I'm lucky enough to have recently picked up a Samsung Galaxy 10.1 tablet running Android 3.1. The tablet itself is pretty impressive but uses a protocol I'm unfamiliar with to connect to other computers as a mass storage device. Since the tablet doesn't have a removable SD card (which is kind of strange) Google decided to build the Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) into the device. MTP is great because it allows the tablet and your computer to read/write to the tablet filesystem without Android having to unmount the tablet filesystem first. This means that your Android apps that require the storage area to be mounted won't be killed when you put the device into mass storage mode. This technology apparently can also be referred to as "PlaysForSure" which is a Microsoft brainchild.

This new awesome doesn't come without a few growing pains though. To mount the filesystem on a fully updated Fedora 15 computer you must go into the Android Settings area and select "Applications > Development" and make sure that "USB debugging" is unchecked. On my tablet this box was checked by default (it is a retail device, not the Google I/O edition). After disabling debugging it can simply be plugged into the computer via the included USB cable. If a file manager window doesn't pop up asking what you'd like to do please make sure you have the fuse and libmtp packages installed (they should be by default).

Unfortunately this is where I ran into another bug, check out this screenshot:

Every folder in the root level of the device is listed as empty! A quick read around the intertubes leads me to believe that MTP does some sort of file translation based on file extensions. This is odd since Android is basically Linux and OSS operating systems have pretty much moved away from file extensions being the sole determinator of file type. I'm at a loss for where to report this bug as it could be present in MTP itself (perhaps as a weird Microsoft-y "feature"), in the libmtp implementation or in the Gnome file manager. However copying files to the device worked as promised, even though they disappeared from the file manager listing on a subsequent connection to the Fedora machine. This could possibly be related to file ownership or permissions.

One more thing to note: it's annoying that the only way to initialize an MTP connection on the tablet is to physically unplug the USB cable and plug it in again. It would be nice if you could enable this from the tablet interface sort of how other Android devices handle the mass storage mode.

For those of us that may want to compile mtpfs for fuse manually (as of version 0.9 this didn't change anything) the source code can be found here. Fedora users will probably have to install some development packages to successfully compile:

yum install fuse-devel libid3tag-devel libmtp-devel libmad-devel

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Note: This post is not meant to pick on any one person or any of my specific Facebook friends. I consider telling new parents anything negative about their behavior or children tasteless and counter productive. If you have recently had children and fit into the stereotype portrayed in this post please try not to take it personally.

**Rant warning**

I'm probably going to get a ton of flak for saying this but it needs to be said and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone:

Pictures of three second old infants coated in leftover after birth are best left out of public Facebook posts, as are "Precious pumpkin had their millionth poopie related accident" stories.

Some people probably care. Some of your good friends and immediate family may want to hear about every turn in your journey through parenthood.

The truth is: Most people, maybe even your close friends with children of their own, find the thought of this type of information absolutely disgusting.

I'm not talking about regular baby pictures or school related announcements, I'm specifically talking about the really knarly stuff.  Basically anything involving bodily fluids or feces.

Many parents spend large portions of their children's years hoping for a break in the soul crushing monotony of child rearing. Are your offspring's first bowel movements and the dynamics of public vomiting what you want to remember when they are (hopefully) off to college? Are these the things by which you want your friends who aren't around every day to remember Junior? Imagine this conversation happening at every family holiday in perpetuity: "Hey <16 year old progeny of my cousin> I don't have anything age appropriate to use for small talk so how about I bring up <embarrassing story your unthinking parents have forever etched in my memory>?" That'll teach your kid to bring his girlfriend to witness the annual humiliation we call family gatherings. If these aren't the types of things that you want to define parenthood then why do you record them as such?

What happened to stories from U-6 soccer or t-ball games, school photos or other ways humans use to mark and communicate the maturation process? At least those are circumstances with which almost everyone can identify (no placenta required).

Chances are that your single and childless friends are at least disinterested and may even be revolted to read your "Little Johny figured out how to pee on me from across the room" stories, especially bright and early on Monday morning. I realize that the number of your friends in this category probably decreases with time but so does your propensity for posting baby pictures (all three parties eventually grow up). Similarly someone who isn't wearing your expectant mother goggles couldn't for a thousand dollars discern anything from the blob your doctor has convinced you is a hand in the fuzzy sonogram you posted last week. Considering posting daily updates about your fetus? Go ahead and try reading that aloud to yourself while substituting an acquaintance's name for yours, not nearly as endearing as you'd hoped? GOOD, STOP POSTING!

Oh and don't even get me started if your "promotion" to parent status was unplanned. I refuse to give you a pat on the head for simply completing your biological imperative.

I've been talking for years about how to use Facebook to screen out pictures of distended uteruses, infant poop reports and "we're pregnant" posts from male friends. Hint: if you aren't the one carrying a human in your womb you aren't pregnant. (Side note: men should always come up negative if they take the urine pregnancy test, if you are XY and come up positive go get checked out, also I'm pretty sure you can come up with something more interesting to pee on in the bathroom.) Other than unfriending anyone who has posted unreasonably intimate baby details or meticulously removing their posts from my feed I've yet to come up with a built in solution.

/Rant

So here is what I consider a genuine opportunity to create a Facebook application everyone can find useful:

Facebook should create groups or profiles for common types of people. These groups should be transparent to the users so they don't actually have to join anything, the Facebook team probably already does this type of thing to target advertisements. These groups should represent common demographics, some good examples might be "Minors", "Techies" and of course "Single with no Children". Facebook could then use internal information to get a good idea of what groups a member may belong to. Using things like age, post frequency, keywords and relationship status they could get a good idea of what each individual is interested in.

Facebook should then create a feature (or an app) to mark posts as belonging to certain themes that coincide to the groups mentioned above. A baby related post that is marked as such may get a cute pacifier or a set of balloons or whatever Zynga/Farmville themed avatar that is appropriate. Tech related posts may get black background and green font formatting, adult themed posts could get a 18+ warning, etc.. People can mark their own posts at the time of creation or their friends can mark them, this mechanism works much like tagging a photo with the names of your friends.

Then when someone sees something objectionable in their feed (my fraternity friends probably don't want to read my latest code signing howto) they can opt out of the group that the post in question belongs to. After a few users mark my posts Facebook should have a good idea of who else may or may not be interested in their content. Facebook could even create different types of news feeds based on these transparent groups and auto tag posts (like how Digg has "All Topics", "Business", etc). This way family or other new parents can get information about the gritty details of raising "your precious little angel" and you don't have to read my monospace code fury (how many of you actually care about perl -pe -i 's/\cM//')

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

*** EDIT *** I used Google Chrome version 6.0.453.1 dev from their official yum repository, YMMV

I spent about an hour figuring this out tonight so I figured I'd send it along.  Up until now I've never really gotten the combo of Tor, a browser and a proxy working to my liking.  This is how I did it:

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

I recently had to install Adobe AIR on a newly built Fedora 13 machine, the steps were fairly easy (everything could be done via YUM). As the root user:

1. Install dependencies:

   yum install ld-linux.so.2 gtk2-devel.i686 libdbus-glib-1.so.2 \
   libhal.so.1 rpm-devel.i686 libXt.so.6 gnome-keyring-devel.i686 \
   libDCOP.so.4 libxml2-devel.i686 nss-devel.i686 libxslt.i686 xterm

2. Download the Adobe yum RPM: http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ Install with:

   rpm -Uvh adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm

3. Install the adobeair package:

   yum install adobeair

4. You can also install flash 10.1 (32-bit) this way:

   yum install flash-plugin

Thanks go to if not true then false for resolving the dependencies.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

I recently had to re-figure out how to coax windows and linux with GoDaddy to obtain compatible code signing certificates. This is *much* harder when using a mixed environment than it should be.

GoDaddy issues spc files and needs csr files which are generated in conjunction with pvk files but Ant/Java want p12 files and most Microsoft signtools want pfx files but you can't generate any of these without pem files. Here are the steps:

1. Log into your build server
2. Generate private key, don't forget the password:

   openssl genrsa -des3 -out code-sign.pvk 2048

3. Generate the csr:

   openssl req -new -key code-sign.pvk -out code-sign.csr

4. Take csr to GoDaddy
5. Download spc file
6. Convert spc to pem:

   openssl pkcs7 -inform DER -in code-sign.spc -print_certs \
   -out code-sign.pem

7. Add the private key to the pem, this was the trickiest part. Apparently openssl outputs files in pem format unless otherwise instructed and the pkcs12 export doesn't like to be given more than one file during import:

   cat code-sign.pvk >> code-sign.pem

8. Generate p12 (which is also a pfx), use the passwords from above again to simplify things:

   openssl pkcs12 -export -in code-sign.pem -out code-sign.p12

The P12 file is basically the same thing as a Microsoft PFX, awhile ago Microsoft switched to PKCS12 P12 but insists on calling their files PFX source

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

My family has recently switched from a "Secret Santa" style gift giving to a "Gift Stealing" game.  Basically everyone buys one cheap gift and puts it in a pile.  Everyone draws a number out of a hat.  The person with the lowest number picks a gift from the pile, the person with the next number can pick a new gift or steal one of the previously picked (and unwrapped) gifts. 

Reason #2486 why I hate the Christmas season:

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Holiday get together ???

Chris and I will be attending.

I like a gift exchange but prefer a secret santa drawing with spending limit to the gift stealing game from past years.

We're game for whatever though.

Rockstarmode

#### Reply ####

Yes the gift stealing is the fun part... but we need to keep an eye on some of you.... ha ha ha
It's been reported (may be a rumor) that during the stealing session, a particular cousin (D**w) was squirrelling a special gift under his seat as not to be stolen ;-]

[Family Member]

##################

After reading this reply I was pretty pissed, so I figured I'd post my argument here instead of hitting "Reply All" to the family.

###

Was I not clear? Is this a joke that I don't get? Did [Family Member] really not understand that I *don't* like the gift stealing but will go along with the program? Or am I just being ignored?

I know that I'm usually guilty of being different just because I like to switch things up, but buying non-specific gifts just doesn't seem to go along with the point of the holiday season. In fact it seems to reinforce the part of Christmas I hate the most: blind, blatant consumerism.

By only buying one gift and making them inexpensive we rule out money issues. The gift stealing game provides a little fun during the exchange but in my opinion removes any thought that would have gone into personalizing the gift itself. I know everyone is really busy so maybe making gift buying easier is the point of the stealing game but doesn't that go against the idea of Christmas? Using our familial bonds and a little thought to generate ideas for one personal gift?

Isn't Christmas supposed to be a holiday where you think about the people you actually give a crap about? Where you consider giving them something they may actually like because of some personal bond the two of you share? Isn't a gift supposed to reflect this bond and whatever amount of thought that went into deciding what to give?

You know what I did with the DVDs I got at one of the last Christmases? The unopened cases are sitting under my laptop to keep it from over heating on my desk. I never even took the shrink wrap off of them. It wasn't on purpose, I wasn't trying to make a point, I even like one of the movies (The Bourne Supremacy). They just didn't mean anything to me, I probably would have enjoyed them more if they fell off of a truck and I found them on the street.

I don't want to come across as angry or overreacting. This post isn't meant to criticize any particular family member or start any shit talking. I didn't send this to my family because I don't want to alienate other people that may feel differently. But if Christmas were my holiday (Rockstarmas?) I'd be incensed.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Last night the boys and I went to Hollywood to see Dethklok and Mastodon play at the Palladium. It was an absolutely rocking show to say the least.

Believe it or not but Los Angeles has a working public transit system!  I know, you're all calling bullshit on this one but it's for real, the system was even complete enough to get us from my house to within a block of the Palladium with only one transfer.  Given that no one was driving we met at my house to preparty a bit then hopped the Silver Streak to Union station, from there we took the red line to Hollywood and Vine.

The subway was fun, we met at least three transvestites and were left with the golden advice of a bum "Don't get arrested".  From there we hit Dillon's Irish pub and then walked the block and a half to the venue.

The Palladium itself is an excellent place to see a metal show.  The acoustics are good enough to keep the music from getting muddy and their sound guy knows how to keep the volume cranked without being ear splitting.  It was general admission only with no seating but the balconies were open for people that prefer not to pile in the pit. There were at least six full bars in the place so beer lines were nonexistent. 

We arrived just in time to see the beginning of Mastodon's set.  They sounded excellent but had little stage presence and their complicated polyrhythmic beats made it hard to headbang.  It kind of reminded me of when we saw Dream Theater.

Dethklok sounded just like their albums, Brendon Small has done an excellent job of putting together a road band.  Unlike I saw in some of the YouTube videos they didn't play much of the Adult Swim characters between sets.  Chris got beat up pretty good in the pit and ended up getting jacked for his phone and wallet.  I managed to clobber my way to the front row about four people from center by the third song as seen in the photo.

For only $35 and combined with the convenience of public transit seeing Dethklok live was a ridiculously good time.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

If you are having issues with upgrading Fedora from 11 to 12 with error messages saying that your /boot partition is full *and* this walkthrough doesn't help I may have a solution for you:

1. Boot into your Fedora 11 kernel
2. remount /boot as read write (mount -o remount rw /boot)
3. move the file /boot/upgrade/install.img to unencrypted storage, I used a USB key
4. Reboot into the Fedora 12 upgrade kernel, when it errors out with a message claiming it can't find the installation image point it at the place you moved the install.img file to. 
5. Have a beer, the upgrade takes awhlie

The walkthrough on Fedora Project was for people preparing to upgrade, I however was stuck halfway though an upgrade so their solutions didn't help me.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

*** UPDATE *** Fedora 12 has this same issue, this isn't surprising as this is likely going to be solved by the PulseAudio people

Earlier today I kind of got bluetooth audio (a2dp) working with Pulseaudio on Fedora 11, the solution can be found here. As that solution involved using a .asoundrc file with an ALSA device I was less than enthused.

A little research and a helpful push in the right direction and I figured out how to use the new-ish pulseaudio 'module-bluetooth-device'. To get this working in Fedora 11 without using ALSA:

1. Make sure you have the pulseaudio bluetooth package installed (yum install pulseaudio-module-bluetooth)
2. Download the attached perl script and mark it executable.
3. Pair your bluetooth device with your computer. Have it remember the PIN, etc.. 
4. Open a terminal and run the perl script 
5. When the script prompts you to connect the device use the bluetooth applet, command line, whatever you use to get hcitool to connect. Hit <enter>. 
6. The script will attempt to unload modules that interfere with getting a2dp working. 
7. Try to play something with sound. If you see the bluetooth device in pavucontrol under "Output Devices" but still don't have sound try setting your "Internal Audio" profile to "Off"

The details:

I was attempting to use the Dell BH200 headset that comes with some of the laptops in their XPS line. The headset paired and connected without any issues but refused to show up under "Output Devices" in pavucontrol. I learned that pulseaudio bluetooth support wasn't installed by default on all Fedora 11 machines so I went yummed the correct package. After uncommenting the 'module-bluetooth-discover' module in
/etc/pulse/default.pa stuff was still broken, just differently.

It turns out that the pulse people prefer to default devices to the HSP/HFP profile which is used for monaural telephone conversations. For some reason when pulse sees that my headphones are A2DP capable it tries to change profiles and ends up just disconnecting them instead. When I connected the bluetooth device it would show up under "Output Devices" but disappear after a few seconds, no sound would work in the interim. Catching it and changing the profile before it had a chance to error out didn't help.

I guess the bluetooth-device module works just fine if you tell it exactly what you want (A2DP), and that the 'discover' module was the culprit. My script just unloads the discover module long enough for the user to connect the device and then sets the correct profile before exiting.

I'm not sure why the pulse people have things set up this way and I'm not sure why Fedora hasn't made this automagic. Hopefully this script will be helpful to someone else.

bh200-a2dp.pl Download this file

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

It's been almost 2 years since we last saw a post on RSM. It's been a crazy ride; new jobs, new people, new stories. Hopefully hosting with Posterous will make things a bit easier, I've added a few contributors so we can get more content.

For the few of you that remember the old blog I'm working on porting the posts, I had a feeling that Mephisto Blog was doomed from the start and now it's refusing to give up my old data.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »