Problem Solved!

Mimicking the GoogleTV Browser with Chromium

jecortez — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 18:53:50 +0000

There are a bunch of websites that are optimized for the “leanback” GoogleTV experience. I wanted to get these pages to load on my ubuntu media computer in my living room. To launch chromium that mimics GoogleTV, launch it using:

/usr/bin/chromium-browser --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U: Linux i686; en-US) AppleWebKit/533.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/5.0.375.127 Large Screen Safari/533.4 GoogleTV/b39389"

Now you can go to sites like http://www.radioparadise.com/ and it will automatically be formated for your living room enjoyment!

For bonus points, lets open it up to the GoogleTV spotlight which has a list of optimized sites:

/usr/bin/chromium-browser --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U: Linux i686; en-US) AppleWebKit/533.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/5.0.375.127 Large Screen Safari/533.4 GoogleTV/b39389" "http://www.google.com/tv/spotlight-gallery.html"

If you have any more tricks like this, please let me know!

Tethering android and OSX without root

jecortez — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 01:44:58 +0000

This guide explains how to tether your android phone to a OSX machine over USB. It supports Android 1.5 Cupcake. I have only tested this on an Android Development phone (HTC Magic aka Google Ion), but it should work on others.

UPDATE 1/21/10: Confirms works on Nexus One.

This guide assumes several things. You must have macports, be able to install apps on your phone (IE android SDK), be familiar with the terminal, and be aware what your cell carrier’s position on tethering is.

Lets get started.

Install the openvpn port for OSX:
```
sudo port install openvpn2
```
This may take a while depending on your connection speed and processor speed. It will build several dependencies, including openvpn2.
Download AziLink:
http://azilink.googlecode.com/files/azilink-2.0.2.apk
Install AziLink to your phone:
with the sdk installed:
```
adb install azilink.apk
```
or on the phone: http://lfx.org/azilink/azilink.apk
Enable USB debugging on the phone. From the home screen, this is under Settings>Applications>Development>USB debugging.
Install the Android USB driver (if you don’t already have one installed). See http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/device.html for more information. The driver is included in the ADB download if you don’t want to get the full SDK.
Create a script (I called it androidtether) and make it executable:
```
touch androidtether
chmod 755 androidtether
```
copy bash script from http://jimcortez.com/code/androidtether into that file
This file (credited below) will take care of all the setup and tear down of the tethering
On the phone, run AziLink and make sure “Service active” is checked.
run the script
./androidtether
If all goes well, you are now tethered! AziLink should have a connected status and network stats should start flowing.
And yes, it does work, I am posting from a tethered MacBook Pro!
When you are done, hit contrl+c and the tear down will be triggered

Problems and Notes

I had a problem running the script, I got this error message:
```
Cannot allocate TUN/TAP dev dynamically
```
There are many theories about why this happens. The range from co-installation of Cisco VPN to faulty TUN/TAP drivers. I fixed it by simply installing tunnelblick (http://code.google.com/p/tunnelblick/). I think it included some helpful drivers.
If you do a network connect/disconnect/switch on the computer or phone (ie wifi to 3G, ethernet to wifi). You must restart all the services.
This is NOT a secured connection, the above does not utilize the encryption capabilities!

Credits

I cobbled this guide together from so many sources, it was hard to keep track. Feel as though I didn’t give you credit? Please let me know!

TUN/TAP issue:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20060803032236476
some stolen instruction steps:
http://code.google.com/p/azilink/
script from mochabyte post:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/archive/index.php/t-481162.html

Outdoor Computing

jecortez — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 20:09:47 +0000

Originally posted to the SF-LUG and DorkBotSF-blabber mailing lists:

While enjoying the incredible weather at Baker beach today, I found myself wanting to get some work done outside, in bright bright sunlight. So here are some brief requirements for a machine that I want to build:

need to hook up to a battery of some kind
want about 5 hours of usability
need to see the screen in bright sunlight
need it to be semi-portable (meaning I can carry it to the beach)
needs to be sand proof
run Linux (Ubuntu or some derivative preferred)
have a budget of $600 (can probably machine things like a case if needed)

The main thing is the monitor and usability. I figure the use of an intel atom board would be efficient enough. I know the OLPC has an LCD that can switch to grayscale and is visible in bright sunlight, anyone know if anyone makes a larger version of this screen? Most of the time I will just be coding, so video and full color display is not really necessary. Looking for at least a 15′ screen.

Keyboard and mouse can be wired for power-conservation, but I prefer a full keyboard for coding.

Does anyone have experience coming up with external power sources? Any tips?

At some point I might break down and get a 3g pc card, but in the meantime I can make due with caching any data I would need beforehand. I think the atom boards have built in wifi.

Any suggestions or commentary?

Ubuntu and full /tmp

jecortez — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 08:28:29 +0000

Recently, firefox screamed at me because my /tmp “partition” was full. This stuck me as odd because I did not create a manual /tmp directory. After running “df -h”, I found that ubuntu had created a /tmp virtual partition and set it’s size at 1MB. This also stopped videos on Youtube from playing as 1MB fills up very quickly.

I found the fix at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=677185&page=3#22

Open up /etc/mtab in your favorite text editor with root privledges (ie “sudo vim /etc/mtab”). And remove the line that dictates your /tmp directory. Ubuntu will now use a directory under /, like a normal OS would do.

My Personal Information Management and its Problems

jecortez — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 06:12:11 +0000

Recently, I have been concerned with getting my personal information in order. Part of it is finally having an organized life. The other half comes from no longer trusting companies to store my information for me. I am going to outline my current setup and the problems with it.

Let me first say that I am aware of a couple systems out there, but none of them so far seem either installable on my current host, or feature-complete. Zimbra seems very viable, but it requires root-access and a full server or vm (none of which my hosting plan provides). Also before you jump to “Just use all web apps,” I am not always connected. I use my iPod touch as a PDA and wifi can be spotty. My laptop has a superior input system, and that is also not always online.

My goal is the following:

Central IMAP email
Central Calendaring System
Central Address Book
Central Todo list
Use Kontact PIM suite with all of the above
All hosted on my current web host
Accessible and editable from all my devices (laptop, desktop, ipod touch, wap phone, etc…)
Do it open-source (for free)

Mail

I am actually very close to having this covered. Right now, I use IMAP, with several folders, filters, etc. I use Kmail on my laptop, roundCube webmail, and Gmail for mobile.

One problem I have is mobile access. Right now, I use Gmail to access via my ipod touch and phone. GMail does not provide IMAP access to OTHER email accounts, only POP3. This means that when Gmail reads my mails, everything in my inbox is marked as read! Gmail also archives my email, something I can accomplish myself, thank you very much.

Another problem I have is filters. My host does provide server-based filtering, but it is a clunky interface. I have about 25 filters though Kmail. I like their way of creating filters, it allows for fine grain filtering. Some might say “use Sieve,” but alas my host does not support it. So currently, I rely on my laptop to eventually filter email for me. I am toying with the idea of exporting Kmail filters to a .procmailrc file and throwing it on the server, but have yet to venture into that deep hole.

Calendar

Starting last year, I started using a calendar, and it has saved my life. Currently, I use Kontact’s calendar on my laptop. It is running the GCalDaemon that syncs with Google Calendar. It offers 2 way sync so I can edit either through Google or my laptop.

As said above, I am trying to host all my personal data myself. So having Google host my data is a problem. However, they provide good interfaces for the web and mobile. I have yet to find a way to nicely manage my calendar both on the desktop and the web.

Todo

This is perhaps the most important. I use this to keep track of mostly homework and exams. My explanation for not using a calendar is long-winded, theoretical, and personal. Right now, I use the system in Kontact. I like how it will mash together with the calendar and show me what is due each day on a week time line.

My problem lies with the inability to sync with any services. To my knowledge, there is no todo list system that will read Kmail’s file format, or vice-versa. This is a big problem when I am not toting my laptop and I need to know when an assignment is due.

Address Book

I have made little effort on this front. Kontact has gathered names and emails for me. I have tied some of the names to Kopete (IM client) contacts, but that is about it. In the future, once I start to have real contacts, I would like a central way to contact them all.

I have a couple ideas. One is using and LDAP server, which Kontact supports. The problem (again…) lies with not having that service available on my host.

Bringing them all together

So the BEST solution would be Zimbra-like. I can view everything together in one web interface, yet use whatever client tools I want to make changes. What is an Address book without the email client? Todo list without calendar? I have read a little about akonadi, but don’t quite grasp it as a whole yet, maybe it will help after I make the switch to Kubuntu 8.10 and KDE 4.

What are your suggestion or comments? Leave a note below or email me.

Basic GPS Distance Class (in PHP)

jecortez — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 05:08:08 +0000

I wrote this small PHP class a while ago for a project that never really came about. The purpose is to use GPS coordinates to find the surface distance. I did some research and am pretty sure the formula is correct. Before using it in any mission-critical apps, I suggest verifying the formula. Use it, steal it, whatever, just let me know if you use it in something cool!

As always, I am open to any suggestions that might make it better!

http://www.jimcortez.com/code/codeShow.php?filenum=0

Physically Blowing Up Machines

jecortez — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:08:13 +0000

ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS make sure to flip voltage switches on machines BEFORE packing them to go to another country with different voltage. I recently went on a trip to Peru and forgot to flip the switch on a server we brought down. A stream of smoke and several curse words later, I realized I forgot to flip the voltage switch. Needless to say there were no replacement parts for the machine we were using and had to completely replace the machine. Just be careful!

One nice thing however was that Ubuntu was smart enough to work on the new machine without a reinstall! A simple hard drive swap was all that was necessary!

Forgetting attachments and Kmail

jecortez — Fri, 16 May 2008 02:30:03 +0000

I just ran into this and had to write a new post. While not a problem per say, it is a REALLY GREAT feature that I have never seen before in an email client. I was sending an email and forgot to attach the file I was sending. Kmail automatically sensed that I had referenced an attachment, but had forgotten to attach it! Let me state again:

Wrote email that referenced an attachment in the text (ie “..please see attached file..”)
Forgot to attach file
Kmail told me that I forgot!

Such a useful feature, great job Kmail team!

Many to Many and Primary Keys

jecortez — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 00:09:01 +0000

I wish I would have seen this before I started working with rails’ has_many_and_belongs_to_many relationship stuff. When creating the relationship table (ie. posts_person), make sure that it DOES NOT HAVE AND ID! This is very strange, but it will mess up saving multiple objects.

To fix this, in your migrations, when creating the table (create_table()), make sure you pass in the :id=>false option to not have rails automatically create the id field.

Suprisingly, this is actually documented in the api, http://api.rubyonrails.com/classes/ActiveRecord/Associations/ClassMethods.html under the habtm description.

I wish I would get some type of warning that this is going on, but oh well…

Publishing Source Code for an old Yahoo Widget

jecortez — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 07:09:27 +0000

A couple years back, I made a yahoo widget that would check JK Rowling’s official site for updates. I never really let it out of beta and eventually abandoned it out of lack of motivation. To my knowledge, it is not widely used, I would be surprised if one person knew about it! But anyway, i decided I might as well let out the source code for the thing in case anyone wants to improve on it! Anywho, all the code (including old versions) can be found at:

http://jimcortez.com/code/JKRCOMwidget/

I am going to say this now, this was written a long time ago and has only a slight bearing on what I am capable of now. With that out of the way, I can say I do not remember very much if at all of what I wrote. I know there is a javascript file in there that, to my spotty memory, is actually pretty well documented. From what I do remember, it uses (probably outdated and slow) XML parsing to parse out the cfm files generated by the site. It uses flat cache files to decided if a site is new or not. For all I know, they (being lightmaker) have changed the way the site functions and the code won’t actually work.

Feel free to use the code however you please, I am not going to go through the trouble of attaching a license to it. If you do happen to start using it, I would be interested in an email!

Have fun!