Install RealTek 8187b on Ubuntu Hardy Heron

Update 10/12/2008: Don't bother with this. Get wicd to fight the fight with this card (and other wireless cards). Also, for this particular card, I gave up and replaced it with an Intel 4965AGN, which solved a host of issues. The N card is overkill, because it provides three antenna posts versus the two you get. As well, the native Ubuntu driver (BONUS!) doesn't indicate it's an "N". However I hooked up to antenna posts 1 and 3 and it worked fine enough -- as in, I got it to get on the web reliably. At $30, it was a minor extra purchase and worth it to increase the reliability of the WIFI adapter. Also, it worked better in Windows during suspend/resume. Windows users will probably want to get the Intel driver, which works perfectly fine, even if Intel warns that you should get the driver that comes with the PC...

Original post:

Of course it wasn't working when I started it up, I just got a Gateway MT6730 (Great deal on Buy.com)

Anyway:
Wired network connection helped.
Go to Realtek and download the driver.

In the gnome panel, System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager
Click Search
type in ndiswrapper
select for install ndiswrapper-utils-1.9

if you want, you can also choose the ndisgtk, but it shouldn't be necessary.
Click apply

From this website (It's in Italian) I got the rest of the information.

First, open a terminal, go to the download location (cd Desktop, likely?) and unzip RTL8187B_driver_only.zip
cd RTL8187B/Win98
sudo ndiswrapper -i net8187b.inf
sudo ndiswrapper -l
sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
sudo ndiswrapper -m
sudo echo ndiswrapper >> /etc/modules


By now, you should be able to click on the network icon of the panel and see wireless networks.
You should be able to connect to the network of your choice.

Please let me know if this works for you, or doesn't. Or if you have hints to make this better.

ETA: added a line for ndiswrapper to load after reboot.
Edit 12/2/2008: Changed the link to Google Shopping for the card, because the original supplier was out of stock. I can't imagine that I was the only one to buy the last one.

Ubuntu Gutsy make a CD from an ISO

How easy is this?

Insert CD.
"Hey, you inserted a blank CD. Make Audio disk/Make Data Disk"
Click Data Disk
Find and double-click your .iso file
Write CD

It ejects. You're done.

Tolerance is what other people want you to have when you don't agree with them

If you are a Christian, what should you be intolerant of? In my opinion, you should be intolerant of the things that make you a hipocrite. In essence, you should be intolerant of the things in your own life that detract from the message of hope and salvation that it is up to you to show others.

Intolerance is not being appalled at what others do. In Christian terms, intolerance is preventing those things from affecting your own witness.

God is good (not benevolent. Good). He has an intolerance to sin. He's allowed. Christians are supposed to be seeking God and encouraging others in the walk. Christians should not be telling non-Christians what to do. If the Christian path is the right path, the actions of Christians should reflect that. Internally, inside "the church", the Christians have the right, duty, and responsibility to maintain the proper intolerance to sin, in the same manner as an individual should also maintain that intolerance. However, that should be because it's in the body.

Christians should do their best to let their light shine before all men so that they may see [their] good works and glorify [their] Father in heaven (Matthew 5:16).

Christians should also strive for perfection in their own lives and love even their enemies.

Perhaps there is a lack in understanding of what Matthew Chapter 5 is all about. I really do understand the idea of indignation and what should *never* be allowed. However, the law has been fulfilled by Jesus, hasn't it? Is it not time for discussion?

Make an offline install of AOL full software

(edit/update for AOL Desktop 10)
So, I'm working on supporting someone who had an issue with AOL and had to reinstall it. Nevermind the other issues, there are still lots of people who rely on AOL for dial-up access. Although, for $29.95/month, can I interest you in DSL?

AOL's interface is a download manager instead of a full zip extract. For those of us on high-speed internet, it's a quick download. Don't bother installing the result... it's not for you, unless you want it.

As of this writing, AOL has three main releases: an allpurpose 9.0VR (includes support for 98/ME/2K/XP/Vista), a 9.5 release for releases >= XP, Vista, Win7, but not 98/Me/2000) and a Desktop release for XP/Vista/Win 7.

If you run the downloaders, but not the installs, AOL drops all of what it does inside of C:\Documents And Settings\All Users\Application Data\AOL Downloads\
9.0 is "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\AOL Downloads\waol\0.4327.165.1\waol-0.4327.165.1.exe" (About 60MB)
9.5 is (in Vista) C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Temp\waol_single_4337.185.4.1\setup.exe (about 50MB for the directory).
Desktop (10.1) is "C:\ProgramData\AOL Downloads\NexusSuite\2.1.103.1\setup.exe" (About 43MB) (Updated 9/19/2010 for Desktop Version 10.1)

The whole size of AOL Downloads for those three installs is about 150MB, easily burnable to a CD or copied to a flash drive. Obviously, if you want to hedge your bets, the 9.0 is the most versatile, but with rapidly decreasing costs and increasing size of portable storage, having the choices on-hand is easier than ever before.

So, knowing where the installs start (the 9.x are not setup.exe) is important, but at least now you have the offline copy of AOL full software.

Nobody ever became skinny drinking a diet drink

Diet drinks are bunk. If one is likely to lose weight or not gain it, it comes by the standard methods of eating less calories than you use, and excercise.

Come to think of it, you're about as likely to shave those pounds drinking diet drinks as you would clipping coupons to become a millionaire.

Racism appears when you want it to

I'm reading an article at politico.com:
Obama Supporter Oprah Takes a Big Dive

I must make the disclaimer that I am not black/African American (whatever that means -- Hint: If you were born in America, you probably didn't come from Africa, and you will probably never go to Africa. Besides, there are lots of white people in Africa, and they are just a capable of being so-called African Americans. Further, there are plenty of dark skinned people who have origins of places like Haiti and Jamaica and the Bahamas that would likely never call themselves African Americans.)

But I digress, and while you're fuming because logic might escape you reading the missive above, the Politico article, in my humble opinion, is rather straight-forward, summarized thusly: Oprah has had a long and distinguished opinion rating. She backed, and later stumped for Obama, gained some traction for Obama's campaign, and then lost her approval rating.

If you didn't know that Obama and Oprah were both black in this article -- and while you might have to be living under a rock to not know these things -- the article doesn't make any statements or judgment calls relating to this fact, or its apparent effect on either Obama's candidacy or Oprah's approval rating.

So, who cries racism? Well, I guess it's anyone who feels that race is relevant. Why is it that *some* people of color can't get "that one day [they] won't be judged by the color of their skin" into their heads? I don't mean to paint a wide swath. Some doesn't mean "all", of course. A fact that might surely be lost on the people who might dismiss me simply as a whitey who doesn't "get it."

Let's take a look at a comment or two from the site:

What's wrong with you people? You typical white people? You've been given the opportunity to spew your racist hate towards Oprah's success. So glad you get the opportunity to come out of your racist country closets. Now, do you feel better since you've finally said it? Oprah is a billionaire!! Get it? She has fiven more to help you typical white people than your typical white president and his administration. You know..........the bush.cheney group, et al. Those guys are the reason the dollar isn't worth the paper it's printed on, thousands of Americans have lost their homes, the USA is in a recession,a YOU can't afford to purchase gasoline. Did black Oprah do that? You typical white people really need to denounce rush limbaugh and the likes, because you are really brain dead and useless people in a a modern and intelligent society. Your racism is not welcomed.

Let's take a look:
Source: 2006 Annual Report, page 18 The penny cost more, the nickel cost more, but the dime and quarter are way under.
The reason the dollar is depressing is because the Federal Reserve Bank is trying to prevent the market from crashing. Because the Fed reduces interest rates that banks loan to each other, it makes cash flow better. Unfortunately, the side effect of this action is risk of inflation. Why is the Fed doing this? Ideally, they should not have needed to. SOME people... OK, a LOT of people, felt that they could make money infinitely on the value of their house. So they took loans they could not pay for on houses they could not afford, with money they would not verify. The banks are culpable, but so are the consumers. Greed works in every direction. The people who have lost their homes, generally, put themselves in the position to lose their homes. To blame this on the Presidential administration is foolish.

No, the people who shout the loudest about others being racists, bigots, etc. have a lot of introspection to resolve. Whining about "You said something negative about a black person therefore you are racist!" is, well, the pot calling the kettle... you know.

About my fascination with another blog

One of the parts of the movie, "My Fair Lady", has Professor Higgins writing to some organization to offer up Eliza Doolittle's father as being one of the great moralists of his time. An uncouth drunkard that otherwise would have been "the fool" of a Shakespearean play. "The fool", mind you, is not so much the one who knows nothing, but the one who can get away with saying the controversial things, sometimes the things which need to be said but can't by anyone else.

Indeed, this theme is evident by the tale of "The Emperor's New Clothes":

So now the Emperor walked under his high canopy in the midst of the procession, through the streets of his capital; and all the people standing by, and those at the windows, cried out, "Oh! How beautiful are our Emperor's new clothes! What a magnificent train there is to the mantle; and how gracefully the scarf hangs!" in short, no one would allow that he could not see these much-admired clothes; because, in doing so, he would have declared himself either a simpleton or unfit for his office. Certainly, none of the Emperor's various suits, had ever made so great an impression, as these invisible ones.

"But the Emperor has nothing at all on!" said a little child.

"Listen to the voice of innocence!" exclaimed his father; and what the child had said was whispered from one to another.

"But he has nothing at all on!" at last cried out all the people. The Emperor was vexed, for he knew that the people were right; but he thought the procession must go on now! And the lords of the bedchamber took greater pains than ever, to appear holding up a train, although, in reality, there was no train to hold.

In the end, perhaps one of the great moralists of my time might actually be the author of the blog "Violent Acres" and with whom I hold respect for calling out her own, so to speak, in her post Atheists are Snobs (Warning: adult language!). It's not so much that I should be biased to believe this one way or another, but that I could easily apply similar rhetoric to zealots of any type, including Christians. Reading her follow-up post, I feel enlightened further. While I doubt I'd be adequate fodder for any of her upcoming parties, I am quite intrigued to agree with her level of snobbery.

Also, I have to smirk a bit at the vitriol that she received on the former post. Not, of course, the mere fact that she received the attacks, but about the same realization that she constantly declares: she's not writing to please her audience. The humorous part, to me, is that snobs don't like being called out. When a radio talking head presented his belief of the thinnest-skinned group of people, those same people practically read him the riot act. Perhaps, on another post, I might be interested to discuss my viewpoints on why being offended should be a time to hold up a mirror instead of pointing a finger.

And VA, if you're reading, thanks for writing.

Skype Mic and testing microphone for ubuntu, Linux

How do I get the mic to work with Skype on Ubuntu?

This post says:

To fix this you need to open /usr/share/alsa/pcm/dsnoop.conf
and change

@args.SUBDEV {
type string
default -1

to

@args.SUBDEV {
type string
default 0

and then you have to fight your mixer:
I ran the default(?) alsamixer and played around with it until I figured out:
Hit [Tab] to select Capture
Hit [Space] to make ADCMux show Capture L R.
Use arrows to make certain the columns are somewhere in the green area.
Hit [Tab] and use arrows to find/hilight Input So[urce] (may not be necessary, but I needed it to be "Front", so I used up/down arrows to get the correct input).
Hit [Esc] to exit the mixer.

To test: arecord testfile.out
To hear: aplay testfile.out

If you get this far, Skype's microphone audio will/should work for you.

Violent Acres is holding a fund drive for charity

The Violent Acres Birthday Charity Challenge Begins

So if you’d like to help abused children and/or have an odd curiosity about what I look like, dig deep and donate as much as you can.

While I tend to not feel the cursing is necessary, that matters not to the reclusive author of the popular blog of a woman who'll "say some [stuff]." Actually, in my opinion, I find the tales rather strikingly to the point and, believe it or not, find a lot of what she says to be among the more forthright and on target versus other people who tend to blog.

Well, she's looking to raise money for a charity. If enough money pours through her Paypal account ($10K), she'll even post a picture of herself. On the other hand, if you just want to donate to her charity, that's pretty much OK, too. This is a scraped copy of her donation button:

You can donate via paypal:

If you don't trust the button, and why would you trust it from me? then make a direct donation to her charity of choice, if you want: West Valley Children's Crisis Center. Me? I get nothing. And given that I get no hits, generally, this is probably a dumb post. But *you* read it, and therefore I've hit slightly more than I expected. Thanks.

awk before and after

This is attempt number one for my friend who wanted awk based before-and-after.

It's not very interactive, and needs some command line features. The point, I guess, is that you could use this in conjunction with my colorize awk function to have context sensitive searching of words in a way that less can be useful. ETA: Oh, yeah, the point was to add "before" context to tail-f filename | grep "search" , similar to how grep does it on static files. In this case, it's more of tail -f filename | awk -f thisfile.awk, and you could also pipe that through my awk colorizer for the double whammy: context (before and after search) plus color.


BEGIN {
numlinesbefore = 3
numlinesafter = 3
needle = "search"
aftercount = -1
head = ""
tail = ""
}
{
before[numlinesbefore] = $0
for (i = 0; i < numlinesbefore; i++) {

before[i] = before[i+1]
}

if ($0 ~ needle) {
for (i = 0; i < numlinesbefore-1; i++) {
head = head "\n" before[i]
}
aftercount = numlinesafter + 1
tail = ""
print head
}
if (aftercount >= 0) {
print $0
--aftercount
}

if (aftercount == 0 ) {
head = ""
tail = ""
print "---"
aftercount = -1
}
}


Of course,this is an awk program.

awk colorizer for tail.

One of the problems I have with tail -f maillog.txt | grep "search" is that I really did want to watch the noise and not just the signal. Except that I'd like to notice the signal. Here's my printcolor.awk Now I can use tail -f maillog.txt | awk -f printcolor.awk and see the whole tail, with keywords highlighted in *different* colors.

NOTE: ^[ is supposed to be Ctrl-v, Escape; NOT caret, left bracket.


function colorize(word, color)
{
c["red"] = "^[[1;31;40m"
c["green"] = "^[[1;32;40m"
c["yellow"] = "^[[1;33;40m"
c["blue"] = "^[[1;34;40m"
c["magenta"] = "^[[1;35;40m"
if (line ~ word)
{ split (line, a, word)
line=a[1] c[color] (word) "^[[0;37;40m" a[2]
}
}
{line = $0
colorize("whitelist","green")
colorize("Bayesian Spam","red")
print line
}



ETA: If you'd like to be annoyed/beeped at for something that you're looking for, you can add ctrl-v, ctrl-g in the right hand side, eg: "^G^[[1;32;40m" (not caret G)