be outstation for one reason or the other. Neat, huh? :)

Anyway, been spending two days of restless night to have pre-loaded Xandros Linux removed and have eeeXubuntu installed in its place: together with all the minor tweaks and package installation to make it a personalized power house.

Still not used to the extremely small keyboard with keys just the size of my own fingertips, so that makes it pretty unsuitable for tasks that require speed typing. But things like normal surfing and stuff was pretty usable. The small 7" screen is really something that needs to get used to as well, my eyes felt strained from time to time (mainly due to the LCD brightness though, 8pt fonts are still very readable in its current state).

Other than that, I'm looking forward on the possibilities this ultraportable will bring to my work and the computer market overall. With the critical success of the Eee PC, I'm pretty sure most manufacturers will really want to have their slice of the pie as well.

Do have to say a well job done to the Asus design team whom get it right during its first launch! :D (compared to the hyped tablet PC which no manufacturer seems to make it take off in any sense)

No More Hard-to-Read Chinese Text!

2007-11-12T22:12:00.002+08:00

NEWS: Currently the font is included in the Ubuntu Hardy Heron repository! Install the "ttf-wqy-zenhei" package

Recently I have been continually fine-tuning my Ubuntu to give me the best (i.e. most comfortable) environment for me to work with. One of the major quirks is the hard to read Chinese fonts, which is due to the fact that it's pretty hard to hint SongTi (宋体) fonts.

Somehow it's pretty surprising that Ubuntu's repositories doesn't come with HeiTi (黑体) or Chinese Gothic fonts, which has thicker strokes. But luckily there's this open source, GPL'ed font foundary, Wen Quan Yi, which does provide their HeiTi variant called "Zen Hei". Basically what I do is grab the package, install the Debian package (execute `dpkg --install wqy-zenhei-0.2.15-1.deb`), adding the configuration to match the font in my /etc/fonts/local.conf file (see my previous article for details) and lastly execute `sudo fc-cache -fv`.

Once I done that and restart my applications, now I had 100% reliable and perfectly readable Chinese pages! :D

From Gentoo to Ubuntu

2007-11-09T18:39:00.000+08:00

By some circumstances, I found myself migrated to Ubuntu Linux from Gentoo. It's not a intentional flavour change, to be honest: but rather just happened that I royally screwed my partition table as I shuffle them around. An attempt to raking in dormant partitions (mainly my old Linux installations) and salvaging them for better use ended up having myself wiped out the LVM partition that my Gentoo lives in. Whoops! No doubt that fdisk may as well be your best friend or your best enemy.

Luckily I have my home partition and personal data separated out and I didn't have any production MySQL databases (phew...), so I'm still safe :). (that coming from someone who have screwed up Linux several times, my best advice is better to keep all your important out from your OS partition :p)

So, mainly due to my own laziness of not wanting to spent a whole day just to set a razor-edged Gentoo (i.e. which is very time consuming but you do get to craft every single nook-and-cranny of the system: customized the way you wanted it to), I opt for Ubuntu instead.

But that said, installing Ubuntu using their Desktop Installation CD is only a breeze if you didn't find the need to use LVM. But in the end, it's not as hard as it seemed as Chantra from Debuntu.org did posted up a tutorial on how to do so, which basically needs you to:

Execute `sudo apt-get install lvm2`
Setup your LVM partitions; or if you have an existing LVM setup, just activate the volume group by executing `vgchange -ay VolGroup` (where VolGroup is the name of your volume group)
Once make sure that the logical volumes have entries in /dev/VolGroup/... (again, VolGroup is the name of your volume group), kick up the installation GUI. Remember to use the "Manual" option when you reached the partitioning section
Once installed, DON'T REBOOT FIRST! Mount all your logical volumes and the /boot partition into /target. Chroot into /target, perform an `apt-get update` there then install LVM2 (Otherwise you won't be able to boot into your computer)

So now I'm running Ubuntu and got it setup in a breeze and I'm pretty impressed on how polished the Ubuntu team have made it to be. Coming from a Gentoo background, I'm really impressed because if you happen to build everything yourself, you'd end up noticing a lot of small quirks which give some rough bumps in interacting with the user interface (especially Compiz, during my days in Gentoo I never seemed to get it "right").

And never needing to leave my PC overnight to let emerge do it's thing (i.e. compiling updates) is a definite plus :).

RedesignMalaysia: Glitch or Gone?

2007-10-28T13:36:00.000+08:00

Was browsing around today and noticed that Redesign Malaysia's site was gone!

For the uninitiated, Redesign Malaysia is "an initiative to improve Malaysia’s broadband facilities" (extracted from their site as last cached by Google), which provides information and news of all broadband providers in the country as well as serves as a platform for the rakyat (Malay word for "citizens") to voice their complains and concerns on the services being provided or any development that will hinder the development of wider and faster adoption of broadband.

I'm not sure what had happened behind the scenes, but should we lose the site, it would be a great loss for Malaysia. Just hope that it's just a temporary matter that will be solved swiftly.

Meebo Firefox Extension

2007-10-25T14:40:00.000+08:00

Meebo just recently launched its own extension, aptly named as Meebo Firefox Edition. The extension basically adds a Meebo buddy list sidebar (which can be hidden) and a couple of bells and whistles that makes it more useful than a glorified sidebar.

The major convenience that the sidebar provides is the automatic login feature, which is able to log into your IM account automatically when Firefox is started. Once you logged on to Meebo, you'll see your buddy list in the sidebar, which you can select which friend you'd like to message and set your status. The sidebar is resizeable and with the minimum allowable width, the buddylist is still usable without taking up too much screen real estate. The sidebar can be hidden as well, which you can toggle whether it is shown or hidden by clicking on the Meebo icon (see red circle on the first image).

One nifty feature they had included is the alert box feature, which is a small blue box which will pop up on the bottom-right corner of the screen to notify you when your friends were online or when they messaged you. The neat thing is that the alert box is shown even when Firefox is minimized. Not only that, in the Options dialog you can configure what Meebo Firefox Edition should alert you and when it should keep quiet.

At the time of writing it's still in its early stage of development, it still require the actual Meebo page to be loaded in a tab, which is required to contain all the conversation windows and provide other functionality that is not implemented in this extension. So at the moment, what it provides is still pretty basic but it's worth the install just for the desktop alert feature. But I'm definitely looking forward it becoming a full fledged IM extension.

Here's a feature (wish) list that I'd hope to see in future releases:

Theme-able skins
Able to configure where the sidebar should be located: either left, right or as a floating window. What I would find it nice is probably something like Google Notebook which is capable to slide out from the bottom
The login screen should allow a narrower width
Buddylist groups
I know this is in the works but I can't resist saying this: Make it standalone without requiring the Meebo page to be loaded ;) (that would mean one less tab :p)
Audio alerts/notification
Capability to set MSN display name

To install the extension, head to http://www.meebo.com/firefox and try it for yourself :).

UPDATE: I did forget to mention a quite annoying quirk that if you use the auto sign-in feature, it'll always open a new tab loading Meebo's site. This is quite annoying because I personally use the auto-load previous session feature in Firefox: which make it always end up with two tabs loading Meebo and I have to take the trouble to close one of them. Hopefully that get resolved soon (but then again, the "no tabs" feature is on the way :) ).

Follow-up to Spam Blogs

2007-10-09T10:19:00.000+08:00

It had been a few weeks after I found out the previous Blogger subdomain of my site was maliciously occupied by a spam blog which not only filled with random content, it also shown deceiving full-screen ad that claims to be anti-spyware but actually attempts to install malicious software in your computer.

So I had filed a spam complaint to Blogger, and the next day the first thing I saw is the deceiving full-screen ad was gone, doesn't automatically attempt to install malicious software, but the page still remained intact with spam. Then I sort of let the issue slide.

Then today, out of curiosity, I revisited my old real-estate and pleasantly surprised that apparently Blogger had closed down the previous site and open it up for others to occupy it. Apparently it seemed that Hayden had picked it up and posted his new blog there, which is also a computer tech blog and the content seemed very promising. Looking forward to read more from him/her. :)

Other than that, I'm glad that Blogger was fast to resolve and had actually taken steps to get rid of spam blogs. Despite the fact that I didn't follow things up on a daily basis, but the fact that they took action is commendable. Good job! :)

Spam Blogs

2007-09-20T20:50:00.000+08:00

Once upon a time, The Digital Blue Wave does not resides at the same URL as what it is today: I migrated it to another "virtual real estate" (read: subdomain) in the same "neighbourhood" (Blogger).

Apparently months later after the move, my friend, Eng Lee told me that my old space was occupied. Just out of curiosity, I paid the newcomer a visit. And boy I was surprised!

Nastily surprised, in fact.

Yes, you probably could have guessed it: it has become a spam blog, much worse than one, in fact. It's pretty funny to see how creative those spammers had become, and in the end of the "scan", they even attempted to give me a fishy download file, which that could anything but a nice present for your computer. (well... unless you liked the idea of having your computer spied on)

And they are smart enough for not making it easy to report it as inappropriate (you know, there's a "Flag as inappropriate" button on the Blogger navigation bar on top that you can click on). Even with my attempts of not letting the mock malware scanning screen shown by disabling all graphics, CSS and Javascript, the "Flag as inappropriate" button is no where to be seen! O_O

I have to say that spammers are really a smart shady bunch indeed.

In the end, after rummaging around with Google, I finally found Blogger's spam reporting page (really, they should have make it more.... umm, visible). Just filed my report and let's see how long does it take for Blogger to respond to that one.

In the meantime, I got around to install GreaseMonkey and a script to make sure the damn flag is not made hidden by those hideous spammers. Hope that would greatly help me to weed out those spam blogs as soon as I see one.