it’s me… henry

Finally… I got the new Sprint HTC Hero.  I’ve been playing with it for a while and started development on it.  Creating apps on it is actually really easy.  Surprised me how easy it is.  Everything you need to know is on the Android Developers site.

One thing I did notice is that the USB port for the HTC Hero is not the shape as the universal/generic shape.  But I did try to put a generic USB plug and it does charge it.  When I used the generic USB plug for development (with Eclipse), it didn’t work, I thought something was wrong with my machine.  Then I tried the original USB cable and it worked.  So in my experience, generic USB cables will charge the phone, but you cannot use it for development.

I have a 2001 Toyota Tacoma XtraCab truck and I want a bike rack for it.  Instead of buy one, I made one with the help of http://www.utahmountainbiking.com/bikerack/makerack.htm

Some minor changes to make it fit on my truck…

For the width, instead of 16.5″, I used 12.75″.  And for the height, instead of 18.5″, I used 15.75″.

The height went right underneth the rear window, and the width went snug between the tire humps of the bed.

The only thing to do is to paint it.

After fiddling around with .NET 2008 ATL COM DLLs and creating events, the class object that implements the interface does not have any reference to the event.  After searching on the net, there were no solutions.  After reading the MSDN documents over and over (ATL tutorial, Step 5: Adding an Event), it mentioned to make sure that the IDL file contains the function.  I checked after I created it, but to my surprise… there is no function declaration.  I added it manually, then went back to the class, added the connection point, and finally… there’s the “Fire_” function.

Update: Nevermind… the tutorial does work.  I was not adding the function correctly.

http://www.jejik.com/articles/2008/10/setting_up_dual_monitors_system-wide_with_xrandr_on_debian_lenny/

I have the OSX Leopard (10.5.x) DVD installer, but it is a dual layer disc.  The Powerbook G4 does not support dual layer discs.  So, I had to strip down the installer inorder to install it.  Using OSX Tiger (10.4) installer was easy and fast.  But it was a single layer disc.

I found many tutorials to stripdown/slimdown/convert to single layer DVD, but the only one that worked was…  http://web.mac.com/owenmcgarry/Downloads/Leopard_on_a_single_layer_DVD.html

Now… lets install Xcode with Iphone SDK…

Firestarter is a firewall.  Moblock is an IP blocker.

To have both work together, I had to modify the firestarter script to restart Moblock.

After some digging, edit /etc/firestarter/firestarter.sh as sudo.

Find start_firewall function and modify it to this…

# Start the firewall, enforcing traffic policy
start_firewall () {
lock_firestarter
source /etc/firestarter/firewall 2>&1
retval=$?
if [ $retval -eq 0 ]; then
echo “Firewall started”
if [ -x /etc/init.d/blockcontrol ]; then
/etc/init.d/blockcontrol restart
fi
else
echo “Firewall not started”
unlock_firestarter
exit $retval
fi
}

So, I’ve been using VirtualBox for a while and everything is good.  Then recently, VirtualBox would randomly crash.  What happens WinXP will boot, then it will start, but the screen size is really small (640×480).  So after I boot up, I would try to resize the desktop, but once I got into the display properties, it would crash.  In VirtualBox, it says WinXP is “aborted”.  Googling at what “aborted” meant, it says that it’s just a random crash.

Thinking what changed previously… I remember I’ve been using RDP a lot more, so I disabled it.  That gave me a little time to do something, but the screensize is still 640×480.  So I went to display properties, and it crashed.  I turned RDP back on cause that’s the not cause of it.

Still thinking now….  I look at my firewall (firestarter) and it was “red”.  So I looked and it was blocking NTP (port 123).  So I enabled it to see if that helps.  And now… no more crashing.

• Blackberry Pearl 8130 on Sprint
• Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex 8.10
• Dell XPS m1330

Get rid of the low voltage message when connecting blackberry to xps

1. Found this link: http://georgia.ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=6775440&postcount=2
2. All I did was go here: https://launchpad.net/~doctormo/+archive/ppa
3. Add OpenPGP key
4. Add repository
5. Update apt-get (apt-get update)
6. Install barry-util (apt-get install barry-util)
7. Not sure if it’s required, but I restarted xps here…

Get ready to setup tether…

1. From previous post… go here: http://wiki.colar.net/tethering_with_blackberry_pearl_on_linux
2. Oh…. there’s an easier way… go here: http://wiki.colar.net/bbtether

Get ready to setup easy tether…

1. Go here: http://wiki.colar.net/bbtether
2. Followed instructions installing the dependencies and bbtether.
3. For me… I do have “replacedefaultroute”, so that was easy.

Let’s tether

1. Connect blackberry to xps
2. Watch screen popup a message (something about low voltage) and it will go away
3. Start Berry4All
4. Go to Device>Rescan
5. Oh… says it failed… (expected)
6. Disconnect blackberry from xps
7. Go to Device>Rescan
8. Only listed USB devices…
9. Connect blackberry to xps again
10. Go to Device>Rescan
11. Oh… it worked.. but I got a warning… (we need this warning…)

12. 

    warning for tethering

13. Disconnect blackberry
14. Turn off blackberry (don’t need to remove battery)
15. Turn on blackberry
16. Close Berry4All
17. Connect blackberry to xps
18. Start Berry4All
19. Go to Modem>Connect
20. Select Sprint
21. Connected!!!

Improve speed

1. Edit conf/sprint file
2. Increased speed to 921600.

Side Note

1. I did have trouble with firefox… it wouldn’t “surf” the net
2. I could ping though…
3. Reading the FAQ on bbtether… sometimes firefox puts it to “work offline”.
4. That is my issue…
5. Unchecked “work offline”… and now I am able to surf the net.

So, I was reading one of my favorite blogs, Monster Munchie, and ran across a user, named Christine, that commented on a post.  She had a blog, and so I started to read it…

Christine has an aunt named Cindy and she passed away earlier this year.  She was a teacher and always wanted to help others.  Even when she found out she had colon cancer, she still went out of her way to help others out.

By reading Christine’s blog, I found out that she also gave one of her eggs to her gay brother (?) and his partner to have a baby.

She helped a homeless student.

“Cindy requested that instead of flowers, all monetary donations should be given to her school Lampson Elementary to purchase books for the students.”

I don’t know Cindy, but she has touched my soul by her act of kindness and unselfishness.  It’s a shame that she had passed away at a young age, but the amount of good deeds she has done, it seemed like she lived a full life.

Dell has an unofficial site for Linux distributions.  http://linux.dell.com/

For firmware updates… there is http://linux.dell.com/wiki/index.php/Repository/firmware and  http://linux.dell.com/repo/software/