Geekably

I’m not sure why but the system beep seems to be one of the favorite sounds in Ubuntu. I hear it often when I mistype something at the terminal, when I’m accidently clicking the wrong thing, or sometimes if I just accidently hold down a key a bit longer then I should.

I’ve found the system beep to be very annoying and I’m guessing that many others do as well. The system beep is the loud, annoying noise that comes from inside your computer and is not played in the speakers.

If you are like me and find it to be more of an anoyance then something that is helpful you might have been looking for the setting to shut it off and failed to find it thus far.

Open a Terminal and type (or copy and paste the following):

sudo rmmod pcspkr

You will be prompted for your password and it will take only a second for the command to run. If it shows your username again on the Terminal then you’ve successfuly removed the system beep.

Run Application Window

This one seems to be fairly well known but is something that I recently discovered while at work.

In the world of Windows if you want to run an application from a “Run” window it was simply a click away on the Start menu. Ubuntu uses Gnome by default and as such you have no “Run” shortcut it would appear.

This is not the case however!

If you want to open a quick run window simply press the keys [ALT]+[F2] at the same time and you will be presented with a “Run Application” window.

I started the install to World of Warcraft on my Linux system today. I hope I can prevent it from taking over my life.

I got virtualbox running, I got vmware running, I have Vista installed on both. iTunes working on both and both of them give me the same error when I connect my iPhone.

error code 0xE8000035

That is what I see. I removed Windows from my system entirely and now I’ve really screwed myself over because the iPhone won’t work no matter what I do in a virtualized enviroment.

I hate the idea of repartitioning my drive to install Windows just for the iPhone because every other application works just fine.

I’ve been able to get the open source edition of VirtualBox running on my machine but it doesn’t have USB support.

The version from SUN will never install though. It just gives me an error and not a descriptive one either. As a matter of fact it doesn’t give me an error period.

Just acts like it will run… then never does.

I’ve given up hope and decided to attempt to use the vmware player and hope to hell that it supports USB. I just read that VirtualBox won’t see my iPhone since the 2.0 upgrade anyways it would seem from a lot of complaints online.

So I’m working on installing vmware player right now.

Today I’ve started the daunting task of upgrading several of my Facebook applications so when the new Facebook look rolls out they will still function as they should.

Some of the applications may not make the cut when I decide which ones really need upgraded and when the time comes that Facebook decides to turn off support for the old applications they may be deleted.

I’m going to try and update as many of them as possible but with my workload being high and other more important things that need dealt with I’m not counting that all of them are going to make it in time.

The changes aren’t a lot but a few of the things that a small number of my applications use are not working properly and trying to get them working and then updating everything in them is proving to be quite daunting.

I’ll try and keep everyone updated here on my blog as to which applications have been upgraded.

Matt Emmi pointed out that the MobileMe site does actually tell you to backup your phone numbers and contacts if you use the Mac. Which I setup via a PC Setup page that didn’t have those directions. Shame on me for not doing the Mac first.

I’ve decided to keep MobileMe though because now that it is working I can quickly enter my contacts on the computer or the Mac and have them sync up to my iPhone.

This wiping of my contacts is actually a blessing because I get to start over and make sure I have everyone in properly now as opposed to before where some people were in just under initials or something similar. I can type them out much faster on a real keyboard and I get a few chances to organize things better.

I’ve also learned that I could also restore my iPhone and get my old contacts but that is more stuff to do then I have time for.

Ryan Cook wondered if it is possible to run a Virtual Machine from my currently standing Vista partition. A VERY interesting thought Ryan. I’m not sure if it is possible but I will be investigating now that you’ve mentioned it.

Kurt suggested that I just install Windows XP using VirtualBox. I’m thinking that might be the way to go for iTunes in Ubuntu because XP has a smaller footprint and I have an XP CD and license just going to waste at the moment. I also have a Vista Premium CD and license that is also going to waste so I could always do that and once I feel comfortable repartition my drive so the Vista side of things is gone. Lots of options.

I don’t have time for many of those options but instead of just mindlessly surfing the Internet at some point this weekened (as I am sure I will do) I’ll start exploring my options better so I can rid myself of restarting for iTunes and a few other applications.

I’m off for the day for an event. I’m not looking forward to it so much so I won’t say what it is… but lunch will be free and I already said I’d come so I better go ;)

With all of the fuss about the iPhone last night I had to switch over to Windows out of Linux because iTunes doesn’t run in Linux.

Wine, Crossover, nothing will make the iTunes software work in Linux. Which for me is really dissapointing. It is one of the few things that prevent me from removing Windows Vista Ultimate from my PC.

The iPhone is running a variant of Darwin which as many of us know is a variant Unix.

That is why it still amazes me that a Linux port of iTunes has not been released since the port process doesn’t seem to be terribly hard.

I imagine that the demand isn’t very high for iTunes and the iPhone on Linux and that Apple doesn’t want to release the software to the Linux world for fear of people finding new ways to circumvent DRM and the possibility that some key OSX files would need to be released in a manner that would open up another can of worms with people making unauthorized ports of other Apple software.

So for the time being I’m stuck with Windows on my machine until Apple decides otherwise. I could just as easily install Vista in a virtual machine but seeing as how I already have it installed it seems like a waste of time to install it again… then again if I did install it on a virtual machine only I wouldn’t have to reboot my computer to use certain Windows only applications.

I just lost all of my iPhone contacts. Every persons number… gone. Poof. Cya.

I have a .Mac account and today it converted over to Mobile Me. I had it setup to sync my contacts between PC, Mac, and iPhone for me automatically.

The service has been down all day. No big deal. I expected as much.

A few minutes ago I went to call a friend… and I can’t. I don’t have the number anymore.

All of my contact information synced OTA with Mobile Me which had nothing in it meaning I lost every number. This is an EPIC failure. The Mobile Me site has a notice to backup contacts before using the service but because the service has been down ALL DAY I haven’t been able to read the message that warns me to back up my contacts.

So I’m back at zero. No numbers, no contact information.

How hard could it have been to sync the numbers from my phone to Mobile Me OTA? Instead you just wipe them and expect me to remember them and punch them in online. I’m going to complain with my wallet. Mobile Me consider yourself canceled.

I knew we’d have problems, I knew that it was likely it wouldn’t work at all today… but to design the system to delete ALL of my contacts and put the warning on a page that doesn’t work all day… well that… that is just unacceptable.

You botched something that could have been revolutionary and something I would have told my friends about… you turned it in to something that fails. Great job Apple!

So I’ve decided to start moving my regular blogging over to this new domain because I recently received and offer to purchase amassedlust.com that I couldn’t pass up.

I’ve been doing the majority of my work and gaming in Ubuntu as of late and the more I use it the more I love it. The more I love it the more I love Windows less. I think things are working out just great ;)

I’ve been fighting with Wordpress to import my old blog. The import system is only able to handle a 2 meg upload and my blog is over that. I decided to make it a gz file and got it under 2 megs just as the Wordpress Codex says to do and uploaded that but a large number of my entries just won’t import.

I hate to not have those entries on here but I don’t have the time to fight it nor really look for another solution. So for the moment a year+ of entries is lost.