Shared Debian Learning of the Day

 Geek  No Responses »
Mar 222004
 

I tried installing VNC over the weekend and ran into difficulty. I’m running the stable release of Debian 3.0 (Woody), so I went ahead and pulled that package version of vncserver.

(BTW, it’s been said a million times before, but I don’t think I’ve raved about it yet. apt-get is really amazing. It’s definitely one area where this particular linux distribution has Windows beat in ease of use.)

Anyway, back to VNC. Everything installed like a dream as usual, but upon trying to run vncserver, I got “~/.vnc : No such file or directory”. Hmmm, a directory listing showed that the directory had, in fact been created and seemed to have usable permissions. I also tried vncpasswd with the same result.

Frustrated, I searched the VNC user mailing list, found a mention of similar problems, but no solution. I subscribed and posted my question with as much info as I could provide, hoping someone would help out. While I slept, a helpful user named CeBee from the Netherlands gave me the solution. Apparently, something is messed up in the vncserver script on Debian and it doesn’t correctly check for the .vnc directory. It’s necessary to run vncpasswd.real to set the password for your vnc session and then vncserver will start without problems.

An answer in less than 12 hours. The Internet and the community built up around open source software still manage to amaze me sometimes.

 Posted by on March 22, 2004 at 8:02 pm

Phone hacking phun

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Mar 102004
 

I found this article on unlocking your Nokia GSM phone via BoingBoing. It worked on the first try. I don’t travel abroad much, but I might have a need to purchase a pre-paid SIM at some point. It’s kind of stupid that you have to go through hoops to use a phone as it was originally intended. I just love sticking it to THE MAN when he tries to keep me down with his overpriced international roaming fees.

 Posted by on March 10, 2004 at 6:45 pm

Some day…

 Geek  No Responses »
Feb 192004
 

This is an impressive demonstration of the power of CSS. One of my long list of projects "when I have free time" is to abandon all of the table-based layout that I’m familiar with and go whole hog with CSS. Of course, I didn’t try looking at the various designs in different browsers yet. That should be amusing.

 Posted by on February 19, 2004 at 2:37 am

And there was much rejoicing

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Jan 142004
 

So after failing several times to figure out how to get the Debian machine not to boot into the screwed up X Window configuration, it dawned on me that I could ssh into the box from my WinXP machine. Duh. A little "su" and some "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86" and I’m now posting from my nifty new Linux install. My first lesson is that Konqueror sucks as a web browser. It couldn’t render the security code for login on this site. Thank god Mozilla is installed by default as well. Wonder how long I can go before I screw something up and abandon this. Anybody want to place a bet?

 Posted by on January 14, 2004 at 7:16 am

XFree me from having to be a video card geek

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Jan 132004
 

So, I downloaded and ISO image of the latest stable release of Debian Linux, burned it to a CD, rebooted and started the install. Everything went fine until I hit the X Windows configuration. Being that I haven’t really messed around with Linux for about three years, I forgot how easy it is so screw up an X Windows install. I wrote down a bunch of hardware info about the machine from WinXP before I reformatted the hard drive, but neglected to check out the video card info. BIG mistake. I ended up guessing vga on the chipset and of course, it doesn’t work. Since I inheirited this machine from someone else, I don’t know what the hell is in there off the top of my head.

Is it too much to ask for a Linux installer that can examine my video card and configure everything so that I don’t have to know the refresh rates of my monitor and the chipset of my video card? I think Red Hat got this right at some point, but they’re now dropping their traditional packaging and splitting into Red Hat Enterprise and the Fedora Project. Since I fear what is new, I’m a little skeptical of Fedora and I’m staying away for now. For instance, there isn’t any documentation for Fedora, per se. It appears that I’d have to use the Red Hat 9 manuals if I were going to try it out now. At the same time, I’m dreading trying to tweak an existing X Windows install. I may spend a little time trying to get it to work, but it’s not really something to which I want to devote more than an hour or so. Either way, I’m looking at yanking the video card and examining it. Not a big deal, but still. I can whine can’t I?

 Posted by on January 13, 2004 at 1:10 am

Phonecams. Art.

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Dec 022003
 

Now that I’ve had a phonecam for a couple of months, I’ve been intending to use it more often. I’ve run into a couple of situations where I should’ve used it, but didn’t. Perhaps these two recent finds via BoingBoing will inspire me. Speaking of BoingBoing, they switched IPs not too long ago. I can access it fine from work, but I still get the old IP (and, hence, a different server) from home. What’s up with RoadRunner’s DNS?

 Posted by on December 2, 2003 at 1:21 am

Geek snort.

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Nov 202003
 

Lots of geek stuff that I haven’t posted about lately.

I’m gradually getting in deeper and deeper with the Nokia 3650 that I mentioned in a previous post. I wrote my first Java app for it last night. Yeah, it was just the obligatory HelloWorld app and it wasn’t much, but at least it’s something. It’s my first foray into J2ME. I have yet to come up with a good idea for an app, but I’ll think of something. I’m contemplating some sort of web services client. I could try out either the google api or Amazon’s for a first attempt. I hadn’t mentioned it, but I downloaded a Commodore 64 emulator and am now able to play things like Zaxxon and Pitfall on my phone. I also found copies of LodeRunner and Miner 2049er, two games that I spent quite a lot of time with as a young lad.

We’ve finally joined the rest of the world in desktop computing. I’ve been on a Micron 300mhz PC since late 1997. It was brand new and bleeding edge at the time, but it’s woefully outdated now. I think I paid almost three grand for it. I picked up a Dell Dimension 4100 700mhz PC from work overstock and just bought a DVD/CD burner for it. This is my first CD/DVD burner. Pretty pathetic. I’m waiting for Amazon to deliver a copy of Nero before installing it. Truthfully, even the "new" Dell is underpowered and just barely meets the minimum requirements for the burner. I think my next PC purchase will be one that I build myself (probably an AMD 64-bit processor) so that I can cannibalize existing parts including my new DVD burner.

After hearing all the reviews about Panther (the new version of Mac OS X), I’ve been lusting after a Powerbook or an iBook, but I think I’ll resist those temptations and busy myself with installing Debian or something on Henry’s old PC. He’s getting my Micron 300mhz as Mary got a 700mhz Dell laptop (also a purchase from the overstock at work). I hooked her up with a 54G wireless card so she use it throughout the house while chasing down the Princess. I already resisted going for one of the new Zaurus PDAs, a temptation that Jason seems to have succumbed to.

In addition to all of this other geek junk, I bought a USB/Bluetooth adapter to allow my phone and Dell to talk with each other at home. I’ve been transferring files via the IR port on my work laptop until now.

 Posted by on November 20, 2003 at 1:29 am

Geek out

 Geek  No Responses »
Sep 282003
 

Amazon was running a great rebate deal on the Nokia 3650 which basically has them and AT&T or T-Mobile paying you $20 to get the phone with a 2 year contract. Since this phone is the uber-geek phone with a JVM, Symbian OS, camera, Bluetooth, and infrared among other thing, I fell for it hook, line and sinker. Of course, since I already had another contract with AT&T, this means that Mary now has a cell phone as well. I had to upgrade my existing phone to a 3595 because in order for us to have a shared plan we both have to be on the GSM/GPRS network as opposed to TDMA which is what my existing phone was on. The coolest (read as geekiest) thing about this is that with the new phone, I can now moblog. I’m going to permanently link this somewhere, but you can check out the first post (and subsequent posts) here. It’s setup such that I can take a picture with the phone, attach it to an email with whatever text I want and send it to the site. It’ll automagically post the text and picture as an entry on the moblog. Pretty sweet.

We went over to Ted and Jenny’s for dinner tonight to meet Tess. Kids and grown-ups had a good time. I’ll post pictures from the digital camera later tonight or tomorrow.

 Posted by on September 28, 2003 at 5:58 am

Baby Chaos Pool Outing

 Family, Geek  No Responses »
Jun 022003
 

We all headed to Deep Eddy pool yesterday for an afternoon of Baby Chaos. Two of the other kids from our birthing class were there along with a set of twins. The La managed to get stung by a bee on the palm of her left hand, but she survived without too much trauma. Once again, Sofia saved us by taking a ton of pictures.

My computer is still out. I could just go ahead and re-install the OS, but I’m trying to exhaust all my options for saving the existing install first, particularly my email archives.

 Posted by on June 2, 2003 at 6:43 pm
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