Acer Aspire One (ZG5) hands on experience

Hi everyone!

Got one of these little subnotebooks to my hands for a short period and here’s a small summary about it.

So far I’ve tried out the Linpus Linux preinstalled to the laptop very briefly, as it had to make way for Windows XP SP3. Yep, got that right and no, it was not pleasure. Pain would describe the experience more.

Biggest reason is the very slow SSD hard drive. It just isn’t even feasible with Windows. Not even if you try to use fast SD card on the storage expansion slot for swap. It’s quite easy to get devices work in XP, as Acer kindly provides drivers for the laptop.

So, that was covered fast. Then to the part that was more interesting for me personally. Xubuntu 8.04.1 in a very, very small laptop. I was a bit afraid how the keyboard would fit for me, as i’m almost two meters tall. So far, I’ve had at least decent experience with it.

Biggest problem with the laptop and Xubuntu is the wireless card. It won’t work “off the shelf” and little tweaking was needed. Installation instructions will be posted on a separate quide and I will also post a separate post about device technical spesifications and how I installed Xubuntu to it.

Everything else seems to work out of the box.

As the out of the box configuration has only 512Mb of memory, I did an memory upgrade also. Didn’t take any pictures though, so we’ll have to see if I come across dismantling the laptop again. Will take pictures then, I promise! Verbal instructions coming up in a separate post also.

After the upgrade, things seemed a bit faster, but that was when the XP was installed. Xubuntu was installed onto the laptop with the additional memory already in place.

Next things to try out include bluetooth connectivity to phone to gain mobile internet over GPRS/EDGE/3G and how well the battery lasts in usual work/everyday usage. Also thought to try out playing videos, I have some movies in MPEG4 H264 which should stress the video playback enough. More about those when I have some experience..

EDIT: Tried to get Bluetooth connectivity to phone and internet-access via that way, and was not too hard. Biggest part is to find out correct settings for your service provider and phone model. Rest is just finding out correct channel etc. (I think I need to dump a post about using BT and mobile phone as internet connectivity)

Also, video playback seems to work out fine, just remember to ditch Totem Movie Player and get VLC. Tried with MPEG4 H.264 clip. Still need to try out DVD-playback with DVD-drive connected to USB and .iso file from internal storage and external USB drive..

Battery life with 3cell version is weak. There’s few tweaks that should help out, just remember to keep backlight as low as your eyes can take..

Summer comes late, apparently.

Waaaah!

Flies, oh god how I hate those damn buggers.

We came to upstairs with my wife some hours ago, moved the clean laundry to their respective places and during that session, I had to eliminate one fly bugging us. My wife really doesn’t like any flying wildlife creatures.

So, off I go on a hunt. Took first object that should do the trick, on my way to the “office”, which is the free room in our home currently, occupied with a desktop and apparels. After a small status check and finding a good spot to slap the fly to oblivion, I got my chance.

“peck” was the sound that emerged from the contact of the fly and the wall. “There, job well done, cat will take care of the remainings” thought I. Bollocks.

Here I was sitting on the “office” and minding my own business, while the damn fly passed my screens. Have to admit that I was a bit surprised, as it really took a hit against the wall. Oh well, back to job not so well done earlier.

DVD-case was this occasions melee weapon of choice. A good slap again, “peck” from the wall and the fly laying on the corner of the sofa (guest bed). hard hit with DVD-case to finish the deal. Fly again in the same corner where I thought was going to be the cat’s feast buffet.

“Good, now I should be able to mind my own business again” seemed to be too much to ask, as the fly apparently refused to die.

Got three not-so-good hits before the fourth that took the fly to ground, still twitching around. This time I sure did finish off the fly.

Decided to leave the fly visible, if it for some hellish idea decides to wake up yet again.

UUID of storage media and using it in Ubuntu

Uh,

This post is more or less to just keep me reminded of this, as it seems I tend to forget this every time I happen to need it. Frustrating to try to find it again when in need.

As there happens to be slight problems with storage media connected to USB ports and mounting them to correct places, it’s whole lot easier to refer to the storage media in /etc/fstab by it’s UUID. This way the device will be mapped even if it’s order in USB hub/chain/whatnot changes and therefore it’s /dev/sdx path would change at the same time.

So, long story short. if you have an external storage media connected to USB, say port 1, and you see it as /dev/sdb1, you then go and create an entry for it into /etc/fstab and continue working normally, thinking “now it works, yay.”, you’re wrong. Next time you have the device on USB port 2 and whoop-de-doo, the device is seen as /dev/sdc1 “oops” you whisper when you realize that the /etc/fstab entry you created, fails this time.

Instead of /dev/sdx1 use UUID=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx

To get UUID for the storage media, use one of the following methods:

1) ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid
2) vol_id /dev/sdx1
note that with this you need to know the path to the partition/disk you wish to get the UUID

System Administration Appreciation Day

Well,

Here it is again. The System Administration Appreciation Day.

Lucky me, I’m the only one in the office today, if you don’t count my kids who are keeping company for me today

It’s my wife’s last day of her vacation, so we decided to let her enjoy of it as much as possible.

JVC Everio GZ-MG132E and Ubuntu Hardy 8.04

Right,

This little HDD Camcorder is starting to be really handy. Start with it was a bit of a pain, but with great patience from Jartza, as he managed to get the correct settings for mencoder just right. Need to buy him few beers when he gets back from his tour.

So, the problem with the camcorder is that it creates almost standard MPEG2 movie clips, but those are saved in .MOD type and the “real” video scale is 1.33:1 and that creates a small trouble if you don’t want to use the software that came with the camera. Also, the movie clips are huge, one hour clip is 4G, and to my opinion it needs to be smaller for reasonable storing.

So! Now we need mencoder. $ sudo apt-get install mencoder should do the trick to get it installed.

After a short talk with Jartza, we decided that H264 MPEG4 would be good. 4Gb clip shrinks into about 700Mb and that starts to look much prettier in terms of storing.

Now the actual conversion of the .MOD file into .mp4 is done with two commands, which are long. So I won’t even try to remember them. We need a bit of scripting. Below are the commands, notice that there’s two passes for the same files, so if you have for example MOV011.MOD as original and you give mov011.mp4 as output filename, you need to give those exact names for the second command too.

$ mencoder original.MOD -sws 9 -vf pp=ci,dsize=1.78,harddup -oac faac -faacopts br=128:mpeg=4:object=2:raw -ovc x264 -x264encopts pass=1:turbo=1:bitrate=1500:vbv_maxrate=2500:vbv_bufsize=2500:nocabac:level_idc=13:global_header:threads=2 -of lavf -lavfopts format=mp4 -o output.mp4

$ mencoder original.MOD -sws 9 -vf pp=ci,dsize=1.78,harddup -oac faac -faacopts br=128:mpeg=4:object=2:raw -ovc x264 -x264encopts pass=2:bitrate=1500:vbv_maxrate=2500:vbv_bufsize=2500:nocabac:level_idc=13:global_header:threads=2 -of lavf -lavfopts format=mp4 -o output.mp4

For someone to remember those is seriously damaging to the brain, so we probably like to somehow shorten the procedure. Here’s how it’s done in the easiest way.

Open editor which you prefer, and copy the following code to it and save with some name which is easy for you to remember.

#!/bin/sh

# Script to convert JVC Everio .MOD files into x264 mpeg4 movies#

mencoder $1 -sws 9 -vf pp=ci,dsize=1.78,harddup -oac faac -faacopts br=128:mpeg=4:object=2:raw -ovc x264 -x264encopts pass=1:turbo=1:bitrate=1500:vbv_maxrate=2500:vbv_bufsize=2500:nocabac:level_idc=13:global_header:threads=2 -of lavf -lavfopts format=mp4 -o $2

mencoder $1 -sws 9 -vf pp=ci,dsize=1.78,harddup -oac faac -faacopts br=128:mpeg=4:object=2:raw -ovc x264 -x264encopts pass=2:bitrate=1500:vbv_maxrate=2500:vbv_bufsize=2500:nocabac:level_idc=13:global_header:threads=2 -of lavf -lavfopts format=mp4 -o $2

After saving the text, you can use it as follows: open terminal and cd to the same directory as the script you just saved. will ease up if you have the .MOD file also in that same folder. Then use the script like

$ ./scriptname inputfile.MOD outputfile.mp4

After awhile, you should have outputfile.mp4 in the same directory. Be patient, conversion takes long. I like to open a screen and start the conversion in it, as it can be detached and then attached from other locations too to see if it’s ready.

However, that little script will not check wheter the inputfile exists nor if there’s already an outputfile in the same folder. I use that just to get a shitload of files in a conversion “pipe” by opening screen and then using the script as

./scriptname inputfile1 outputfile1; ./scriptname inputfile2 outputfile2; ./scriptname inputfile3 outputfile3

and then ctrl-a d to detach it and let it do it’s magic.

I’ll post more about how to get some error-checking into the script tomorrow or soon, it’s getting late and I need a hug and sleep to be fresh tomorrow morning. Last day before my one week holiday.

Taa-Taa.

YAY! Now both of our kids are driving bicycle without supporting wheels!

Ha!

Took about five hours from Miko, the senior, after seeing Jetro, the junior, drive without supporting wheels, to loose them too!

Oh happy days!

Yay! Junior has driven his first meters on bicycle without supporting wheels!

That’s a BIG hi-five to him!

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

Threw Gnome-Panel away..

Mh,

Got tired of gnome-panel and decided to give avant-window-navigator a go. Some problems occurred after installation, as desktop just froze right after the desktop background was loaded.

Seems that it was pulseaudio having issues, needed to go to tty and issue kill -s KILL pulseaudiopid before the desktop woke up again. Did quite much work trying to get it work, but seems that following tweaks solved the problem.

Settings – Preferences – Sound : change all definitions from autodetect to ALSA, make sure that on “sounds” tab the Enable software sound mixing (ESD) is selected.
Open Users and Groups from Settings – Administration and check that your username is in the pulse, pulse-access and pulse-rt groups.
Also, have a look at asoundconf tool and it’s commands.

I’ll post some quick installation quide to avant-window-navigator and it’s extras in awhile.

Edit: Still having small issues with login/startup, need to see how my setup works to determine if I’ve corrected the problem. Hold on..

Small gathering among good friends

Ah, what a splendid day!

Good friends came to our place for a long picnic. We had few kilo’s of pork, filled mushrooms wrapped in bacon, sliced pineapple, halloumi cheese slices and all of those went to grill!

Not forgetting the whopping amount of fresh salad, potato salad, bread and loads of other good food, we talked for quite a long time, had fun and even the weather was on our side. Nice clear sky and over 30C in sun.

Kids played at yard and occasionally inside too (don’t really like that as the weather really was so good) but didn’t really bother to push them outside as we got a bit of “free” time out of it for the adults

Now, after nice refreshing shower, I’ll head downstairs to have some evening snack and watch telly for few moments. Then it’s time for wonderland movies, hopefully (though I think I’m so tired that no movies this night asleep).

HP G7061EO laptop, Atheros wireless card and the webcam on Ubuntu Hardy 8.04 i386

If you have HP G7061EO laptop that has Atheros AR5007 (AR242x) wireless network adapter follow this procedure to make it work in Ubuntu Hardy 8.04

This is for i386 users. I’m repeating that because you might end up messing your system badly if you have 64bit installation.

- First go to System–>Administration–>Hardware Drivers and disable both selections having Atheros in their description

- Atheros Hardware Access Layer (Hal)
- Atheros driver..

- Then Reboot your system.

Preparing your system

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential

- Then open the terminal from Applications–>Accessories–>Terminal and issue/copy the following commands

$ wget http://snapshots.madwifi.org/special/madwifi-ng-r2756+ar5007.tar.gz

$ tar xfz madwifi-ng-r2756+ar5007.tar.gz

$ cd madwifi-ng-r2756+ar5007

$ make

$ sudo make install

$ sudo modprobe ath_pci

$ sudo reboot

That’s it! Now your wireless connection should work.
Webcam works out of the box. To test it, give the following command:

$ sudo apt-get install cheese

Cheese program should appear after installation in “start” -> “graphics”.