Philip's Blog

While gnome-do hasn’t updated over the last year, a couple of weeks ago synapse was released. Synapse is a lightweight, super-fast Application launcher for Linux.

It comes with a Zeitgeist integration which let you search for things like: the video i watched half an hour ago. This new method of finding things sounds very interesting to me.
I recently discussed about file management with my workmates, and we all agreed that we personally don’t care were files were located on our disks, the main clue is to find things quickly and without browsing and searching through hundreds of folders. We still want to have access and the full control over it (for special situations where you want to have a file at an exactly position) but for everything else we don’t really care.

Who could explain Synapse better than its developer mhr3:

“It well… searches stuff… If you ever used Gnome Do / Quicksilver / Gnome Launch Box, you’ll feel right at home with Synapse, if not, the only thing you need to do is run Synapse (or press Ctrl+Space to summon it), type what you’re looking for, and Synapse will present you a list of items that match your query.

Once you found the item you were looking for, you can perform an action on it (and these are defined by the plugins you’re using). If you don’t like the default action, just press Tab and search appropriate action.

And besides this primary use-case, you can also browse recent items which were logged by Zeitgeist, in case you close a document by mistake or just want to hear again the music track that played a few minutes ago.”

Its really really fast and has a Plugin management. The list of available Plugins isn’t as long as the gnome-do list, but i think this is a matter of time. On my desk, it looks like this:

Be sure to give it a try:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:synapse-core/ppa
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install synapse

It sort of PITA managing webDav share under Linux. If you want to save some time you should look at the script I wrote to manage webdav shares under Ubuntu Linux.

If you want to run the script on a other disto, just contact me, so we can look at the necessary steps to do. You can find the source code of my script @ https://wiki.enterpriselab.ch/el/public:linux:ilias_webdav

Its a well known fact that my laptop is schizophrenic. Sometimes after rebooting the device, a complete new side of its personality comes up. There is the well known Ubuntu side, but also the evil side (I think its called Windows 7, or something like that).

From time to time its necessary to medicate the Win7 personality because the dark side is getting stronger and stronger.
Personally I like to to this when the evil side is sleeping (And Ubuntu is up and running). Why? Ok lets see:

• No evil things running on the Win7 can disturb or dupe the doctor
• The doctor is sure to clean up everything

I use ClamAV as doctor. How to make a appointment:
sudo apt-get install clamav
Send the doctor to a course. So we can be sure he is up to date with all known infections:
sudo freshclam
Figure out where the evil side is located on the hard disc (/mnt/win7). Then send the doctor to his house and let em clean it up recursively (-r)
clamscan -r -l scanres.txt --remove=no /mnt/win7 > scanlog.txt

The doctor will write a final report to ./scanres.txt and a documentation of what he reviewed to ./scanlog.txt
It’s also possible to tell the doctor to cut out all infected parts automatic with: –remove=yes But you should think about that. He will cut it, regardless what is infected.

I think this is a good way to treat my Laptop and keep it clean.

I like to have all original sized images, but to share they’re just too large. So here’s a quick tutorial how to batch resize and compress your images with a shell one-liner:

- Install ImageMagick with something like:
sudo apt-get install imagemagick
- Copy all the images you want to resize to a folder (keep the original one’s)
- Resize and compress all Images with:
mogrify -scale 50% -compress JPEG -quality 70  *.JPG

Mogrify is very powerfull. You can find a list of all supported options here.

EDIT: Google removed the Download Image. Manual Updates are no more possible.
Google rolls out Android 2.2 for the N1 right now. To manually upgrade your N1 to FroYo:

- Download update Image
- Rename the Image to update.zip
- Shut down your N1
- While powering up, hold down the Volume-Down button
- Choose recovery with the Volume-Down button and press the Power-Button
- When you see a big exclamation point, press the Power and Volume-Up button
- select “Apply sdcard:update.zip.”
- Wait until your Phone reboots

You should check your Battery status before to make sure you Phone can complete the whole Update Process.

This Tutorial is confirmed to work in the UK, and now also for Swiss N1′s. I love the new Thetering Options (USB and a Portable WiFi hotspot on your N1), and the auto-Update feature for your installed Apps.

Like Euro-Droid said: “You hear that, HTC Desire owners? You’re second-class citizens already!”

Zattoo has released a new Ubuntu Client based on Flash.

• Get the .deb: Download
• If you run a 32 bit Ubuntu, the deb works out of the box. Else install it with sudo dpkg -i --force-all ~/Downloads/zattoo*.deb
• If you have installed the Adobe 64 bit Flash Plugin, delete it!.
• Install the flashplugin from the ubuntu repo: sudo apt-get install flashplugin-installer

Your done!

I found time to write about my Ubuntu setup. You can find some informations about fancy Linux apps here:

Philip’s Wiki

Ubuntu 9.10 (karmic koala) comes with Grub 2 (1.97~beta4). Some improvement:
- Universal support for UUIDs
- Scripting support including conditional statements and functions
- Boots from LVM, RAID and ext4 directly
- Non-X86 platform support (such as PowerPC)
So, lets see how we can make some default grub-legacy changes in grub 2.

Change screen resolution (for grub-menu):
gap@devBox:~$ sudo vi /etc/default/grub
Now you can edit the GRUB_GFXMODE (uncomment and change VBE Mode)
GRUB_GFXMODE=1280x1024
You can show your supported VBE modes when you hit c in the grub menue, and run vbeinfo in the appearing console.

Change the tty resolution:
Even if my laptop has a intel grafic chip, im using the uvesafb kernel module. These, because you have much more work with the intelfb module.
So, you have to load the uvesafb, and you should also be sure its not blacklisted.
# write the name of your module in this file:
sudo vi /etc/initramfs-tools/modules
# uncomment the line if the modul is blacklisted:
sudo vi /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-framebuffer.conf
# update initramfs
sudo update-initramfs -u
# install v86d (if you use uvesafb)
sudo apt-get install v86d
After that we can edit GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT in /etc/default/grub:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="video=uvesafb:mode_option=1600x1200-24"
After a
sudo update-grub
sudo reboot
Youre done.

In September I began my studies in computer science at the Hochschule Technik & Architektur in Horw. I planned to do a full time study but changed my mind when a friend came to me and asked, if I could imagine to study extra-occupational. He gave me the address of Bruno Joho and in a little while I found myself in an interview with Bruno. He made me really enthusiastic and curious about more! So I decided to apply for the job, even if I had no Solaris experience and, in my last job, was mostly employed in ANSI c programming. Now, the first semester in the enterprise lab core team is over, I’ve seen a lot of new things, and there is still so much more, that I’m curious what the future will bring.