Time Tomblog

My dad's computer was being a dick and didn't let him connect to new wireless networks without administrators password. Since I'm not always around, that is not acceptable.

I added user rights for him to admin Network Manager. I was surprised when it turned out that didn't work. Every time he tried connecting to a new network, it would ask admin password and for a moment I was stumped.
As it turned out, this was because by default all new connections are added with "Allow all users" switch. Which is something that only admins can add to new networks.

Heres what I did:

In terminal:
sudo gedit /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.policy

Look for this:
<action id="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.settings.modify.system">
<description>Modify network connections for all users</description>
...
<message>System policy prevents modification of network settings for all users</message> <message xml:lang="en">...</message>
...
<defaults>
<allow_inactive>no</allow_inactive>
<allow_active>auth_admin_keep</allow_active> <- this is what I changed
</defaults>
</action>

Change indicated line to <allow_active>yes</allow_active> and all desktop users with limited users rights can add and use wifi networks.

I've had this same problem with USB devices for a while now and since I seem to forget the solution, I'm writing it up.

Currently I'm running Ubuntu 12.04 (precise) 64-bit (Linux kernel 3.2.0-39) on a HP 620 laptop.
This particular installation of Ubuntu was introduced as 9.10, then quickly upgraded to 10.04 LTS and later 12.04 LTS.

I've been getting errors with different mice (one old Logitech M-RN67 cordless and one M185, one general travel sized Microsoft mouse) and flash drives, such as the following:
"usb 6-1: device descriptor read/64, error -71"
Which results in an unrecognized UBS device. The only way I've found I can remedy this situation so far is *drumroll* POWER OFF! Not just powering down via shutting the OS off, but actually removing the battery and power cord all together.

So if you have problems with USB devices not showing with "lsusb" in terminal, unplug you power and battery and wait for 10 seconds before powering back up.

Also.

Wireless grievances:
Due to this particular model's (fuck you HP) way of handling Bluetooth and Wifi on hardware level, wifi has not worked for most of the time I've had this machine. The hardware button for "wireless switching", which should cycle through BT and Wifi functionality, ie. one on/one off/both on/both off or so, does not work under Ubuntu at all (HP, again, FUCK YOU very much). Any tips on this regard would be gladly tried and tested.

Suomalaisen Netflixin uutuuksista ei oikein ole missään hyvää listaa, puhumattakaan että tiedon saisi helposti esimerkiksi RSS-syötteenä tai muuna vastaavana.

Löysin kuitenkin hyvän sivun suomen Netflixiin lisätyistä elokuvista, mutta koska sielläkään ei tule käytyä kovin usein, jäin edelleen kaipaamaan RSS-syötettä.

Dapper.net tarjoaa työkaluja HTML-sivujen käsittelemiseen, joten loin sen avulla tuosta Netflix-sivusta RSS-syötteen. Kauniiksi lopputulosta ei voi kehua, mutta tulipahan tehtyä. Tuon luomani, naurettavan pitkän, RSS-syötteen osoitteen löydät tällä bit.ly-osoitteella: Bit.ly/NetflixUutuudet

Lisäsin samalla myös If This Then That reseptin, joka seuraa Google Readerissä ko. syötteen kansiota ja liipaisee sähköpostin kun syötteeseen tulee päivityksiä. Reseptin löytyy täältä.

Monimutkaista ja sekavaa, eikö totta.

PS. Jos olet sattumoisin mukana Netflixin kehittäjäohjelmassa (Developer Network), niin olisiko mahdollista että kaivaisit API:sta uusien lisäysten RSS-syötteen ja kertoisit sen osoitteen?

I'm participating in Movember as part of team Turbojugend Finland.

Feel free to contribute: http://MoBro.co/jukkake

I've grown my mustache since 2011, when the last Movember ended and I had missed the whole thing. I've got a goatee and sideburns as well, which is also frowned upon in the rules. So I'm going totally against the rules, but I figure my money is just as good as the next guy's and it is for a good cause.

Asioita jotka ovat kivoja juuri nyt.

1. Dead Skeletons: Dead Magick (Musiikki)
2. Soijarouhepihvi-burgerit (Ruoka)
3. Jutut, joista tekisi mieli puhua kaikille (Salaisuudet)
4. XCOM: Enemy Unknown PS3 (Pelit)
5. Netflix PS3:ssa ja Xoom-tabletissa (Elokuvat)

Mikä saa sinut hyälle tuulelle juuri nyt, juuri tänään?

Had a bit of an problem with Thunderbird, when I tried sending mail via my Gmail account (or rather Google's SMTP server).

Now, I usually use Gmail either via Android devices or the web interface, Thunderbird is mostly reserved for work use and the several mailboxes I need there. Thus I usually don't need to send personal mail using Thunderbird and this was the first time since I've turned Google's 2-step verification on several months ago.

Here is how you get it to work:

1. Make sure you have the SMTP-setting correct (see here, in Finnish).'
   
2. Send a mail and receive "Login failure" error
   
3. Go to IssuedAuthSubTokens -page at Google Accounts and create a new application-specific password for something like "Thunderbird SMTP at home Desktop"
   
4. Copy the password you've just created, hit the "Retype password" button in the Thunderbird error dialog and paste, make sure you don't choose the "Use passwordmanager to remember" tick, because this is a one time password
   
5. Hit Retry and you should be okay

If you get the same dialog again later, you should be okay with just entering your normal Google password. If not, repeat.

I'm sure this principle also works with other email clients, not just Thunderbird.

I wanted to get Chrome OS running on my EeePC 901, but as it happens, it wasn't really the best OS for said hardware. Not without some serious tweaking anyway, but I'm willing to try it again if some tweaks are going to happen.

I love the idea of a system with low power consumption, really fast boot up and no practical HDD space requirements, since all files and such are online (in the cloud). However, booting from USB is definitely not something that I'd want to do in a normal situation.

Booting ChromiumOS Lime with Asus EeePC 901 from a USB stick, required some tweaks and googling, so I made a short how-to guide for anyone interested in trying. Installing from a pre-existing image is currently not something I had time to go into (building from source is quite well documented, if someone feels like doing that).

I would like links and help in the comments, regarding image files and installing Chrome OS to EeePC 901 (with ralink with drivers). If you can help me, please post a comment.

See my Chrome OS running on EeePC 901 how-to guide.

I just got fed up with spam, namely comment spam, so it was either delete this whole blog or look into plugins that would help me.

Since this blog has been in rather sporadic use, at first I thought about purging the damn thing all together, but that would mean spammers win! So no, I chose the annoying path and eventually found what I was looking for. Took me about a week of looking, which I only did when I felt like I got a new idea on how to approach this problem.

So now it looks like I have a solution, where I can manage the influx of crap comments and delete them when I have time. During this they're not visible to public, which is the main point. Sheesh.

This is almost stupid (especially since I'm under the influence of beer and red wine), but I just spent way too long looking for this info, so here goes.

The setup: I had a external 1,5TB USB hard drive, which was formatted to NTSC and I needed some space off that in FAT32. Since Partition Magic is no more (fuck you Symantec), I was in a bit of an jam, regarding getting this done under Windows 7.

What I did was this:
1. Plugged the damn disk in to my Win7 machine and typed diskmgmt.msc to the "Search programs and files"
2. With that I shrunk the existing NTSC partition by 102 400 megabytes , thus leaving 100GB worth of unassigned space
3. Clicked previously made unassigned space and quick formatted it to NTSC (not exFAT, yeah right, skip that shit)
4. After numerous attempts at googling the shit out of internet, I found FAT 32 Formatter (or fat32format for command line action), which is awesome! AWESOME I TELL YOU! As it does only one thing. Guess what it does?
5. Downloaded it and launched it (no install required, how's that for a change?!)
6. Trotted over to the recently created NTSC partition (conveniently named PS3), clicked it, as well as Quick Format and hit Go! (or Start)
7. I was done

Now I could back up my way too small PS3 HDD (without losing the stuff I had on the NTSC side of that USB thing) and could switch it for a larger HDD.
Oh Bliss! Now. Back to Dust 514!

Had a brief Android SDK install problem, where the installer insisted I don't have Java Developement Kit (JDK7) present and that I'd need to install that before Android SDK installer could go forth.

Turns out the problem is with my Win7 being 64-bit and thus the JDK is 64-bit as well. Started looking into this and stumbled onto few similar problems, until I notices something peculiar in this StackOverflow item's comments.

Quote: "Believe it or not, clicking Back and Next will fix it :)"

Which it did and Android SDK installed nicely. I'm glad I caught that, before knifing around register and so forth. For some reason the Android SDK installer is looking for JDK path inside 32-bit registry keys while I have 64-bit JDK installed.

My Android SDK installer was r12, while r8 was also mentioned as being affected.