Scratching the itch again

Picked up a couple more toys this weekend, supposedly due to necessity (or at least as far as my wife knows, since our dog decided to have my earbuds for a snack). First one was a gadget I came across a couple of weeks ago from a company called Quirky, Inc. Essentially from all appearances all it is is a 4GB thumb drive, but there's a bit of a twist. It's called the Split Stick and if you look at the product image it's pretty much self explanatory. It's split into two 2GB memory cards with one on each end, and a slider switch in the middle to switch between the two. What makes this unique is the possibilities it presents. For example, on mine I plan to have a System Rescue CD installed on one side for emergencies, and on the other I'll install a bootable image with Ubuntu Netbook Remix on it that has a small persistent partition to store data on. My wife saw them and ordered one as well, although I have no idea what her intentions are for hers since she has plenty of SD cards to carry her data around on.

The other was a pair of Skullcandy headphones (the G.I. model in Winter Camo) to replace a 5+ year old set of Panasonic cans that are starting to short out on me. Reviews are mixed on these headphones and there doesn't seem to be any in-between either, people either absolutely love them or absolutely hate them. But they were reasonably priced ($69.95 at Skullcandy, but got them for $33 at Overstock.com) and I suppose I will see whether or not you get what you pay for, plus they come with a lifetime warranty. One consenus is that the low end seems to be a bit weak, but that has never been an issue for me as I a) mostly use headphones to listen to podcasts and watch videos and b) don't listen to rap or any other genre of music that involves a lot of bass, so a pair of 40mm drivers with a decent midrange should suit me just fine.

Don't know when I'lll get a chance to review them for you as I'm a sucker for the "Free Shipping" opeion meaning it's a crap shoot as to when I'll receive either of the items, but hopefully it will be before the end of next week.

A little off the beaten path

Although I am a blogger (although not a very prolific one), I do like to keep a private journal to record my personal and private thoughts as I'm not "that kind of blogger" (i.e. have to discuss relationships, my personal life, politics, etc in front of the whole world unless I'm advocating a cause I feel REALLy strongly about). but anyway, just getting straight to the point, even though I usually discuss hardware related things here, I wanted to take the time to post about a piece of software I've really been enjoying lately. Once upon a time back when I was an ardent Mac user there existed a very nice piece of diary/journal software that I used on a regular basis, that is until it went shareware, and not being in agreement with the author that the price he wanted to charge justified it's utility, I gave it up. Lo these many years I've gone about my business and not really actively sought out a replacement, but always wished for one in the back of my mind.
As it so happens, the other day while perusing my feeds in Liferea I stumbled across an app called RedNotebook. Curious, I visited the page and it appeared to possess all of (and then some) of the features I enjoyed and desired in my old journal software. If you are an Ubuntu user you won't find it in the repositories, although he does produce Ubuntu builds and provides instructions on his project site on how to add his repo to your sources list as well as providing a GPG key. I believe there is also a Mac version and the author appears to be actively seeking a Windows packager as well (if you happen to swing that way). I won't waste time going into details and feautres as you can check those out for yourself at the link, but I just wanted to take the time to share this with those who might be interested. So if his is the type of thing that strikes your fancy, by all means give it a look.

Update on the 1000HA

I received the 1000HA overnight delivery last Friday. and so far Netbook Remix is getting along with it pretty well. The only real snag I ran into is the wireless compatibility. The current ath5k module in 9.04 worked very sporadically at best. So I ended up having to reaquaint myself with ndiswrapper. There are several sets of instructions on resolving this situation (just search the Ubuntu forums, (especially this post: Asus Eee PC 1000HA / 9.04 / Atheros AR242x) as well as many guides which can be found if you just google the terms "wireless, jaunty and 1000HA". One of the most important parts of this process is making sure you blacklist the lackluster ath5k module so Ubuntu doesn't try to fall back on it for some reason. But otherwise all is well, I haven't suffered any dropped connections (although they can be a bit weak at times) but so far I'm getting a full strength 54Mb/s connection about 98.9% of the time. I'm hoping that since Karmic is supposed to be so focused on netbooks that this situation will be resolved by next release, as I understand that Intrepid's ath5k drivers worked just fine so I know it's definitely possible.

One thing that has crossed my mind since access to major components on this machine are so easy to get to is a possible replacement for the OEM wireless card, preferably something from Intel. Any recommendations?

Speaking of Karmic, there is a lot of hard work being done on the proposed artwork for this upcoming release. One theme in particular, Redux, is my current favorite and seems to be coming along quite nicely. You might want to drop by GNOME-Look or the Incoming Artwork for Karmic page on the Ubuntu wiki and give it a test drive, and most iportantly provide some feedback as this may very well be the first theme you see when you fire up your brand spanking new version of 9.10 this fall.

Out with the old, in with the new.

Well, the HP mini had some great attributes like size and keyboard, but battery life definitely wasn't one of them, and getting a replacement 6-cell just wasnt worth it in the long run as it would A) ruin the slimline aesthetics and B) the gain in battery life wasn't nearly as much as had been hoped for as reported by those that actually purchased one. So I sold it for a bit of a loss and purchased an equally reasonably priced Eee PC 901 20G (wanted to stay on the small side), the one that came with (blech!) Xandros Linux pre-installed. First order of business was to wipe out that kiddie interface and replace it with a "real" distro. I never got around to trying out Crunchbang as I had heard there were a few issues that needed to be ironed out with the "Cruncheee" version yet and I really didn't have the time or patience to work on it at the time. So during my research I found a distro that was supposed to make an Eee PC run like a top straight out of the box. Said distro shall remain nameless to avoid any flaming (although it's not too hard to narrow down the list of "Eee specific distros), but it certainly did not function as advertised. After many hours and days of the 901 overheating, updates breaking different features and trying to get all the hotkeys to work like they should (if I could get them to work at all), I finally threw in the towel and went in a different direction. Since the 901 was listed as a Tier 1 machine on the Ubuntu Netbook Remix web site, I decided to give it a spin. I installed it, ran all the updates and installed Eeecontrol. This time it was a much different story. Everything functioned as it should and the battery life was amazing. It worked so well, if fact, that my wife fell in love with the machine and decided she had to have one of her own. Unfortunately, by the time she had come to this conclusion the 901 had been discontinued and couldn't be found anywhere at a price of $400 or more, which was obviously unacceptable. Needless to say, the 901 is now the prized possession of Mrs. M and by week's end I'll be the (hopefully) proud owner of an Eee PC 1000HA. Hoping things go just as well with this machine as they did with the 901 fist time around. We shall see shortly, I suppose.

FYI, The Sansa Fuze is stil running like a champ. Looks like it's earned a permanent position in my ever flexible gadget-sphere. It works great with Rhythmbox (and Quod Libet, my alternate music management fave), not so much with Banshee which I gave a brief workout (yes, I'm yet another one of those anti-Mono zealots). Plan to give Listen and a few others a try in the not so distant future as well.

#!

Trying out a relatively new distro called CrunchBang (#! for short). It's essentially and unofficial stripped down version of Ubuntu using OpenBox as the WM rather than the standard GNOME. It's quite fast and just about exactly what I was looking for to run on the Mini as it uses less resources but still retains a good deal of the standard Ubuntu functionality since it relies largely on the Ubuntu repos and can utilize GTK apps. I've been a user of Fluxbox in the past and have found the learning curve of OpenBox to not be quite as steep as I imagined. If you're a netbook user like myself and are looking for an operating system with a little more pep and a little less bloat, do yourself a favor and fire up unetbootin, create a live USB image of CrunchBang Lite and take it for a test drive.

Latest additions to the family

In keeping with my new resolve to post more frequently, I'm posting about two new gadgets I've acquired recently. In the long interim since my first post I've had about five different computers, a Nokia N800, and HP iPaq Travel companion, two Nintendo DS, a PSP, iPod Touch, two Nano versions, two Shuffles and three different cell phones. But today I'm going to concentrate on a couple of things I've picked up in the last couple of weeks.

First up is the Sandisk Sansa Clip. Very simple and toy-like, there is a lot more under the hood than you might expect from a simple DAP in the Shuffle competition segment. Unlike the Shuffle, with which it shares only a similar size, you get a display, voice and FM radio recording, FM radio with presets, the ability to switch between MTP and MSC connection options, and support for OGG and FLAC as well as the expected WMA and MP3. Far more versatile than the proprietary Shuffle and best of all it works great in Ubuntu with music software such as Rhythmbox and Banshee. :)

Next is a little beauty I picked up on clearance at Best Buy, the Garmin Nuvi 205. For being a GPS device on it's way out, it's certainly a handy little guy. I plugged it in when I got to the parking lot and it acquired a good signal within about two minutes. I put in my home address to try it out and it took me straight there using my usual route. The maps were pretty up to date out of the box, but my apartment complex is so new that the street it's on didn't even show up, but the device itself can't really be blamed since this place just went up in the last few months. The screen is very responsive and legible even in the relatively bright sun and the touch provides nice positive haptic feedback when used. The speaker was quite loud at full volume and the voice cues were very clear. The battery appears to run down rather quickly which is a bit of a disappointment since there is an option for a "pedestrian" navigation mode which is something I very much wanted. But I think I can live with it since the device will spend the majority of it's time tethered to the power cord. One thing I can't figure out for the life of me is why some of these companies think that something like a picture viewer app adds value to a device like this. Go figure. I'd much rather have the space for additional maps. Aside from the battery the device also one other downside, and for me this is a biggie. So far after much time spent on Google there appears to be no (easy) way to update the device under Linux, which means I'll have to rely on the kindness of Windows and Mac using family and friends. Oh, well. I guess you can't have everything. Otherwise this little guy seems like it's going to earn it's keep and stay in my gadget arsenal for some time.

Better late than never

Whoa! Am I ever behind. But while time has passed me by, technology certainly hasn't. I've sort of returned to my young, experimental roots and installed the latest version of Ubuntu Netbook Remix on my recently purchased HP Mini. Things have been going quite swimmingly so far with the exception of having to iron out a few audio issues by having to install some updated ALSA drivers. Otherwise it's been pure heaven and the experience has reignited some of the old tinkering flames I first experienced when tinkering with Debian on PPC machines about 10 years ago. I find myself quite a bit reinvigorated.