So it takes $40 to donate $5? WHAT???

Charity

Remove all those hidden devices…

Computer booting up slow? Too many device drivers installed in the last 3 years? With no idea where that device is today? Well, that driver might still be getting loaded…

• Start->Run->cmd.exe

• set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1

• cd \windows\system32

• start devmgmt.msc

• View->”Show hidden devices”

Uninstall/delete all grayed devices one by one (sorry!)

Click -> Delete, and yes the screen will refresh and you’ll have to scroll to the next one again … you would think they could do a ctrl-select more than one, but no …

Why is it running in XP?

You have a Task Manager full of things that was not there yesterday, like “Google Updater”, “OGAVerify”, etc, etc … and you can’t find from where the suckers are launched, so check all these places:

Start->All Programs->Startup   <- delete everything fishy here

Start->Run… (or Window-R) and then type “Regedit” and go to HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\, the most suspect location. I always do a search (F3) for “RunOnce” and look in it and in the “Run” folder right above it.

( A tool like CCleaner can also help here, it has a “Disable” button in Tools->Startup for everything that wants to run, but also a “Delete” button if you are sure!  )

Then go to Start->Control Panel->Scheduled Tasks and have fun with all the programs that got put there without you even knowing, like “Goolge Updater” <- I had 7 in the list to start “every hour”, “every day”, and so on!

You also need to check through all your “Services”, so Right-Click on My Computer, then Manage and at the bottom go to “Services and Applications->Servies” … here you want to Stop and then Disable (or Manual Start) the unwanted services … note that Google Update is hanging out here too!

The most effective way to catch all these “Internet Surfing Unwanted Applications” is to install a Firewall like ZoneAlarm, and let it show you every program that tries to open a socket locally or to the outside, and then you simply block them forever!

Hope it helps!

Turning Dell Latitude D610 LCD off in Ubuntu…

to turn on:

/usr/sbin/vbetool dpms on

to turn off:

/usr/sbin/vbetool dpms off

put them in on.sh and off.sh and

chmod +x *.sh

then do

./off; exit

and then login in the dark and do

./on

easy huh?

well, only if on.sh is in your own home folder…put it somewhere in your path and just use:

on

Bluetooth Applet and D-Bus…what a learning curve!!!

Well, by lack of being able to specify the PassKey for all Bluetooth LCD panels on the command line, I thought I’d start learning in the GUI world by getting it typed in for me! This will not work if you run a server without GNOME, since bluetooth-applet (from bluez-gnome-1.8) won’t be running either.

So after a crash course in how Bluetooth Pairing work, how D-Bus might work and how Gtk2 will only work (seems like applets are very sensitive to “debug” strings, they might just not show up!) here is a screenshot of the General tab in Preferences, where I’ve added the “Default Passkey”:

Bluetooth Applet's Preferences

It also took some code changes (additions, rather) in applet/main.c, applet/agent.c and properties/general.c

Without a worry about the key, you can do “sudo ussp-push /dev/rfcomm3 /home/user/image.jpg image.jpg” from the command line, especially when the Bluetooth gadget just got started and needs to be paired.

just some random Gtk2 a_note() showing in GNOME

static gboolean a_note(const char *text) {
gchar *line;
line = g_strdup_printf(_(“Hallo, %s”),text);
show_notification(_(“My device”), line, _(“Click here for more info…”), 0, NULL );
g_free(line);
return TRUE;
}

balloon tip any one?

find, exec, grep, globbing…

find . -name “*.c” -exec grep -H Bluetooth {} \;

sudo mv -v /home/user/mnt/sdc/dcim/147canon/img_7{5[789],6}* .

dos2unix in what package, Ubuntu?

dos2unix is in the tofrodos Debian package

sudo apt-get install tofrodos

PAN7001 to the rescue, with a blue tooth…

Well, well, well, we found a solution! (continued from here)

Traincars at Windhoek

Not the best quality digital frame at a 480×234* resolution, but for $45 from Big Lots, a 7″ LCD Digital Photo Frame, model number PAN7001W01T made by Pandigital. “Stores 4000 images on 512 MB of internal memory.”

Apart from the same old problems with “PC connection established” and a long reboot after disconnecting the cable, and not starting the slide show by itself, I found a way to make it do what I want. It also shows the time at the top left, which seems to disappear after some time, or after sending a photo as described below.

So what you need is a $5.99 AirLink 101 ABT-U200 Bluetooth 2.0 USB Adapter (I am sure others might work too, but where do you get them for $5.99?) and a similar Bluetooth device on your computer. After pairing (code “1234″) your (Windows) computer would have a “My Bluetooth Places\Find Bluetooth Devices\Pandigital” folder from “My Bluetooth Places\Entire Bluetooth Neighborhood” containing an item called “OBEX Object Push on Pandigital”, and you simply need to drag a photo (24bit jpg, I’ve read) onto the “OBEX Object Push” icon and WHALA!! (You can send other files too, like a .BMP, but it shows you the “FILE” screen with photo, audio, video as “folders”, it does not display it) The manual even says that “When copy photo completes, your DPF will play the copied photo immediately after.” – in that exact English!

If you drag a photo with the same file name, it will overwrite on the internal memory of the device that will avoid me filling up the memory (there is no access through the Bluetooth to delete photos). But even if you send a new file, it will only display the sent one. Now I can see that a future firmware might change this, because, if I were sending pictures from my cell phone, I would have wanted the DPF to show all of them in a slideshow immediately.

The question now is, what would 25 DPF’s do up and running and how would Ubuntu fell about all this OBEX/Bluetooth stuff, off to the store, see y’all(s) later!

We are back and three LCD’s are talking with all three different Bluetooth dongles. Fry’s don’t have AirLink anymore, but MicroCenter has $9.99 xxx dongles and a tiny, tiny $14.99 xxx version. Not the quickest of all tasks to use Windows’ xxx\system32\fsquirt.exe to copy a file to a Bluetooth device, mainly because there is no way (yet) to supply the file and device name on the command line, and the GUI wants to discover ALL the devices again when you change from one to another. But fair enough, this ain’t going to run on Windows.

So now we have three displays, showing 3 images I want them to show, and I can change it any time I like…the file transfer happens so quick (small file helps) that you only see a blue background for a second or two.

A few pictures:

Default startup screen (not always starting in Auto Slideshow, weird), note the BT for Bluetooth in the top right corner:

Menu

Same old USB attachment nagging screen (someone cloned something somewhere…):

Removing the USB cable will cost you 60 seconds:

Reboot sequence after disconnecting the USB cable. Still can’t tell Windows (or PC) to fake a disconnect, but if you do “disable” all the drives or USB device in Device Manager, you can prevent a “reconnect”:

And now the Bluetooth solution:

The AirLink Bluetooth device attached:

The device while pairing:

The Windows screenshot:

If you send a .bmp file:

All three in a row, how cool:

(I now have plenty of spare remote controls for the PAN7001W01T units (since one can control all), part number 60014YT00-HF8-G, so if you lost one, find me at www.huntatrophy.com, and depending the postage, I might send you a remote)

*Turns out that all my pictures looked somewhat crappy at 480×234 with extra space above and below the image on the screen, so on to a little investigation, not an easy one, since the Pandigital will zoom until either the width or height fits. After numerous Bluetooth transfers, I decided to look at what the “default” demo images are from the store…856×480, which is displayed as 428×240, which is not even close to advertised! Furthermore, if you do zero compression in the 24 bit jpeg file (and the image looks perfect when you reopen it on your PC) the edges are somewhat blurry on the display, so they do same averaging too…why in the world?

svn+ssh at another port

in ~/.ssh/config write:

host svnserver
Hostname 192.168.1.2
Port 232
ForwardAgent no
ForwardX11 no


to get a list

svn list svn+ssh://svnserver/svn/svnrepo

or checkout

svn co svn+ssh://svnserver/svn/svnrepo/code local_folder