Ghosty’s weblog

Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) on Thinkpad T61p

I just created a new entry on the thinkwiki with bits and pieces of information from previous ubuntu installation instructions and added some minor changes for the latest version of Ubuntu:

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Installing_Ubuntu_9.10_%28Karmic_Koala%29_on_a_ThinkPad_T61p

my own ghetto power control

Thanks to this post of SiD3WiNDR I know of the existence of power bricks with 4 outlets controllable by USB. The only problem was finding where to buy them in Belgium. A friend who could place a special order via a shop (they normally only do wholesale) managed to get me 2. And because they can be controlled by Linux they are perfect for controlling various devices like screens, usb hub and other peripherals when my pc starts up. Now if only I don’t get too lazy …

Gmail imap support stopped?

Just figured out that Imap on my gmail box stopped working and not only for my box, multiple people on IRC report the same. If you log in to the webinterface of gmail the “enable Imap” option is gone too. What is going on Google?

Update: someone on IRC pasted a message from google apps (I don’t use those myself so i cannot verify this)

Your users may be experiencing issues accessing Google Apps services- As of 1:00:00 PM PDT on April 16, 2008
* Services impacted: Email
Our team is working quickly to resolve this situation as soon as possible. We will continue to post updates here as we learn more.

Update2: services have been restored it seems …

Open source as alternative

Nice link with some open source alternatives for much used Windows programs: open source as alternative
Another similar list: The Top 50 Proprietary Programs that Drive You Crazy — and Their Open Source Alternatives
These 2 reminded me of this project started by a guy on the newsgroups already few years ago, the site seems a bit abbandoned but still a nice overview: Open Source for Windows

Epson ALC1100N on Ubuntu Gutsy A64

Since we have such a printer and it was not working anymore since I installed gutsy I started searching for some solutions. The answer I found largely in this post, however the deb files were not available on that location. So I asked someone with a i386 system to alienate the rpm’s to deb format for me (You can find them here). And the instructions are like this:

• download the above deb files somwhere
• sudo dpkg –force-architecture -i epson-alc1100-filter_1.2-1_i386.deb
• sudo dpkg –force-architecture -i epson-alc1100-filter-cups_1.2-1_i386.deb
• add a new printer throug: system ->administration -> printing and select for driver the newly added alc1100
• All done!

Sed replace newline character

Since sed parses data line per line normally you need to get the next line in the buffer also, you can do this like this:
cat textfile | sed ‘/.*$/N;s/\n */ /’
the clue here is the /N will put the next line in the buffer.