Projects

Yup, i decided to hit the ‘upgrade distro button’. After taking all the necessary safety precautions:-

Fresh beverage…..Check.
Snacks………………..Check.
Seat Belt……………..Check.
Unplugged sensitive data HD…..nah be right, today i’m walkin’ on the wild side
Anything else? Nah don’t think so.

So i sat back, strapped in and clicked ‘Go’

Mostly successful, my bluetooth keyboard is broken – STILL! This is a *known* bug and was reported weeks ago but noone has fixed it yet, its partially caused by the missing HIDD binary from the Bluez-Tools package (think they’re going for a replacement method but it doesnt work. My lovely Logitech Dinovo Bluetooth keyboard simply won’t work – it doesnt even work fudging as a usb keyboard since Ubuntu detects the dongle as a bluetooth device – if you don’t install drivers under windows it just ‘works’ This had better get fixed soon as it is doing my head in using a PS2-USB adaptor which crashes every so often and i get stuck letters.

I just got Compiz working again finally, normally it would just max the cpu, it turns out this is a settings related issue which didnt get upgraded/disabled during the update. So that’s working again.

In an attempt to fix my keyboard and compiz i installed all of the test packages – thus breaking the entire system as it decided it wanted to change the kernel type to 386 (i only found this out later) so didn’t have the modules or the restricted modules installed. So everything broke – no hardware detection, no graphics to speak of etc etc etc.

Eventually i was able to fix it by installing the modules packages, why it changed the kernel type to begin with is beyond me.

Virtual box is now integrated into the distro which is nice, but i still have to manually do chmod 777 /dev/vboxdrv before i can run it, this is due to me being too lazy to look up how to add myself to the vbox group. Which should be done in the installer but isn’t.

Off Ubuntu…ish I attempted to use Mythbuntu (and hence the TV part of LinuxMCE) to find that neither of my tuners are supported, so that idea is just out completely. I’d like to try it properly – i like the idea of a backend-front end system (noisy server with big disks and lots of tuners in a cuboard, thin netbooting client on the front for playback) and being able to run clients all of which can watch tv all over the house. But alas no, it’ll have to wait until i buy new tuners.

Instead, i gave Vista a go on my mediacentre, it being a decent enough spec to run. It’s not bad either, the MCE seems less buggy, bit annoying to try to set familier settings as they all seem to have moved around but now bad. All my drivers were detected automatically – even the Tuner card. The RAID card didn’t work until i put the CD in (cheap designed before vista even came out hence no vista drivers) but it looked at the CD and said yes ok, i’ll use those – it actually worked. I’ll see how it goes, but so far it’s been more reliable than the last XP MCE install.

MS related, i was told about MS DreamSpark for Students https://downloads.channel8.msdn.com/ Any current student is eligible for this – either your institution must be a partner, you have an Eduserv Athens Password or an ISIC number (also on your NUS Extra-rip-off card) You authenticate your status by logging in with your Athens password (or thats how it did it, more about Salford Uni and MSDNAA later…) and you’re let in for unlimited free donwloads of things like Visual Studio 05/08 and Server 2003 Standard.

Not bad for a freebie, but not as much as i’m entitled to. Salford University, like many others are MSDNAA partners, this means they have the ability to give students access to the vast majority of MS software for free (or at least for the School of CSE) – do they allow this – NO! I suspect purely becuase of the admin overhead. Salford Uni isn’t even listed as a DreamSpark partner. Other universities give their students access to this system through their online systems (Salford has Blackboard), friends of mine elsewhere can get their hands on any MS software completely legally.

I on the other hand, am going to end up subscribing to TechNet Online – £200 a year for all the OSs and some office/server stuff isn’t bad. I’d rather have the CD Media version, but it’s twice the price.

Car wise, all isn’t bad, MOT on thursday, fingers crossed it passes. I’ve more or less sorted the Laptop in there now, i have another problem where the USB hub won’t run properly, but i’m forced to use it as the laptop only has one USB port! I found some software which monitors the power type (AC/Battery) and on switching to battery it waits 10s, closes the LCD Control App, waits 20s then hibernates. This way shutdown is automatic when i get out of the car. Start up it restores from hibernate and waits a bit, then launches the LCD control app.

I contacted the developer of LCDC, the LCD app, and asked him to put resiliency in on losing the USB/Com port, just like my Car2PC adaptor does. He said he would look into it. I’m still awaiting a response.

It’s highly likely i’ll end up developing my own, it’ll be more reliable.

I was looking at PicoITX boards – tiny little things, but i still like the idea of using a laptop – with batteries, so that i can completely cut power when the engine is off. I’ll have to replace the current machine though, with one which has a decent docking station at least – power, audio, multi usb, display, so nothing goes into the laptop itself and i can keep the ports well protected. I’ve strapped in the box of tools/fluids at least so damage is less likely.

Work wise things are going well – just sent off an order to the Isle of Man today, may be going out there to comission it in a while. Other big orders are coming up too, which is good, it keeps us busy but does get in the way of doing fun stuff!

I’ve also dug out my monitoring controller again, i finished another pair of line drivers yesterday, once i do the headphone amp and low pass filter that will be all of the audio circuitry done! Yay! I will the have to integrate switching and control, that’s a big job, i need relays, pics and usb GPIO. I have a 4-bit IR TRx module which will go in there too. I already have the light up buttons so i can get those mounted soon.

Well that’s all for now, i’ll keep you updated as and when stuff happens. TTFN