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.

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.

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.

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.