jastram.de Blog - Technology

Google Apps Status Page

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 15:23:47 -0400

Just found a really useful link. The Google Apps Status Page shows whether there are problems with any Google app (Calendar, Mail, Docs, etc.

Synaptics Touchpad & USB Mouse at the same time

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 09:57:42 -0400

While Touchpad and USB Mouse worked out of the box on my T61 running Ubuntu 8.04, I prefer the synaptics touchpad driver. Installing it was a breeze, but it stopped my USB Mouse from working.

While there are a lot of fixes are on the internet, it took me a while to get it to work, mainly because my Kernel was too new. Most fixes suggest to use the "AlwaysCore" Option in the "ServerLayout" section. Eventually I found this link which suggests to use "SendCoreEvents" instead. Now my xorg.conf looks like this:

Section "ServerLayout"
    ...
    InputDevice    "Touchpad0" "CorePointer"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "SendCoreEvents"
EndSection
...
Section "InputDevice"
    ...
    Option         "SendCoreEvents" "true"
EndSection
...
Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier      "Touchpad0"
    Driver          "synaptics"
    Option          "CorePointer"
    Option          "SendCoreEvents" "true"
    ...
EndSection

Under construction...

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:56:52 -0400

Ich bin am umstrukturieren, daher sind in Moment ein paar Links kaputt. Das wird in den nächsten Tagen in Ordnung gebracht.

Generate your own QR-Code

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 14:09:43 -0500

When I was in Japan, I loved the fact that there were QR-Codes all over the place - QR-Codes are two-dimensional bar codes that can be "scanned" (i.e. photographed) with any cell phone with camera. The camera would then decode the QR-Code and visit a URL, call a phone number, etc.

There are QR-Generators online, and the code shown here is for jastram.de. I found this on PDA Geek.

Citizendium as an alternative to Wikipedia?

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 22:32:31 -0400

Are you worried about rogue content in Wikipedia? Citizendium will try to be an alternative. Or will it just be an elite Wikipedia...?

Ubuntu: Problem with international Keyboard Layouts

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Fri, 26 May 2006 15:53:25 -0400

I was very close to dumping Ubuntu. This has so far been the best Desktop Linux distribution I ever worked with, and I really liked the ease of use. But one day, something broke. It didn't allow me to switch between keyboard layouts any more! As I often have to compose texts in German, this is a big deal, and quite a problem. I was exploring the various forums for months! I found quite a few people who had the same problem, but nobody with a solution that actually worked for me.

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Installing X.org on Ubuntu

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 19:42:21 -0500

Time for checking out a new distribution - there has been a lot of noise about Ubuntu, so I gave it a try. So far I like it a lot - it is Gnome-based (vs. my KDE-based Suse 9.2 system), and Gnome definitely got much better! Many of my favorite tools (Gimp, Eclipse, Firefox) are Gnome-based, so I like the idea of running them in their native environment.

As I use the system on my IBM Thinkpad R52, I ran into the same problem I ran with Suse: The 1400x1050 screen could not be driven out of the box, and in order to fix this (as I already found out for Suse), I had to recompile X. Here are my notes on doing that.
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Sun & SOA

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Sun, 10 Jul 2005 00:49:49 -0400

SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) pops up more and more often. Seems that Sun, after kicking its butt for not capitalizing more on Java, tries to respond better to SOA, as this Register Article explains.
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1400x1050 with Intel Mobile 915GM

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Wed, 13 Apr 2005 22:22:52 -0400

As I posted previously, I got a new laptop and am in the process of setting it with Linux. Installing Linux is easy - to make it take full advantage of the existing hardware is tricky. My current challenge is to have the Graphics subsystem use the full 1400x1050 resolution of the screen. I will update this post as I go along to document my progress.
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Using procmail with the Courier MTA and virtual mailboxes

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Thu, 03 Feb 2005 00:46:02 -0500

I am in the process of migrating to LFS 6.0. In the process, I changed my MTA from Postfix to Courier. I am using Courier with Virtual Mailboxes, and getting this to use with procmail (for spam filtering) was a little tricky.
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KDE or Gnome...?

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 18:18:24 -0500

After playing around with various distributions and desktop environments, I finally made my decision on my preferred environment: KDE it is. Here is my reasoning, and some advice on how to run GDK (Gnome) applications peacefully under KDE.
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Mozparty in Philadelphia!

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 20:49:20 -0400

Mark your calendar (and sign up): Mozparty on Friday, November 19th at Fergie's in downtown Philly!
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Blog Spam

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 23:31:05 -0400

Casual computer users only have to fight spam, spyware and torjans - but if you host a site where users can leave feedback (like this one), you have to deal with users writing spam comments!
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How to update the Tripwire Policy

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Thu, 05 Aug 2004 23:10:17 -0400

I finally figured out why I couldn't update my Tripwire Policy. Tripwire is an amazing tool that checks the integrity of your computer's filesystem, thereby detecting intrusions. But there are some pitfalls...
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Gmail account for free

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Mon, 12 Jul 2004 22:57:49 -0400

A friend of mine got me a Gmail account. Now they gave me 6 invitations that I can forward. Any takers...?

Update: All invitations are gone! Sorry!
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