I got the .deb package for Ubuntu and the Windows installer from the Google Code hosted Synergy+ nightly build page, found here. The .deb package installed with no problems, as did the Windows installer. However, the Windows program wouldn’t load, it had lots of missing .dlls errors.

The missing dlls are libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll, QtCore4.dll, QtGui4.dll and QtNetwork4.dll. A quick Google led me to loads of issues related to various QtXXXX4.dll problems that are seemingly mostly fixed by installing EA’s Download Manager (since most of the posters were having Sims3 issues (nice one EA!)) or some awful bloat-ware that claimed to scan your PC’s registry. Errr, no thanks to that, downloading random dlls is dangerous. So, I went to the source for the dlls; Qt from Nokia. Download the most recent version (you don’t need the SDK) from here and choose LGPL and Qt: Framework only and install the package (it is rather huge at over 200MB, but hey ho).  Once installed, navigate to this folder “C:\Qt\4.6.3\bin” (the version number might be different if it gets updated, but just find the bin folder) and copy the four missing dlls to here: “C:\Program Files\Synergy+\bin” (the location ‘may’ be different on Vista and Windows 7.

So, to recap. Copy:

libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll, QtCore4.dll, QtGui4.dll and QtNetwork4.dll

From “C:\Qt\4.6.3\bin”

To “C:\Program Files\Synergy+\bin”.

Finally, you can now run Synergy+, configure it if need be (though since I was running an older version of Synergy, my configs were already setup) and off you go. No more issue (hopefully:))!

I did this on a minimal install of Ubuntu Lucid, so it is as up-to-date as possible. The PC I was using has no Windows Manager of Graphical Display Manager, just the good old terminal so all this is done via the CLI only. I did this using a USB WiFI dongle, but it should be the same whether you use an internal card or a USB card.

First, you need to install the relevant software. You need to have a wired connection at this point, otherwise this wont work.

sudo apt-get install wireless-tools wpasupplicant

If you are connecting to an open network, you wont need wpasupplicant. Next, to make sure your wireless device is working as it should issue:

iwconfig
and then
sudo iwlist scan

This should show you some wireless networks as proof that the WiFi device is working, if something goes wrong here, then there is a problem with your device or driver and you need to get googling.

If you are accessing a secured network and you really should be, you need to access the correct version of your WiFi key. To get your key, issue this command:

wpa_passphrase YOURSSID YOURWIFIPASSWORD

This will result in something that looks like this:

network={
ssid="YOURSSID"
#psk="YOURWIFIPASSWORD"
psk=fe727aa8b64ac9b3f54c72432da14faed933ea511ecab1 5bbc6c52e7522f709a
}

You need to make a note of the long phrase after psk= (NOT #psk=) as this your WiFi password in hex format.

Next, you need to edit your interfaces file, so issue:

sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

At the end of this file, you need to add your WiFi configuration. Here are the options you can add.

auto wlan0     #change this to the name of your WiFi interface
iface wlan0 inet dhcp     #this is normally fine, if you want a static IP address replace “dhcp” with “static”
netmask 255.255.255.0     #change this as appropriate for your network, this value is usually right
gateway 192.168.1.1     #change this as appropriate for your network
address 192.168.1.100     #only needed for a static IP address
dns-nameservers 192.168.1.1     #only needed for a static IP address
wpa-driver wext     #you shouldn’t need to change this
wpa-ssid YOURSSID     #just type the name of your SSID here
wpa-ap-scan 1     #if the name of your SSID is hidden usually, type 2 instead of 1
wpa-proto WPA    #if you use WPA1 type WPA, if you use WPA2 type RSN
wpa-pairwise CCMP     #if you use AES type CCMP, if you use TKIP type TKIP
wpa-group CCMP     #if you use AES type CCMP, if you use TKIP type TKIP
wpa-key-mgmt WPA-PSK     #usually WPA-PSK (if you share a key) but sometimes WPA-EAP (for enterprises)
wpa-psk YOURHEXKEYFROMABOVE     #the hex key that you generated earlier

Thus, since I am using a WiFi card that is identified as wlan0 and am connecting to a WPA1 AES encrypted network called MYPLACE that isn’t hidden without a static IP address, this is what I added:


auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.1.1
wpa-driver wext
wpa-ssid MYPLACE
wpa-ap-scan 1
wpa-proto WPA
wpa-pairwise CCMP
wpa-group CCMP
wpa-key-mgmt WPA-PSK
wpa-psk 71c81a844973ae7bb1243141e5caa7b6bb0e2d7eetcetcetc

Finally, comment out the top section so it looks like this:

#auto eth0
#iface eth0 inet dhcp

This stops your wired network from working. This helps to ensure there are no conflicts. Remember, if you want your wired network to work again, remove these two comments (the #).

Finally, save the file by pressing CTRL and X and then pressing Y to save to the file. Now, reboot and your network should come up. Yay!

Some people have found that this doesn’t always work, so the next thing to do is to edit the configuration file for the wpasupplicant program. Do this by issuing:

sudo nano /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

Basically, you add pretty much the same information here as you did to the interfaces file, except without the wpa- part. So, my file looks like this:


ap_scan=1
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
network={
ssid="MYPLACE"
scan_ssid=0
psk=71c81a844973ae7bb1243141e5caa7b6bb0e2d7eetcetcetc
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
proto=WPA
pairwise=CCMP
group=CCMP
}

As far as I am aware, the options are the same. So, edit this file as necessary, make sure you add the ctrl_interface and network={ at the beginning and the } part at the end. Save it and try restarting again. If it still doesn’t work, then kick your PC, wish you had installed Windows 7 instead and go off and do some Googling. You’ll find the answer on the Ubuntu forums and you’ll be happy again.

Best of luck!

About a year ago, I hacked my Wii, installing the Home Brew Channel via the Twilight Hack (it made me buy the game, which is meant to be one of the best on the Wii, so it’s all good Nintendo – though I haven’t really got into the game – I hate the wide eyed characters, its just so clichéd). However, I didn’t really find much use for it and let it die when the Wii updated itself (incidentally, this is a risky thing to do because depending on the version of the hack you installed and what you installed afterwards, a Wii System Update can brick your Wii..).

Recently, after having too many sleepless nights with the baby, I decided I needed to hack something. In my internet travels I came across this program, USB Loader GX, that allows you to backup your Wii Games to an external hard drive and load them all from one USB drive, no need to change discs any more. Now that sounds seriously cool.

So, following the rather detailed excellent ReadMii from USB Loader GX, I was able to re-install the hack, install the Home Brew Channel and then install the USB Loader GX program. A Word of Warning: Doing this invalidates your warranty and seriously risks turning your Wii into a fancy paperweight if you aren’t very careful. Also, do not use the Wii System Update function, since it might also brick your Wii, bear this in mind before proceeding. You can still access the Wii Network and the Shop after installing this hack, at least for the moment.

Essentially, the install process is:

1. Use the Banner Bomb technique to install the Home Brew Channel (Home Brew software) via the HackMii installer.
2. Install various hacked and custom IOS (essentially Operating Systems) and cISO (custom OSs) on your Wii, giving Home Brew software greater access to your Wii.
3. Install USB Loader GX.
4. Prepare a USB hard drive to use (formatted either via Fat, NTFS or WBFS), I chose WBFS as I have loads of spare hard drives and it is the most flexible with the Wii.
5. Connect the hard drive to the Wii and load USB Loader GX.

Once done, you then need to copy all yours games to your Hard Drive. I found that for some reason the Install function of USB Loader GX (where you copy the game to your hard drive) didn’t work for me. So, instead I used a tool called DVD Dumper, following the tutorial from here. That site actually contains lots of useful guides, I recommend it for a good background read. There is a version 1.3 of the DVD Dumping tool, but the dev has given up development and 1.2 seemed to work well, over WiFi anyway. Bear in mind it takes about 2.5 – 4 hours per disc, depending on the speed of your connection – shame Nintendo never added an Ethernet port really.

The process was pretty easy and basically goes like this:

1. Load DVD Dumper via the Home Brew Channel.
2. Choose Network Dump and insert your disc.
3. On a computer, type your Wii’s IP Address in to FireFox (don’t use IE), your Wii’s IP Address is given to you on screen by the DVD Dumper program.
4. Click on the link to download the inserted game as an ISO and save the file.
5. Wait 3 hours and go do something good, go running, mow the lawn, vote Lib Dem.
6. Connect your already prepared USB hard drive to your computer and load WiiBackupManager.
7. Copy your ISO from your computer to your hard drive using WiiBackupManager.
8. Connect your hard drive to your Wii, load USB Loader GX, highlight one of the new cover-less games, press 1 to choose to download the covers, let it do its stuff and finally you are good to go!

It should be noted that this technique can also be used by naughty and bad people to download copies of games from the internet and play them, without paying for them. People, this is stealing. If you didn’t buy it, you have no right to use it or play it. I know these days most internet users feel it is their right to download stuff for free if they want, but, there is no way round it, this is stealing and is only harming the industry you love. Don’t do it. Please only use this program to backup games you already own to a hard drive (this in itself is probably illegal, but as I don’t share my games with anyone, I don’t think I am really doing anything wrong).

The Home Brew Channel also gives you access to loads more cool stuff as well. Simply follow this guide to download and install the Home Brew Browser. It allows you to browse, install and update all the cool stuff that people have written for use on the Wii, including old school game ports, media players (including the GeeXbox) and a load of other weird and wonderful stuff. Get stuck in and be the envy of all your boring Wii System Menu version 4.2 friends, so long as you don’t mess up along the way and end up with a nice white brick

Hopefully things will now be more reliable and I shall see if I can add any more services.

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One thing I planned to do was to make my own baby monitor, rather than dropping up to £150 on some pre-built device. I wanted to be able to see as well as hear my baby when it is asleep upstairs, but those devices are very expensive. I thus thought I would try to make my own device using things lying around the house already. It actually wasn’t too difficult in the end, but I was lucky that I had the right equipment lying around. The first and most important piece of equipment is a Webcam. There are loads of options out there, but I wanted to use one that didn’t need to be connected to a PC to use. I had a Dlink DCS-2120 IP Webcam, that can connect to a Wireless network and doesn’t need a PC to run, it perfectly suited my needs.

Dlink DCS-2120

The DCS-2120 includes some built-in features that are very useful, but I’ll mention that later. You can use other Webcams, even just simple USB versions, but you’ll need something to handle the video feed. If you don’t want to run a PC all the time, you could use something smaller, like a Fonera 2.0 router, that allows you to plug a USB Webcam.

So, next, you need a wireless network. Now, I didn’t want to carry around a huge router just to get this system up and running, because after all, this system should be portable enough to take to other people’s houses when we go travelling with the baby, so I chose to use the smallest WiFi router I could get my hands on. Luckily, I had one of the smallest routers already, a La Fonera. I already had another La Fonera installed and connected to the excellent free WiFi-sharing FON network, so I didn’t mind using this router for my own devices. Since the firmware (the software that runs on the router) that comes pre-installed on the router isn’t suitable for use as a normal router, I had to install (called flashing) some alternative Firmware. I chose to use DD-WRT, since it is fully supported on the Fonera and is very flexible. I used the guide from here that had some very detailed instructions on how to install DD-WRT on the Fonera. I shall summarise it here:

1. Enable SSH access to the Fonera using a special web page hack.
2. Enable the Redboot boot loader (allowing you load alternative firmware on the Fonera).
3. Copy over the DD-WRT firmware and flash it on the Fonera.

It isn’t that simple, there are lots of steps involved, but the guide is very clear and easy to follow. Once I had DD-WRT installed, I now had a cool mini router, that I could then set-up to use with my IP Webcam.

La Fonera

Finally, I had to figure out how to actually view the feed. I wanted both a portable and a static solution. The Webcam I was using provides a feed using the rtsp protocol, so I needed a video player that could handle the rtsp stream. For my portable solution, I decided to use my Nokia N82 mobile phone, that has built in WiFi and can run the Core Media Player, that supports rtsp streams. For my static solution, I decided to use my laptop, running VLC on Ubuntu Karmic. In fact, because the Webcam just sends out the stream, any client that can access the wireless network and can play an rtsp stream will work. So, I can view the stream on my Windows Desktop upstairs, using VLC, whilst my wife can view the same stream on her Ubuntu Karmic netttop downstairs (yes Jobsworth, nettops can be useful).

I set-up the Fonera router, so that it provided a WiFi network with the same name (SSID) and security credentials as my main WiFi network at home. Thus, the Webcam automatically connects to my WiFi network when at home and my phone connects to it automatically also. Then, if I take the baby elsewhere, the Fonera replicates the WiFi network, so as far as the Webcam and phone is concerned, it is connected to the same network (this is very useful, because, the only way to change the wireless connection on the Webcam is through a wired interface, which is a bit of a complicated pain).

The real advantage of using this set-up is that you can have as many clients connected as you want to the video feed. The Webcam features a powerful microphone, so you can hear as well as see that the baby is ok and finally, the DCS-2120 includes some handy additional features, including the ability to take a photo at set intervals and upload them to an FTP server. Thus, I will be able to create one of those cool time-lapse movies of my baby as it sleeps and grows over time. I also chose the Fonera, because you can connect alternative aerials to it, most noticeably the La Fontenna, so this set-up should even work in my parent’s old house that has 12″ thick solid stone walls.

Since this whole system is meant to allow me to check up on our baby whilst it sleeps, I wanted to make sure it doesn’t look quite so scary and also allow it to be quite versatile. I thus bought a little teddypig, put the Webcam inside and used a Gorillapod camera stand to keep the Webcam in place (and also so I could attach it to pretty much anything).

It might look a little freaky, but I think it looks much less scary than the Webcam on its own.

Finally, here is a quick movie of the WebPig in action, alongside my laptop and mobile phone, showing it all working. The Core Media Player isn’t the best app in the world, so the video feed on the phone occasionally breaks up, as the video shows, but in general, it works very well.

The WebPig

To manually get a minimal install of Ubuntu to auto-mount a USB drive at boot:

First off, you need command line access (also called The Terminal) to your installation and also you need to boot WITHOUT your USB drive connected. So, shutdown your box and then disconnect your USB drive. Now restart the box. Then, when XBMC has loaded, press Alt and F7 together, which should bring up a new Terminal screen with a log in.

Then log in using your username and password that you set up when you installed Ubuntu.

Next you need to type the following:

tail -f /var/log/syslog

This basically prints out the system log as it changes. Once you have typed this, plug in your USB drive. You should see a load of new stuff being printed in your terminal, this is the Ubuntu system recognising and loading your USB drive (though not mounting it). You should see something like this:


Jan  8 13:13:34 xpuntu kernel: [ 1671.616121] usb 2-2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 5
Jan  8 13:13:34 xpuntu kernel: [ 1671.750917] usb 2-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Jan  8 13:13:34 xpuntu kernel: [ 1671.752477] scsi6 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Jan  8 13:13:34 xpuntu kernel: [ 1671.752815] usb-storage: device found at 5
Jan  8 13:13:34 xpuntu kernel: [ 1671.752820] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
Jan  8 13:13:39 xpuntu kernel: [ 1676.753513] usb-storage: device scan complete
Jan  8 13:13:39 xpuntu kernel: [ 1676.754606] scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access     WDC WD16 00AABB-56PUA0    7H00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2 CCS
Jan  8 13:13:39 xpuntu kernel: [ 1676.755793] sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
Jan  8 13:13:39 xpuntu kernel: [ 1676.756402] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 312581808 512-byte logical blocks: (160 GB/149 GiB)
Jan  8 13:13:39 xpuntu kernel: [ 1676.757163] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
Jan  8 13:13:39 xpuntu kernel: [ 1676.757171] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 00 38 00 00
Jan  8 13:13:39 xpuntu kernel: [ 1676.757176] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
Jan  8 13:13:39 xpuntu kernel: [ 1676.761108] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
Jan  8 13:13:39 xpuntu kernel: [ 1676.761119]  sdb: sdb1
Jan  8 13:13:39 xpuntu kernel: [ 1676.774572] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
Jan  8 13:13:39 xpuntu kernel: [ 1676.774583] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk

You want to look out for the reference to “[sd*]“, in my case it is [sdb]. This is the name that Ubuntu has given to your USB drive.

Next stop the tail command, so press:

Ctrl and C

This stops the tail command, then type the following:

sudo blkid

You will have to enter your password. This should give you something like the following:

/dev/sda1: UUID="1024B74F24B73696" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda5: UUID="015273a3-e1a8-4d53-867f-ffec83b3df60" TYPE="swap"
/dev/sda6: UUID="50b2512a-4d07-4a83-860e-be608a5b2cb7" TYPE="ext4"
/dev/sdb1: LABEL="" UUID="48D3-B1C9" TYPE="vfat"

What you see should be different from this. This basically lists all the drives attached to your system, alongside two important pieces of info, the drives UUID number and what the drive is formatted as. You need to find the reference to the “sd*” that you found out earlier, so in my case it is /dev/sdb1. Then, make a note of the UUID number and the TYPE as well, in my case it is vfat.

So, now we know where our USB drive is and what it is called.

Next, we want to tell Ubuntu to automount it each time it boots.

So, you need to edit the /etc/fstab file that tells Ubuntu what drives to mount at boot. Be careful here, don’t delete or change anything that is already in this file, since it will stop your device from booting. It is ok to add new stuff to this file however. To be safe, we shall make a backup of the /etc/fstab file, just incase we mess up. If we do mess up, simple copy this backup over the /etc/fstab file and reboot and everything will be back as we found it. So, to make a backup simple type:

sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstabackup

This copies the /etc/fstab file to /etc/fstabackup, which we can use as a backup.

To edit the /etc/fstab file, you need to use the command line Text editor called Vi ([url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi[/url] and [url]http://www.cs.colostate.edu/helpdocs/vi.html[/url]) I would recommend reading about it first, since it is a bit of an arse to use in Terminal mode.

Start Vi to edit your file using:

sudo vi /etc/fstab

Use your arrow keys to move down to the very end of the file. Then press “a” to Append stuff to the end of the file. Press Return to start a new line and then type the following:

UUID=YOURUUIDNUMBERHERE /home/xbmc/usb vfat defaults 0 0

Add your own UUID number after the = and change the TYPE if yours wasn’t vfat. /home/xbmc/usb is where you will be mounting your USB drive, this can be anything you want, but to make your life easy, since XBMC defaults to showing your home directory in the file browser, put it under your home directory, so in my case, the main user on my box is xbmc, so I use /home/xbmc/usb.

Press Enter again after typing that, then press Escape, then press and hold Shift and press Z twice, this saves and exits Vi.

Next, you need to make the folder that the drive will be mounted in, so type:

mkdir /home/xbmc/usb

Replace /home/xbmc/usb with whatever you put in the /etc/fstab file earlier.

Finally, that is it. Hopefully, if all went well, you can now simply reboot, with your USB drive attached, and the drive will be found at /home/xbmc/usb which you can navigate to from XBMC.

Best of luck!!

Simple, but if I wasn’t running my backup solution, I would have been screwed – bye bye to my music, photos and work files.

Thank you rsback and rsync….

(Update)

What is even more awesome, is that since Linux regards everything as a file (so all drives are effectively referred to as files (via the UUID) in Linux (in my case Ubuntu)) swapping out a drive with a new one is very simple. I just updated /etc/fstab with the UUID of the new drive, and then copied over my backed up files to it.

As far as Ubuntu is now concerned, it is the same drive, now only bigger. So all my samba shares and rsync folders all work as before.

God I love Linux.

I thought this was a bit of a hokey solution, so I asked around if there was a script that allowed you to rename MythTV recordings (to a more human readable version), move them to another location and remove them from the MythTV database. There were some solutions out there, but they all involved the recorded files being kept in the MythTV database.

So, I wrote my own script. This script renames the MythTV files to a nice human understandable version using mythrename.pl, it then moves the recordings to a folder of your choice (in my case a mounted samba share on my server), it then uses myth.find_orphans.pl to delete the moved recordings from the mythTV database (I don’t know if it will still remember that these files were previously recorded so it doesn’t rerecord them or not, I guess time will tell).

So, without further ado, here is the script, in lovely Bash (the script is called mythtvremodel (mythtv REname MOve DELete, geddit?):


#! /bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: mythtvremodel
# Required-Start:    $local_fs $syslog $remote_fs dbus
# Required-Stop:     $local_fs $syslog $remote_fs
# Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:      0 1 6
# Short-Description: rename, move delete recordings
### END INIT INFO
# script to rename files recorded from mythtv and then to move them and delete them
#made by prupert.co.uk
#creative commons licence, whichever is the most FREE (as in beer)

#lets put in some variables so others can use this
#location of log file, you can choose anything and any name
log=/path/to/mythtvremodel.log
#this is the full path to mythrename.pl
mrename=/location/to/mythrename.pl
#this is the full path to your recordings folder
record=/var/www/mythweb/data/recordings/
#this is the extension your recordings are stored as, usually mpg or nuv
ext=mpg
#this is the full path to where you want your files moved to
dest=/path/to/folder/to/move/recordings/to/
#this is the full path to myth.find_orphans.pl
morphan=/path/to/myth.find_orphans.pl
#mythtv database password for myth.find_orphans.pl
pass=yourmythtvdatabasepassword

# first, run mythtvrename to get nice names for the recordings
echo starting mythtvremodel on `date "+%m/%d/%y %l:%M:%S %p"` > $log
perl $mrename --underscores --format %T-%S-%d%m%y >> $log
# use find to search for all recorded files in the recording folder and move them to the TV folder
find "$record" -name "*.$ext" >> $log
find "$record" -name "*.$ext" -exec mv {} "$dest" \; >> $log
# use mythorphan to remove the now missing recorded files from the database
perl $morphan --pass=$pass --dodbdelete >> $log
#that should be it
echo stopping mythtvremodel on `date "+%m/%d/%y %l:%M:%S %p"` >> $log
exit 0

And there you have it. Now, since I run mythbuntu, I have put this script in /etc/rc0.d (thats rc zero . d) and have named it K03mythtvremodel, thus it is run when my system shuts down, but before all the samba shares and drives are unmounted. As I said, since I use mythwelcome to shutdown my machine when idle, this seemed like the best solution.

Hope it helps someone!

The fact that the PS3 only supports UPnP or locally stored videos is a joke, I mean, come on Sony, Windows Shares are where it is at. Mediatomb is great at what it does, but the interface of any UPnP device is just SO horrible.

However, the interface on XBMC is just liquid gold, that can be further customised via skins like Aeon or Mediastream. Both look truly beautiful and put the PS3 to shame. I would dearly love to run XBMC on my old Xbox, but sadly it just hasn’t got the processing power to play my .x264 encoded mp4 videos, so I will use it just as my Music player (still using XBMC on it though). Thus my HTPC, which primarily runs MythTV will now also be used to view my videos via XBMC. It seems rediculous to me that a machine as powerful as the PS3 comes with such an ugly and limited Media Player interface as the UPnP protocol. I guess because Sony are shortly to release Video Store to stream and download Videos, they want that to be the main way PS3 users access videos, and not ones they already own. At the end of the day, it is all about new revenue streams

Still, all I can say is that XBMC rules, and I wish I had an Acer Revo with the new Nvidea Ion platform to truly appreciate the full power of XBMC without worrying about messing up my MythTV set-up

It comes with a horribly stripped down version of Ubuntu 8.04 from Dell pre-installed. Luckily, however, that can be ripped out and a nice new install of 9.04 can take its place and it all works wonderfully….except the touchpad. To save space, Dell has used a horrible touchpad that integrates the two left and right mouse buttons into the touchpad itself, so when you go to click on something, you actualy end up moving the mouse at the same time. I was amazed that no one mentioned this in any of the reviews about the mini 10v, I guess everyone was embarrassed since they thought it was just them and they had fat fingers! Luckily, the Open Source Ubuntu community being what it is, there is a fix out there.

If you follow this post there is a clear step-by-step guide telling you how to download some specialised drivers for the touchpad that disable the lower portion of the touchpad, so that it works just as a left and right mouse button and not as part of the touchpad. THANK YOU. My Wife was getting ready to throw her netbook out the window until I found that fix. Be warned though, it only works on the 9.04 (and hopefully later) versions of Ubuntu and not on the version of Ubuntu that comes pre-installed, so you will have to install a new normal version of Ubuntu from their website first (though this is a simple process). I hope this helps some one else and allows them to love their Mini 10v, not hate it!