Radeon 3400 on Lenovo T400 and Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope

Recently ran into problems with my new Lenovo Thinkpad T400 and the Video Card.

Problem: The internal Intel card worked fine. The T400 contains switcheable-graphics which can switch between the Intel Card (low-performance for power saving) and the ATI radeon mobility 3400 series card (high performance). In some OS, automatic switching occurs based on the power status. Unfortunately, Ubuntu, and the latest version I’m using – Jaunty Jackalope a.k.a 9.04, doesn’t support this. What’s more is that since the Intel card is set as the primary card, that is what Ubuntu detects.

Solution: To install the ATI Mobility driver, do the following:

1. Reboot the T400, and go into the BIOS setup
2. Under Config, select Display
3. Change from Switcheable-Graphics (both cards) to Discreet Graphics (ATI). Integrated Graphics is the Intel card.
4. Disable OS Auto-detection of Video Cards
5. Save and Exit (F10)
6. Boot into Ubuntu, go into menu: System->Administration->Hardware Drivers
7. Install the ATI driver given there – Ubuntu will automatically do this for you

Everything’s up and running after this (a reboot maybe required), and ATI’s proprietary fglrx driver should be installed. The ATI Catalyst Center should be under Applications->Accessories->ATI Catalyst Control Center.

However, I did experience a lot of flickering – especially when Google Earth was running – I also couldn’t watch movies in the full screen mode.

This fix worked:

1. Install the latest version of the ATI Catalyst Center. I installed version 9.6
2. URL: http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx
3. Select the correct version for your architecture.
4. Assign permissions to your downloaded file:    sudo chmod +w <filename.run>
5. Run the installation:   sudo ./<filename.run>
6. Once finished, reboot into Linux. Everything worked fine for me hereonwards.

Adding Google Calendars to Evolution

Evolution Calendar offers a great way to manage tasks – reminders and all. And the popup tasklist in the taskbar is even greater. Google calendar on the other hand also offers a wide variety of benefits for an online calendar client. Here is a way to see all your Google calendar items from within Evolution – and thus letting you go offline with your GCal stuff in Evolution.

Ok – there seems to be some bugs overall which restricts 2 way sync between Google Calendar and Evolution (2.22.31) – however for simple calendars, here goes:

1. Create your calendar in Google Calendar
2. In the Evolution (2.22) mail client, select New->Calendar
3. Set the type of the calendar to Google
4. Give a name for your Calendar such as “Conquest of the Shire Timeline”
4. Enter your google account username in the Username section
5. Click OK, and enter your Google account password in the resulting box
6. Sit back and view your Google calendar in Evolution

There seems to be some bugs in accessing multiple calendars from the same account too. Anyways, as a workaround, you can add calendars as ICAL:

1. In your Google calendar account, within the specific calendar settings, copy
the ICAL URL.
2. In Evolution, create a new calendar of the type “On the Web”
3. Enter the ICAL URL in the URL section: replace the ‘http://’ section with ‘webcal://’
4. The other steps are similar to the Google setup given above

Enjoy…

Maps for Advocacy: An Introduction to Geographical Mapping Techniques

TacticalTech recently released Maps for Advocacy: An Introduction to Geographical Mapping Techniques. This book is very informative and nicely edited, and gives an overview of mapping techiques to a new user. I had the priviledge of contributing to this wonderful piece of work, and I received my complimentary copies today. A must read for everyone. Good work, TTC.

Cows Point North

Interesting article in the Telegraph about how Cows automatically point to the north.

Dr Sabine Begall and colleagues from the University of Duisburg-Essen looked at thousands of images of cattle on Google Earth in Britain, Ireland, India and the USA. They also studied 3,000 deer in the Czech Republic. The deer tended to face north when resting or grazing.

Wow. And to know that the cow in my backyard can be used as a very handy compass . This comment on Slashdot summarizes it all:

Having an edible compass would come in handy if you get lost.

Facebook chat on Pidgin

My friend Gunith mentioned that there was a plugin to integrate Facebook chat into the Pidgin instance messenger – and obviously, I tried it the very next day, and am glad to mention that it rocks
Pidgin is an all-in-one instance messenger client, formally known as GAIM. Facebook-chat is one of the latest additions to its ever-growing list of supported protocols. To install the Facebook plugin for Pidgin (assuming you have Pidgin in the first place), select the appropriate package from Google Code and install it. If you use Debian/Ubuntu, then grab the .deb package, and install it via
sudo dpkg -i [name of package]
Next, go into Accounts->Manage in Pidgin, and add a new IM account. You should see Facebook-chat as an option in the protocol section. Select it, enter your account details, and accept it, and hey presto, your Pidgin should be Facebook-chat enabled.

qGIS on Ubuntu Hardy

I’m a big fan of qGIS, my favorite GIS desktop client. I recently upgraded to Ubuntu Linux 8.04 LTS, a.k.a Hardy Heron, and was amazed to find that qGIS was no longer part of the standard Ubuntu repositories, which is absolutely dissapointing – anyways, here is a workaround to getting qGIS installed on Ubuntu. Of course, compiling from source is always an option, but I’m going with the ‘Ubuntu way’ here.
The latest version of QGIS for Ubuntu is available at http://ppa.launchpad.net/qgis/ubuntu/. Add this entry:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/qgis/ubuntu/ hardy main
to your Sources list, usually available at
/etc/apt/sources.list
And Update your Ubuntu sources:
sudo apt-get update
Now install qgis:
sudo apt-get install qgis

However, when I tried starting qGIS from the command line, I got the following 2 errors/warnings:

Couldn’t load SIP module. Python support will be disabled

And

Couldn’t load PyQt bindings. Python support will be disabled.

The above 2 can be corrected by installing the following packages in Ubuntu:
sudo apt-get install python-sip4
sudo apt-get install python-qt4
And with the above steps completed, I now can run QGIS again. Viva GIS

Creating ER diagrams from SQL

SQLt/SQL::Translator/SQLFairy is a great tool to create ER diagrams from SQL:

SQL::Translator is a group of Perl modules that manipulate structured data definitions (mostly database schemas) in interesting ways, such as converting among different dialects of CREATE syntax (e.g., MySQL-to-Oracle), visualizations of schemas (pseudo-ER diagrams: GraphViz or GD), automatic code generation (using Class::DBI), converting non-RDBMS files to SQL schemas (xSV text files, Excel spreadsheets), serializing parsed schemas (via Storable, YAML and XML), creating documentation (HTML and POD), and more.

In Ubuntu Linux and Debian Linux, this can be obtained by installing SQLFairy:
apt-get install sqlfairy
This is quite useful if you follow a bottom-up approach: create the SQL first, and then create ER diagrams – although this might not be a common development method, it does have its uses, and some of us like it
So for instance, say you have a MySQL schema named sample.sql. To create a ER diagram with color, named sample_schema.png, run the following in the command line:
sqlt-diagram -d=MySQL -o=sample_schema.png sample.sql --color
where -d=MySQL specified the MySQL driver. Other available drivers can be obtained by:
sqlt -l
Additionally, sqlt can also be used to convert between various database schemas as well.

Software Freedom Day in the Hills

Kandy celebrated Software Freedom Day a day previously, on the 14th of September. As part of the FOSS Community’s mega plan, we planned to hold events in 4 different locations of Sri Lanka: Kandy (University of Peradeniya), Matara (University of Ruhuna), Rathnapura, Colombo (SLIIT), Colombo (APIIT) and Colombo (Excel World). Hopefully, the other events to come would be a raving success as well.

The Kandy event went smoothly. Since the event was targeted mainly at School Students, it had to be held on a weekday, hence a day earlier than the actual SFD. Anyways once again, commendable organizing by the Kandyan team from the University of Peradeniya, for a brilliant event. I was privileged enough to present a keynote sort of thingy, where I spoke on “Overview of F/OSS in Sri Lanka”.

All in all, the event was a success, and surroundings were outstanding. Move over, Colombo

Playing Encrypted DVD on Linux

Ever tried to play your favorite DVD movie, just to find that you couldn’t since it was encrypted!. First time I tired it with the magical combination that allows you to do wonders (Linux+mplayer,VLC and Xine), I got the following error message: ” Encrypted VOB file! Read DOCS/HTML/en/dvd.html”. Seemingly, libdvdcss2 is required to play Encrypted DVDs, and it was not available in some standard repositories. But as usual, anything is possible under Linux, and the magic works here too

To install libdvdcss2 under Ubuntu (Dapper),

cd /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/examples/
./install-css.sh

This script would automagically install libdvdcss2 for you, from the appropriate sources. And then its a matter of watching that DVD of yours in your favorite player! Is that cool or what??

Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter

Ever sat back and wondered about 2 of the greatest Fantasy books ever? I’m an avid Reader, and 2 of my favourites are the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and Harry Potter. A recent heated debate with a friend on which was the greater of the two (which didn’t result in any sort of sane conclusion), made us amused to realize some of the similarities between the two, of which I list some below (The order is Category – LOTR Example – Harry Potter Example):

• Magical and mythical world: A world filled with magic and mythical creatures. Common creatures like elves and goblins exist, people who can transform into animals, flying creatures etc.
• The Dark Lord: The source of all evil, whom’s destruction is the goal of the good guys. His name is not spoken, and he is referred to as the Dark Lord, He who must not be named, or We do not speak of him in these areas etc. – Sauron (LOTR) – Voldermort (HP)
• The Innocent Looking Hero: The fate of the world/middle-earth depends on him. He is seemingly innocent, small compared to other powerful beings, especially his enemy. He is sometimes arrogant, and leads himself to trouble. Simple minded and modest, and trusts his friends. – Frodo Baggins (LOTR) – Harry Potter (HP)
• The Worm Guy: The Bad sneaky guy acting as a good guy, with a slimy name. The slippery villian, who in the eyes of some is good but eventually turns out bad. Faithful servant to his master, even though the master isn’t always kind to him. Has another name, but is called by this name often. Name starts with ‘Worm’ and ends with a part of the body, : tongue or tail. – Wormtongue (LOTR) – Wormtail (HP)
• The hooded Spooks: It’s all about fear when these dudes are around. No face, no physical form, no soul etc. Hooded figures who bring fear to all around.- Nazgul (LOTR) – Dementors (HP)
• The good old wizard: The white wizard who is Wise and old, but is amazingly nifty and strong. The strongest of the good guys, and might have the ability to defeat the dark lord, but it is not his fate to do so? Very close to the hero, and like paternal adviser to the hero. Talks in a slow and steady tone, and mostly in riddles – Gandalf (LOTR) – Dumbledore (HP)
• The Troublesome Creature?: Looks all slimy and troublesome, but helpful in the end. Small and slippery, and knows a trick or two. Sometimes talks to itself, or refers to itself in the 3rd person (or creature?). The movie spent a lot of time creating the creature using CG. Close to the hero – Gollum (LOTR) – Dobby (HP)
• The Dark Forest: The dark and mysterious forest – Fangorn (LOTR) – Forbidden Forest (HP)
• Fang the Dog: A dog named Fang – Belongs to Farmer Maggot (LOTR) – Belongs to Hagrid
• The Tree: The tree that tries to strangle or hurt one of the good guys – Old Man Willow – Whomping Willow
• I don’t trust him: A scruffy looking vagabound who earns the distrust of the hero and his friends. Eventually, he turns out to be the most trustworthy, who is loyal to the hero – Aragorn (LOTR) – Sirius Black (HP)
• The magic of 1’s: The birthday that starts it all – 111th Birthday of Bilbo (LOTR) – 11th Birthday of Harry (HP)
• The unhealing wound: Pain increases in Enemy’s presence.- Frodo’s wound by witch king (LOTR)- Harry’s forhead scar by Voldy (HP)
• Giant Spider: Shelob (LOTR) – Aragorg (HP)
• Deceased Parents: Frodo’s (LOTR)- Harry’s(HP)

Frankly, too many similarities.. A coincidence? You tell me