menu.

I recently upgraded my Ubuntu installation to 11.10 after not having used it in a while. Part of the upgrade to this new version (Oneiric Ocelot) is that automatically (I believe) adds Thunderbird to your installation, intending that you use it rather than previous client Evolution.

Now, I haven’t used Thunderbird in a while so its fancy new “detect my mail server settings” functionality was all new to me. It all actually went quite well, detecting my mail server name and ports by checking “common server names” based on my email address of steve@xxxxxx.co.uk (in my case mail.xxxxx.co.uk).

However my providers SSL certificate isn’t mapped to my domain so the certificate is flagged as “invalid”. There’s no option to accept this certificate so you have to go digging around in Preferences (Options on Windows versions).

What you need to do is go to Edit -> Preferences and go to Advanced -> Certificates -> View Certificates, From here, Add an Exception giving your server (e.g. mail.xxxxx.co.uk:143). Click ok and go back to account setup and it should allow you to proceed. Hope this helps and thanks to leepa at Mozzilazine Forums and also bpat1434.

I recently bought a netbook on eBay that had come with Windows 7 starter but the owner had wiped this and replaced it with Linux.  I needed a new netbook and figured the fact this one came without Windows would keep the price down.  I was right and I purchased a netbook for £68, now all I had to do was get a copy of Windows 7 to install using the product-key which was still stuck underneath.

In the mean time I installed the new Ubuntu 11.04 and set up a number of partitions to get it ready. I set up a /boot partition of about 500MB (for Grub etc.?), a / partition for Ubuntu and a /home partition for my documents.  I also set up a “Win” partition to leave a space for Windows and a final NTFS partition to use for documents etc. when I was booted into Windows or to share across to Linux.  Linux seemed to be working fine and I got on the internet etc.  It was all very smooth, much more so than when I installed Ubuntu 9.10 or whatever it was back in the day.

I got hold of a copy of Windows and began trying to install it from SD card.  When it came to selecting a partition for Windows to live on, I picked my 40GB Win partition but Windows started throwing a strop and told me something it seems to have told a few others before me:

Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition. See the Setup log files for more information.

Not impressed, I booted into Linux and tried to set a boot flag on this partition.  That took it off my original boot partition though, as a hard drive can only have one boot partition.

In the end I gave up and wiped all the partitions using the Windows installer.  I then created a 40GB partition for Windows, which proceeded to also create a 100MB “system” partition at the start of the drive.  I’m wondering if I’d left my room for Windows at the start of the drive in the first place if maybe I would have avoided this, but as it is – I now have to install Ubuntu all over again.  Fail!!  Thanks Micro$oft!

The horrifically footery and niggly process I’ve just gone through to install Skype is sad proof that Ubuntu, and Linux, is still not ready for prime time. The fact you have to get a bit hacky to get a product as mainstream as Skype working is a sad indictment of the state of the OS.

Step 1: Add the Ubuntu Partner Repository following the instructions from Ubuntu’s wiki.

As my installation was Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) upgraded from 9.10 (Karmic Koala) I had to edit the repository information and change the distribution from ‘karmic’ to ‘lucid’ as for some reason this had not been automatically updated as part of the upgrade.

After doing this, and reloading the package information, the Synaptic Package Manager still didn’t find Skype when I searched, so I had to follow

Step 2: Revert to the terminal and enter

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install skype

This was a command I’d picked up from Googling previously and finding this guide.  I figured it was worth a shot.  This seemed to work, gave me a lot of information and asked me if I wanted to continue. I did.

The terminal did a lot of stuff in the background as I’ve been typing this, eventually telling me:

Setting up skype (2.1.0.81-1ubuntu5) ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin ...
ldconfig deferred processing now taking place

and returning me to the command prompt. Umm… ok? Still not sure this had worked I started looking for Skype and guessed (correctly) that it would be under Internet (I’m using Ubuntu Netbook Edition).  I opened it, accepted the Licence Agreement and signed in. Very slowly.

A good 2-3 minutes later I’m signed in.  Unfortunately, I only use Skype for talking to my girlfriend who’s currently studying in Malaysia and as it is currently 5:40 am there, she’s not online for me to test it out properly on a call.  However I don’t need to do that to ask this question:

How many ordinary users are going to go through all that just to install Skype, and how many will give up and go back to Windows?

I’m trying to get into developing apps for Android and developing an Android Facebook app seemed like an good place to start with something useful.  However it seems frought with problems that will perplex the beginner.

One early problem I encountered which had a non-0bvious solution was the message:

The method onCancel() of type new Facebook.DialogListener(){} must override a superclass method

This occurred after pasting some example code from the Facebook site into my project.  The problem?  My project was defaulting to JDK 1.5 and the code on the Facebook site requires 1.6!

It’s been a while since I looked at Java but the problem is apparently due to the use of the “@override” syntax. According to one helpful StackOverflow member, in Java 1.6 this can also be used to implement interface methods, but in 1.5 could only be used to override superclass methods.

Yes, it’s Christmas as I blog this at 2am, however I got a new laptop for Christmas and am geeking it out to the point where I can use it for fun stuff.  To that end I’ve been trying to install the requisite tools for Android development and hit an issue which could have (but thankfully didn’t) take me hours to sort out.  I’m a complete n00b at this, so don’t treat this as anything like a complete guide!

Having managed to “install” Eclipse (which from what I can tell just means copying the contents of a zip file to somewhere on your hard drive) and the Android SDK, I needed to install the ADT (Android Development Tools) plugin for Eclipse.  However on doing this I was getting an error telling me:

Missing requirement: Android Development Toolkit 0.9.4.v200910220141-17704 (com.android.ide.eclipse.adt 0.9.4.v200910220141-17704) requires ‘bundle org.eclipse.gef 0.0.0’ but it could not be found

This was a pain, and it took a bit of Googling to discover how to rectify that. Apparently the version of Eclipse Google recommend (Classic) doesn’t include the GEF or ‘Graphical Editing Framework’ which the Android ADT plugin requires.  Nice!  So the easy way to install this (thank you to IBM for the pointer on this) is to install it the same way you would the ADT plugin, i.e. open up Eclipse and choose “Install New Software” in the “Help” menu.

When it says work with, instead of using the URL Google give for Android, use the one where GEF lives.  In my case, for version 3.6.x of Eclipse, this is:

Helios – http://download.eclipse.org/releases/helios

(Helios being the codename for Eclipse 3.6).  Once this is done you’ll be advised to restart Eclipse (so I did) and everything seems to be going ok now (touch wood!).

I just hope this helps someone else with the same problem or, more importantly, helps me the next time I come across the same thing and end up scratching my head trying to remember how I fixed it!

This is just a random puzzling issue. I recently went to work without my iPod headphones which I’ve been using with my HTC Desire to listen to music during work, so I tried some others I’d picked up over the summer courtesy of Continental Airlines.

For some reason when I put the headphones in the sound went all echoy and when I tried to fix it the tracks would randomly skip forwards, skip backwards and skip through tracks. I also noticed the headphones icon at the top included what looks to be a headset microphone.

Turns out I’m not the only one… users on Android Forums have been reporting the same issue. Very disappointing from a top-of-the-range Smartphone.

I’ve posted twice recently about my problems following an upgrade of Ubuntu Netbook Remix to Lucid Lynx (10.04).  In short, I upgraded both the BIOS of the netbook (an Asus Eee PC 1008HA) and upgraded Ubuntu from 9.10 (Karmic Koala) to 10.04 (Lucid Lynx).  Once I did this the sound would disappear after the first time I logged in following each boot, and only work properly if I logged out and in again.

One kind commenter (thank you “ThrasherC”) suggested a solution to a similar problem.  I haven’t followed the story of the bug report and probably don’t know enough about Linux to understand it so I’m not taking responsibility for anyone else doing this. This is a statement of what I did, not advice

1. Open a new terminal
2. Issue command “sudo gedit /etc/pulse/default.pa”
3. Find the line that says “load-module module-device-restore” and comment it out by adding a hash at the start so it reads “#load-module module-device-restore”
4. Restart

Hope this helps someone – be that you, or me in the future.

Right, at the weekend I upgraded my Asus Eee PC (1008HA for those of you interested) to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS – Lucid Lynx from the previous version, 9.10.  Everything seemed fine (I think).

Update: The problem described in this post has subsequently been investigated and solved.

On Monday or Tuesday night I then upgraded the BIOS to see if it would fix the fact that the wireless was shite when I was using Ubuntu.  (Incidentially either the BIOS or OS upgrade seems to have fixed the probelms I had connecting to one specific router)

I didn’t notice a problem at the time because I’m dual booting Windows XP and was using that, but when I booted into Ubuntu again on Thursday night, the audio didn’t seem to be working.  I quickly discovered that the sound did indeed work at the login screen, but once I logged in there was nothing (including no welcome sound).  The audio/volume functions on the Fn keys also now do nothing (though brightness ones still work!)

I think the sound was fine following the Ubuntu upgrade, but I’m not sure, so I think the BIOS upgrade has ballsed it up.  Which is a pain.  It looks like I’ll have to try reverting the BIOS and/or Ubuntu to a previous version.  Watch this space…

I realise I haven’t written anything here in a while but I thought recent developments warranted a post.  Basically my mobile phone contract with Vodafone is up for renewal.  My contract expires at the end of May and I’m already into my "eligible for upgrade" period.

I have decided on a phone. I want an Android phone. I simply MUST have an HTC Desire. So much that I already want to start writing apps for it!

Things looked good at the start of April when it was available on T-Mobile for £15/month and £129 up front for 24 months.  This came with 300 minutes, unlimited texts (they say 300 but you get a choice of flexible booster free and mine would go on unlimited texts)  and "unlimited" (1GB) data.  This is much better than what I’m currently paying Vodafone £30 a month for!!

Unfortunately while the plan is still available on T-Mobile the price of the phone was hiked to £191 fairly quickly.  It’s still a very competitive contract, and still better than what Vodafone were offering, but I was already nervous about taking out a contract on a network known (to me) mostly for shit signal, based partly on my experience with them about 6 years ago, so I went to do more research.

I’ve spent a lot of time researching the best deals from all networks (except O2 who don’t stock it yet, but I’ve found ways round that) from at least a dozen retailers.  Really it would be a waste if I kept this information to myself and didn’t share what I’d found out with the world (or the 3 random people who happen to stumble on this blog over the next year and probably don’t even speak English).

Anyway, to got a long story short(er), I’m going to post a summary of what I’ve found over the next couple of days. Keep your eyes peeled.

Some of you may have noticed the above message appearing where my recent posts should have been for the last week or two.  It turns out the “Post-Plugin Library missing” message can be fixed by downloading the latest copy of the Post-Plugin Library (shocking, I know).

I can’t remember if I upgraded WordPress or the Recent Posts plugin or both, but I’m guessing it was an upgrade to the Recent Post plugin that caused the problem. The new version requires a “Post-Plugin library” (written by the same guy).

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