Linux – Page 4 – My Thought Spot

Google Sky and something more!

I just heard about Google Sky which is a new feature inside of Google Earth. It gives you star charts for your current location along with some amazing photos from the Hubble. Just like in Google Earth there are articles you can read about different stars and points of interest. All the major stars and constellations have articles written about them. Very cool.

But it gets amazingly better.

There is a flight simulator hidden in the program! After you install it, you hit Cntl+A (in Linux), Cmd+A (in Mac OSX), Cntl+Alt+A (in Windows). Yes! It works in Linux too.

For those not familiar with flight sims (which would include me), there is a list of the keyboard commands you will want to know. You can navigate quite a bit with your mouse, but you will need the keyboard to get the most out of it.

Click on the screen shot to the right to get a full size picture. I chose LAX as my airport of departure for no real reason other than I had recently been there. You will see in the pic that there are 2 push-pins. I was shocked to see them while flying. Those are stores that I had mapped in Google Earth when I was in Long Beach. The flight sim takes into account all of your personal settings inside of Google Earth. Awesome!

I heard about it from Marco’s Blog. Check out his article for more details.

Windows Picasa in Linux

With the recent upgrade of my main computer from Slackware 11 to Slackware 12, I have also tried to update as much individual software as I can. I was pleased to see that Google had released a newer version of Google Earth in May of this year. But was equally disappointed to find out that the 2 year old version of Picasa I had been using was the same. I was really wanting to try out the new Picasa Web Albums.

While I enjoy using Picasa in Linux, it is not a native Linux application. It is kluged into Linux via Wine. This got me to thinking that I might be able to install Wine and get a recent Windows version of Picasa up and running. The only thing that concerned me was that I remember there was talk that the Wine install that Google built for its software was very modified and a standard install of Wine would probably not work.

I did some surfing around and found a nice tutorial on getting the current version of Picasa (2.7 build 28.3205,0) to play nicely with the current version of Wine (0.9.43).

This info is pulled off of a mailing list. The person who posted it said it was not original to him, but he did not know where he got it. If you know the original source of this, let me know. I will gladly give credit.

Let me step you through each part of the process. These steps were originally written for Ubuntu. I will leave them intact and comment under the steps if there are any changes.

The steps with commentary

1. I installed Picasa as usual (v2.2 for linux)

I installed the original version of Picasa for Linux. This is a truly enjoyable experience since it installs (somewhat) like a Windows program. While I am a dyed in the wool Linux user, there needs to be a standard way to install software. Google has done a good job with the installers for Google Earth and Picasa.

2. I started it up and scanned some folder containing photos

Just let it do it’s thing. For me this took no time at all since I had previously had Picasa running on my system, it found all the configurations and photos.

3. Shut down picasa AND the media detector

The media detector is the little Picasa logo that sits in the tray by the clock (on KDE). Right click it to choose the option of shutting it down.

4. Installed wine (apt-get install wine)

If you are using Slackware, then don’t use apt-get. It does not work here. I grabbed the latest version of Wine for Slackware 12 (even though the site is in Italian, the package was English). Install the package just like you normally would any other Slackware software package. If you don’t know how, there are tutorials for that too.

As a side note, and something that was confusing to me, there was no Wine configuration that I needed to do. Just keep plugging through the steps and you will get there.

5. Downloaded picasa 2.5 for windows (wget http://dl.google.com/picasa/picasaweb-current-setup.exe)

Again, this is a step in Ubuntu (and other Debian based systems). Just go download the Windows .exe file from Picasa.

6. Installed it using wine (wine picasaweb-current-setup.exe)

This is done from the command line. cd to the directory where you downloaded the picasaweb-current-setup.exe file and issue this command: wine picasaweb-current-setup.exe

7. When asked if I want to run Picasa, I did so, then I shut down picasa AND the media detector (if running)

This will happen after Wine gets through with the install. The media detector ran for just a second and found only a few pictures. I became concerned at this point thinking that I was going to have to start all over getting the new Picasa set up with my pictures. But that problem is taken care of in the following steps.

7. Moved the old picasa installation (as root):
cd /opt/picasa/wine/drive_c/Program Files
mv Picasa2 Picasa22

Why this is also step 7, I don’t know. You enter the lines under step 7 into your console as root. Each line is done separately. The first line gets you into the directory where Picasa is stored and the second line moves the whole install into a different directory (so you don’t lose it). I believe this is the original Picasa install, not the one you just installed.

8. While in the same dir i copied the new installed Picasa 2.5:
cp -R home/USERNAME/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Picasa2/ .

Just run the line of code at your command prompt. You will need to substitute your username where it says USERNAME. That period on the end is important. Don’t leave that off or it won’t work.

8. Then it just worked… Good luck!
I had big troubles getting the start up logo disappearing, this is why some steps are kind of awkward.

That was exactly my experience. It worked! Except…

The fallout (however minor)

I was not able to start it from the newly created desktop shortcut. When I did that, it was like I was starting the new version, but with no photos (like after the first step 7 above). But going to the command line (or ALT+F2) and typing in “picasa” (without quotes) started the program just fine.

My only issue now is with getting connected to the Web Albums (the reason I wanted to upgrade to begin with). I am getting the “Failed to connect to server. Please try again later.” error. This can be caused by a few of different issues. I think mine is tied to the fact that I am outside the US and their only Web Albums server is a US one.

Let me write that up as a separate issue in a later post.

Ubuntu messed up my wireless

I was using Ubuntu 6.10 on my notebook happily for the last few months. I only use this computer when I go on a trip and am getting it ready to go for some trips over the next month and a half. There is a newer version of Ubuntu out, 7.04. When I fired up my computer the other day, it asked if I wanted to upgrade to the newer version. Newer is better, right?

I am not sure what good things should have been loaded with the upgrade, but it at least broke my wireless. My computer did not even see my Linksys WPC11 card at all after the upgrade. Well, that is not entirely true. It knew that I stuck something in the PCMCIA slot, but not what it was or anything.

Trolling through the Ubuntu forums, I found a thread that currently is 34 pages long with people trying to get and give help on getting wireless to work in the new Ubuntu. Actually, it is not so new. It has been out for over 2 months.

By reading through this thread, the best I have found so far is to comment out the two lines in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist that read:

blacklist r818x
blacklist r8187

In my blacklist file, they were the last 2 lines. Now the machine can see my card, but I am still not able to connect automatically like before. I have been able to connect however. Someone said that you need to put an “x” at the end of the wireless SSID name for it to work. It worked for me without this.

It seems to me that something that has drawn this much attention should be addressed by the Ubuntu team. It was working before, what caused them to have to break it?

I am sticking to Slackware on my main box. I did try Slack on my notebook, but sadly, could not get wireless working at all. Ubuntu 6.10 worked out of the box. I might downgrade back to 6.10 if I cannot get this working right.

How to use RSS

I have been wanting to do a post about RSS and explain this wonderful technology in a way that maybe my mom could understand. Until yesterday, I was not sure how to get going on this, but I saw a great video that explains the basics of RSS.

Watch the video and then continue reading to see how you can make RSS work for you.

Now that you know what it is, why would you use it? As was explained in the video, you can have your newspaper “feed” the information to you. If you like reading blogs, then using an RSS reader can really be a help in getting your information in one place instead of surfing to each blog. Then when you see a post that interests you and you want to comment on it, you can go to the blog to make your comments. This saves a lot of time and makes sure you don’t miss anything.

How does it save time? The reading software will constantly be checking for updates to the websites you are “subscribed” to. When you open your feed reader you will have all the latest news and blog posts. You don’t have to load up 6 different blogs and news sites. Also, you won’t be wasting time if the site has not been updated since your last visit. This is particularly helpful for sites which don’t update often. It is easy to just stop going to look for updates if there has not been one in a while.

It keeps you from missing anything because the reader will pull all the information together in one place. You are less likely to forget a site for a few days (which happens if you individually surf to sites) and miss something important. Again, especially true for sites which don’t update often.

You can get stand alone reader software for your computer, or you can use an on-line reader. I have accounts with Google Reader and Bloglines. Both are on-line readers, but I use neither. I have the accounts, but only occasionally visit the sites. That is because I primarily use one computer and have reader software installed on the computer. The software I use is small, streamlined and fast.

You may want to look at one of the on-line offerings if you move from computer to computer, or you have a good Internet connection negating the “slow as molasses” page loading problem that some of us experience.

There downside of using an RSS feed reader as opposed to visiting the site directly is that you are not exposed to all the ads that the blogger or news site imposes on you. Also, you don’t get “counted” as a page visit unless you actually go to the website. Neither of these issues is a problem for you as the reader, it only affects the page host.

If you want to use an on-line reader, I recommend both Bloglines or Google Reader. I have not used either enough to know which I like better, but they both work. For a stand alone solution, you will have to look around. I use Akregator, but that is only available for Linux. My wife used to use FeedReader when she was on Windows. I have not really searched for one on the Mac. When I am sitting at the Mac, I just use Google Reader. But, I only use the Mac when I am handcuffed and forced to watch a TV show since the Mac is in the TV room. My use of RSS on that machine has been limited.

Do you have a favorite reader that you use? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

I have not touched at all on how to subscribe to a site. Many sites will have a nice little button that will allow you to subscribe right into Bloglines or Google Reader. That makes those options more appealing.

Finally, a good ISP experience

I have rarely had a good ISP experience. Especially if you mention you are running anything other than Windows.

Yesterday afternoon we started having connection issues with our DSL provider, Prodigy. The way it was coming and going, it seemed more like a network problem than my personal connection to the world. But, I called them this afternoon anyway just in case it might be my modem.

The agent that took my call, Victoria, spoke a bit fast and didn’t seem to care that I was not a native Spanish speaker. If I didn’t understand something I would ask for a clarification. Like most people, she just said the same words but a bit louder. I think people don’t understand that when a foreigner does not understand a word, that saying the same word over and over does not make it clearer. You need to find a basic synonym of the word.

Well, we worked through those issues little by little. Obviously that is not what was good about the experience.

She stepped me through resetting the modem/router to the factory defaults and then we messed with some settings inside the modem and it all eventually worked out fine. In the process I had to get a new IP address assigned by the router. She asked me which version of Windows I was using. I told her I did not have a Windows machine, but I had Linux and Mac available to me. When I said that I was sitting at the Linux machine and it was the one closest to the modem, she asked me to reboot so that I could get a new IP. Most of the time I get told by other ISPs that they do not support Linux and therefore I would need to do the configuration on Windows, or they would not be able to help me. She did not mind that I was using Linux nor that I manually requested an IP address from the modem instead of rebooting.

I have even been told by a DSL provider (many years ago) that their system would not work on Linux and that I would have to cancel my service with them if I wanted to use Linux. I had been using their service for 10 months at that point with Linux, it was just that I was having problems with the modem for some strange reason. I ended up hanging up with him and figured the problem out myself.

So, Prodigy in Mexico did not seem stunned that I was running Linux and Victoria did not mind that I actually used my own brain to do what she wanted me to do. Usually you have to go through their exact set of steps or they don’t know how to proceed from there.

It is always nice to have a good customer service experience.