technology – Page 19 – frans goes blog

Klippo Excellent S GCV

Couple of years ago I wrote about our first lawnmower, a Stiga Collector model. In couple of summers I have managed to break the thing several times (I always run it against stones), until it felt not worth paying for repairs any more. Also, it had become apparent that the collector part was not really necessary for us — bio-clipping is really enough (like Eki then already commented). Our new model is hopefully simple and durable machine: a Klippo Excellent S GCV model. It has a solid aluminium base and motor built by Honda. To be ready for those stones, I asked it to be installed with a Blade Plate system: six small blades that cut the grass at different levels and which are hopefully more resistant against stones (or, more likely, breaking in a manner that makes repairs a bit cheaper). Lets see. The ultimate goal is to have a smaller lawn in any case.

Ubuntu Netbook Remix in AA1

Ubuntu Netbook Remix, originally uploaded by FransBadger.

Another thing I did the late at the other night (not getting much sleep this summer) was finally install another OS version for my netbook, Acer Asprire One. The stripped-down Linpus Lite it shipped with was ok for basic stuff, but I kept on tweaking it, pushing it towards a full, networking capable desktop system. Since Linpus is built on Fedora, you can actually do pretty much with it, but at some point it just became so patched up and broken I realised I needed to do something.
I had been following the development of netbook versions of popular operating systems, but for a long time there appeared to be serious problems: a full Ubuntu desktop, for example, would be running very slow, being too heavy for a meagre AA1 (my system is version ZG5, with 512 MB of DDR2 memory). There are also many hardware drivers that would stop working if one reformats the Linpus environment Acer had set up.

But finally, it appeared that the Ubuntu Netbook Remix project had managed to produce a version of Ubuntu that would be running smoothly on weak systems, plus it would support almost all of the AA1 hardware out of the box. Trying it out now for couple of days, I am pretty happy. It is not a speed demon, but I am amazed at the scope and quality of functions they have managed to pack into a lowly 512 MB netbook machine. Reason to be happy for a while! 🙂

Canon LBP5050n driver problems

As a part of this summer’s transition to a new home server environment, I upgraded my printer to a colour laser one. The print quality of Canon i-SENSYS LBP5050n was the ṕrimary reason for choosing that one. I was originally going to buy an USB model and use my home server as the print server, but it soon appeared that Windows Server 2008 as the Web Server edition does not allow printer sharing. MS strikes againg – they have actually disabled all printer sharing functionalities so that they can sell more expensive versions of Server 2008 for those who need more than only the web server stuff. In this (as probably in many other accounts) it makes much more sense to use Ubuntu Server Edition or something similar rather than MS products if you want to have a cheap, yet efficient general purpose server of your own.

Persisting against the odds, I went ahead and picked the 5050n model instead, since it includes its own ethernet connector and print server built in, so that you can print to it from anywhere in your home. Except for the printer driver. Rather than a regular Postscript printer, this Canon printer is a CAPT printer, meaning that it uses Canon’s own proprietary printer language. They have tried to develop driver versions for many operating systems, but according to my experiences, the development of 5050n drivers is still not yet finished. I at least hope they will release better versions in the future.

Luckily, two of my most important OSes are supported and working fine: Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008. Funny thing is, that neither have a dedicated driver version — you can install a Vista version and it works. But as I tried to install the driver to my two Vista systems, the driver did not produce test prints, and the status window actually completely stalled the computer/UI. I had to remove the driver. Also, trying to install the Mac version of driver to my Mac Mini (a OS X Tiger system) did not produce any working results.

See: http://software.canon-europe.com/products/0010663.asp

Since I am also using Ubuntu with my workstation and Acer Aspire One netbooks, I was interested to see whether I could finally print anything from there. No success. A Linux package of CAPT printer drivers also exists:

http://software.canon-europe.com/software/0028622.asp

But I tried to follow the instructions and tweak my systems, but it appears that there is not yet a printer profile file for 5050 models. I tried install using LPB5000 profile file, but it did not work out.

Thus: out of the five tested OSes that we are using, only two managed to print to this new, home/small office network printer. Not a very good result to my estimation (even while I am happy with the printer itself). Hopefully Canon will produce more and updated printer software for this printer in the future.

YouSat press release

YouSat project has made a press release about its goals and scope:

http://www.newsdesk.se/pressroom/sics/pressrelease/view/a-new-concept-for-sharing-travel-experiences-on-the-internet-305839

Quote: The YOUSAT project will invent and study new mobile solutions to support interactive exploration of nature-based tourism, including applications tailored to younger generation tourists. Four Nordic tourism associations collaborate in the project together with SICS, a research institute, Idevio AB, a map technology company, and Tampere University. Together they will create a new service that not only makes it easy to share travel experiences via the mobile phone, but also to find interesting local recommendations.

Hannamari Saarenpää from our team is doing work in YouSat, bringing playful experiences, games and user-centred research methodology contributions to the project.

Site frozen, taken offline

An advance warning: since I am making a transition to a new server (and a new server OS, plus a new version of WordPress), this site will be frozen and all commenting functions temporarily frozen today. Sorry, lets hope site transition will be over soon. Since I will be carrying servers physically around, as well as transferring the databases and files, there might be times today when the entire site and domain will be offline.

Edit: this is continuation post of my log about transition to IIS 7.0 (Windows Web Server 2008).

Sony MDR-EX85LP/BLK

I have written before about the Sony wireless, bluetooth headphones I can use with an adapter with my old trusty iPod. Bluetooth stereo works also fine with my new work laptop (Vaio Z31), which was a bit surprising (e.g. with Lenovo the sound was snapping/breaking; must be related to the way bluetooth stereo works for Sony). But wireless headphones do not fit every use and opportunity. You can try to use them with your mobile phone (Nokia N95 and Sony do not work together particularly well, though). But a radio, or some other sound source requires good old wired headphone. I have few of them, like “The Plug” by Koss, but I did find the in-ear-canal, tube-structure painful. They were also dropping out of my ears, and I got tired of cutting the soft isolation material to the odd shapes of my ear canals. I finally found Sony model that appears like a nice compromise between the real high-end and the cheap end: Sony MDR-EX85LP. I like the construction of these in-ear plugs, they fit very well and the isolation is also rather good (even while you can still hear something when you are called upon by your family members…) These ones have also decent sound: rather neutral and balanced in both treble and bass areas. Nothing spectacular, but these are, after all, sub-60 euro headphones. Koss Porta Pro are still the best-sounding travelling headphones I’ve got. (You can get these Sony’s also as a white version.)

Building media room ventilation

This is probably the ugliest cooler casing ever, but when finished and properly installed, it should help with the fresh air flow to my media room in cellar. (Built around SilverStone FM121 cooler fan, some wooden and aluminium parts added, fitted together with liberal use of Super Epoxy…)

Default html editor in Vista

Another small tip, in case someone else wonders about this: it appears that you cannot change the default html editing program through the “Default Programs” tool in Vista (if you select e.g. MS FrontPage, it will also use FrontPage to open and show all html files, not only to open them for editing). I did find that you can set the editor by going to Internet Explorer, selecting Tools > Internet Options > Programs > HTML Editor. After that, your default “open file” action will be set as in “Default Programs” and the “edit file” default as set in Internet Explorer. (This is silly, btw — this kind of action defaults should obviously be set in OS settings not through settings of some single app, shouldn’t they?)

Syncing three kinds of calendars

There are three main types of calendars that I need and use:

the standard desktop calendar app (the one with the best interface, accessible also when offline)
the mobile calendar (handy when making notes in the meetings, on the road etc.)
the online, shared calendar (essential for groupwork, accessible from any webtop)

The challenge currently is that there is no single, seamless solution for a regular user that would (affordably) provide all these elements so that they would be automatically synchronized together. I tried to move away from MS Office and Outlook which is senseless bloatware and resource hog if the only thing you need is the calendar (I use Thunderbird as my PC mail client). And Google Calendar does nicely its job as the shared online calendar service. However, if you are using Nokia mobile phones/symbian devices, it is very difficult to do without Nokia PC Suite, and it only supports sync to Outlook (or Lotus Notes, and other MS calendars). There are workarounds where you use your phone’s GPRS data capabilities to sync the mobile phone over the air to Google Calendar, and you can integrate Thunderbird/Lightning calendar then to Google Calendar, but if you have couple of phones and no flat rate plan to some of them (like I do) then doing every sync over the air does not really make sense. For the data carrier and slow access reasons I do not prefer to load online calendar to a mobile browser and access the mobile calendar that way.

I was finally forced back to Outlook – Google Calendar Sync – PC Suite – Nokia/S60 combo, as I did not want to pay and install for extra software just for this (and we already have the MS Office licenced provided by our university to staff use). If you have found a better way to keep these three types of calendars synchronized together, please let me know.