Thursday, 29 October 2009

You Gotta See This!


Contest
Abbott Medical Optics Inc. is running a competition titled "You Gotta See This!". Entrants should make a video about how better vision has (or will) improve their lives. For most of us IT people, better eyesight would be a huge benefit. After all, who wants to wear one set of glasses for programming, a different set for mid-range viewing, and then take them off for looking at distant objects?

This could be a fun competition to enter. One of the themes in particular - "My favorite sport or activity would be so much cooler with better vision" is very relevant for most people. So it would be easy to have some fun making a creative video out of this.

The winning videos in the competition are determined by a community vote, so make sure you tell all your friends about your entry! If you do enter, leave a comment here so I can go and check out your video.

Full details  are listed below:

The Details (from the iLASIK Video Contest site)
1.Submit A Video
Users make and submit a video in one of the following categories:
• “My contacts are getting in the way of my good time”
• “My favorite sport or activity would be so much cooler with better vision”
• “You should see life after the iLASIK® Procedure”
2.Tell Friends To Vote
Once users submit a video, their friends can vote on it. And votes are one of the key factors in determining which videos win a prize.
3.Have A Chance To Win
• One Grand Prize winner will win $5,000 — selected from all submitted videos
• Three First Prize winners will win an HDTV package(a $2,500 value) — one per video category
•Three Second Prize winners will win the Flip UltraHD™ camcorder (a $199.99 value) — one per video category

So head down to the site today. There are lots of cool prizes to be won, and making the video itself should be heaps of fun. In fact, you could even re-make an existing video if you wanted to - the choice is yours. Now I'll just see if I can get an entry in myself..... =)

Post?slot_id=80452&url=http%3a%2f%2fsocialspark

Tuesday, 27 October 2009

Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Ctrl+Alt+F1 Show Blank Screen

I was trying to change to a virtual terminal, but all I got was a black screen. I am using the latest Nvidia graphics drivers (proprietary).

To fix, I had to run the following command:
sudo modprobe vga16fb
 sudo modprobe fbcon

Then I was able to change to different tty virtual terminals using the keyboard shortcut. Ctrl+Alt+F7 to get back to graphical interface.
Source: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=679861

Friday, 23 October 2009

Spoof MAC Address on Linux

Spoofing a MAC address on Linux is quite easy. It does require that you shut the interface down however. Shut the interface you want to spoof down, and then run ifconfig.


Code:
ifconfig eth0 down
ifconfig eth0 hw ether 00:11:22:33:44:55
ifconfig eth0 up

Wednesday, 21 October 2009

How to Mount Samba Share at Boot / Startup Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty

To mount a Samba share to be mounted when a Linux system comes up after reboot edit the /etc/fstab file and put entry as follows for your Windows/Samba share:
//ntserver/share /mnt/samba smbfs username=username,password=password 0 0
For example, if you want to mount a share called //ntserver/docs then you need to write the following entry in your /etc/fstab file:
//ntserver/docs /mnt/samba smbfs username=docsadm,password=D1Y4x9sw 0 0
Where,
  • //ntserver/docs: Windows 2003/NT/Samba share name
  • /mnt/samba: Local mount point (you may need to create this directory first)
  • smbfs: File system type (samba file system)
  • username=docsadm,password=D1Y4x9sw: Share username and password
Note: This will work for all Linux systems, not just Ubuntu Jaunty. You may encounter an error like the following:

$sudo mount /shared
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on //beta/shared,
       missing codepage or helper program, or other error
       (for several filesystems (e.g. nfs, cifs) you might
       need a /sbin/mount. helper program)
       In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
       dmesg | tail  or so

In this case, smbfs might not be installed. For ubuntu, run:
sudo apt-get install smbfs
and then try mounting again.

Source: http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/configure-a-system-to-automount-a-samba-share-with-etcfstab/

Tuesday, 13 October 2009

404 - Component not found in Joomla when viewing Virtuemart

404 - Component not found
You may not be able to visit this page because of:
  1. an out-of-date bookmark/favourite
  2. a search engine that has an out-of-date listing for this site
  3. a mistyped address
  4. you have no access to this page
  5. The requested resource was not found.
  6. An error has occurred while processing your request.
Please try one of the following pages:
If difficulties persist, please contact the System Administrator of this site.
Component not found


I found this error message when working from a clean install of virtuemart. Actually, the solution was quite simple - just add a menu item linking to the Virtuemart Component. Without a menu item, Joomla doesn't recognise the component correctly.

How to Fix Screen Blank when Installing openSuSE 10.3 on Eee Box


openSuSE installed from the DVD successfully, but the screen would go blank and enter standby mode after booting. A DVI-VGA adapter was used to connect a VGA LCD screen.

The problem lies in the Xorg configuration. Apparently the default Intel driver does not work. The driver needs to be changed to VESA.

To fix the screen and get Xorg to work correctly:

1.      Turn on the computer. It will display the boot progress, but then the screen will go blank. Press Ctrl+Alt+F1 to change to command line mode.

2.      Login as root.

3.      To edit the configuration file, you will require a text editor. By default, only vi is installed. These instructions use pico. To install pico, place the openSuSE Install DVD in the drive, and type “yast2 –i pico” on the command line.

4.      Open the configuration file: pico /etc/X11/xorg.conf

5.      Scroll down using the arrow keys to find the line which says:
Section “Device”
A few lines futher down, replace this line:
Driver    “intel”
With this line:
Driver    “vesa”

6.      Press Ctrl+O and then Enter to save the file. Press Ctrl+X to exit.

7.      Type “reboot” to restart the computer. This time you should be able to login to the desktop environment as normal.

Full contents of working xorg.conf file (with modified line highlighted):
# /.../
# SaX generated X11 config file
# Created on: 2009-09-09T11:23:59+1000.
#
# Version: 8.1
# Contact: Marcus Schaefer , 2005
# Contact: SaX-User list
#
# Automatically generated by [ISaX] (8.1)
# PLEASE DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE!
#

Section "Files"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/misc:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/local"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/Type1"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/URW"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/Speedo"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/PEX"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/cyrillic"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/latin2/misc:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/latin2/75dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/latin2/100dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/latin2/Type1"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/latin7/75dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/baekmuk:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/japanese:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/kwintv"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/truetype"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/uni:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/CID"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/ucs/misc:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/ucs/75dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/ucs/100dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/hellas/misc:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/hellas/75dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/hellas/100dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/hellas/Type1"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/misc/sgi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/xtest"
  FontPath     "/opt/kde3/share/fonts"
  InputDevices "/dev/gpmdata"
  InputDevices "/dev/input/mice"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
  Option       "AllowMouseOpenFail" "on"
EndSection

Section "Module"
  Load         "dbe"
  Load         "type1"
  Load         "freetype"
  Load         "extmod"
  Load         "glx"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
  Driver       "kbd"
  Identifier   "Keyboard[0]"
  Option       "Protocol" "Standard"
  Option       "XkbLayout" "us"
  Option       "XkbModel" "microsoftpro"
  Option       "XkbRules" "xfree86"
EndSection


Section "InputDevice"
  Driver       "mouse"
  Identifier   "Mouse[1]"
  Option       "Buttons" "5"
  Option       "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
  Option       "Name" "KYE Optical Mouse"
  Option       "Protocol" "explorerps/2"
  Option       "Vendor" "Sysp"
  Option       "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection


Section "Monitor"
  DisplaySize  306 230
  HorizSync    30-70
  Identifier   "Monitor[0]"
  ModelName    "107S (107S1)"
  Option       "DPMS"
  VendorName   "PHILIPS"
  VertRefresh  50-160
  UseModes     "Modes[0]"
EndSection


Section "Modes"
  Identifier   "Modes[0]"
  Modeline      "1280x1024" 119.40 1280 1368 1504 1728 1024 1025 1028 1063
  Modeline      "1024x768" 95.50 1024 1088 1200 1376 768 769 772 807
  Modeline      "1024x768" 85.45 1024 1088 1200 1376 768 769 772 803
  Modeline      "1024x768" 74.62 1024 1080 1192 1360 768 769 772 799
  Modeline      "800x600" 60.07 800 840 928 1056 600 601 604 632
  Modeline      "800x600" 53.14 800 840 928 1056 600 601 604 629
  Modeline      "800x600" 45.50 800 840 920 1040 600 601 604 625
  Modeline      "800x600" 38.22 800 832 912 1024 600 601 604 622
EndSection


Section "Screen"
  DefaultDepth 24
  SubSection "Display"
    Depth      15
    Modes      "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600"
  EndSubSection
  SubSection "Display"
    Depth      16
    Modes      "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600"
  EndSubSection
  SubSection "Display"
    Depth      24
    Modes      "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600"
  EndSubSection
  SubSection "Display"
    Depth      8
    Modes      "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600"
  EndSubSection
  Device       "Device[0]"
  Identifier   "Screen[0]"
  Monitor      "Monitor[0]"
EndSection


Section "Device"
  BoardName    "945 GME"
  BusID        "0:2:0"
  Driver       "vesa"
  Identifier   "Device[0]"
  Option       "monitor-VGA" "Monitor[0]"
  VendorName   "Intel"
EndSection



Section "ServerLayout"
  Identifier   "Layout[all]"
  InputDevice  "Keyboard[0]" "CoreKeyboard"
  InputDevice  "Mouse[1]" "CorePointer"
  Option       "Clone" "off"
  Option       "Xinerama" "off"
  Screen       "Screen[0]"
EndSection


Section "DRI"
    Group      "video"
    Mode       0660
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
EndSection