bifröst

Nokia’s PC Suite is really a nice software - if you use Windows and Outlook. But you have to find alternatives if you change one of these parameters. Maybe you run thunderbird as mailing client, so you can use tools like MobileMaster. And maybe you run linux as OS, so you can use tools like… wait… that’s the question!
Theres an XML-based format called SyncML which can be used to sync clients with a server application. The default sync client on Nokia mobiles is such a client, so why not use it? A connector for thunderbird’s addressbook and sunbird/lightning calendar is also available. So what kind of server should be used? I tried the OS version of funambol but swichted to their free online service at my.funambol.com quickly. There you can setup a push mail service for your symbian mobile phone. I didn’t try it because I have an IMAP client on my phone. You can sent a config message to your mobile which includes all the data for the sync profile. With my Nokia E51 syncing the addressbook worked fine via WiFi. One problem isn’t solved yet: some numbers aren’t replaced with the person’s name in the message inbox, although the are linked with the person in the addressbook (and I don’t have duplicates!). Let’s see if I can fix it via PC Suite when I start Windows next time.
I don’t sync the lightning calendar via funambol because you have to select which calendar you want to sync in the addon. One point is: it’s not handy to switch to the extensions config for 4 different calendars. And secondly all appointments send to the online service will be resend to the “other” calendar, which means I have duplicate entries in every calendar. I am using a google calendar connector within lightning and have some private calendars, share some calendars and use calendars shared by other persons (with writing access), so this sucks hard… I’ve found some tools for my mobile, but the don’t have all the features I need yet. One of it is open source - I want to talk about it next time.

I really like konqueror as file browser. So I’ve changed the start view to “file managment”, which is more useful for me due to using firefox as my default browser. Also that worked fine, the “intab” view feature of konqueror was annoying. I had to switch back to my prefered “detailed list view” every time, after opening kpdf, gwenview etc. within konqueror. Here is my solution to fix it:
Go to the “configure konqueror” menu, and select “file assocations”. Browse to “inode” and click on “directory”, where you switch to the “embedding” tab. Just move your prefered view to the top.

I have a Logitech diNovo for several years now and it really worked fine under windows. But I’ve switched to ubuntu on my desktop machine about one year ago. And I got the keyboard + mouse running via bluetooth after searching a lot about this topic (examples: here, here and here). But (re-)connecting did not work properly, I always had to use this command:
sudo hidd --search
And how do you type a command when your keyboard is not connected? Yes, you use another keyboard plugged via PS/2 and this sucks!

And now? When I ran this command for the first time with the new Ubuntu 8.04 everything worked fine

my hcid.conf
device 00:11:22:33:44:55 {
name "Logitech diNovo MediaPad";
auth enable;
encrypt enable;
}
device 00:12:34:56:78:90 {
name "Logitech diNovo Keyboard";
auth enable;
encrypt enable;
}
device AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF {
name "Logitech MX1000 Laser Mouse";
auth enable;
encrypt enable;
}

or: presentation is everything

Within the last week I worked a lot for FabrikIM, a software written in ruby. This project is part of my studies and we had to do it as a group of four people. It’s more or less a simulation with input of sellwishes, working lists for the staff etc. and and output of production or orderlist. Our tool is maybe the best in a technical view (I am sure it is ;)) and we finished the concomitantly business game as no 1. But sometimes technique is evil. The software worked fine and we had to present it today. But we did not check all technical issues, which means that the LiveCD (FabrikIM was developed under linux but will work on every platform) failed to open our presentation, because we just tested the documentation and the tool itself. So we switched to our normal developing machine (at least one of them :D) and there the connection to the beamer sucked: 640×432!? No way to change it fast and so the technique was our undoing. The presentation was “ok” but you could see anything in the live demo of the tool itself. Now we will get a “bad” mark cause we “ignored” something very important: presentation is everything.

But: we will release the good part of the software as open source soon, so stay tuned…!

For me, it’s a well known problem: all these super live cds (e.g. Knoppix or like we have it today: Ubuntu) do not start as expected: X-Window always fails to set up everything correctly, but only on my pcs… Maybe it’s Dell’s fault?
After getting the console on my Inspiron 6400 I had to fet a new driver with sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx, edit the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, replace the Driver in the section “Device” from vesa to fglrx and restart the X-Window server with startx. Always funny, especially for beginners, right?
By the way: it’s a ATI Radeon Mobility X1400 as gpu.

Ok, the first thing I’ve learned right today is:
Fonts in the web aren’t perfect. I didn’t see the difference for a until I’ve changed the css sheet from
code {
font: 1.1em 'Courier New', Courier, Fixed;
}
to
code {
font: 1.2em Monospace;
}
There was a differnce, but I was too marginal for me.