Quick website updates

Looks like a recent update to the website killed the ability to submit comments, this should be fixed now.

Currently listening to: Easy Fight Rambling by X-Japan

Ubuntu, VMWare and accessing the iPhone

Turns out a bit of extra work is required in order to access my iPhone under VMWare when the host OS is Ubuntu.

The first problem I had was related to the usb audio trying to add my iPhone as a mic device. The simple fix is to add snd_usb_audio module to the blacklist although if your computer does have a usb audio device this will cause it to stop working. To add the snd_usb_audio to the blacklist under Ubuntu edit '/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf' and add

blacklist snd_usb_audio

After that is done it's just a matter of doing an `rmmod snd_usb_audio` if it has already been loaded.

The next problem was keeping the hald/dbus from trying to load and mount the iPhone as a camera device. A couple of rules added to hald policies will fix this problem. In Ubuntu create the file '/etc/hal/fdi/policy/10-iphone.fdi' with the following content.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
  <device>
    <match key="info.product" string="iPhone 3G">
       <merge key="info.ignore" type="bool">true</merge>
    </match>
  </device>
</deviceinfo>

NOTE:The string value needs to be the exact same as found in `hal-device`, to find the exact string try running the following command while the iPhone is plugged into the computer:

$ hal-device | grep iPhone
 usb_device.product = 'iPhone 3G'  (string)
 info.product = 'iPhone 3G'  (string)

Thinkpad T400 and Ubuntu 9.04

So my new work laptop arrived the other day, it’s a Thinkpad T400 with a 2.6Ghz processor, 4gigs of ram and a 160gig 7200rpm drive. I decided to go with Ubuntu for the OS this time since I have not tried it before and some other people I know appear to have had good success with it on their Thinkpad laptops. They also had just recently release the new 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope version so what better time to give it a try.

So far I have been very happy, the only hick-up I ran into was when I loaded the proprietary hardware driver for the ATI videocard. After installing the ATI driver and rebooting the system it would start to load X and then lock with corrupted graphics on the LCD. After some digging I found a post about other Thinkpads with a switchable graphics card that can operate between a low-power mode and a discrete mode. After turning of the OS detection and forcing the BIOS to only use the discrete mode all of the graphics lock up issues went away.

For everything else, the wireless, ethernet, suspend, bluetooth, sound, webcam, dvd burner all worked out of the box with no configuration required.

2009 Iditarod Standings KML Feed

Every year at work we create a KML feed for the Iditarod race standings. This year is no different with the addition of some GPS data added in from the IonEarth Iditarod website. Unfortunately I couldn’t add in all of the GPS locations for each musher due to the ITC charging for the service this year but I did add in the data feed from the free demo that is available.

Checkout the KML feed for the 2009 Iditarod Standings here

Server/CMS Updates

Over the next week I’m going to transition the website over to a server and cms system. I’m not really happy with typo, it’s a great system but I really want something that is a bit easier to customize and hack on myself, I am a web developer after all. Of course the server upgrade is being prompted byt he fact that the current host is a bit limited on resources and we have several users currently trying to use the system. I really wish that I hosting service I am purchasing from would over a Gentoo install but alas it is not and most places that offer them tend to be a bit to expensive for my budget, so I’m going with the next best alternative CentOS.

So my current plan for the new CMS to try out is Radiant. We recently starting using it at work for the new versions of a couple sites we host, and it has been fairly painless to get used to working with and creating content in. The main developer appears to be fairly available and easy to interact with along with a lot of other community support that I have found lacking with Typo. It also looks like it will be simple to bring over the current content, especially since I haven’t lived up to my goal of posting every week so I don’t have much to move over currently.