After many attempts, I am finally able to print to our HP Deskjet D1600 inkjet printer (which is hosted (connected to) the Linux CUPS server on my 24/7 Linux MythTV pc) from either of the two other Windows 7 PCs on our local LAN. Here’s what I had to do to set that up:
When running Linux, installing RockBox is almost trivial using the GUI driven RockboxUtility. Here’s a walk through of the installation of Rockbox on my Sansa.
Back in 2000, I wrote a series of programs to enhance my enjoyment of various flight simulator programs which ran on the “IBM PC” and clones. The series probably has minimal value now even though my source code is provided. However, in this day of “prior art” lawyering, the ideas herein contained might have some value to show that some patent troll’s invention has been previously published.
Say your Quicken financial files are kept on a USB Drive which has been formatted by TrueCrypt as an encrypted volume. Furthermore, perhaps you want to access the encrypted volume from within a virtual instance Quicken running inside a virtual machine in VirtualBox Win7. That way you never have to leave the Linux Desktop to run Quicken and the data generated and accessed by the virtual copy of Quicken running in your VirtualBox Win7 is directly saved back to the encrypted drive. Sound like your situation? Continue reading
Virtualization according to Larry: Here’s my take on Virtual Machines having experimented with VMWare Server (success), VirtualBox (success and recommended) XEN (never did run successfully) and now KVM which after a few days walking about in the dark was installed successfully. If you want to experiment with virtualization, try VirtualBox first. VB Version 3 installs from the Ubuntu Repository. This is a good introduction to virtualization. Take my advice though. Dedicate an entire HD to your experiments. Unplug the power from your other HD’s so that when the first Live CD/Install Program boots, you won’t be wondering if you are going to wipe out your production installations. After you get VB going, you should try KVM using the program Virtual Machine Manager. Just wipe out your experimental HD and start over) In this walk-through, I install KVM on a Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04 desktop system which I used as the host. I then install and configure a guest Ubunty Jaunty 9.04 desktop in that host. Continue reading
Kismet will run with this cheap USB wifi dongel installed. After you have installed kismet (sudo apt-get install kismet), edit the /etc/kismet/kismet.conf file (sudo gedit /etc/kismet/kismet.conf) and change the “sources” line to read: Continue reading
I have a Dell Inspiron E1505 laptop with a mini-pci card containing a Intel 3945 wireless chip. This works fine most of the time except when I want to connect to a weak RV Park access point. Then I want to use a USB Wireless “dongle” that I can move around until the signal strength is sufficient to allow a reliable connection. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a way to run the Intel card and a wireless USB dongle at the same time. I ended up blacklisting the Intel 3945 card then rebooting. If you have the same problem, this may be helpful. Continue reading
This excuse to dabble in Python was a response to sleepless nights and pathetic programming on late night radio. So I’m awake at 2:30 AM, there’s nothing on the radio, but my nearby LAN cifs server is filled with interesting podcasts and some media files. However, I don’t want to wake my sleeping partner by turning on a monitor, clicking on the keyboard, and otherwise creating a distraction. The answer: this TalkingMediaPlayer. (TMP) TMP is a python script that combines the media player Totem with an InfraRed Remote Control and a text to Speech Synthesizer. Give the location of your mounted media files to TMP, put in your ear buds, then grab your remote control. Arrow right moves to a new directory then speaks the name of the directory. Arrow down changes to the next file within this directory and so on. The play button starts the media player Totem running on the selected media file with appropriate audible feedback. All quiet and easy to run in the dark. Here’s the source and two demo files in which you can hear Talking Media Player in action:
Bins (http://bins.sautret.org/) is a photo album generator. Given a directory full of images, bins will format the images into an html page offering your choice of resized images and thumbnails. Many arrangements are possible and several templates are included. This walk through used bins version 1.1.29 which I installed from the Ubuntu Hardy 8.04 repository on March 26, 20009 using Ubuntu’s package manager synaptic. Continue reading
