Archive for July, 2009
The Emobile D02HW, Pidgin, and how to deal with “Waiting for Network Connection”
I can’t believe I just wasted 2 hours fixing this stupid problem.
First the problem lies with network-manager. It doesn’t play well with EMobile and there is no simple way to connect with the modem directly from 9.04. (I read some chatter about modifying the 10-modem.ifi file, but I think this only works with the D03HW.)
To connect, I’m using the pon/poff method, but you can also connect with wvdial. The config file that I’ve tested successfully with wvdial is as follows:
[Dialer Defaults]
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2
Dial Command = ATDT
Modem Type = USB Modem
Baud = 460800
New PPPD = yes
Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0
ISDN = 0
Phone = *99***1#
Password = em
Username = em
Finally, you need to disable network manager. I got these instructions from The HungryCoder.
- Click System -> Administration -> Services
- Choose Network Manager and click Stop and Disable
- You can stop it from command line using
sudo service NetworkManager stop - Restart Pidgin.
This also fixes the irritating Firefox “Offline” issues.
Getting PHPUnit working PROPERLY with Ubuntu.
I stupidly wasted almost a day tracking down a bug that didn’t exist. Turns out the version of PHPUnit that is in the Ubuntu repositories is actually quite old and will not function properly.
Follow these three steps to get it up and running.
sudo pear channel-discover pear.phpunit.de
sudo pear upgrade pear
sudo pear install phpunit/PHPUnit
Ubuntu maintainers, you do a great job, but please at least consider putting up a newer copy of PHPUnit for us to install via apt-get.
Tokyo Prayer Schedule and Reminder on your Cell Phone
I became quite disillusioned at all the prayer schedules with Google ads to the side of them. Especially since most of those sites did not offer any value-added information. I’ve built a Google Calendar version of the prayer schedule for July, and plan on doing it for all months in all cities.
The benefit of this is that you can create a Google Calendar account for your cell phone and follow this public calendar. As a result, you will receive emails when prayer time is starting (with the added benefit of a guess as to when prayer time is supposed to end).
HTML version of the Tokyo Prayer Schedule
XML Version of Tokyo Prayer Schedule
ICAL Version of Tokyo Prayer Schedule
Guigoog vs. Byjobi
I was looking up my old boss to check in on him the other day when I ran into a bunch of posts about a fight between him and another fellow in regards to a web idea that he had presented at some Silicon Valley conference.
The idea is basically an interesting way to retrieve information from goog via its AJAX search stack. You can decide yourself which one you prefer.
http://byjobi.com/
http://guigoog.com/
I personally don’t need an AJAX interface on my search results, but people like instant feedback. We’ll see where it goes from here.
My opinions: Byjobi team, I REALLY don’t like how you resize my firefox window without my permission. Furthermore, the visual elements are conflicting to the point where I am not sure where to focus. Why is there that small blue box around the search box, and why are there so many buttons to do a simple web search? What’s up with document files and search networking? Fix the UI clutter. There is no good reason to demonstrate this site in front of an audience when it is in this state.
Guigoog team, if you are going to keep the locations on the front page, you might want to use my IP to track down my location to make it easier to guess what order to show the regions in. It’s important because the option is extremely prominent but useless in its current setup. I am not likely to be searching in Afghanistan, neither is anyone else. Rather, I’ll be more likely to select Japan while I’m here in Tokyo, and Canada/USA/Mexico if I was back in Canada.
Comments are off. :sick:
One Day Challenge: The Translator
I have a client who is localizing his website into Japanese. As part of the contract, I’m supposed to document the localization aspect of the program. I’ve decided it would be more fun to take the time and build an application for him; it would show more respect, and make it easier in the future to translate his site.
The time is 4:15 AM. The challenge is getting a functional piece of software out by 4:15 PM, and to be wrapped up by the end of the day.
-update-
The first hour is up. The objects and the basic user story seem to be coming together. I’ve decided to stick to PHP but use SQLite and the PDO add-on for interaction. It took quite a bit of time to get SQLite 3 working on this Ubuntu machine. Simply running apt-get install php5-sqlite3 doesn’t work sadly.
-update-
It’s 12:40. I went to sleep around 7. Time to get back to work.
-update-
Well it’s 4:40. It isn’t done, but the model is done, and some unit tests as well. It’s to be expected, all things considered. I’m going to finish up the view and give her a whirl.