December 24th, 2010 2:19 by ogrim
I love the new version of the Opera web browser. If my memory is correct (it sometimes is) I have been using Opera for about 8 years. They do like to change things up, innovate and think differently. This is often for the better, giving us new and exiting features, for instance the Speed Dial. They changed up a lot of things for version 11, but there is one change I did not like: hiding the URL parameters.
I found a solution for this problem in the opera.beta newsgroup, and it is dead simple: enter “opera:config#UserPrefs|HideURLParameter” in the address bar, uncheck the highlighted field and press save in the bottom. Done. Now URLs will not be truncated in the address bar!
Tags: computers, instructions
December 5th, 2010 3:16 by ogrim
Update 26th August 2011: Solution tested and working with Debian Squeeze (my new main distro). A commenter reported it works on Mint, so I guess it works on most Debian-based distros. Another commenter had success on a Gigabyte motherboard, which is very interesting indeed.
After 3.5 years I finally caved in and got a new laptop. Screen resolution, lagging editors and general sloppyness where the major factors for ditching the old one. I have been quite pleased with the quality on my ASUS eeePC 1015PE, so I decided to go for another ASUS computer. As I am to use this machine for development, I’d like to have a large screen; the old one left me frustrated at the lack of screen estate and the crappy resolution. I therefore got me a 17,3″ ASUS N73JF, with enough power to last me just as long as the old one, I hope!
Since the new laptop has a somewhat decent graphics card, I decided to let the Windows install it came with stay, to be used for games and the likes. I of course installed Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit right away after booting the laptop to Windows 7 to check it out. It took longer booting to the preinstalled Windows 7, than it took installing Ubuntu from scratch! In addition to this, the Windows install was defiled with crapware. No wonder people buy Macs. Enough rambling; over to the problem at hand.
I did encounter a problem with getting the Suspend working in Ubuntu. After checking the fantastic ubuntuforums.org, I found people with similar issues. This thread holds the answers, but it seems the fix is more technical than it should be. However it will probably get included in some patch in the future.
At least for the N73JF, you need to create two files.
sudo touch /etc/pm/sleep.d/20_custom-ehci_hcd
sudo touch /etc/pm/sleep.d/20_custom-xhci_hcd
To open a GUI editor like gedit, with root privileges, you can use the following command:
gksudo gedit
Keep in mind this is dangerous if you edit the wrong files, so only open the ones we created with the touch-command. If you want to open the file directly, you can append the path to the filename onto the gedit command like so:
gksudo gedit /etc/pm/sleep.d/20_custom-ehci_hcd
When you have opened the files in your favorite editor, we need to enter some scripts. In 20_custom-ehci-hcd put in:
#!/bin/sh
# File: "/etc/pm/sleep.d/20_custom-ehci_hcd".
TMPLIST=/tmp/ehci-dev-list
case "${1}" in
hibernate|suspend)
echo -n '' > $TMPLIST
for i in `ls /sys/bus/pci/drivers/ehci_hcd/ | egrep '[0-9a-z]+\:[0-9a-z]+\:.*$'`; do
# Unbind ehci_hcd for first device XXXX:XX:XX.X:
echo -n "$i" | tee /sys/bus/pci/drivers/ehci_hcd/unbind
echo "$i" >> $TMPLIST
done
;;
resume|thaw)
for i in `cat $TMPLIST`; do
# Bind ehci_hcd for first device XXXX:XX:XX.X:
echo -n "$i" | tee /sys/bus/pci/drivers/ehci_hcd/bind
done
rm $TMPLIST
;;
esac
In 20_custom-xhci_hcd put in:
#!/bin/sh
# File: "/etc/pm/sleep.d/20_custom-xhci_hcd".
TMPLIST=/tmp/xhci-dev-list
case "${1}" in
hibernate|suspend)
echo -n '' > $TMPLIST
for i in `ls /sys/bus/pci/drivers/xhci_hcd/ | egrep '[0-9a-z]+\:[0-9a-z]+\:.*$'`; do
# Unbind ehci_hcd for first device XXXX:XX:XX.X:
echo -n "$i" | tee /sys/bus/pci/drivers/xhci_hcd/unbind
echo "$i" >> $TMPLIST
done
;;
resume|thaw)
for i in `cat $TMPLIST`; do
# Bind ehci_hcd for first device XXXX:XX:XX.X:
echo -n "$i" | tee /sys/bus/pci/drivers/xhci_hcd/bind
done
rm $TMPLIST
;;
esac
Now you must make these files executable with these two commands:
chmod +x /etc/pm/sleep.d/20_custom-ehci_hcd
chmod +x /etc/pm/sleep.d/20_custom-xhci_hcd
A user on the forum reported he didn’t need the extra file as proposed in the first solution. I did not test without this file, as it wasn’t working until I added the xhci-related file. I suggest you try the steps outlined here first, and attempt these last steps only if it doesn’t work.
Make this file:
sudo touch /etc/pm/config.d/usb3-suspend-workaround
Open the file, and put this in:
#File: "/etc/pm/config.d/usb3-suspend-workaround".
SUSPEND_MODULES="xhci"
He didn’t say if it needs to be executable, I’m assuming it should and that it couldn’t hurt:
chmod +x /etc/pm/config.d/usb3-suspend-workaround
I hope you get it working 
You should also check out the source for this post, as pointed out earlier. The forum might contain new information, after this is published.
Tags: computers, debian, instructions, ubuntu
October 9th, 2010 16:00 by ogrim
The best flight simulator of all time is set in space. It was released in 1994. Upgraded in 1995, and once more in 1998. I am of course talking about TIE Fighter. The version I’m currently playing is the release from 1998, which feature the best graphics. Sadly it is missing the characteristic MIDI-soundtrack from the earlier iterations. I played the 1995 version on my family’s first computer.
We got a computer relatively late; it had a whopping 166 MHz (and the excellent sound card Soundblaster 2 Pro!). I largely grew up on this machine and a Sega Megadrive. After a recent trip home, my old joystick and throttle appeared. I could not resist bringing them with me, so I connected them to my Windows 98 box (I know, but I only use it for really old stuff that wont emulate properly 
). Sadly the original computer where thrown away as garbage years ago (with the Soundblaster 
), so I had to assemble this “crappy” machine for legacy purposes such as this.
The game is just as awesome as I remembered.
Pictures by my wife, Matilde.
Tags: computers, games
November 3rd, 2009 12:00 by ogrim
My laptop have been somewhat dodgy the past 6 months. On occasions, it has overheated and died. The dying is caused by the CPU protecting itself from meltdown. In the old days there would be a burnt smell, and then you would swear. Even though I’m grateful the laptop doesn’t get bricked when overheated, I don’t really appreciate it dying on me. Sometimes it could die in a hot room, if it the CPU utilization was high enough. Not very handy.
Another problem have been the noise level it have produced, even by just browsing the web. It was making louder noise than my desktop PC, which got something like 8 fans in it. My laptop have 1. I had opened it earlier too look for dust, however it seemed perfectly clean. Yesterday, I figured I should try replacing the thermal paste. So I went ahead and opened it up again.
I stared dismantling the fan, with the easiest parts first: a piece of tape. Under the tape, I found this:
A thick layer of dust I had not noticed and blown out the first time I cleaned it. After removing the dust, I simply replaced the tape, closed the laptop and booted it up. No more loud noise, even under heavy load! The reason for the noise, was this compact layer of dust. The fan forced air trough the dust, resulting in a high pitched noise, and the fan working harder than it should. Now the air is flowing freely, and the bad sounds are gone. Happy times!
Tags: computers, rant
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