I’ve been having fun with my LAMP setup again at home.  I decided that it’d be interesting to setup laconica to play with (an open source implementation of Twitter, the most well-known of which is identi.ca).

Fortunately getting it setup was fairly easy to do, but I decided that I really wanted to play with it a bit more, in terms of see how it can be extended, and setting up a customised theme.

This got me to thinking.  I’m the Subversion admin at work, and recently was on a course to that effect, and I figured, why not set up Subversion at home, and bung my laconica installation into it.  Similarly, as a result of the course, I’ve been looking at Trac (wiki and defect-tracking software), and so thought I may as well set that up to play with as well.

Both subversion and trac are easily installed via Synaptic, although its not the most recent versions (version 1.4.6 of Subversion and 0.10.4 of Trac), but for my purposes these are fine.

Fortunately, the Trac website has a handy FAQ I was able to use to help set both up.  Subversion worked pretty much out the box after installation, but I wanted to get it working with my Apache installation which this helped with.  The only issue I had was that the www-data group doesn’t seem to be working properly, and I can’t add my user to it.  So I created my own wwwusers group instead, which seemed to work ok.

The fun thing for me, was that in work I work in Windows, so most of my Subversion usage is via TortoiseSVN.  At home, in Linux, I wasn’t really sure about what GUIs to use.  I’ve installed a couple via Synaptic, but I ended up using the command-line to create the repository, the directory structure, import the code and create my branch to work on.   Good practise for me.

I don’t do a lot of development at home.  But I’m hoping that as I get my environment setup I’ll get more into it, and if nothing else this is good practise for me in building my admin skills rather than just being a desktop user of Ubuntu.

I downloaded the Wordpress app for my iPod Touch a while ago, but I’ve never gotten around to testing it out.

So here we are. A bit of a pointless post, granted. But this app does seem like a nice way of blogging on the move. I especially imagine it’d be useful at conferences and conventions.

I’m a glutton for punishment I think. I’ve blogged about this before, but I’ve been having another crack at getting the wifi to work on my laptop under Ubuntu again.   I really can’t figure it out.

With ndiswrapper, I get my broadcom card’s drivers installed.  Near as I can tell, this definitely works.  The blue light comes on, and I can get my laptop connecting to my wifi either unencrypted, or using WEP.

However, I use WPA on my LAN, and I’m not particularly wanting to compromise it’s security.  And it seems to be at the WPA authentication that everything’s falling apart.  I’ve tried both ndiswrapper and the fwcutter drivers automatically installed by Ubuntu.  I’ve even borrowed a kernel-supported wireless PCMCIA card from a friend, and that had the same problem.

I’ve tried different distros, broadcasting my usually-hidden SSID (and that was a story within itself), and nothing seems to work.

At this point I’d be suspecting my router of being Linux unfriendly, except that my Xandros-powered EeePC talks to it no bother (after installing some of the updates).

Its been really doing my head in.  I’ve tried both the gnome network manager, and last night I tried wicd (which, having now played with it, I actually think is a bit nicer than the Gnome version).  At this point I’m wondering if manually configuring my wlan settings by hand is the way to go…

I reckon tonight I’ll need to sit down, note my network card details etc, and put a post up on Ubuntu Forums pleading for help.

Well, the big surprise news from the last day or two (at least to me), was the sudden surprise announcement of the beta for the new web browser from Google, called Chrome.

Based on the WebKits rendering engine and boasting improved performance and stability by launching each tab as its own process, I was suitably intrigued, and being a sucker for these kinds of beta tests, was quick to grab the beta first thing yesterday morning.

So far, I must admit, I’m very impressed. The cutdown interface takes a bit of getting used to, but focuses your attention on the webpage you’re reading. A welcome change in these days of being flooded by toolbars for various things. The fully draggable tabs are incredibly cool as well. The way they undock and re-dock with the main window is very smooth.

However, the main thing, is the speed. Its helluva fast. There are various benchmarks floating around, but basically it smokes even Firefox3 by a considerable margin. Despite its beta tag, its also been pretty stable for me as well. I’ve been using it since yesterday morning, and so far no crashes.

Since getting my iPod Touch, I’ve been enjoying using the calendar application to try and be a bit more organised (I’m great at double and triple-booking myself).

However, the issue I’ve been having problems with is regarding syncing. While I like the iPod’s calendar, it’ll only sync with Outlook. And I don’t have MS Office.

I ended up downloading the 60 day trial of MS Office to see what it was like, and I’ve been investigating the various different licenses and purchasing options etc. What surprised me, is that I actually really like the new Outlook. I like the “To-do” pane beside your email with upcoming calendar events, and I like silly little touches, like the pictures in your contacts being displayed in the email you’re reading.

However, it also costs a lot of money, and up until this, I’d been using Thunderbird and Open Office happily.

So I decided to look into Calendaring in Thunderbird. I installed the Lightning plug in, and was very impressed. The To-do panel I liked so much from Outlook was present and correct, and it all seemed pretty polished and nice (apparently its going to be built in as of Thunderbird 3 I was reading).

Last night, I decided to check out my other options, so imported my details from Outlook (I must be getting close to the end of the 60 days I think) into a Google calendar. And it was also pretty painless to get this Google calendar syncing with Thunderbird (via another easily installed plugin).

I’m planning on getting a Blackberry at the end of my current mobile contract, for my home email etc, and it turns out that Google also provide a Sync application for Blackberries.

While I do like the new Outlook, I just can’t justify the expense for an email client, when Thunderbird and Lightning do the same job for nothing. And while I also really like the iPod Touch’s calendar, the fact that its currently locked to only syncing with Outlook is a huge issue for me as a home Windows user.

At the moment I’m really happy with Thunderbird and Lightning alongside a Google calendar, and with the Blackberry syncing as an option, I can really see it as the way forward for me. By keeping the calendar online, it means I can easily access it on my laptop as well, when I’m gaming on my main PC, or view it from my Linux installation with a minimum of fuss.

The moral of the story? I suppose that prohibitive costs and locking things down scores another victory for free software. My hope is that Apple opens up the calendaring options in a future update to allow it to sync with a Google calendar (or directly with Thunderbird), or that Google provides a sync application similar to the Blackberry one (if that’s possible). Outlook I can leave or take, but it would be really nice to keep using my iPod calendar. However, as things stand, I just don’t think its going to happen.

I guess the other moral of this fairly pointless tale, is that people should try out the lightning plugin for Thunderbird. Its ace

Well, Apple put the Application Store for iPhone/iPod Touch live yesterday as part of the iTunes 7.7 update.

Its a heck of a strong launch for them.  Although the initial aim had been to have 200 applications available at launch, the store actually has over 500, spanning multiple categories, and with a healthy amount of free applications, as well as inexpensive ones, going for only 59p or so.

Admittedly, personally speaking, from a quick look last night, there wasn’t a lot that I think I’ll nab.  I have grabbed the Facebook app to try out, but I’m not looking to spend a lot of money on games or applications, so I was mostly interested in the free applications.   I can especially however, see the benefit of a lot of those applications to iPhone owners, with their ability to access the web via Edge or 3G networks while on the move (whereas I’m limited by whatever free wifi I happen to be around).

Hopefully the 2.0 software update will be out tonight.  That’s what I’m really looking forward to, and I’m really hoping that it addresses some of the issues I’ve mentioned here before.

I’ve been using my iPod Touch for a good few weeks now, and with the v2 software due out imminently, I thought it’d be interesting to put together a wishlist for what kind of things I’d like to see, that haven’t already been mentioned.

• Better home screen customisation.  Currently, while you can re-order items on the home screen, and add Safari links, you can’t add quick links to different types of audio, in the same way you can on the other iPods.  I tend to use Playlists, Podcasts and Audiobooks a lot, so it’d be nice to have buttons on the home screen for them, rather than navigating to them via the Music section.
• Podcast syncing.  I’ve noticed there seems to be a bug with podcast syncing, in that sometimes podcasts I’ve listened to, aren’t marked as such, and removed from the iPod on the next sync.  However its an intermittant problem.  Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t, and I have to mark the podcasts as not new in iTunes manually.  It’d be nice to see this fixed.
• Podcast descriptions.   When first released neither the iPhone nor iPod Touch supported lyrics.  Apple added that functionality with the first software update, however they didn’t extend it to include podcast descriptions.  Viewing them is a feature I miss, as when I’m listening to Linux podcasts, its handy to be able to refer to the show notes to double-check the name of any interesting software they might be talking about.   Some podcasts have started copying their description to the lyrics section, but really it’d be good if Apple could just fix this properly.
• Radio Remote compatibility.  Everytime I’ve got to pull this iPod out just to skip to the next track, I tend to be worried that I’m painting a big “mug me!” sign above my head.  It’d be good if Apple could either tweak the software to allow the existing radio remote to work, or ship a new version with iPod Touch/iPhone compatibility.

Those are probably my top 4 niggles with any otherwise brilliant device.  They’re minor things, and these kinds of things are to be expected in the first generation of a new device, but I hope Apple addresses them.

The good news is that I’ve now done my bit for Firefox’s Download Day. I managed to nab it when I got home, just in time (I think there’s only half an hour or so left before time’s called on the record attempt).

In terms of using it, its pretty much the Beta 5 I’ve been running happily. Its a lot faster than v2.0 and definitely recommended to any other Firefox users out there.

I signed up to Firefox’s Download Day, world record attempt a few weeks ago, and was pleased to get the “download it now” email last night.

I’m assuming the attempt’s going well for them, as the servers seemed to have taken a major kicking, and I was completely unable to download the new version. I’ll try again when I get in tonight though, but I imagine I’ll be pushing my luck to make it within the 24hr window. I’ve been using the release candidates pretty much exclusively for a while now, so I’m looking forward to having the final version at last (although I believe its identical to the last release candidate).

I read as well, that there’s been various other problems, with people getting corrupted downloads, or the wrong version being downloaded.

Something like this was always going to entail a fair amount of carnage. The number of people trying to download the software at the same time was always going to result in a few horror stories. I’m happy to just get the update as soon as I can, and hopefully they’ll get a high number for the record books.

As I mentioned last night, I was surfing with my EeePC, by downgrading my wireless encryption to WEP.

I had also noticed that my EeePC didn’t like using my router as its DNS server, so I was able to fix that by swapping in the DNS servers for my ISP.   Once I’d done that, I installed updates using the EeePC’s add/remove software tool from the Easy Desktop.   However I noticed that the wireless updates were listed as a broken package.

At this point, the fact I’m an experienced Linux user kicked in, and I decided to just boot up Synaptic instead.  Its pre-installed on the EeePC, so sudo synaptic from the terminal launches it no bother.  I then used it to install all the available upgrades, which included a newer version of wpa_supplicant.

The great news is that this has made all the difference.   WPA now connects to my home network no bother, so I no longer have to worry about lowering my level of security to use my EeePC.  If anyone else buys one, I heartily recommend just using Synaptic to upgrade the software from the default repositories, it seems a bit more reliable than the Asus updater.