Tag Archives: linux

HTC G1 rocks

Personal, , ,

A few years ago I switched cell service from Sprint to AT&T since Linux was starting to get a presence in the GSM arena. Then came OpenMoko and hope I’d soon have the same freedom on my phone as on the pc. That project has slowed a little but Google came along with Android and my hope stayed afloat.

The G1 has been out since last year but unfortunately it was exclusively sold through T-Mobile, the one carrier that doesn’t have decent coverage in my area. T-Mobile was being generous with “unlock codes” but it seemed to be a hassle to buy a phone from one carrier only to try an use it on another. I’m always up for a challenge but that was a little much. So I waited.

It was then in December Google offered an “unlocked” version called the Dev Phone 1 usable on any GSM network. That was more to my liking but I wasn’t ready to jump in. That all changed this week. Not really sure what prompted me now, it has been in the news a bit with more manufactures signing on. As well as a new release coming called cupcake. Regardless I took the plunge this week and registered as a Android developer and ordered it.


    You do not have to be a developer or prove that you can code to register. Registering is a requirement before you can order.

It arrived today and after a few hours of use so far I’m impressed. I already have a GMail account so it’s a good fit when it comes to some of the main features. Getting it to work with AT&T was pretty simple too following what others have already noted on the internet adding a APN for AT&T as follows.

name: AT&T
apn: wap.cingular
proxy blank
port blank
username:WAP@CINGULARGPRS.COM
password:CINGULAR1
server blank
mmsc: http://mmsc.cingular.com
mms proxy: wireless.cingular.com
mms port: 80
mcc:310
mnc:410
apn type blank

.. and I was up and running. Of course having the GMail account for activation made things that much easier. All my GMail contacts and Calendars were synced immediately. When the contacts on my SIM weren’t loaded all I had to do was go to Contacts -> Menu -> Settings -> SIM contacts importer … done.

I’m not sure if I’ll do much on the development front but I do like that as an option. I’ve only just started looking at the app store, I’m sure I’ll get more into that as time goes on. I’ve yet to touch the GPS or camera and only played an mp3 or two. So for now my hats off to HTC and Google for putting out a quality phone with a wide array of features. Lets hope my attitude doesn’t change after a few months.

Virtualbox rules

Technology, , ,

The beginning of 2009 I decided to move back to windows for work and with the laptop dead again it seemed like the right time. Yes I forgot, after getting a new power supply it again has decided to shutdown randomly. At times receeding the hard drive, or the memory, or the battery seemed to bring it back but nothing consistent. So I picked up a used IBM T42, added a extended life battery and maxed the memory at 2GB (from the old laptop) and it has been great. Hopefully I’ll get a year or so out of it.

So about Virtual Box. Since the T42 came with a copy of XP I had a license to work with. Installing was simple using aptitude, but I did grab a more current version by updating /etc/apt/sources.list with.

deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian lenny non-free

This was mainly since the T42 runs Debian and the desktop runs Ubuntu. From there it was.

aptitude update
aptitued install virtualbox-2.1

.. and I was ready to create a virtual machine.

With the virtual machine created I loaded XP, updated and added the software I needed from our servers at work. When it came time to move it to the other machine I did run into a problem. But after checking the forums I was able to clone from one machine to the other and things are working in both places.

Sweet !!

Comcast using Zimbra

Technology, ,

A hockey buddy sent me a email recently where the mailer was reported as.

Mailer: Zimbra 5.0.9_GA_2533.RHEL5_64 (zclient/5.0.9_GA_2533.RHEL5_64)

I’ve always found it interesting what others use to manage their mail but I didn’t think he used open source, not to mention Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Zimbra. So that got me thinking he is a Comcast user and so am I, does Comcast use Zimbra ? I sent a message from my Comcast account then checked the mailer, nope it was AT&T Message Center. So I did some googling and sure enough I missed this one late last year.

The reason he has it and I don’t is it’s a feature of their Triple Play package, we only use TV and Internet. Regardless it’s pretty cool for open source software. I’ve been reading good things about Zimbra and was thinking about installing it on a test server about a month ago but never got to it. Five or six years ago when I was hosting my own mail server a product like this would have been sweet. Guess if I get crazy and want to go back I know now there’s a good option that’s free.

Linux continues to answer the call

Technology,

As I wrote a while ago I’ve been using Linux 100% now, no more Windows for work. Things have been going well since the switch and even though Wine won’t run a few apps I need Windows for work provides terminal services for access.

Every week their seems to be something new when it comes to supporting applications at work. That is not suppose to be my main job these days but when the phone rings it’s hard to say “sorry call Support”. So when the question came yesterday, “what does this cryptic error message mean other than the xml data is bad”, I turned again to open source software to provide an answer.

At first I thought it was odd being asked to trouble shoot an issue this way but I’m always up for a challenge. So to answer the question I needed to validate the data against the xml schema. The schema I did not have, those who were asking the question did … which is why I thought it was odd. So I asked for the schema and set off to find a tool to do the validation. Most browsers today will parse xml which is very helpful to identify illeal characters and tags that aren’t closed. However validating against schema is another story.

After some googling and checking both Screem and Geany, as I use both, I came across MLView. A simple little gui that can create, modify and validate xml documents. It installed in 30 seconds and a minute after that I had my answer. BTW -Their was nothing wrong with the data it was the transport.

It’s refreshing to know that solutions to problems are but a click away where in many instances others have already created something to meet the same challenge. The web is a wonderful tool, open source makes it that much better.

2 weeks with the new box

Personal,

Well it’s been 2 weeks now with the new box and no Windows, a little different not using Windows for work but it hasn’t required any more effort. Some of the apps we used before for personal things, Quicken and iTunes, their are open source alternatives so we haven’t missed them yet. On the work side for the windows only apps I need, which are 2, they are on a server that can be accessed via tsclient. Their is one app I don’t have, Microsoft’s Communicator/Net Meeting, wihich is missed somewhat. We are not a company that traditionally communicates via chat so it’s use is still taking shape. I had hoped the web version was installed on the same server with the other apps but that is not the case. Maybe IT will get to that.

So far I’m pleased… except for the sound card taking a dive this morning. Lightning struck the power line outside the house which seems to have blown the integraded sound on the mobo. I never lost power and nothing else seems to have been affected so may have to scrounge a PCI one up. For these last 2 weeks I’ve also been using Evolution for mail, work and personal. I’ve switched back and forth between it and Thunderbird over the years but have never been able to stick with one or the other. It’s nice that both use mbox format for storing messages, makes copying that much easier. But I think it will be back to Thunderbird now and I’ll use the Lightning add on for Calendar functions.