howto

I've got an Android phone with, currently, no phone service. Well, OK, it's a WinMo phone chainloading Android, but that's relatively irrelevant. Soon I will want to avoid using minutes from my incoming T-Mo PAYG phone card, so I'll still want to make phone calls using SIP any time I'm in WiFi range. You can even get out of paying for outgoing calls so long as you turn them into incoming calls.

I myself probably should have looked for one of these before I made this one; it's a .desktop file for gksudo that gives you access to it from the GUI in non-incidental ways. Below the break you'll find the text, which is not very long.

I wanted to run OpenELEC 3 to get XBMC 12 "Frodo" because cancel works, which is to say that I've never previously been able to cancel actions like browsing a SMB server and I've been running XBMC since it was XBMP. To make a long story short, OpenELEC 2.99.2 (RC2) has nonworking bluetooth. Some have reported success with 2.99.1 but that didn't work for me either. But as of yesterday (20130206) there is a dev build that does work, and I have installed it.

The dockstar doesn't have an RTC to keep costs down. If you're running Debian Squeeze (and you probably should be) then you can make the following tweak to /etc/init.d/ntp to use ntpdate (which you should also install) to set the time before running ntp.

I guess this should have been obvious to me long ago, but if you have shell access you can near-instantly upgrade drupal like this:

wget (new drupal release)
tar xfz (new drupal release)
cd drupal-(new drupal version)
rm -rf sites
rsync .htaccess * (your drupal root)

If you need it spelled out a little more closely, here's what the commands look like for me for 7.18, which seems to be a security update...

Various online resources say to hold down INPUT and VOL- on the remote while plugging in the TV. This doesn't work, at least on mine. Hold them down on the TV while plugging in the TV, that works. Then you press VOL- and CHAN- on the TV, to get into the menu. Channel buttons select, volume buttons alter.

Ever since I got it, my 1992 F250 has had a bad wiper motor. The symptom, which can be caused by several different kinds of faults, is that it didn't "park". That is to say, the switch turned the wiper motor on and off, regardless of setting. High speed always worked, but park never did. I proved that the motor was the problem by taking off the cover and cleaning the contacts, and having it work for a short time. Rather than fight corrosion and continually shave switch contacts, I decided to drop the forty bucks retail on a new window motor.

Install gpm (e.g. aptitude install gpm for Debian, Ubuntu, etc.) and run the following as root (you can sudo bash first)

( for i in `gpm -t types`; do sudo gpm -m /dev/input/whatever -t $i -T -D; done ) 2>&1 | tee /tmp/gpm.log

(where "whatever" is the device you're trying to identify.) Now press the left button or the touch screen repeatedly. Some drivers will spit out a lot of this:

On my last visit to the tire shop for my '82 300SD I got some Dorals (I thought they were cigarettes, but they're also an Indonesian tire) and an alignment. Turned out one of my braking support rod bushings was going, and also that my rear springs were shot. Consequently I have just replaced them. I spent half the day trying to use a spring compressor and the other half of the day doing the job right. Short form, drop the rear of the subframe and they will fall out.

Recently I decided to give XBMC Live a try as the alternative to making my own Ubuntu install. I figured they might have it worked out to go a little faster. It looks as though I was right, and it's a great install so far as I can see, but I also discovered that they left out bluetooth. As probably the best cheap option for a good remote is a used Playstation 3 remote available at a gamestop near you for thirty bucks or less, this seems like an unfortunate omission. As I want to use a Logitech MX5000 keyboard hooked up to an MX900's USB Bluetooth dongle/mouse charging cradle, it was especially annoying.