Resurrecting an old blog

Update

Since I last wrote on this blog I have been promoted and moved jobs. I am now trying to think of ways to use this blog.

Since my current role is in Product Management, I was thinking of doing something in that realm.

Product Management and Agile Practices with Lean Principles applied maybe...

https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenmcvarnock

Palm Pre - export Contacts to a HTC Wildfire S

Well, since webOS now seems dead :-( and I have been given a new phone by the office I had to bite the bullet and export my contacts from one to the other.

I found this link very useful.


http://www.precentral.net/export-all-your-contacts

I followed the above steps, imported into Gmail via the Contacts->Import button. Gmail also provides a very useful utility to merge duplicate contacts.

I then sync'd gmail with the new HTC and voila...contacts all there.

Palm Pre Battery Life

After months of disappointment in the battery life of my Palm Pre (a few hours in some extreme cases) I have finally figured out why the battery was draining so quickly.

I turned off my 3G connection at home and lo and behold, the phone now stays charged for a couple of days now. It seems my poor connection at home (I live in semi-rural Northern Ireland) was causing the constant drain. However even in Belfast city (which has blackspots when it comes to 3G) the battery was draining away quite quickly.

So happily it does not look like a Palm issue - more a network connectivity issue.

I also found the following:-

"Unlike with some older rechargeable batteries, charging your battery often does not reduce battery performance over time. In fact, it's good for your battery to keep it charged rather than letting it become drained before recharging. Whenever possible, plug your device in to a charger or charge it from a computer via the USB cable. Note that charging your device from a computer may take up to twice as long as using the charger. Having both a Touchstone charging dock and a car charger makes it convenient to charge your device any time."

I was starting to wonder if leaving my battery on charge overnight had caused the problem.

I found the above here:-

http://kb.palm.com/wps/portal/kb/na/pre/p100eww/sprint/solutions/article/17233_en.html

Hope this helps some people. I may now even consider staying with Palm at contract renewal time!

Ubuntu 11.04 Upgrade - Natty Narwhal

Upgraded from 10.04 on both my laptop and desktop.

First thing to note was that the laptop upgrade went very smoothly.
Desktop upgrade broke the hard drive (was not being detected). So I had to do an install from a Live CD and that resolved the issue - whatever it was.

Secondly, the new look and feel of this Ubuntu release marks a big change from previous releases (I have been using Ubuntu since release 8.04). I am not sure I like it but its not enough to prevent me from sticking with what has proved to be a very good OS.

Computer Upgraded - Attempt the Second

Well, I had to remove the 320GB hard drive.

Reason: the motherboard only accepts IDE/PATA connections. The HD was a SATA interface type. So I was using a PCI adaptor to link the two. Turns out, the adaptor was not a good fit - it kept losing connection with the motherboard.

So I have replaced the HD with an IDE/PATA 40GB HD - complimented with a 120GB external hard drive.

Which should be plenty for my purposes.

Computer Upgraded

After battling with a disk suffering from corrupted sectors for a month now I have bitten the bullet and upgraded my old (8years+) machine.

120Gb Hitachi Deskstar up to 320GB (unknown).

512Mb Corsair ddr pc 3200 to 2Gb memory.

Ubuntu to be installed later.

Now 100% Ubuntu only at home

Migrated from Fedora Core to Ubuntu. The reasoning is simple. The upgrade on my desktop for Fedora was proving problematic - the /boot partition is only 200Mb but apparently 500Mb is required. I would either have had to use a hard-wired connection to download FC14 or resize the partition.

Option a) is out during to wiring restrictions and Option b) was out simply because I couldn't be bothered. I have the latest Ubuntu (meerkat) on my laptop and any install or upgrade with it has always been very simple. Hence the decision.

Result: Happy. Ubuntu working very well on my (very) old desktop.

Migration from Ubuntu Lucid Lynx to...

..Maverick Meerkat via Update Manager was, as usual, very easy and went smoothly. No issues to report.

Also installed Ubuntu Tweak and it has been very useful in tidying up and removing old packages and kernels.

The C++ Programming Language by the creator of C++

Just started to wade through the tome that is the above book by non-other than Bjarne Stroustrup himself.

I am looking forward to it - but his opening assertion that C++ is 'fun' is already something I have taken issue with :-)

It should make for interesting reading when stacked up against the C++ Coding Standards (101 rules, guidelines and best practices) which he was also involved in writing.

Finally...

..got around to completing "C++ for Dummies" as mentioned on Feburary 10th of this year!

Now to proceed with completing the following

"C++ Coding Standards - 101 Rules, Guidelines and Best Practices"

So far I am at point 18. There is a lot to C++ !

Finally got OpenVPN and Firestarter to play nice

My last post indicated there were web pages out there you could refer to to get Firestarter and OpenVPN to work together.

However the following link provided me with the details for MY situation (your own may obviously be different)

http://ignore-your.tv/2006/08/03/openvpn-and-firestarter/

So, for me I had to update the user-pre file with details of my tap interface. Thus I added the following:-

$IPT -A INPUT -i tap+ -j ACCEPT
$IPT -A OUTPUT -o tap+ -j ACCEPT

To find out if you must add details for a tap or tun interface, run the command 'ifconfig -a' from your command line and look for the 'tap0' or 'tun0' (or similar text). Note, this of course will only show up IF your VPN is already up and running - but not working (due to Firestarter ;-)

Security - Linux style

Maybe it's because I have been left scarred by my use of Windows or maybe it's simply good sense but I am adding a firewall and virus checker to my Fedora install.

• Firestarter (firewall)
• clamAV (virus checker)

Life in the Old Dog yet?

Seems I could have been a bit premature on the future of the Palm Pre. HP are certainly talking up entry into the smartphone market with the Palm and webOs leading the way.

The OS (in my opinion) is at least the equal of the iPhone OS in most regards and better in others (true multitasking from the word go on webOS).

Now lets see how HP takes on Apple in the coming months!

The big advantage for HP/Palm is the community of developers out there who love to develop on the webOS platform.

Palm Pre

I am very much enjoying using the Palm Pre. Unfortunately it looks like the days of the Palm are numbered. Little or nothing has been heard of potential onoing developments for webOS devices since the takeover by HP.

If anyone has heard of anything from HP in terms of a roadmap for webOS and future smartphones from Palm/HP I would be very much interested in hearing about it....along with every other Palm Pre owner!

Linux kernel and Linksys USB wireless adapter

I had problems with my Linksys WUSB54GS wireless adapter when I tried to use it with Ubuntu (v9.10 Karmic Koala and v10.04 Lucid Lynx) and Fedora (Fedora Core 2 and Fedora 12).

Sometimes it would work and find my network. Other times it would not. This seemed to be related to issues with its driver (rndis).

I purchased a new TP-Link wireless adapter from e-bay. This worked straight out of the box with Ubuntu 10.04. This uses the rt73 driver (I think).

Anyway, the up-shot is I am finally certain that I have a wireless adapter I can reply on and I can recommend it - for Ubuntu 10.04 at least. I am going to re-install Fedora 12 and see what happens there.

Ubuntu/YouTube/Firefox - "an error occurred, please try again later"

I upgraded my laptop to the latest version of Ubuntu (10.04). I noticed straight away that embedded Youtube videos where not working in Firefox. After much messing around I found the following worked.

1) Remove swfdec - a free open source replacement for Adobe Flash Player
2) Remove gnash - the GNU SWF movie player

This was on the back of advice from this post.

This resolved the issue - But i am left wondering what the impacts of removing the above packages may be?

Disabling Broadcast SSID does not work on Fedora with LinkSys WUSB54GS

I normally disable the broadcast of the SSID of my wireless betwork as set up on my LinksysWAG54GS router. Turns out that this behaviour is not supported by the driver used by my USB modem (a Linksys WUSB54GS) on Fedora.

Interestingly, some people think that using what I thought was a fairly obvious security feature is pretty pointless.

Have a look here for the fact that WUSB54GS and disabling SSID does not work on Fedora/Linux. It's in black and white under the 'What does not' work section.

As a result, consider upping your WPA password to greater than 20 characters to make it useful!

Windows Free

I am now Microsoft Windows free for the first time since University.
CentOS at work, Ubuntu on my laptop, Fedora at home and of course webOS on my Palm Pre.

Feels good :-)

Remember the Milk App for the Palm Pre

I was able to install this app from the Palm USA link.

This application is currently in beta but it is a welcome addition to my own beta GTD system.

Unfortunately there seems to be an issue with Google/RTM and the Palm Calendar app.

I have the Palm Pre Calendar app sync'd with with my Google account calendar. This works fine.

For Google calendar I have added the RTM Daily and sidebar gadgets. Again, these all look fine when I view my Google calendar with my browser on the laptop/desktop.

Now, when I look at my Palm Pre calendar I can see that there is an RTM task icon at the start of each day. However, none of the entries from the RTM task list (which shows up fine on Google calendar ) has made it onto the Palm Pre calendar i.e. it is always empty.

I have posted about this on PreCentral and RTM forums. If and when I get this issue resolved I will post an update.

Customised Applications for Mobile network Enhanced Logic

I am currently reading up on CAMEL/CAP/GSM/SS7 concepts. It has been a while since I have done anything in this area having been concentrating on SIP for so long. This is all part of AePONA's Network Gateway project.

It's nice to get to grips with something different.