I’ve just put up a page on my impressions of the way hp has customised a beautiful front end for Ubuntu 8.04 on the hp mini 1000 MIE.  Click on the tab labelled “hp mini MIE” on the lower edge of the top banner (showing the HP 32S calc) to read.  

The page talks about the bundled apps and suggests additional software you may want to add, and the command lines to do this with. (why command line?  hp “simplified” the add/remove programs list, probably to keep things safe and orderly for non technical users).  

Have a read if you’re interested in Linux for the common man, or are curious about the MIE interface, which I’m tempted to put on my other 2 machines running Ubuntu.  

If you’d like to read more on the interface, here’s a good post from downloadsquad.com

My podcast listening categories tend to be around tech and business.  I’ve just been compelled to add another podcast to my list.  Peter Day’s World of Business, a program you can catch on the BBC World Service, is readily accessible from the iTunes podcast directory.  It’s all business, of course, but often with a tech slant.  Last week, it was an interview with John Chambers.  This week, there’s no tech, but still about a “recent” trend that will reshape business -  fair trade. 

If you are an iTunes user like me, fire up iTunes and go to the iTunes store.  Type the following in the search bar:

podcast bbc peter day

If you’re not on itunes, you can go directly to the worldbiz podcast page on the BBC’s website.

Be warned – you can only get the latest episode so check in regularly or risk missing a program.

Strongly recommended.

Incidentally – my podcast listening life is not all work and no play.  If you’d like a bit of entertainment, there’s a new podcast from Shareen Wong and Joe Augustin – they’re now doing with podcasts what they used to do on their morning radio show, sans songs and sans station management censorship.  You’ll find the episodes listed on their morning jam website.

I’ve always loved newspapers.  

Newspapers and a cup of coffee and a few minutes to enjoy both together is my idea of an ideal start to any morning. 

Yes, I’ve sometimes resorted to having a laptop in front of me as coffee companion, with the news sites I love loaded up but this is only when I was not able to get a paper. 

The BBC World Service covered the closing of the Rocky Mountain News, a mere 55 days before it’s 150th anniversary, and attributed it’s demise to the trend of news consumers increasingly turning to the internet instead of the newspapers.  

The Media companies, once so powerful, so influential, are now either embracing a move to the internet in an attempt to survive, or folding up their businesses.  

Of course, the bad economic climate had a role.  But there have been bad economic climates before, many in fact during the Rocky Mountain News’ nearly 150 years of operation.  

As content is increasingly consumed in digital form, those involved in the packaging and distribution must evolve too.

It’s ironic that the first time I’ve ever read a page from the Rocky Mountain News is from their website – and it’s the goodbye article on the last issue front page.  I’m encountering the newspaper on the very medium that helped bring out it’s demise.  Ironic too that the other great anniversary being celebrated during this time is that of Charles Darwin. 

This is the last of the 3 posts on having a Linux based hp 2133 that, thanks to it’s size and the decent performance of Ubuntu, will be a machine I carry most places with me, for taking notes, checking mail, writing, organising my day, talking to my Daughter in california …….

I once thought this would all be done on a smart phone.  I’m now convinced that I’d rather have 2 separate devices – this mininote with a very comfortable keyboard and decent screen size, and a basic phone that does just one thing and does that very well – making and taking phone calls.

So the last piece of getting this machine set up is the audio aspects.  First, getting Skype working well in Ubuntu (microphone and built in webcam), and then being able to record Audio notes.

Setting up Skype:

In Skype’s Options/Sound Devices you should have “HDA VIA VT82xx (hw:VT82xx,0)” set for Sound In, Sound Out.
Double click the speaker icon in the task bar (top right) to open it.
In the Device box, it should say HDA VIA VT82xx (Alsa mixer)
Select the Recording tab.
CLick on the Preferences button.
Ensure Microphone, Capture and Internal Mic are all checked.
Back in the recording tab, make sure the microphone, capture and internal mic icons are enabled.  That is, the little microphone picture under the right volume bar should be clear, with no red box and white X in it.
Plug a headset with mic into the two sockets on the left of the machine.
Do a skype test call.  You should be able to hear your voice played back to you after the recording section.

The Webcam works nicely with Skype for video calls – no need for any additional installation steps or tweaking.

Audio Recording

Recording in the default Sound Recorder app does not work, whether with the internal or plug-in mic.

However, audio recording works well using Audacity:
Install using add/remove programs.
Accept defaults for audio in edit/preferences
Double click the speaker icon in the task bar, select the Recording Tab, and enable the mic and capture sections.
Back in Audacity, increase the mic recording level (default is 0, all the way to the left).
Click on the record button
Stop when satisfied, then click the play button to listen to what you’ve recorded.

For the other parts of this series:
>>Part 1 (setup)
>>Part 2 (BIOS & video tips)
>>Photos here and here

The books below are courtesy of the Singapore National Library…..

Wallpaper courtesy of the Watchmen movie site

hp2133 – skin on palmrest

Originally uploaded by time-travel

Will soon be posting the third and final part of my Ubuntu 8.1 on hp mininote 2133 series. Meantime, this post is a good chance to test Flickr’s blog post feature.

The skin (thanks Steph!) is based on a manila envelope design – looks great on the mininote and kinda makes you think of the clever way Mr Jobs unveiled the MacBook air (and the fantastic Yael Naim song that went with the ad)

I’ve been dual-booting this machine with Vista Business, just so that I can get VPN access to my office network if I need it. Vista is fine with the unnecessary services and eye candy stripped off, but I’m finding myself tempted to replace it with the Windows 7 beta. The Windows 7 beta is surprisingly stable. I’ve testing it on an old Tablet PC – the performance is good, the handwriting recognition is better …… wait, I should simply save this for a future post. Another day.

In just 2 days time, it will be the first day of the new Chinese Year, the year of the Earth Ox.

If you’ve found yourself amused, confused or both by the crisis of confidence that’s ravaged equities, commodities and property values, and have given up hope in the advice of financial analysts armed with their MBAs, Charts and Spreadsheets, you owe it to yourself to read the latest in the FengShui Index series published by CLSA.

It’s available from the CLSA website, but be warned – you need Internet Explorer to download the PDF of the Index.  (more on this later)

The CLSA website is at http://www.clsa.com/index.php

If you visit the page soon enough, you’ll find the download link on the bottom left.

Here’s an exerpt from the early part of the PDF:

Well, despite it shaping up as a Cow of a year, the index shows there’s no cause for udder despair.  Admittedly, we’ll all have to plough hard for our pennies during this Year of the Brown Cow (‘brown’ because of the prevailing earth element and ‘cow’, rather than bull or ox, because of the yin, or female, influence this cycle). However, there’ll be some terrific money-making opportunities for the sage and the swift.

The BBC recently ran a story in their business section on the release of the index that gives a nice summary that you can start with, if you’re too busy with spring cleaning, cooking up the reunion dinner or hopping from one relative’s home to another.  But get to the actual CLSA document eventually – it’s definitely worth a read.

Now, on to the Web aspect of this story.

I mentioned earlier that one requires IE to get the PDF.  After clicking the download link on the main page, one is lead to another page with a legal/disclaimer statement that one must accept by clicking into a checkbox.  Only after clicking in does a “Yes I accept” button become un-greyed and clickable.

With IE, this works well.

With Firefox, my default choice of web browser, clicking on the checkbox does not make the “Yes I accept” button clickable.

With Chrome, clicking on the checkbox makes the “Yes I accept” button clickable, but after clicking it and waiting a while, you get an error saying that there’s a problem opening the page.

The difficulty with Firefox and Chrome is odd because doing a “view source” on the page shows that it’s just javascript calls.

with Firefox in Linux (Ubuntu 8.1), I get the same result as Firefox on Windows.  The other browser that’s installed by default in my Ubuntu setup is Epiphany, which like Firefox is gecko powered.  

With Safari on a Mac, the checkbox and download button work well.  Firefox on the Mac has the exact same problem as Firefox on Windows and Linux.  

There’s a pretty good chance that most of the people accessing the FengShui Index from CLSA’s website are using IE so CLSA’s download metrics won’t suffer from their Firefox/Windows and Chrome incompatibility.  But one wonders how the web guys could have let the page go up without at least getting it to work on Firefox.

In this post:

1. A BIOS upgrade from F.03 to F.05 prevents the GUI from starting up
2. Getting the Via drivers in, and Compiz to run

I helped a friend install apps into her Vista 2133 this morning, and noted that her system was at BIOS level F.05.  My machine, being older, was F.03.  I downloaded the update file from hp.com, burned the ISO to a CD, and booted from the CD to perform the update.  The update went very well, but succeeded in killing X – the system kept getting stuck with a black screen and a single cursor right at the point where startX was supposed to happen.  I found this post by user luvit on hp2133.com which suggested that the 05 bios required the use of the latest via driver.  Fortunately, his post had a link to the F.04 bios iso, and downgrading the BIOS enabled me to start up Intrepid and log in successfully.

The next step was to install the Dec2 Via drivers – an attractive thought because this version was supposed to run Compiz.  Again, a post by user luvit on the Ubuntu forums came to my aid with instructions on installing the Via drivers and the link to download the files.  These are the steps from the Via driver readme file:

 How to Install/Uninstall the via Linux Driver
   1.1 uncompress the via driver package
	tar zxvf ./5.74.33.85a-44597.tar.gz
   1.2  Install the via linux driver
	cd   ./5.74.33.85a-44597
	sudo ./vinstall
        Reboot system

I used the xorg.conf file linked to the post, but still needed a few more steps to make it work well (I’ll spare you the errors and odd video behavior I kept bumping into)

Because I had accepted an update (bringing the kernel up to 27-9), the Via install script was incorrect, and the following steps had to be performed manually to fix it.  Instructions for this came from a post by JeeBee on hp2133:

1. cd /lib/modules/2.6.27-9-generic/kernel/ubuntu/via_chrome9/
2. ls -l
3. sudo mv via_chrome9.ko via_chrome9.ko.fails
4. sudo mv via_chrome9.ko.viabak via_chrome9.ko
5. Reboot

Once the Via drivers were installed, I upgraded the bios again to F.05, and this time, Ubuntu had no trouble loading the GUI.

Now to get Compiz working.  The next step is to add “via” to the whitelist in the /usr/bin/compiz file, per the instructions in the Notes section of the via driver package readme.txt

Then, replace the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file with the contents of the example in this page, from the Ubuntu Wiki (see section for xorg.conf for 3D)

Start up Add/Remove programs, and type compiz in the search box.  Select “Advanced Desktop Effects Settings” and install.

Reboot

Right click an empty portion of the desktop and select “Change Desktop Background”.  Click on the “Visual Effects” tab, and select the “Extra” option.

After that, you can go to System>Preferences>CompizConfig Settings Manager and configure it as you please.

A page that I found very helpful in configuring Compiz is this post from the Xubuntu Blog.

It’s been a lot of trial and error and looking up lots of forum and blog posts, but it’s all very nicely working now.  I have the many contributors of the posts I’ve linked to above to thank for this.

I use VLC for playing video, and I notice that if I skip the slider ahead, the video window is black until I shift the window a little.  Not a problem for me, and something I’d gladly exchange for the eye candy compiz brings.

Have not yet tried getting the webcam to work with Skype – that’s next on my to-do list.  But first, a full backup is in order, just in case.

>>Part 1 (setup)
>>Part 3 (audio tips)
>>Photos here and here

Finally got my mininote 2133 2 days ago, and spent a very enjoyable day yesterday getting it just-so.

Since my post on having dual boot Vista/Ubuntu hardy on a compaq tc4400 5 months ago, I’ve had a chance to play with Intrepid on several desktop and notebook PCs (as well as OpenSUSE 11) as part of the school IT lab project I wrote about a few weeks back.  Between 8.04 and 8.1, the installation has gotten so much easier.

Setting up broadcom wireless had been a little tricky in Hardy.  With Intrepid, there’s an alert on the taskbar, with a popup window offering the Broadcom STA wireless driver via a simple ACTIVATE button.  Google Toolbar’s bookmarks installed correctly without the need for installing pre-req packages.

There were two little things on the mininote 2133 specifically that needed special knowledge that was very readily available on the excellent Ubuntu hardware wiki page for this model.

The first was to select the “Safe Graphics Mode” option (press F4 at the opening screen after language selection) before selecting the “Install Ubuntu” option.  Failure to do this resulted in the windowed installation screen being unusable when it appeared.

The second was to modify the default xorg.conf file to provide the proper native resolution (1280 x 768 ) that the mininote’s display required.

I had previously shrunk the Vista partition, and deleted the recovery partition from the harddisk, leaving a very healthy 70G for Ubuntu to use.  In the partitioning options section of the install, I asked Ubuntu to use all the unpartitioned space it could find.

I’ve pretty much set into a routine with Ubuntu installs, and for the hp mininote, it went like this:

1. Install Ubuntu from CDROM (I had the hp external optical drive)
2. Connect to LAN (wired) to get and install updates
3. Accept the Broadcomm wireless proprietary driver, after which I disconnected the lan cable and worked wirelessly
4. Modify the xorg.conf file and set the correct screen resolution
5. Turn on subpixel smoothing for a better display (right click desktop, select “Change Desktop Background”, Select FONTS tab, then the subpixel smoothing option.
6. Install Google Toolbar from Firefox, and set my google ig page as home.
7. Install VLC (via Add/Remove Programs) and test this with files from my collection of songs and video.  To make VLC the default application for these media types, right click a media file, select properties, click on the “open with” tab, then configure for VLC.
8. Install OpenOffice 3.0 (using Marius Nestors excellent instructions)
9. Using the Add/Remove Programs, install Flash, Microsoft Core Fonts, Sun Java 6 runtime and browser plugin.  Test that these work by playing a video on Youtube (tests flash and java) and logging into internet banking sites that requre the Java plugin.
10. Open Places/Computer, and right click the drive representing the Vista partition.  Select MOUNT, and check that the files in my vista folders can be seen.
11. Download some nice wallpaer (I chose something from the Watchmen movie site) with Scaled Style, black background (to match the wallpaper), and set the top and bottom taskbars semi transparent so the wallpaper shows through slightly.
12. The final step was to look for a good cbr/cbz comic viewer, and I settled on comix, which is available in the add/remove programs (synaptic) package manager.  There was an error about needing an unrar module the first time I tried opening a cbr file, but this was fixed by running terminal and executing sudo apt-get install unrar

That’s it!  This is going to be my main Linux machine from now on, and I’ll do my personal work (writing, internet banking, eBook and eComic reading) on this (photo and music work is on the family mac!).  That will free up my reliance on my old tc4400 tablet, so I can upgrade it to Intrepid and finally work to get the tablet features working on that machine.

Over the last 24 hours, I’ve tested startup and shutdown times (fast compared to vista, which I’ve already stripped unessential services and eye candy from to improve performance), and suspend works very well.

The keyboard, which I’ve heard complaints about, is excellent, my only complaint being the loss of the independent Pg UP/DOWN keys.  These keys are available, but require the Function key to be pressed before hand.  This will force me to learn other keyboard shortcuts to navigate webpages, pdfs and comix.  So perhaps it’s a something I can live with.

Battery life seems decent – I ran for an hour off battery this evening, reading a PDF magazine, and still had a half-tank of battery life after that.

Also heard complaints about heat – the bottom getting really hot.  I did not find this machine any hotter than other laptops I’ve used.  Was careful to keep the ventilation holes (at the bottom) clear, though.

In the past, I would have set vista to be the default OS in Grub, but since I’m not going to do any office work on this laptop, I”m leaving Ubuntu as default, and Vista is there as a nice-to-have in case I need something Ubuntu won’t give me.  Which seems unlikely at this time as all my writing, communications and entertainment needs seem to be ably met by Intrepid Ibex.

The hp 2140 has already been announced, and I supposed I could have waited a little longer to get that machine and the improvements that come with it.  But I’m plenty happy with the performance I’m getting from Ubuntu on the 2133 and will stay with this for quite  a while.

>>Part 2 (bios & video tips)
>>Part 3 (audio tips)
>>Photos here and here

I’ve just given Blurb a try.  This was something I promised myself I’d do during the end of year holiday between Christmas Day 2008 and New Year’s Day 2009. Blurb is a service for self-publishing – it enables authors to sell books that they create using Blurb software, on the Blurb online bookshop.  Buyers can purchase any uploaded books made public on the Blurb online bookshop – but only physical copies in softcover and hardcover are for sale – there is no purchase option for downloadable PDFs.  

My new book, a series of digitally edited photos taken during a trip to Cambodia (Siem Reap specifically) in november 2003, was put together using Blurb’s free software.  Currently in version 1.9.9, it’s called Blurb BookSmart, and is available in Windows and Mac versions.  I tried both, and found them to be a much easier application to use than Microsoft Publisher 2007.  (In the “old” days, we used PageMaker and Ventura).

To give it a fair test, I relied completely on BookSmart’s built-in themes and page layouts.  The final book size came to about 42Mb (the right size for a 40 page book), and was a relatively painless upload (about 15 minutes) to the Blurb website.  Once the upload completes, Blurb’s webpage launches automatically, and after logging in, one is able to order a copy (which I did – a hardcover edition printed on premium paper, with a dustjacket), make the book public on the bookstore website (meaning browsers of the site can see the title, preview the first 15 pages and purchase online), set your price and promote it.

The book preview feature is surprisingly good.  It’s a flash application that renders the book image from the upload – here’s the example of the cover in the preview:

Flash Preview of Book on Blurb

Promotion is available via a “tell a friend” link, a “make a badge” widget that generates html to paste into a website or blog page (see the badge at the end of this post), and “post to the web” – which provides links to del.icio.us, digg, facebook and the like.

 

I won’t be able to comment on the print quality until the book arrives in several week’s time – though feedback I’ve read in forums suggests I’ll be in for a pleasant surprise.  All my images were created as 300dpi pictures in Photoshop Elements, and I was careful to set them to the right physical dimensions before importing them into BookSmart, so I really should not worry too much.

Cambodia Pictu…

digitally edited t…

By Philip Lee

Book Preview