Archive for March, 2009
Microsoft’s I’m not cool enough for a Mac Awesomeness
So, Microsoft’s new add that highlights how much more expensive a Mac is compared to a similarly specced Windows PC has caused a lot of comment, on Zdnet for example.
It makes a good point and it is very amusing reading the SAFB writing in comments to defend Mac.
The truth of the Mac matter is, due to its price, Macs are set at a price point that only people with a high disposable income can afford them. Buying one shows that you earn a decent amount of money and care enough about outside appearances that you want to own a laptop that ‘looks cool.’ Most of the comments I have read about current Mac owners wanting to upgrade to a new Mac talk about the newer Mac ‘looking cooler’ and even Apple’s own advert on TV for its most recent Mac book talks about how it looks amazing (milled out of one piece of metal with a glass screen etc.), in fact it makes no mention of if it has any performance improvements at all.
If you ask me, the reason SAFB get so angry about defending their precious products, it is because deep down, they feel a little guilty that they have spent so much money on what is the laptop equivalent of buying a big red Ferrari.
I HATE APPLE/iPHONE
<rant>
I just dont get some people.
Why do people love Apple and the iPhone so much. Ok, granted, it is a clever use of of a UI, but apart from that, it does NOTHING that many other phones can do. The phone itself has been so oversold and it so under-delivers. Everyone knows the huge flaws of the device (copy/paste, battery issues, push email, dropped calls) but people still talk about it like it is the best thing ever made.
Then, Apple has the gall to release OS 3.0, for which users have to pay for, that introduces features that all other phones have by default (copy/past and bluetooth) and people actually think Apple is doing them a favour!!
WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE, Apple is taking you all for a ride and the SAFB lap it up and ask for more, whilst at the same time slagging off MS because, hey, why not.
Apple have done some great things with shaking up the Mobile Telecomms world, but it also does some terrible things as well (err, marketing the iPod as if it can hold 160GB of songs when in actual fact it can only hold around 140GB).
SAFB forget that MS invested in Apple in the first place, without Bill, Steve’s company probobly wouldn’t exist, remember that next time you criticise MS.
All I am asking is that the hero worship of Apple is just toned down a bit.
</rant>
UPDATE
How ironic, Google Adsense whacks an iPhone add beneath this article!! Awesome work google. Reader, please click away for some super dooper irony 
Finding missing packages when building from source on Ubuntu
So, you are building a program from source on Ubuntu and you have run into dependency issues, what do you do?
One solution is to use apt-file. Install this with sudo apt-get install apt-file. Then run apt-file update to update it’s cache. Now, you can use it to search for your missing dependencies by running apt-file search mymissingfile.so (replace mymissingfile.so with whatver you want) and it will show you what packages provide that dependency. The go ahead and install that package to solve your problems, it even shows you where that dependency is installed to!
Bluetooth controlled motion start-up script
So, after messing with ZoneMinder and creating a bluetooth script for it, I am now messing with motion instead, and have modified the script accordingly.
For kicks, I have hosted it on google code
http://code.google.com/p/bluetoothmotion/
It also details a fix for the problem with motion on Ubuntu and the /etc/init.d/motion stratup script.
motion 1 zoneminder 0
So, after messing around with ZoneMinder for a few weeks, I finally gave up. I then decided to try out motion instead, which I had heard a lot about, but largely ignored because it didn’t have a fancy website or nice looking web GUI.
Oh how wrong I was. Motion is so much better than ZoneMinder, I am sorry to say. It has a very basic web interface, allowing you to start and stop motion detection and view a live stream from one camera at a time. However, it really beats ZoneMinder into a cocked hat when you look at support for webcams. I had so many problems getting my webcams working in ZoneMinder, but in motion, you just tell it your video device locations (/dev/video0 etc) and off it goes.
There are some additional php packages out there allowing you to create webcam stream montages and view previous alerts created by motion. Although all configuration is done via a text config file, the file is well laid out and well commented and thus easy to understand.
I would highly recommend motion over ZoneMinder and am using it now as my main geek project. I am thus updating my bluetooth script to work with motion and will post the new version soon.
Turn programs on and off with Bluetooth in Ubuntu
Having recently been messing around with ZoneMinder for home security, I wanted to turn on and off the program using Bluetooth. Basically, the idea being that when I am around, the server will sense my presence (no Darth Vadar jokes please ) via the Bluetooth on my phone and turn off ZoneMinder. Then, if I leave the location of the server, it will no longer be able to sense Bluetooth on my phone and thus will turn on ZoneMinder.
So, I hunted around for such a program, I came across bluemon and BlueProximity, but they both only worked on proximity, i.e. they relied on you being near by, as far as I could tell, there was no option of running an action when the phone was completely unavailable.
So, I decided to write my own script to do what I wanted. Now, bear in mind I have very little skill when it comes to Bash and scripting and what I wrote was a result of trial and error. It all revolves around a tool called hcitool that can be used in Linux to control Bluetooth connections.
The first attempt at my script can be found here and with another link below.
It is only designed to work with ZoneMinder and there isn’t much advice within the code, but I shall update it as time goes by to make it more useful
Here is the full link to the script: