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By Matthieu, 2010-06-25 09:47

So yesterday, the iPhone 4 was released in the US, the UK and many other countries other than Canada. And the Internet is all abuzz over the problems with reception on the iPhone 4. Basically, the problem is that human hands are conductive, and when holding the bottom left corner of the phone, skin creates a bridge between the HSPA and Bluetooth/Wifi antennae (antennas?) and causes the phone to drop connections as seen here:

[stream provider=youtube flv=http%3A//www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3D03PQyWp0mWE%26feature%3Dplayer_embedded img=x:/img.youtube.com/vi/03PQyWp0mWE/0.jpg embed=false share=false width=450 height=253 dock=true controlbar=over bandwidth=high autostart=false /]

An iPhone 4 user sent an e-mail to Mr. Jobs regarding the problem and received a curt reply:

via engadget

So, according to Steve, we all need to adjust the way we hold our phones. Not a huge deal I suppose, but as a clever user pointed out, I think we learned by example.

via engadget

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By Matthieu, 2010-06-13 21:10

Yes, I know, another Linux post. What can I say, this is what I do these days.

I’ve been running a Windows server in a kvm VM just to be able to run uTorrent. This was overkill, had a crazy amount of overhead, and was unstable (downloading to a share on my Samba server). Today I decided to attempt a more efficient solution: uTorrent in Wine. (Yes, there are other BitTorrent clients, and even… NATIVE Linux clients, but I’ve found none of them match the speed of uTorrent for my connection except for kTorrent. However, I don’t have an Android and/or iPhone app to remote control kTorrent.) Wine is a supported platform, according to the uTorrent website, however I wanted to run it on a headless OpenVZ container, and not on a standard desktop Linux distro. Should still be pretty simple, but knowing me, I might forget something next time I try and set this up, so I’ll document it here.

1. Create a fresh VZ container. I used the Proxmox Debian 6.0 (squeeze) – standard i386 template.
2. Edit /etc/apt/sources.list to point to a fast mirror in Canada (iweb!)
   deb http://debian.mirror.iweb.ca/debian squeeze main contrib non-free
   deb http://debian.mirror.iweb.ca/debian-security squeeze/updates main contrib non-free
3. run an apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
4. apt-get install wine sudo xterm openbox tightvncserver
5. adduser matt
6. add google repo: http://www.google.com/linuxrepositories/apt.html
7. install Google Chrome
8. wget http://download.utorrent.com/2.0.2/utorrent.exe
9. From another PC: ssh -Y matt@openvz-container
10. wine winecfg
11. run vncserver and set a password.
12. run wine utorrent.exe
13. Enable Web UI

Next steps:

1. Set up Dropbox for easy adding of torrents: http://wiki.dropbox.com/TipsAndTricks/TextBasedLinuxInstall
2. Make uTorrent and VNC server run on container startup*
3. Create a VZ mount script so that torrents download outside of /vz area.

* For this I used a cool script obtained from http://www.abdevelopment.ca/blog/start-vnc-server-ubuntu-boot :

1. Modify your ~/.vnc/xstartup to start the programs you want (gnome-session, lxde-session, utorrent, etc.)
2. Save the following script as /etc/init.d/vncserver. Change

   export USER="mythtv"

   to the user you want to run the VNC session for.

#!/bin/sh -e
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          vncserver
# Required-Start:    networking
# Default-Start:     3 4 5
# Default-Stop:      0 6
### END INIT INFO
 
PATH="$PATH:/usr/X11R6/bin/"
 
# The Username:Group that will run VNC
export USER="mythtv"
#${RUNAS}
 
# The display that VNC will use
DISPLAY="1"
 
# Color depth (between 8 and 32)
DEPTH="16"
 
# The Desktop geometry to use.
#GEOMETRY="x"
#GEOMETRY="800x600"
GEOMETRY="1024x768"
#GEOMETRY="1280x1024"
 
# The name that the VNC Desktop will have.
NAME="my-vnc-server"
 
OPTIONS="-name ${NAME} -depth ${DEPTH} -geometry ${GEOMETRY} :${DISPLAY}"
 
. /lib/lsb/init-functions
 
case "$1" in
start)
log_action_begin_msg "Starting vncserver for user '${USER}' on localhost:${DISPLAY}"
su ${USER} -c "/usr/bin/vncserver ${OPTIONS}"
;;
 
stop)
log_action_begin_msg "Stopping vncserver for user '${USER}' on localhost:${DISPLAY}"
su ${USER} -c "/usr/bin/vncserver -kill :${DISPLAY}"
;;
 
restart)
$0 stop
$0 start
;;
esac
 
exit 0

For more info, see the source link.

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By Matthieu, 2010-06-05 10:30

Trying to set up Samba on a Debian server so that shares can be browsed as a guest, and user-authentication is optional. IIRC this is the default behaviour on Ubuntu.
After hours of messing around, I finally decided to grab the /etc/samba/smb.conf from and ubuntu machine and replace the debian one. And what do you know, it works.

seems the key directive is

usershare allow guests = yes

Ubuntu:

#======================= Global Settings =======================

[global]
 log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m
 passwd chat = *Enter\snew\s*\spassword:* %n\n *Retype\snew\s*\spassword:* %n\n *password\supdated\ssuccessfully* .
 obey pam restrictions = yes
 map to guest = bad user
 encrypt passwords = true
 passwd program = /usr/bin/passwd %u
 passdb backend = tdbsam
 dns proxy = no
 server string = %h server (Samba)
 unix password sync = yes
 unix extensions = no
 workgroup = WORKGROUP
 os level = 20
 syslog = 0
 panic action = /usr/share/samba/panic-action %d
 usershare allow guests = yes
 max log size = 1000
 pam password change = yes

Debian:

#======================= Global Settings =======================

[global]
 log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m
 passwd chat = *Enter\snew\s*\spassword:* %n\n *Retype\snew\s*\spassword:* %n\n *password\supdated\ssuccessfully* .
 obey pam restrictions = yes
 null passwords = yes
 encrypt passwords = yes
 public = yes
 passdb backend = tdbsam
 passwd program = /usr/bin/passwd %u
 unix extensions = no
 dns proxy = no
 server string = %h server
 unix password sync = yes
 workgroup = WORKGROUP
 os level = 20
 security = user
 syslog = 0
 panic action = /usr/share/samba/panic-action %d
 max log size = 1000
 pam password change = yes

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By Matthieu, 2010-06-02 21:53

Simple fix for Mac OS X 10.6.3 Samba Write Access problem – OS X Daily.

Why this hasn’t been fixed yet is beyond me.

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By Matthieu, 2010-06-01 21:47

A clean Adium profile wiill by default use your Mac’s user icon as the “display picture” for your IM accounts. Changing your DP once breaks this association.

To fix : Edit ~/Library/Application Support/Adium 2.0/Users/Default/Account Status.plist and delete the “User Icon” Data value.

That’s it!

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By Matthieu, 2010-05-30 22:47

So, I now have two blogs. The old faithful WordPress, and the new kid, Tumblr. I’ve been thinking over the past little while which one to use, or how best to make use of both. And now I’ve decided.

WordPress will remain my main blog, where I will write whenever I’m really in the mood for writing. Tumblr will be a repository of all things memorable or interesting, but not so much as to motivate me to write a blog post.

Posts on the WordPress blog will be sent over to Tumblr (hopefully) by RSS.

We’ll see how this goes.

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By Matthieu, 2010-05-25 00:33

The Netgear WNDA3100 is a pretty nice wireless adapter, but the drivers from Netgear are bundled with a crappy management software. I extracted the basic driver files from the .exe provided so that I can install the hardware using the Windows standard methods.

The 7z contains the Windows XP/2003 and Vista/7 drivers.

WNDA3100v1 Driver

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By Matthieu, 2010-05-24 17:07

As you all may or may not know, I just got back from a nice little tour of London, Paris and Mauritius. It was a bit of a spontaneous last-minute decision, and I’m really glad I decided to go. Now, without further ado, let the anecdotes begin. (These are based on my memories, notes and pictures and may not be completely accurate.)

Feb 26, 2010

This morning, I’m heading to the OASBO conference in Missisauga. We had a fantastic snow storm last night, pretty much the first real storm of 2010. Took over 30 minutes to get to Delta Meadowvale… should take under 20. Man that was a “fun” drive… not. This Day 2 of the conference was pretty routine; educational, moderately interesting, and with good food. All the while I was thinking about how in less than 24 hours I’d be in London, and in less than 48 I’d be in the sun in Mauritius. At 2pm, I said goodbye to my coworkers and headed home to do the last bit of packing. Last minute, yes yes I know.

Departure was scheduled for 8:15pm. Headed over to Pearson and had a last coffee with the family before heading off.

Went through security and sat down in the departure lounge with my dad. And at that point the excitement really started to hit. We were called to the gate, and naturally everyone rushed up to form a line to get on the plane. (I really don’t get this, I mean people, you have ASSIGNED SEATS.) Boarded the plane, and I must say I was impressed with Air Canada’s 767. The whole thing seemed newly renovated, with fairly comfortable seats, a cool, modern-looking colour scheme, and the latest movies on the (Linux-based!) entertainment system. Upon my dad’s recommendation, I decided to browse the French movies, finally settling on Paris (2008), since I would be visiting there in a few weeks.

Feb 27, 2010

Arrived at LHR around 8:30am. We had 10 hours in London, so took the Tube to Picadilly we grabbed a ticket on an open-top bus tour so we could get a nice overview of the city, its landmarks and history. In those 10 hours, I got to see Big Ben, the Eye, the Tower of London…. All the big stuff. Still have to go back and get a real taste of the city. Oh also, must go see Abbey Road.

And here ends Part 1. I changed my mind and decided to split this into parts, otherwise either it would never get published, or I’d end up with one incredibly long post that no one will read.

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By Matthieu, 2010-05-01 11:51

“¡Dos piezas de pollo!”

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By Matthieu, 2010-03-22 20:41

Macfusion: The world in your Finder.

A handy gui to MacFUSE – user-space filesystem for Mac OS X