Friday, March 6, 2015

Harrison Ford Plane Crash

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Six Days Seven Nights

Saturday, March 8, 2014

SvtPlay på Chromecast

Så här gör man för att få igång SvtPlay på Chromecast:
  1. Installera följande Appar på din telefon eller platta: Play SE (för svtplay.se) och BubbleUPnP.
  2. Ställ in (strartad) Chromecast under Devices i BubbleUPnP.
  3. Ställ in Play SE att använda en extern videospelare och välj BubbleUPnP när du startar ett inslag.

Chromecast - finally the one total streaming solution?

I finally got the Chromecast unit after the recent news on support for additional apps and platform opening up a bit. This post is to jot down some of my experiences.

Replacing the SMART TV functions

My first test was on my daughter's recent SMART TV. Booting up and Chromecast takes over the TV beautifully, landscape background imagery with a super easy configuration. Using an Android phone I installed the Chromecast configuration App which was used to set up WiFi. After that no more configuration was necessary.

Youtube and Netflix
Youtube and Netflix Apps on the phone finds the Chromecast straight away and plays everything as expected.

DLNA
Now, how about the movies on my DLNA NAS? BubbleUpnp is already my favourite Android DLNA player, now with supposed Chromecast support. The instructions say a transcoding server (also from Bubble) needs to be installed (this is because Chromecast only supports a few media formats and other media needs converting).
I'm not intending to set up any transcoding server so I'll try without BubbleUpnp finds the Chromecast straight away (right along the actual SMART TV playback server). Playing media from my NAS does not work at all. Browsing is good but starting movies or mp3's does not work. Playing media from the phone actually works quite well (movies recorded with the phone camera and some local mp3's and photos).
This is where it all really turns: I switched BubbleUpnp to use the SMART TV instead of the Chromecast and everything just works - all movies and mp3's from my NAS play just the way I want. The TV also include apps for Netflix and Youtube so here's where I pulled the Chromecast from that TV.

Read my later posts for more Chromecast tests.

Thursday, January 31, 2013

Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal on Sony Vaio X

Ubuntu now works completely out of the box for the Sony Vaio X. One can forget about using the Unity desktop environment though - it's beyond sluggish. Moving back to the fallback/older GUI is the perfect option. Just follow the usual guidelines for installing Ubuntu from USB.

As always, take precaution before completely removing Windows if you want to get the WWAN 3G modem working. See step 3 of this post.

Confirmed to be working:
  • Display (GMA500, info)
  • External display/VGA (with Fn+F7 - non mirror dual untested)
  • Audio (with keyboard volume control/mute / Fn+F2,F3,F4)
  • Webcam (with Skype)
  • Trackpad (with edge scrolling and two-finger scrolling)
  • Bluetooth (with Mouse and Headset)
  • Youtube video/audio (full screen working but rather laggy/chippy)
  • WLAN
Not working:
  • Display brightness keyboard controls / Fn+F5,F6 (adjusts ok but has no effect on display)
Not tested:
  • WWAN 3G modem (Qualcomm Gobi 2000)
  • Hibernate/sleep (will try and close lid after publishing this article - EDIT: ALERT! Had to re-install everything after Sleep-test !!! :-)
My tweaks:
$ sudo apt-get install gnome-session-fallback # And log in with Classic No Effects ditching Unity and Compiz
$ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences button-layout 'menu:minimize,maximize,close' # move windows buttons to the right 
gconftool-2 --set /apps/metacity/general/button_layout --type=string 
'menu:minimize,maximize,close' # again for chrome
$ gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences always-use-location-entry true # Fix broken address bar in Nautilus
Remove top desktop panel (place tray on the bottom right and set up Ubuntu Main menu bottom left using Alt-Right clicks), Tweak my MS-mouse speed

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Decent sensitivity for mouse with Ubuntu

Having acceleration/sensitivity set to their slowest/lowest settings in System Settings, for a lot of mouse devices such as the otherwise so excellent Microsoft Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000, the sensitivity/moving speed is still far too high.

Here is how to fix that (from Ubuntu 12.04):

First, you will need your mouse ProductName and ID:
$ xinput list

...
 Microsoft Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000 id=14 [slave  pointer  (2)]
...


Test a new sensitivity level (14=device id, 1.7=level - higher level lowers sensitivity):

$ xinput set-prop 14 "Device Accel Constant Deceleration" 1.7


Create a new xorg file for the new setting:
$ sudo gedit /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-mymouse.conf
Containing the following:

Section "InputClass"
   Identifier      "Microsoft Mouse 5000" # Whatever you want
   MatchProduct    "Microsoft Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000" # Product name from xinput list
   Option          "ConstantDeceleration" "1.7" # The same value as xinput
EndSection

Setting now sticks after reboot.

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Getting the Logitech diNovo Edge Keyboard to work with Ubuntu 12.04

Modify the 97-bluetooth-hid2hci.rules file:
sudo gedit /lib/udev/rules.d/97-bluetooth-hid2hci.rules
 Look for the folowing lines:
 # Logitech devices
KERNEL=="hiddev*", ATTRS{idVendor}=="046d", ATTRS{idProduct}=="c70[345abce]|c71[34bc]", \ RUN+="hid2hci --method=logitech-hid --devpath=%p"
Simply change from hiddev to hidraw like:
 # Logitech devices
KERNEL=="hidraw*", ATTRS{idVendor}=="046d", ATTRS{idProduct}=="c70[345abce]|c71[34bc]", \ RUN+="hid2hci --method=logitech-hid --devpath=%p"
Restart Ubuntu (sudo reboot now). Short-press connect button on both keyboard and dongle. Done.

Same fix also works for Ubuntu 11.10, only use the file 62-bluez-hid2hci.rules file instead:
sudo gedit /lib/udev/rules.d/62-bluez-hid2hci.rules

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Quick power off button on Ubuntu

Here is how I permanently make the power switch/button simply shut down Ubuntu from 12.04 (no more questions asked) as root:
echo "event=button/power (PWR.||PBTN)" > /etc/acpi/events/power; echo "action=/sbin/poweroff" >> /etc/acpi/events/power; /etc/init.d/acpid restart;