Category Archives: General

RT2500 wireless PCI card on Ubuntu

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Got the two cards today. Ordered from i-Tech (mob in Sydney, had it delivered here). Were $59AUD each (plus shipping, which was $15 for the two of them).

Really painless setup!

One was for the Ubuntu system my mum uses, the other for the Windows system my brother uses. Well, the Ubuntu setup was easier than the windows one (try to get Windows to tell you the MAC address of the adapter… well… *of course* it’s under “Support” – where else would it be?).

I got the drivers from CVS from http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com as the CVS ones have a few more fixes (makes it easier to build for one).

I got the following packages:
build-essential
cvs
linux-source-(whatever version it was).

cd /usr/src
tar xfj linux-source-whatever.tar.bz2
ln -s /lib/modules/the-right-version-number/build /usr/src/linux-whatever
cd /usr/src/linux-whatever
cp /boot/config-whatever .config
make modules

(as long as it builds the first few you’re fine and can ctrl-c the rest)

then i got the CVS drivers and built it like their docs say (make with the -C parameters).

depmod -a

then used the GUI tool to set it up (the Ubuntu one). The ralink graphical utility (install the kde-devel package to build it) lets you monitor link quality etc.

so, success!

Free Software Wish List

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This has been gathering in my brain, I figure I should write it all down:

X

  • Render everything using Composite and OpenGL
    basically then we can have output that doesn’t suck! Translucency is not only cool, but useful in some UI.
  • All 2D graphics to be drawn with Cairo.
    Enough said here – vector is the future.
  • A magnify screen function (look at MacOS X’s) except using Cairo et all so that everything is still smooth when you zoom (use those vector graphics baby, yeah!)
  • Graphics cards companies to pull their finger out and do full open source drivers.

GNOME (note that this is only long because I love it so much and spend so much time using it)

  • To be able to set emblems on files/folders in Nautilus via the contextual menu.
  • To have the Create Archive option in the contextual menu have a submenu with options such as “.tar, .tar.gz, .tar.bz2, .zip” (or just .gz, .bz2 if only a single file is selected)
  • Take less time to log in
  • Evolution to not leak memory.
  • Evolution to handle big maildirs better (where big is the multiple hundred of thousands of messages
  • For Evolution to not do “checking” stuff on mailboxes.
  • Gaim getting it’s contact list from Evolution
  • Nautilus having better graphics for open versus closed folders (at least in the theme I use – Industrial)
  • The applications menu to be faster
  • Get rid of the Window List and Virtual Desktop – they are broken UI elements. Windows 95 proved that the taskbar just doesn’t scale when you have enough memory to run more than one application. Maybe a NeXT style dock would be good? I don’t have the answer here
  • Dashboard and Beagle to become easily installable and usable. If there’s issues with shipping mono apps as part of core gnome, then lets rewrite them in something that isn’t mono. I want that functionality!
  • gThumb to become good – think iPhoto on steroids with links into Gimp. Also, some sane way to store metadata
  • Multisync to work properly with evo2
  • Multisync to sync photos (and their metadata)
  • GnuCash to be GTK2
  • xchat to get some HIG UI love
  • All settings that a user could care about to be in a user-visible folder and able to be easily backed up (e.g. by dragging to a blank CD with nautilus-cd-burner). i.e. put everything in a folder called “Settings” instead of buried around in dotfiles.
  • A good backup utility that my mother can use (that’s smart enough to split things over multiple CDs if needed)
  • GUI for ACLs
  • Open With to be file specific as well as global
  • Animation with UI events (drool at OSX’s effects, then make better ones)
  • A good RAD dev environment. Something involving Glade and Python and integrated. Think Visual Basic 3 (when it was actually good) but on steroids with GNOME love.
  • Gnome Time Tracker to scale better (and not corrupt it’s own data files – i.e. use rename and sync properly)
  • Rhythmbox to have iPod (or any MP3/Ogg player) integration. I want to plug my ipod in, and see it in both Nautilus and Rhythmbox (and have a big Sync button in RB, as well as being able to drag files to it).
  • The desktop background to be Xinerama aware and know not to stretch an image over both screens. let me set one for each screen!
  • Have “random” desktop backgrounds from a folder
  • a desktop background option to better “fill” the screen on widescreens (where the image isn’t widescreen)

General Utils

  • xfsdump to get DVD support (multi volume dumps directly to DVD)
  • g++ to be faster and use less than a squigabyte of memory
  • prism54 to have proper link monitoring (with the gnome panel applet)
  • GUI version of kismet

there’s more… i just can’t be bothered writing any more at the moment :)

getting rid of comment spam

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If anyone wants to know my really brute force method of getting rid of comment spam, shoot us a mail. I’ll send you a script that will just about solve the problem for you.

I’d publish it… but then we’d have the spammers trying to work around it. This sucks.

I still maintain it should be legal to kill them.

Yes, that goes against my usual more non-harming ways (I’m vegan okay!) – it just seems like the morally correct thing to do with them….

notes from people who knew Becky

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The funeral was on Saturday. It was held at Robert Blackwood Hall at Monash – and the auditorium was just about full – and it holds a bit over 1,200 people – which was enough to totally overwhelm her family. They thought it would be big, but there were wide eyes!

There were lots of familiar faces – and every one of them wished that there was catching up being done over better events. The standard greeting of “How are you?” was constantly postfixed with, “well, apart from”.

but there was laughter and tears – and stuff that was just sooo Becky it couldn’t be anyone else.

(these people left notes after they found my blog entry – it just took me a while to moderate due to the horrible thing that is comment spam.):

miranda
jess
Therase Weeks
ella fortin
Anonymous

thanks for your words.

I will write more over the coming days – there is so much to do and so little time.

Rebecca Tomilson – you will always be missed.

Reprogramming with a large, sharp axe.

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Somebody needs to do this for the Australian Business Register web site.

“Help” on the forms for registering for an Australian Business Number and GST can be “if yes, click yes”. Oh really… I thought i’d just click ‘no’ when I really meant ‘yes’.

Plus, it can ask you all sorts of strange questions that befuddle the reader if they have no real idea on the fine details of australian taxation law (i have no such knowledge, and don’t care for it).

And they have a field in the form – “declaration completion date”. which is, (from the help) “The declaration field records the date the application is completed.”.

I’d like to know why they can’t auto-complete that field. Today is probably a safe bet.

On the brighter side of life – talking to someone at ING Direct was a lot more pleasurable.

and one more thing…. the ‘Exit’ button at the end of the ABN process doesn’t work. I’ll never get out now! NOOOOOOO!

currently listening to…

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Cat Stevens. really enjoying it too. haven’t listened to him in ages.

I’ve raided my dad’s CD collection (vinyl collection is good too, but harder to put onto an iPod[1])

[1] these days I wouldn’t automatically buy one though – Apple is proving monopolistic and evil with their DRM and *why* isn’t there OGG support yet? There’s BSD licensed code out there!

big clean up and office supply shop

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since my office is moving out of my bedroom and into an actual room, I went and did some office supply and furniture shopping.

I hate traffic.

I REALLY hate traffic. It’s boring, slow, not fuel efficient and really wastes your time while you’re sitting in it. I haven’t driven through the CBD and near-CBD during the day in so long that I’d forgotten how bad it really is. urghe.

But Ikea was great. The big store in Richmond – wow, i could spend hours in there (and a few thousand bucks no doubt).

I bought a (smaller) desk. This’ll go in the bedroom (always need somewhere to do stuff) – and move my big one downstairs (not looking forward to that).

Also got a nice big thing to hold my ever-expanding CD collection.

It’s interesting… working for a company based in sweden and buying office stuff from Ikea. I guess it’s in the spirit of things.

The reason i was in the CBD was to get a copy of my birth certificate. Without which, it’s a lot harder to get a passport (which, beleive it or not, i’ve managed to do without all my life). But now, work requires it – so I’m getting one.

Getting the piece of paper took about two minutes, getting in and out of the city took forever.

Bloody city car park. coming out, i swear there was less than an inch either side of my mirrors. talk about crapping myself as driving out. That and it was next to impossible to get out of the car once i had parked (and spent about 5 or 10 mins actually looking for the darned thing).

Been sorting out my filing cabinet too. Trying to separate the work and personal stuff. will put work stuff somewhere more specific. Going to need to – what with expenses et al now being sorted out from home (can’t just leave them at work until i fill out the form).

but should all be good…. just have to get on with that task i’ve been assigned.