As my primary notebook has proven that can run several terminals, a Firefox tab or four, Eclipse, and the Arduino IDE simultaneously without shitting the bed, it is time for my netbook to follow suit.
Q: What suit?
A: The Ubuntu 11.04 suit…you know, Natty Narwhal?
Q: I don’t know cards. This is cards, with the suit thing, right?
A: Busted. No idea…very unsure of the spelling of ‘suit’ too FWIW
natty nar
Tune in tomorrow to see how it all ends up. Wear a suit.
For the most part, I have had good luck with Compiz, Unity, and Ubuntu 11.04 in general. I have said it before, but worth a repost…if you do a vanilla install of Ubuntu, the first thing you should do is get the Compiz configuration tool…I’ll even spell it out.
1) Open a terminal window (Ctrl+Alt+t)
2) Run this command: sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager
3) Hit enter…done. Nothing to it.
Anyhow, I have seen the following bug a few times…so I finally snagged a screenshot:
wobbly fail
It appears that the workspace switcher and wobbly windows have some sort of issue with one another. I don’t see this when I use keyboard shortcuts, and I have been employing those nearly extensively to pop around. Super Key+S (Windows key / Apple key) to open the switcher…or bypassed with Ctrl+Alt+left or Ctrl+Alt+up for instance. It works slickly, once you spend some time poking around.
I suppose it would be prudent for me to enter this bug into the Ubuntu QA system…I am not in the mood to search for duplicate tickets. I do that crap all day at work…enough is enough.
Drop me a comment if you have seen this one in action. Or, if you have any workspace suggestions, send that over too.
Liquid crystal displays are pretty awesome. Command line interfaces are very awesome. Hmm…
I started daydreaming at work about how to go about making hardware interface with an RSS feed. I have seen some projects that use Arduinos with ethernet shields to check Twitter, for example, but they seem unnecessarily bulky. Or clumsy. I spend a lot of time working on the command line, and love to put together dirty little scripts to solve problems. It sort of goes along the lines of ‘when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail’…I figured that the same thing could be implemented with a little shell scripting and my trusty Arduino, sans anything complicated.
So far, so good.
bad lab mobile
I put together a sketch (after the bump) to drive my LCD, writing serial output to the screen. After verifying that the sketch worked via the Arduino IDE’s serial monitor, I popped open a CLI and got to work. FWIW, I am using Ubuntu 11.04 still…ctrl-alt-t pops open a terminal window…unity has me all over shortcuts these days. Anyhow, I was able to verify that I could echo text and direct it to the USB port that the Arduino was mounted to. No sweat.
As a proof of concept, I decided to display the number of times that I had the word “awesome” on swantron.com. Once the LCD was shown to work, the sky is the limit…see some regex, pipes, wget, and so forth in action:
CLI FTW
Survey says:
+11 awesome
Eleven “awesome”s. Awesome.
(Hit the bump for some code, an oddity, and more fun…)
Continue reading
The internets have been abuzz with talk of further stifling of Android tethering. Regardless of what will come of this, I would recommend getting a setup in place. May as well…you paid for the device. Am I right?
My breaking point came with continued poor results from the wireless connection at work. Enough was enough. After trying several mean with which to tether, I think I have found one that is suitable for my needs.
scrubbed MAC / IP
My hardware is simple…mid-line Dell Studio Notebook running Ubuntu 11.04…Droid 2, rooted, running Fro-Yo. Verizon with data plan…unlimited, if that is still the case. Connection…check
swantron = my connection
I played around with several apps, but have found that Barnacle Wifi Tether from the Android Market does the trick quite nicely. I have dumped several gigs through 3G, and it is decently fast. Haven’t had to reboot, or do anything wonky to this point. I have had two clients connected simultaneously, and it seems to be chugging along. You must configure the security settings, as this puppy lets it rip wide open out of the box.
Grab the app from the Market before Google folds to Verizon. If you need any help rooting your phone, holler at me as well.
I’ve had some time to poke around under the hood of Ubuntu 11.04, a.k.a. Natty Narwhal. I still am struggling to spell ‘narwhal’ for the record, but I’ll share some of my first thoughts. After all, sharing is caring. Write that down.
I’ll put the most obvious thing on the table first…they Apple-ed the crap out of this distro. Take a look at this screen shot, and tell me it doesn’t look an awful lot like OSX, with the bottom ‘stuff’ dumped on the left-hand side: (click to enlarge)
thanks mr. narhwal
The good news is that like Leopard, Narwhal is usable. The same cannot be said for Ubuntu’s first foray into this new territory with Unity. Their last attempt was in 10.10 Netbook Edition, which was horrible to say the least. The UI was attempting to mix desktop features with mobile phone-like buttons, and it was a joke. Pretty much junk…I reverted my Mini 9 to the 10.10 Desktop Edition, and jumped back on the Gnome bandwagon. Well, to their credit, Ubuntu has polished the thing up.
From what I can gather, Unity sits over Compiz…sort of like a plugin. I snagged the Compiz configuration tool via a CLI and messed around with the settings. The snap-to-side function that came stock with this was a pain in my ass, so I reverted it to my beloved ‘wobble windows’ It was sort of odd to have the options bar integrated with the top bar at first, but when I change gears and use multiple windows, I am liking the move.
The window switcher function pans out and shows you four workspaces…see below (click to enlarge)
window switcher is switchy
So basically, I am writing this post in one area, have Eclipse up in another, and have two CLI sessions live in their own spots. With the integrated file bar, the Gimp is far less cluttered…which is awesome. The taskbar slider function is a bit spotty still. I have taken Compiz down running my Arduino IDE (trying to set a temp file up as a taskbar item…it puked) but now have it configured and snappy. I would chalk that up to a training issue, rather than a show stopper.
At the end of the day, I give it a surprisingly positive review. I was very satisfied with the last few long term support versions of Ubuntu, and hesitant to make the switch after the whole fiasco with Unity last time. You can switch back to Gnome, but I have no plans on doing so.
Pros:
* Linux distro. Give me terminal or give me death.
* Firefox 4. Much improved.
* Update manager. Keeps me current without much hassle.
* Interesting UI. Make sure you download the Compiz manager to tweak things.
* Free.99. Can’t beat the price
Cons:
* Ubuntu’s slant. Not bad, but they are steering us toward their cloud services and apps.
* Not Linux-y. Feels like a Win7/OSX hybrid at times.
* Rushed to market. Unity is in need of some refinement.
At the end of the day, I am sticking with this distro. It will only improve. When the new Gnome drops, I’ll make the call as where to head, but this is it for the time being.
1997 called…they want their dial-up back.
no thanks.
Looks like someone pissed off the network admins at work. I would find this really funny, if I were not excited to try Ubuntu 11.04 in a VM.
Cancel. I’ll try this at home later. Expect a review of Natty soon.
I suppose I should add a few words. I placed the images in an empty post several days ago, and sort of forgot to update the text on mi telephono.
Dios mio!
netbook action shot
Well, long story short. I put together the little POC using my PIR sensor a while back. The shit deal, is that the sucker only writes high and low. Easy, for the win. Limited, for the loss.
I may or may not have (I did) disassembled a few CRT TVs last month. Hence, have all sorts of components, such as small sub 9V speakers…
the wires are wire-y
I’m trying to do something with a dual speaker setup, in order to shine up my bugler alarm project. The code is boring…stay tuned…I might be able to come up with something amusing.
I shall call this “The Triple Threat”
o hi
Done, done, and done. All systems go.
I dropped Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on the 17″ Dell, via an old image-having CD I had in the man-lab. Updated via the manager to 10.10, on my makeshift table:
Laptop Stand
No problem what-so-ever. Works like a champ.
I snagged the 10.10 image from Ubuntu, and created a bootable USB. I backed up my photos on said drive…so that sucker is one sweet USB. I have been packing it in my pocket, in case anyone needs some Linux on the fly…not holding my breath however.
Anyhow, my wireless card needed some update action…had to go manual on the little guy:
hiding spot
So the secret is out…I keep my modem and router in a wire-jumble behind the TV. It works. As does Meerkat on my Mini 9…with which I’m posting this tale at this moment.
So, I have a Ubuntu trifecta going on right now. Seems like they should have me on the payroll or something. Free shirt, or something. Not having Windows is prize enough.
I’ve been busy. General business…not so much free time business. Here is a brief run-down of what is in the works:
Item: Environment updates
I am in the middle of re-purposing my computers. I have three flavors of Linux that I use on a regular basis. Gone will be that setup, along with all dual-boot machines. I am going to dedicate my Mini9 netbook as my ‘work at work’ machine…my old 17″ Dell will become my bench computer for my electronics projects…and my slick 15′-er will be my couch computer slash backup unit. All will run Ubuntu 10.10 with Gnome for the time being. I am toying with online storage options, so that I can drop files to and from my Droid without using swantron.com’s server space. More to come on that.
Action shot…updating the Mini 9 from Ubuntu 10.4 Netbook to Ubuntu 10.10 Desktop…
little guy --------------------------------^
Bonus from above…real time apt-get Arduino V0022 action
Item: PIR sensor work on the Arduino
I actually had a little POC put together last week, before the system reboot. I made a generic little alarm, using the passive infrared module and a piezo. Once I can get the Arduino IDE up and running on all three boxes, I’ll snap some pics, clean stuff up, and let it rip. Stay tuned.
Item: General EE work.
I’ve been tearing apart all sorts of stuff. Two CRT TVs, some media players, etc. I didn’t document much, but managed to keep from discharging some big ass capacitors. For the win. The goal is to locate points of failure, and swap out components on the board level. This all stems from the flat-iron failure…for which I’m searching for a replacement switch and diode. Pretty cool.
That is about it. It looks like my wireless on the Mini is non-functional. Great. I’m off to track down an ethernet cord.
