The need to code "something completely different" made me do Background Shuffler - a beautiful background changer for Gnome. I wanted to extend the UNIX philosophy to desktop applications so Background Shuffler only changes your background. It does not make coffee.

So I spent a few days hacking and with the help of great tools and libraries like Quickly and appindicator I managed to build this nifty little program that I'm using all the time now.

Features:

• handle all through the indicator icon. No mysterious script running in the background, retain complete control over your desktop at all times
• make the backgrounds change as quickly or slowly as you like
• integrates with F-Spot, so search for certain tags or ratings
• optionally specify a folder that will be searched with photos

But I guess screenshots explain a thousand words.

You'll probably be best running Ubuntu Lucid (10.04). To install the app just download the deb or add the ppa to your sources at: https://edge.launchpad.net/~luopio/+archive/ppa

Bugs, suggestions and patches welcome! Email at lauri(dot)kainulainen(at) gmail.com

After a few days of tinkering and a few days of waiting for the right parts to arrive I've finally managed to connect an Arduino board to a Nokia N800 internet tablet. First steps towards the Mlab robot.. I was really happy to find out how hackable the internet tablets are! Although there are numerous tutorials around the web, I'll put a short description of what I did before I forget:

Steps to connect N800 to Arduino

1. update N800 to OS2008
2. install rootsh to gain super-user access
3. install USB Control (enable Chinook Extras repository)
4. enable host mode through usb control
5. get a female type A-female type A USB connector. You might need to solder your USB-USBmini cable a bit if it's only slave mode. I bought one cheap from and it seems to work both ways out of the box. I guess you can also use an external power source if you don't want to solder your cable(?).
6. get kernel modules for USB Serial communication and FTDI chips from http://fanoush.wz.cz/maemo/modules-rx-34-2.6.21.0.tar.gz

7. unpack and install kernel modules as root with

   insmod usbserial.ko

   insmod ftdi_sio.ko

8. plug in your arduino

Extra: Python testing

1. get PySerial and install it. You can also just copy the python module from some *nix computer (I just copied mine from my linux box)

2. run this:

   import serial
   
   ser = serial.Serial('/dev/ttyUSB0', 9600)
   
   while 1:
   
       print ser.readline()
   

you should see whatever your arduino chip is printing.

Voilá! You have a connected a very flexible development board with a very hacker friendly, touchscreen enabled linux computer! Think of the possibilities :)

Piece by piece I've been improving my home setup consisting of a laptop(mac), desktop(linux) and small server(fit-pc w/ linux). I'm fairly happy with what I've got now. Not only does the small server run '''trac/svn/lighttpd+php''' for development, it also serves as a backup server through a few '''rsync''' scripts running over ssh and a torrent downloader via '''rtorrent'''.

Once the linux wlan drivers support master mode, I can also use the box as a WLAN access point, getting rid of one more appliance.

One very pleasant thing I just accomplished was setting Pulseaudio to run as a server. Now I can either play music via MPD or stream it directly from my desktop (and it's dead simple - I just pick the output sink with a few clicks). Reminds me of the streaming support in apple airport stations, which I always thought was cool. Of course Pulseaudio does this and a lot, lot more.

Now I'm just waiting for the Android phones to hit Finland.. then my - by then self-aware - home audio system will be complete (except for obvious bits, like good speakers and a decent amplifier)..

Ordered myself a fit-pc from Compulabs from the States. Thanks to the weak dollar it was more cheaper to order it from there than from Sweden. I was first excited about getting myself a Bubba server, which would have been nicer since the shop which makes them is Swedish but technically Bubba is missing a lot of the things that fit-pc has, while consuming more power in the process (not a lot though).

Now I need to come up with a purpose for my fit-pc :). I guess I'll cram a 250GB HDD into it, install gentoo (need performance) and tweak it to run as a wifi-router/backup-server/web-photo-server/automatic-backupper/audio-player/bittorrent-downloader -mean-machine. It's claimed to be powerful enough to play basic divx-clips, but I'm not planning on putting myth or anything on it.

All this under 300e.. let's see how it turns out.

After all the struggling, my final solution is to have Vista on one 50GB partition and Linux on the rest. No damn MediaDirect bloatware anymore.

My home key now boots into windows and my normal powerkey into GRUB and linux. Just perfect :).

Huge thanks to "Mario666" for his howto on notebookreview forums.

Just remember to run the command line in Vista as Administrator (right click the icon in the start menu). Otherwise the rmbr.exe command will just throw a useless error.

Dell Media direct proved out to be a Windows CE Embedded system with a simple media GUI. Not really useful, since it only reads FAT-drives and has no network connection.

Since it's a windows system, it only took me two minutes to break it and start ending up with a blue screen of death on each MD bootup (I honestly didn't do anything wrong.. just used it, it hanged and then I had to hard boot..).

I've been thinking about replacing the system with a quick'n'small linux distro with something like Elisa starting up instantly, so I did some research and it seems that starting with the home button starts the MBR, while the normal start button fires up the active partition (you can only have one).

Unfortunately if I install GRUB on the linux partitions start and mark it active, vista hijacks the boot flag to its own partition. So now I have GRUB on MBR and MD still works.. for now.

** Quick how to fix your broken MD Howto **

This is what I did to fix the blue screen of MD death

1. Get the Dell MD recovery disk and follow the instructions
2. After this I ended up with a broken windows install, so insert the vista CD and do the repair bit that comes after you choose the language.
3. Insert your flavor of live CD linux (I used Puppy and I heartily recommend it)
4. Install grub to your MBR with grub-install /dev/sda

I guess I'll look into replacing the MD with a linux distro at some point. I found a howto on it, but I really want to: - press the power button to enter grub to choose between "the main linux" and vista - press home to boot a quick, small linux for media stuff

If you've already succeeded or are interested in the same thing send me a mail at lauriATsokkeloDOTnet

To save the pain from others of repeating my mistakes, I'll write this short howto. In the end you should have a working system with Ubuntu, Vista and Dell MediaDirect.

1. Boot using Mediadirect CD, choose the second option and allocate how much you want for Vista (I gave the beast 50GB)
2. Install Vista
3. Boot into Vista and insert the Mediadirect CD again. Finish MD installation
4. Insert your Linux CD, boot
5. Install your flavor of Linux (I used Ubuntu Studio) by creating new partitions in the empty second partition.

After this I had a working setup with a working Mediadirect button (I could press the home-button when the computer was off and boot straight into MD)

About two weeks ago I ordered a Dell XPS M1330. It's obviously a very popular laptop abroad, but here in Finland I haven't seen anyone packing one. I guess the main reason is that you can't find it here anywhere in-store. You'll have to contact the corporate sales of Dell Finland and request one.

In the end it wasn't that difficult. Just build one from e.g. Dell Sweden, send the specs to your appointed seller (better call in advance to give your details) and then confirm the purchase.

I was harassing them with a lot of questions, such as "can I buy the laptop abroad and then order a sv-keyboard?" and "can I get the ubuntu laptop in Finland?". Both were answered "no". The price for my laptop was around 1300e for a system with 3GB RAM, 2.40GHz processor, Nvidia 8400GS, led-display, etc.. so it's no that bad for a Finn price.

Now I've installed Ubuntu Studio, which kicks butt. It's an artist version of Ubuntu with spiffy graphics and a lot of audiovisual content creation programs.

I'll write a short howto once I get the Dell Mediadirect working..