A few years ago when first travelling overseas I spent $10 on a SIP-to-landline calling service, Diamondcard, that would allow me to use Ekiga on my laptop to make phone calls while in the UK to the US.  It works well, and it’s cheap.

Nowadays I have a T-Mobile G1.  Using Sipdroid and any available data connection, I can now make calls on Diamondcard from my phone.

How to:

• Buy a Diamondcard account.  Yes, click the giant red SIGNUP NOW link.  Put ten bucks into it.  You’ll end up with two distinct pieces of authentication:
  • Website login username & password: these aren’t used to connect to the SIP server.
  • Account ID (mine’s five digits) and PIN number (mine’s 12 digits).  These are for SIP authentication.
  • 
• Download and install Sipdroid.  I recommend grabbing the version off the site as it supports connections over 3G, which is not available in the market edition.
• In Sipdroid go to Menu -> Settings -> SIP Account Settings
  • Authorization Username: <your Account ID>
  • Password: PIN number
  • Server: sip.diamondcard.us
  • Be sure the protocol is set to UDP
  • 
  • You should see the green circle of happiness in the notifications bar (pictured above).  If you see yellow or red, it’s failing to connect or authenticate.
• Make a test call.  Dial *43 for the standard Asterisk echo test.  Sipdroid shows latency and loss stats on screen, watch them.  I recommend staying on the echo test for a few minutes to see how stable your connection is.
• Call people!  I’m pretty sure you’ll need to be explicit about country codes so be sure to prefix numbers appropriately, such as +1 800-555-0123 or +44 20 7946 0123.

You might also want to:

• Plug Diamondcard into PBXes.org (it does work, maybe I’ll write it up…)
• Set your Diamondcard Caller ID

Last Wednesday I came to work to find my workstation had died overnight — and upon reboot, it failed to mount or fsck the root partition.  Unfortunately it seems my disk has seen enough service and was having failed reads:

Jun 19 08:51:39 atlas kernel: [ 1324.948428] sd 3:0:1:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE,SUGGEST_OK
Jun 19 08:51:39 atlas kernel: [ 1324.948434] sd 3:0:1:0: [sdb] Sense Key : Medium Error [current] [descriptor]
Jun 19 08:51:39 atlas kernel: [ 1324.948442] Descriptor sense data with sense descriptors (in hex):
Jun 19 08:51:39 atlas kernel: [ 1324.948446]         72 03 11 04 00 00 00 0c 00 0a 80 00 00 00 00 00
Jun 19 08:51:39 atlas kernel: [ 1324.948463]         00 03 fa 3f
Jun 19 08:51:39 atlas kernel: [ 1324.948470] sd 3:0:1:0: [sdb] Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error - auto reallocate failed
Jun 19 08:51:39 atlas kernel: [ 1324.948519] ata4: EH complete
Jun 19 08:51:39 atlas kernel: [ 1324.950250] sd 3:0:1:0: [sdb] 156250000 512-byte hardware sectors: (80.0 GB/74.5 GiB)
Jun 19 08:51:39 atlas kernel: [ 1324.950919] sd 3:0:1:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
Jun 19 08:51:39 atlas kernel: [ 1324.954928] sd 3:0:1:0: [sdb] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn’t support DPO or FUA

After getting a new disk and the machine back operable, I’ve now plugged it in and trying to recover it.  Mounting fails, as it seems there are read errors in the journal itself:

Jun 19 08:35:39 atlas kernel: [  364.686504] EXT3-fs: INFO: recovery required on readonly filesystem.
Jun 19 08:35:39 atlas kernel: [  364.686508] EXT3-fs: write access will be enabled during recovery.
<errors like above>
Jun 19 08:36:08 atlas kernel: [  393.492868] JBD: recovery failed

It seems somewhat logical that it might be common to have physical failures in the area of the disk where the journal lives.  In my case, it seems the unreadable part(s) of the disk are all within the journal.  I ran debugfs on the volume to find that I could read all sorts of things on the disk — so I just needed to tell it to skip reading the journal and mount the disk anyway.

1. Before you remove the journal, you need to remove the needs_recovery flag from the volume.  You’d think this is possible with tune2fs, but it doesn’t seem so.  So you do it with debugfs:
   

   debugfs -w -R “feature ^needs_recovery” /dev/sdb1

2. Then remove the journal, forcibly:
   

   tune2fs -f -O ^has_journal /dev/sdb1

3. Now, go ahead and mount your volume as ext2:
   

   mount -t ext2 -o ro /dev/sdb /mnt/disk

Voila!  You’ve now nuked your journal, and marked your volume ready for mounting.  It’s possible that it has inconsistencies and needs a fsck, but I mounted anyway and was able to recover everything without failure.

I learned this trick from an Ubuntu forums post at http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-953279.html

Has anyone else been as annoyed as I am about this dialog?  Every time I close a terminal which has a running child process, rather than the terminal closing and the child process(es) getting killed, gnome-terminal tries to protect:

I’m not unlike any other user: I don’t like unnecessary dialogs.

However as I’ve discovered, there is a fix!  Open up gconf-editor (Configuration Editor, not that you can find it on many menu systems these days) and browse to /apps/gnome-terminal/global and uncheck the confirm_window_close key.

Now you may return to killing your numerous terminals the way you’ve always enjoyed.

So I guess bananas has nothing to do with it, although all you monkeys will be jealous to know I had one with my dinner, and it was tasty.

However the real fruit of the day is (you guessed it) Firefox Three.  I’m pretty happy to see this release; I’ve used the betas on and off for a while and been impressed how far it’s come.  It’ll still struggle to compete with the simplicity of Epiphany, but that’s just because I’m human.

It should also be noted that the Spread Firefox group has coordinated a campaign to start a new Guinness World Record for “the most software downloaded in 24 hours.”  So far since they opened the download floodgates about 18:16 UTC, and in the past ~ten hours or so, the Spread Firefox Download Day page is reporting over three million downloads, although I’m willing to bet that this is thus far an unofficial number.

There’s been a lot of commentary on the bad choice of starting time, the lack of advertising, some issues with the map not showing all the countries accurately but please spare us.  This is supposed to be a fun thing, so have fun with it!  Three million downloads thus far implies that the masses are quite happy.  You can’t seriously expect the organizers of this to make everyone just oh-so-peachy, so just roll with it!  Go download Firefox Three and enjoy!

Well done to everyone working with Mozilla!

I’ve recently made the jump to the latest ‘n greatest desktop, GNOME 2.22. Altogether I’m quite happy with the software. Not so happy with all the Gentoo bugs. But that’s another story.

One of my favorite bugs is the crashes that Xorg keeps causing, which has made my computing experience similarly enjoyable to Windows 95 where the computer is no longer logical, and likes to crash in a multitude of ways with no warning.

However onto the subject: Evolution’s new crash detection feature. I won’t debate the merit of this feature. Just the dialog box that I had to squint at over morning tea for a whole minute before I understood what the hell it’s prompting me for:

I get what this feature exists for. They’re worried that certain types of emails are crashing Evolution upon viewing, so we have a feature to disable the preview pane in the rare case that this is the issue. I suppose. I’ve personally never once had this issue. But what the hell. I’ll play along.

I’m annoyed by this dialog. When my software makes me think, it makes me unhappy. I don’t like to think:

• I don’t use the preview pane. Why am I seeing this dialog? There’s nothing to disable!
• “…appears to have exited unexpectedly…” — how the hell else would Evolution’s data files be in a state indicating crash? Be assertive in your dialog messages, as your users appreciate it! This should read “Evolution exited unexpectedly the last time it was run.”
• The text seems to indicate that “all preview panes will be hidden.” This tells me that the software will do what it says. But what options am I given? An Ignore and a Recover option. At this point in reading the dialog, I wasn’t expecting to be asked a question. I can make some assumptions about what these buttons do…but…what? I had to ponder about what button to push for a whole (admittedly sleepy) minute.

Bug 530345 filed. Hopefully not too grumpy in my bug report, I really do want this to get fixed. But it made me think so early in the morning so I’m allowed to be grumpy, right?

So yesterday I was quite convinced that I was going to make it down to see the Chicago Air and Water Show, hoping I could see the Thunderbirds.  Well lets just say that we got water alright.  I stood out in the rain for well over an hour hoping to see something, but it turns out that they cancelled much (if not all of it).  I came home soaked to the bone, but I had been smart enough to put all the electronics in my bad inside a spare plastic bag — or had I?

Last night I was unpacking my bag and found my Creative Zen Micro down at the bottom of the bag.  It was a sad sight.  I might as well have just gone for a swim in the lake while I was at it, because it was dripping, and I could see water inside the screen.  Tonight, with the help of this handy article at hardwarezone.com, I took it apart and found what I expected — pools of water inside the device. I’m hopeful that I can pull the ole “let it dry, reassemble and it’ll work” game, but I’m doubtful.

Does anyone have an old/spare MTP device that they’d be willing to donate or provide cheaply so I can work on MTP stuff for Banshee?  I’m going to comb eBay of course, but would be happy to take one off someone’s hands if they have a spare.  I don’t really have the cash or need these days to buy anything new.  If you have one, drop me a line!

In the mean time, I guess I’ll just have to write really clean code for Banshee that works perfectly, right? ;)

Wowzers, what a great time! Was intending to write about each day individually, but that’s certainly out of the question now. GUADEC was a great experience and I’m hooked on the community! A big thanks to everyone who helped put GUADEC ‘07 together.

My favorite bits:

• Staying at the hostel. It was a helluva long walk and really sucked on the rainy days, but it was a new experience. Forced random strangers to hang out and I met some cool people. Wish I would’ve gotten the names of the two guys running the hostel; they were very laid back.
• There were some killer keynotes; most importantly:
  • Alex’s presentation of PyroDesktop. I don’t take much stock in the comments of folks who don’t like this technology. It’s something we’ve never seen before, and I think the coolest part is the potential to draw a new crowd of developers to the desktop! Alex, Chris & company: keep up the good work!
  • Havoc and Bryan’s presentation of the Gnome Online Desktop. Super sweet guys. Everyone loves integration. Now, lets see it happen!
  • Doc Searls’ closing keynote. Doc is a funny man. “Now bend over and give me some content!”
• And my favorite sessions:
  • Larry’s presentation of F-Spot and the next wave of development. F-Spot rocks!
  • Telepathy and Tubes. You’ve heard the raves of others; I don’t need to spell it out here.
  • Joe’s presentation on Beagle and metadata joyfulness. Joe is a funny man.
  • Kudos to Jimmy K for holding his own during his talk on the new main menu development.
  • The Geodata standards project — creating a totally free database of mapping information.  Cool!
• The Walkabout.  What a great bar.

Many thanks to all the folks who made going out and drinking absolutely hilarious, including Gabriel, Aaron, Michael, Aiden, Rodney, Toms, any anyone else I’ve missed!

Wowzers, what a day!

• Jono’s talk was excellent.
• Video taped the morning sessions in Recital; the F-Spot presentation was great. Larry is working on some sweet ass stuff. Sync’ing our photos online — integration with web services — I think a common theme is emerging!
• Hacked on libgphoto2-sharp and Banshee. Frustrated like no other. gPhoto doesn’t have any magic support for the lame underlying case-sensitive-insensitive FAT32 filesystem. I guess I kinda figured this would Just Work. I’ve been fighting with this for six months and sure enough, I just need to hack 50 lines of code.
• Telepathy: it’s tubular, dude!
• Too many metas: Joe, thank you for taking care of my metadata. You need to publish what you want from us software hackers so we can help take our desktop to the next generation.
• Havoc’s presentation was great. Full integration of Gnome and the web will make our desktop as useful as possible. Web services are all the rage these days and we’re all dying for that One Way To Link Them All…and I think this is the right approach. Bind our online lives with an online desktop and you’ll get my Mom to switch to Linux.
• To compliment Havoc’s talk (not just because Gabriel is awesome) but Gabriel is right: we need a Free Service License. Havoc mentioned it, and Gabriel has already been thinking of it for a week.
• Been meeting a bunch of people; particularly many of the Novell hackers I’ve heard of and met online several times.
• Went and drank the free beer, and the nice cheap doubles of Southern Comfort…on an empty stomach. Ended up back at the hostel relaxing and eating a really nasty fish ‘n chips.  No, that’s not proper british fish ‘n chips…it was deep fried with french fries.  So greasy it made me nearly sick this morning…

Still grumpy about libgphoto2.  Going to see about fixing it in libgphoto2-sharp, and then push the changes down to libgphoto2 proper.

GUADEC continues!

So I arrived in London around 6 AM; everything went quickly.  Plane ride was fun, albeit quite cozy. Took the paddington express train, which is super slick, jumped on the underground to Euston, and wandered around for a while until my train up to Birmingham. The train ride up was so much faster than I had expected — we don’t have quick, cheap trains like that in the US! By the way — if you want a fun bit of adventure when travelling…don’t bring a map of your destination city with you. Half the fun is wandering around (looking quite touristy with my huge bag) and trying to figure out where the heck I am. Then buy a map :)

I’ve been meeting up with a number of GNOME folks that I’ve known over the last year and a half online, and it’s been a great experience. It’s kinda cool to have a team of Banshee hackers and supporters all roaming around. So many ideas! The hacking itch needs to be scratched this week. Big time.

So rather than turn up and go to sessions, what did I do? I walked across town with a bunch of the guys and watched the big football match. It was a blast! I went thru about 3 sets of batteries taking pictures, which I’ll post soon. Lots of funny action shots of people missing the goal. Hilarity.

Then of course, went out and got some beers and the fixings for some good ‘ol homemade pizza. Brought it back to the hostel where we’re staying at and made some pizza! Thanks to Aiden for helping us out and making it a lot of fun. Combine that with some beers, and then meeting up with a few folks later at a bar, and it was a great evening.  Also managed to give away an Ubuntu live cd to one of the guys working at the hostel — he was quite curious about free software and wanted to give it a try.  We didn’t even have to try to “sell it” — he asked for it!

Yes, that’s a VIM :w (not some new fangled creation), as in, I’m actually writing something here!

I haven’t written in three months, and haven’t committed any code in four…as I’ve been a bit distracted by a few things, notably:

• That whole job thing. Turns out when you write code 8 - 10 hours a day it drains the coding life out of you. Am still working on overcoming my hate for coding past 8PM. I’m convinced that gedit/vim silently rearrange my code after 8PM so that it has more compilation errors, driving me to stop coding.
  • Perhaps it’s the immense rage caused by running Lotus Notes 5 (under Wine, no doubt!)
  • Perhaps it’s the fact that PHP likes to silently fail or cause strange errors?
  • Perhaps it’s that I _loathe_ bad management. Yes, that’s it. I might just be a young twenty-something kid but seriously, I know leadership & management and some folks “upstairs” don’t have their shit together. Good thing I work in a kick ass IT department!
• Cycling season is finally here. Finally. Gotta love that good ‘ol mid-western weather for keeping me indoors for so long! Started riding 50 miles/week, then ramped up to 75/week, and then last week jumped right up to 145 in a week (which is hurting right now). Just shy of 500 miles for the year so far; not bad considering I’ve got another 10-12 weeks of good weather and 1,000 miles left toward my goal.
• Being goofy. Yes, I’m a goof.
• Kicking some serious ass in the IT department’s completely unofficial but incredibly serious(ish) mini golf tournament. It’s an intense sport I tell you.
• The fact that bars in Chicago are open till 4 in the morning — enough said. This is simply trouble for a guy like me!
• My truck has been in the shop more hours than I’ve driven it. I’m giving up — I am going to sell it; I don’t need it anymore!

I’ve been up to a few interesting things lately:

• Setting up my own shiny new Linode to host vanstaveren.us stuff (websites, email). Exim + Dovecot makes for one heck of a good email server. I should probably write about Dovecot as it’s pretty swift, not too challenging to set up, and the LDA makes it even better. Cooperates much better than my old host’s IMAP server. Don’t ever consider 1and1 for any kind of hosting unless you like server load averages in the double digits, spiking up to 50+
  • Thanks Aaron for pointing me to Linode!
• Trying, oh so hard, to make my Nokia 770 listen to a simple Ogg Vorbis stream (or even a file). No seriously, I think I’ve spent quite a few hours on this, and I can’t get it to work. I’m getting near ready to re-flash it and start over I’m so distraught. Isn’t Ogg Vorbis one of those things that Just Works on a modern Linux machine?
• I’ve set up my own rsync mirroring system for Gentoo’s Portage tree. My Linode box (sam) sync’s every night, my server here at home sync’s from that, and my other three boxes (including my box at work, behind a firewall, over my VPN) sync from there. Think how much traffic Gentoo users could save their mirrors if they only had a similar setup!
• I’m finally — yes, it’s true — starting to work on Banshee again, working on MTP stuff. I’m going to be traveling in a month and my goal by then is to be able to send tunes and playlists to my device with zero trouble.
• I’m planning to go to GUADEC; this will be my first, and hopefully a lot of fun! Hopefully while there I can gather up a bit more motivation to get back to writing a bit more code :) I’ll also be visiting my job’s London office the following week. All in all it’ll be a sweet trip! If anyone is looking to split a room in a hotel, please drop me a message — I’m certainly looking for a roomate!