Jonathan's blog

For some time now I’ve been running Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix on my EeePC 901. I’ve been very impressed with it.

Today I was prompted to upgrade to the new version, 9.10. On my connection at work (via Janet) the upgrade didn’t take long at all…

Upgrade Screenshot

After 9 minutes of frenzied downloading, the upgrade itself took around an hour and a half. Afterwards, I rebooted. I like what they’ve done with the UI!

Ubuntu Screenshot

The roll-over animations make it look and feel nice and polished to use. They’ve also paid close attention to certain aspects of the interface, such as the package manager. It’s a breeze to configure the system.

One notable new addition is Ubuntu One, a free cloud storage service. I have no need for it, as I have my own server, but it’s a handy feature for most people.

Most of the stuff is the same old. Most things work the same as they used to, so it takes no time at all to find your way around the new version.

Well done Ubuntu!

I decided that I need to sort out the way I do my personal calendaring.

Currently I only use my phone’s built-in calendar. I nearly always have my phone with me, but it’s a bit of a pain to enter stuff on when I’m sat at a computer anyway, and carrying all that information solely on my phone presents a huge risk of loss, theft or breakage.

I need some kind of centralised store of information that is able to sync with all the devices and programs I want to use, namely:

• Some sort of cross-platform calendar client – mainly for use on Linux but also nice to be able to use similar software if I’m on Windows or OS X.
• Sony-Ericsson P1i (Symbian) built-in calendar
• iPhone, for when I get one
• Web interface, for those times when I’m borrowing a computer and can’t install a client.

Google Calendar seems to be a good choice. It’s flexible and can sync with lots of things.

Linux

So I installed Lightning on all my Fedora and Ubuntu machines. It’s a calendar extension for Thunderbird, which I already use. To install it yourself:

On Fedora:
yum install thunderbird-lightning
On Ubuntu:
apt-get thunderbird-lightning

It’s easy to set up, too. Suppose your Google account is joebloggs@gmail.com, then you would…

• Add a new calendar to Lightning by right-clicking in the Calendar area
• Choose On the Network
• Select CalDAV
• Enter your location as https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/joebloggs@gmail.com/events
• Give the calendar a name

OS X and Windows

It’s a little more work to install Lightning on OS X. You have to download the add-on from Mozilla, and install it in Thunderbird. Same story for Windows.

It’s quite straightforward and there are instructions on the website.

When you’re done, follow the same instructions as for Linux to subscribe to your Google calendar in Lightning.

Sony Ericsson UIQ

Setting up Google Calendar on my Sony Ericsson P1i was a bit of a pain, too. The P1i can’t interact with Google natively, I had to set up an account with Goosync to enable this. Goosync talks to Google, and your phone talks to Goosync using SyncML.

But once you have a Goosync account, you can synchronise a lot of handsets with Google calendar.

So first, you will need to set up an account with Goosync. It’s free and very easy. Goosync will ask you to tie your Goosync account to your Google account.

There’s also an option to have the settings for your phone sent automatically to your handset. However this didn’t work for me so I had to enter the settings manually.

Assuming the sync task on your phone has been set up properly, do a  test run to make sure it all works.

• If possible, connect to a wireless network first. If not, 3G will have to do.
• Go to the Main Menu
• Go to Tools
• Go to Remote Sync
• Find the profile that syncs with Goosync
• Find the sync task called Calendar. Make sure it is ticked, and then tap Sync to start off the first synchronisation.

If that worked, you can now run the sync task whenever you like from within the calendar itself.

• Open your phone calendar
• Tap More
• Tap Calendar manager
• Tap Synchronise

That’s all there is to it! Unfortunately there’s no way of making your calendar synchronise automatically at set intervals, but that’s probably a good thing, because you can’t get stung for 3G charges!

iPhone and iPod touch

Coming soon…

Sometimes you need to change the log verbosity of wpa_supplicant for debugging purposes. First check which log verbosity you are currently running with.

ps -ef | grep wpa_supplicant | grep -v grep

-d represents verbose
-dd represents extra verbose

To change the log verbosity, edit /usr/share/dbus-1/system-services/fi.epitest.hostap.WPASupplicant.service and add -d or -dd as appropriate. Example:

[D-BUS Service]
Name=fi.epitest.hostap.WPASupplicant
Exec=/sbin/wpa_supplicant -u -d -f /var/log/wpa_supplicant.log
User=root

Restart NetworkManager and run the check again to see which log verbosity you are running with.

This morning I tried Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) for the first time. My first impression was that it’s very polished and usable by non-geeks.

I’m not an Ubuntu user myself; I use Fedora on all my machines – including my EeePC 901. But my other half, Hana, has an EeePC 701. She’s not a geek, and she just wants something that will work for her. She’s seen XP on a 701 and agreed the 7″ screen isn’t really up to scratch.

Recently we tried gOS on the 701. It’s Ubuntu based and very friendly. It’s well laid out and easy to use. Hana used it for a couple of months and got on well with it. The main problem was that wireless never quite worked properly, and using an Ethernet cable kind of spoils the point of a tiny laptop,

So this morning I swapped gOS for UNR. The installation was painless, and first boot went without hitch. The main snag I ran into on the 701 was that the animated menus made the whole system slow down. This turned out to be a bug which was easily remedied by installing two packages.

It’s early days yet – the system has only been functional for about an hour and Hana hasn’t used it yet. I’ll post again with more comments on UNR when we’ve had a chance to play with it.