Ubuntu’s biggest problem? Lack of good documentation

Well, I guess this can apply to a lot of projects out there, but I’ve spent the past 2.5 hours trying to get a simple email checking program working in Ubuntu 12.04. I originally wrote it in python but wanted to try redoing it in C for practice/fun, but good gravy, Canonical really needs to work on their documentation for all their distro-specific APIs. All my python script does is hook into the messaging menu and displays how many unread emails you have, and it runs every 15min. using a simple GTK backend (timeout_add() to be precise).

Running wireshark w/o root

Geez, this has turned out to be a real headache: configuring wireshark to run properly on linux (re: capture packet data) w/o having to run it as root. Obviously, the easiest thing to do is just run it using sudo, but as wireshark will tell you in a pop-up message, that’s not a good (re: secure) way of doing it. Instead it says to modify dumpcap, the small program that actually captures packet data, to run as root only, leaving the rest of wireshark proper to run w/ normal user privileges.

Finally put my old laptop out to pasture

Years back when I was starting college I saved up my cash to buy a Dell Inspiron B130, which served me well back then. Admittedly, I probably used it for watching movies more than anything else, but I got some school work out of it. Off the top of my head, I think the specs were to the tune of a 1.6GHz Pentium CPU (no idea if it was dual core or not), 256MB of RAM (yikes!), a 60GB(?) HDD, and a 15-17 inch monitor. It originally came installed w/ Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6, which worked fine for me… until the battery died.

Less sleep, more coding, and roadblock after roadblock

I’ve basically been wired for the past week, as I’ve jumped head-first into writing my second Android app (a comic viewer). Seeing as how I’m targeting android 3.0+ but want to support back to 2.2, I’ve had a lot of trouble trying to wrap my brain around the new development paradigm: fragments. Needless to say, I’m still not sure if I like them or not.

Key to android development: don’t let yourself get rusty

Ok, ok, so you can say that about pretty much anything, but having spent the last 2-3 months not doing any android development, it’s hard finally coming back to it. I’m working on my first android 3.0 app (a comic book reader), and I’ve just spent the better part of the evening wrapping my head around the use of fragments.

OG Galaxy Tab finally getting an update to Gingerbread

I had all but given up hope, and was seriously thinking about trying to load a custom ROM on my original/first-gen Samsung Galaxy Tab (the 7-incher), but it seems like finally Verizon is preparing to release the system update from android 2.2 to 2.3. Still, considering that both Samsung and Verizon were pointing the finger at each other as to why there wasn’t any update available (Samsung says it’s done and it’s up to the carrier to roll it out; Verizon says it was up to the device maker to produce it), I’m glad that they didn’t end up being a dead-in-the-water device (I’d given up on Honeycomb a long time ago).

Rooting the Galaxy Tab 10.1

So I have a wordpress site set up on a VM that I used for testing purposes, which have benefited me greatly at work. Recently, I wanted to test out some mobile skins but in order to do that I’d have to edit the hosts file of the target device. And for whatever reason, the android hardware manufacturers insist on locking down their devices – hell, I think even Asus and Acer are guilty of this (wtf?). I know, security and all that, but they should at least give us the ability to set up an admin account. Fortunately enough, it’s pretty easy to root the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, even for a newbie like me.

This is getting ridiculous

I just re-installed Ubuntu 11.10 for the 3rd time, not b/c my previous install was busted, but b/c I wanted to shrink my Linux Mint install. However, I made the mistake of deleting the boot partition as well, and I couldn’t figure out how to re-install grub2 again. Meh, I don’t mind that much, but it sucks that it takes me about an hour to get my system configured correctly again.

Glad I only have to do this once every 6 months. Well, usually anyway. 😐

Now that I have it, what do I do w/ it?

Now that I’ve had my Galaxy Tab 10.1 for a couple of days, I’m beginning to regret my purchase. It’s not that it’s a bad tablet (it’s quite good as far as I can tell), it’s just that I’m not quite sure what to do w/ it now that I have it. Much of what I use my first-gen Galaxy Tab for is checking out RSS feeds and reading manga – nothing really media-heavy. Likewise, I still think gaming on a tablet is pretty gimmicky, so that’s ruled out. I guess that leaves watching videos, but I usually only watch shows at home. So, just what do I do w/ this thing?

And on an unrelated note, I downloaded the latest version of Google’s Music Player upload program for Debian/Ubuntu, and I’m pleased to see that they’ve finally fixed it so that it actually works. I tried it some months back but the thing was completely broken as far as I could tell, but now it works like a charm – it even has app indicator support! The upload program has always been the one thing I have against Google’s cloud music storage versus Amazon’s offering, but now that it works (and arguably better than its Windows counterpart, from my experience), I’d have to give the nod to Google as far as which service I prefer. It’s nice being able to upload my oggs from Ubuntu instead of having to log into Windows to upload the mp3s.

Just got the (new) Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

Less than a year after purchasing the first Samsung Galaxy Tab (a 7-incher), I’ve finally gone ahead and purchased the new 10.1″ one after three months of debating it in my head. My initial thoughts are that it’s very nice looking, however it’s admittedly not as great as I thought it would be.