Ubuntu, CPU Scaling, Battery life and You

My laptop was almost burning my legs tonight so I did a little looking for CPU scaling options in Ubuntu. I found a very useful page on how to adjust the power save method in Gnome on Ubuntu 8.04.

Ubuntu, CPU Scaling, Battery life and You

Last Nights FDLLUG Meeting in Review

Here is a list of things from last night to review, if I miss anything
feel free to let me know. Thanks to everybody who helped.

1. MPTC blocks IRC, work a rounds were needed to join the "fail safe" channel.
2. MPTC wireless issues, most of use had issues joining the network/getting an IP. Once on the network with an IP things were ok.
3. Streaming video over EVDO Rev A. isn't to bad. (Sprint)
   
4. Group audio is an issue. (headsets would help)
   
5. I want a better camera
6. DimDim might work best for whiteboard, and maybe presentations, audio and video kinda lacking yet. Only the presenter can stream a small video. Limit to 3 Audio mics and seemed laggy.
7. Stickam had decent video and audio for a presenter, might be one of the best options to stream video.
8. Adobe Breeze was kinda neat, was the best "shared" video experience We got 4 streams going at once everybody had the same size video window. Audio was also decent. Sharing docs was better in DimDim.
9. I should get a headset with a mic built in.
10. Learned a bunch about the touchscreen thingy that controls the room. It is east to use but we still don't know everything.
11. Having more than one internet connection was nice when we started loading on the video.
12. We could have used more time and been more prepared.

Other thoughts and ideas.

• I had an idea that might be good to try. We have two projectors that can be hooked to two different computers, for presentations coming from a remote source we could combo a shared presentation on google docs on one screen and a stickam session showing video of the presenter with audio on the other.
• More research about what we can do at MPTC with what the room is equipped with might help.
• Maybe look at Talkshoe for audio, didn't have time for this last night.
• Look for other video options. I'm sure there are other options that might have andvantages.
• It would be nice to figure out how to record the audio/video for later distribution via a podcast.

New Podcast and FDLLUG News

I added the new gdgt podcast to my listening today done by Peter Rojas and Ryan Block.  The podcast can be found at http://gdgt.com or in iTunes.  I have listened to a little over half of the first weekly podcast.  This podcast is going over things in the gadgets in the past year. It sounds like future podcasts might be more about the current weeks gadget news in the future.  Audio quality was good and the two make a good team, I think this podcast will stay in my subscription list.

I am also preparing for the next FDLLUG meeting, so far things are going ok, I think we will have enough things to test to keep us busy for a little while.  It looks like DimDim might be a good option to use overall, but we will see what that night brings.  If things go well, I might be able to wrap everything up into a podcast and release it also.

NSLU2 Internet Gateway

I had an idea to try to setup my NSLU2 as a Internet gateway to be able to share my HTC Mogul's Internet connection when needed. I've almost had it working over bluetooth pan except the NSLU2 doesn't seem to be getting an IP address. Once I get that issue figured out I hope to have a full guide. I hope to have it setup before the next FDLLUG meeting in hopes to attempt see how streaming video over Sprint EVDO Rev A. works.

Debian on the NSLU2 - Success

I finally succeeded in installing Debian on my NSLU2, now to play around and see what it can do. I am considering making it a webserver to server content to my Wii via the browser.

This is my first arm based linux box so it will be interesting to see what I can do with it. I also wonder how the 133Mhz is going to hold up. The NSLU2 can be modded to remove the factory underclocking, but there are some concerns about stability when running full speed. Time will tell what I can do with it now that it is a working linux box.

iContact for Windows Mobile

I came across iContact for Windows Mobile today. The iContact app brings iPhone like finger-friendly contact management to windows mobile. The out the authors website.

Debian on the NSLU2

I've now made a couple attempts to install Debian on my Linksys NSLU2. The NSLU2 has a very limited amount of memory so installing is a challenge. My big issue is seems to be running out of memory while formatting my drive. I've been lucky so far that it hasn't locked up because I am remotely accessing the machine via ssh from home. It looks like it isn't going to work again, I think I will have to prepare the drive in another computer and try again tomorrow.

Internet Laptop Update

I've made some progress on my fast booting internet laptop. Right now its booting in just under a minute. I hope to do some more tweaking and tuning yet, but 45 seconds is seeming harder to hit off of my Ubuntu install. I have already delayed starting of most non critical services until after firefox is loaded. Laptop is working decent otherwise except I also want to scale the CPU down a bit after its done booting to help with heat and battery life. Hopefully I will post a full guide after I'm happy with the results.

I still haven't made much progress on my simple web based wireless card manager. I have thought about it and I'd also like to maybe include a few other things like battery life info on this web page. I would really like to be able to get any computer information I need directly from firefox.

Project: Simple Internet Device

Goal: Create a fast booting laptop to get me to a browser asap and have simple wireless setup.

I have a laptop that boots up ubuntu base install with fluxbox right now. My plan is to have it boot up and start firefox. My current issue is I want to be able to setup wireless without having to fire up anything extra on the gui. My idea to fix that is to create a web based wifi manager to find and connect to access points. I lack php skills so this may be an issue, but I don't think it will be that hard to do.

Hopefully I can round up some help on this project. Once I can get a handle on the wireless then its time to start tuning the boot time and add some firefox extentions to fill in any other gaps.

I think this would be great to be able to apply this same idea to a web tablet, but until tech crunch comes out with their web tablet, I'm hoping this will be the next best thing.

Ubuntu 8.04 mogul usb tethering

I got my Windows Mobile Sprint Mogul to work via USB tethering and Internet Connection Sharing on my Ubuntu 8.04 install.

Here are my simple steps.

apt-get install subversion
svn co https://synce.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/synce/trunk/usb-rndis-lite
cd usb-rndis-lite/
make
sudo ./clean.sh
sudo make install

Next plug in the usb cable, and fire up Internet Sharing and click connect on the phone.

On the computer click on the network icon on the top panel and select "Wired Network (Unknown USB Wireless Interface)" from the list and shortly you should have a IP address and be all set.

As a side note to make tethering work make sure that you turn on "Enable advanced network functionality" under "USB to PC" icon on the connections tab in your windows mobile settings.