Johns Blog

I’ve just gotten Guitar Hero 3 for Wii (despite not having a Wii). The Guitar controller connects to my wiimote, and then I can use the bluetooth built in to my laptop to play Frets on Fire with a guitar-like thing. Awesome fun, and very Linux friendly. Debian and Ubuntu users can just apt-get the cwiid driver (you need the wminput package) and use the configuration from here:

# wiiguitar profile for FOF
Classic.Down=KEY_ENTER #Strum
Classic.Dpad.X = ABS_X
Classic.Dpad.Y = ABS_Y
Classic.LStick.X = ABS_HAT0X
Classic.LStick.Y = ABS_HAT0Y
Classic.RStick.X = ABS_HAT1X
Classic.RStick.Y = ABS_HAT1Y
Classic.A = KEY_F1 #First Fret starting at top of wiiguitar
Classic.B = KEY_F2 #Second Fret
Classic.X = KEY_F3 #Third Fret
Classic.Y = KEY_F4 #Forth Fret
Classic.Minus = BTN_SELECT
Classic.Plus = BTN_START
Classic.Home = BTN_MODE
Classic.L = BTN_TL
Classic.R = BTN_TR
Classic.ZL = KEY_F5 #Fifth Fret
Classic.ZR = BTN_TR2

I have that saved as ~/.fof and just run sudo wminput -c ~/.fof before i start frets on fire. Fun!

Back to practicing!

I don’t know why, but I seem to be good at buying hardware that works well with Linux. My friends have (brand spanking new) PC’s that won’t even load an Ubuntu live CD, yet I have two laptops that work great, straight out of the box. Yesterday I went to Tesco and purchased myself a Philips SNU 5600. Just found it all alone on a shelf and a quick phone google showed it had a native driver (zd1211rw).. And there I was thinking i’d never find a USB Wifi adaptor that would just work.

So I went home, dug out my NSLU2 and booted it up. I run Debian on it with a 2.6.21 kernel, so all I had to do was install the firmware (apt-get install zd1211-firmware) and plug it in.

I had a slight moment of fear though:
SoftMAC: Open Authentication with XX:XX:Xx:XX:XX:XX failed, error code: 12

A bit of kernel grepping later: Turns out that error 12 is WLAN_STATUS_ASSOC_DENIED_UNSPEC, and my router was set to only let known MAC addresses connect! Doh!

So now I have a wireless linux box tucked away in the wardrobe, serving my OGGs to anyone of my devices thats interested… Now to setup streaming to my smartphone!

Just felt like sharing a quote i only read for the first time today. It sums part of my feelings up quite nicely.

“Most harmful of all is the message that Microsoft’s actions have conveyed to every enterprise with the potential to innovate in the computer industry. Through its conduct toward Netscape, IBM, Compaq, Intel, and others, Microsoft has demonstrated that it will use its prodigious market power and immense profits to harm any firm that insists on pursuing initiatives that could intensify competition against one of Microsoft’s core products. Microsoft’s past success in hurting such companies and stifling innovation deters investment in technologies and businesses that exhibit the potential to threaten Microsoft. The ultimate result is that some innovations that would truly benefit consumers never occur for the sole reason that they do not coincide with Microsoft’s self-interest.”

• http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm
• http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/ms-conclusions.html

I’ve been doing some work on getting Conduit to play nicely with the version of PyGooCanvas found on Feisty. Initially, having no experience in this area at all, it was quite a challenge. Anway, i’ve got it mostly working but the code is now littered with log messages trying to figure out why an arrow won’t render. It’s gotten to the point where i am going to have to try and reproduce the bug outside of conduit, to see if it is a Conduit bug or a GooCanvas bug.

Why does this make bash/*nix rule? Simple. I need to access a PyGooCanvas demo. I know it’s called mv-simple, but i don’t know where it is saved:

john@laptop:~$ locate mv-simple
/home/john/Projects/pygoocanvas-0.6.0/demo/mv-simple-demo.py
Not bad, but this is old hat to me these days. What i hadn’t tried before, and made me smile, was:

john@laptop:~$ gedit `locate mv-simple`

And the demo was opened unto gedit, yay! No more copy and pasting the path for me. I also found this one to be helpful… It copies the file to my desktop where I intend to abuse it until I have the same SVG rendering glitch as in Conduit…
john@hx280:~$ cp `locate mv-simple` ./Desktop/

Unfortunately this method only opens the first thing in locates list - ideas on opening all files returned by locate welcomed (Any xargs foo must be well explained O_O)

It’s now 6 months since i switched to Linux. I don’t know the exact date, but i do remember the feeling of excitement i had from Dapper. It was such a great experience, things just worked. No faffy installers and drivers. I just plug in my camera and it appears. Sure, there are rough edges. But this time it was different. Everything i needed from an OS was there - and it wasn’t a pain in the butt to get working.

Now it’s approaching Christmas and i’m getting ready to switch from Edgy to Feisty. Who could ask for more for christmas? If you haven’t checked out the specs you should. There are some very interesting things planned for improved integration and its shaping up to be a great next step :]