My Google Voice "call me" button

Just wanted to quickly mention that I added my Google Voice "call me" button to my sidebar (>>>) so that if anyone is interested they can click to call me if they have questions, comments, need assistance, or just want to say hello.

When you call you should hear the voice of a lovely young lady. Just let her know whatever you called to say, and I'll get the message.

I've also added my Crossloop badge for those who want remote assistance with a computer issue (Windows users only; Linux users can get remote assistance via VNC).

Bringing AI to Twitter

So lately I have been thinking a bit about egg-fu; what direction I should go in or if I should even update the source at all. I had been thinking of different ways to implement egg-fu in today's cyberspace. The internet has changed, obviously, in a lot of ways since 8 years ago when the project first began, so I was pondering on ways to bring egg-fu back into the mainstream a bit. One possibility I thought of was porting egg-fu to Twitter. I figured (at least for the development instance of egg-fu) if I direct him to follow the right people he could emulate a certain amount of intelligence quite easily. Of course, I could have him learn from dumb people as well, if I wanted him to. It would not be hard at all to have egg-fu follow certain trending topics and give his unique input in the form of replies and quite possibly formulate his own original tweets based on the things he picks up from other twitterers. The difficult part though, which I was having trouble convincing myself wouldn't be too much work to make the whole thing worthwhile is the fact that I would have to deal with the Twitter API. I wasn't entirely convinced this was the best way to code a simulated-AI bot. I just had my doubts and this feeling that there had to be a better way to accomplish this. So I let the idea receed to the back of my thoughts for a while, to stew.

Then just the other day I was browsing through hundreds of apps in the Android Market, ever curious about what is out there, and I came across something that piqued my interest. I discovered the app LinkDroid, which uses webhooks to manage data. Here is a quote from the app's description:

"Webhooks (webhooks.org) are user defined callback URIs that receive HTTP Posts in response to user actions or system events. For example, LinkDroid (linkdroid.org) can post media, such as images, to defined Webhooks when users selects the Share With option. LinkDroid can also post broadcasted events (by Android, or other programs) to target Webhook (via a background service) as specified by registered IntentFilters."

What intrigued me was the touted ability to define these webhooks in this way, but I was ignorant of what webhooks were or what they really do. So I did the research and found out what I needed to know, but even more importantly I realized this was probably exactly what I was looking for to port egg-fu as a Twitter-enabled bot.

So what I'd do next would obviously be to start outlining and brainstorming on this idea. More to come.

Hit the jailbrakes!

I got into a discussion with someone online about Apple's iPhone and about smart phones in general and during the course of this discussion it made me realize that people often talk about Jailbreaking as if it were the answer to everything. More specifically, we were debating which smart phone is "better" than the rest. I'm quite sure no one has ever covered this topic before.

So, I expressed that I am of the opinion that iPhone is a piece of shit and severely over-hyped. I happen to own Apple's simplified, music-centric version, so I have a little experience with the platform. You may have heard of it, they call it an iPod Touch. Well, as I was saying, I made my point that I didn't prefer the iPhone and that I thought the T-Mobile G1 was superior and one of the guys in the discussion said he liked the iPhone better even though he has a G1 himself. I brought up the fact that Apple is very strict and can often appear to operate without rhyme or reason when rejecting apps (developers often complain that Apple has given no reason for rejecting their app submission). I also mentioned the recent buzz about Apple rejecting Google's Voice application.

Well, someone else mentioned that if you jailbreak your iPhone it resolves all those problems, therefore iPhone wins. Wait, what? It does?

That's what really got me thinking. Why do people think that being able to mod/hack/jailbreak a device as a work-around is a trump card that makes that device better than all of its peers? That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. If anything, I should be using "jailbreak" as a case against it and its usefulness, not the other way around. If you have to "break" or "hack" something (effectively changing its intended use in some way) in order for it to work the way you think it should it doesn't make this device that much better, it makes it that much worse. Even worse if the only real reason you're doing it is because the manufacturer decided against a feature or add-on that you thought it ought to have. In other words, a feature that wasn't included not because it wasn't technically possible or would have negative drawbacks on the resources available to the device or any other technical reason, but simply because the manufacturer said, "hmmm, we'd rather not add that."

All I'm saying is you can't use jailbreaking as a case for the pro-Apple side of an argument. It's just dumb.

Troubleshooting VirtualBox 2.1.4 Guest Additions (Ubuntu 9.04 guest)

I had a little fun trying to figure this one out today and it seems as though there wasn't any updated instructions on how to get the Guest Additions running in an Ubuntu 9.04 VirtualBox (Kubuntu 9.04 more specifically, but these directions will apply to all flavors of Ubuntu 9.04).

First of all, I'm running (as stated, but just for clarification) VirtualBox 2.1.4 on host: Ubuntu 9.04 and the guest is Kubuntu 9.04 (also verified it on Ubuntu Studio 9.04).

Here are some of the errors you may be getting:

(EE) Failed to load module "vboxvideo" (module does not exist, 0)
(EE) No drivers available.

Or

(EE) module ABI major version (1) doesn't match the server's version (5)
(EE) Failed to load module "vboxvideo" (module requirement mismatch, 0)
(EE) No drivers available.

...among the other log info. If you are getting either of these (or something similar, i.e. different version numbers than what is shown above), then you are in the right place! Maybe.

These errors should only appear (as far as I know) after attempting to install the Guest Additions into an Ubuntu guest machine or, as other people have reported, possibly also when adjusting the display resolution in the guest machine. The reason the error arises is because the additions modify your xorg.conf file with some new/modified entries in an attempt to enable to appropriate VBox modules for video and mouse support as well as the clipboard support (I think that part is included in the mouse driver).

So here's the solution. We'll assume you have already tried at least once to install the VBox guest additions and have attempted to reboot to finalize the changes as it instructs you to. When you booted back up you most likely wound up with a black screen, or a tty login prompt (in the case of Kubuntu), or the following message (as in the case of Ubuntu standard/Studio):

In any case, just ignore the error message if any and try get to a tty (try Host+F2 if you're having trouble) where you should be able to login normally. Once in, we'll need to mount the guest additions ISO and run the guest additions installer again, with a twist.

mount /dev/cdrom
cd /media/cdrom/
sudo mkdir /tmp/ga
sudo ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run --noexec --target /tmp/ga

It should do a quick dump of the driver files to /tmp/ga. Next, go ahead and check your X Server version:

dpkg -l xserver-xorg-core

You should see something like:

The part we're interested in is just the digits from the version number (2:1.6.0), in this case a 1 and a 6. This is important to determine which drivers to use later. Now, go ahead and execute these commands:

cd /usr/lib/xorg/modules/
sudo cp /tmp/ga/vboxvideo_drv* drivers/
sudo cp /tmp/ga/vboxmouse_drv* input/
cd drivers/
sudo ln -s vboxvideo_drv_16.so vboxvideo_drv.so
cd ../input/
sudo ln -s vboxmouse_drv_16.so vboxmouse_drv.so

Important: notice that the number highlighted above represents the version number we got from dpkg -l earlier? Make sure the numbers you enter match your version as well so the correct files are linked, or you will get errors starting X again. We copied all of the driver files just in case we need any of the others at a later time (i.e. if you upgrade your X Server), but you really don't have to. At this point I usually do a ls -l on the input and drivers directories to make sure I linked to the files properly.

Once you've completed these steps everything should be fixed, and we didn't even need to touch xorg.conf! Go ahead and try starting X with startx. If everything went well it should start right up. You may want to reboot just for good measure, though it's probably not necessary.

If everything is running now, save a snapshot and you're done! You now have your Ubuntu 9.04 guest OS running with VirtualBox Guest Additions installed, and a much nicer resolution to boot.

If you encounter mouse integration issues, continue with this post.

Install guest additions on Ubuntu (VirtualBox)

Just a quick how-to for installing the Guest Additions for VirtualBox in an Ubuntu 9.04 guest machine. These instructions are specifically for VirtualBox 2.1.4 but should also work with later versions of VirtualBox (and possibly earlier versions as well, with slight variation).

First of all you need to have a fully installed copy of Ubuntu 9.04 (or any of it's variants) in VirtualBox. If you do not, please complete that before continuing. I recommend also letting your guest Ubu do a full update if possible before moving on.

Save a snapshot now before attempting to install Guest Additions!

Once you have installed your guest Ubu and saved a snapshot of the virgin install, you'll need to first release your mouse by pressing the Host key, then go to your Devices menu and select "Install Guest Additions..." This will mount the ISO for you under /media/cdrom0.

Open up a terminal, or switch out of X Windows to a tty and log in. Go ahead and

cd /media/cdrom0/
sudo ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run

It should run through the install and ask you to reboot when it's done.

If you get the warning message above ("...unknown version of ... X Windows...") you may encounter problems after rebooting. If so, please read this post for help.

What I've been up to lately

So I moved into a house a few months ago, which gave us the room to set up an official "office" room. At this point I have my desktop in there and 1 server. My girlfriend has her desktop set up as well (though much more recently) as well as an extra monitor on her desk for her work laptop for when she works from home.

Her iMac G4 (if I'm remembering that correctly) is currently out of commission because her boyfriend flipped a wrong switch causing the outlet it was plugged into to switch off, killing the power supply in the process. Sorry. Who knew Mac power supplies were so fragile? Or maybe it was just on the brink already.

So, all my computers run linux of course. I have my desktop, my netbook and the server (and another desktop and laptop that are collecting dust right now). The server is actually her old laptop, but she lets me use it as our server, 'cause she's cool like that. We had been using it as a file server already, but we acquired a second-hand printer not long after moving in, so of course it quickly became the print server as well. I did some optimizations on it and added TorrentFlux (you know, for downloading linux distributions) and a CRM suite for when we do freelance work on the side. Not to mention some other minor things.

Well that was all working out just fine for a while, but we decided, being as smart as we are, that maybe putting all our eggs (data) in one basket (server) was a bad idea. I know, novel idea. So I set out restructuring our home network.

I figured, since my desktop is the most powerful computer in the house (world) and since hosting the majority of our data (porn) elsewhere left me with the better part of a terrabyte unused, I could give my desktop's life more meaning by having it be the file server instead and relieve the print server of its file hosting duties. This way, I can repurpose the print server as a backup server (of course it will still serve printers), and that's what I'm working on currently.

So, that's it in a nutshell. More to come, soon enough.

A minor change

Originally, this blog was meant to host my developer journal, but I decided I wanted to also post about broader subjects, also. So, from here on out, in addition to my developer entries, expect to see more posts about computer geekage and the lot with potentially an occasional, completely off-topic post.

Oh and in case it's too cryptic, the new title is a mashup of me + *nix.

Updates about what I've been up to are on the way.