Thank you ulti for the title

Today I got my grubby hands on an openmoko neo1973. It’s cool.

It is lacking wifi networking and there doesn’t seem to be an interface for reading SMS messages although there is a basic one for sending SMS, written in python, that you can install yourself. Also there is no Preferences interface, so you have to know a bit about linux to be able to do things like set the data and time. But the Neo1973 isn’t currently intended for use by the general public but by developers.

I’m hoping to be able to get a bluetooth networking working so I can control it and it can talk to my computer within a reasonable distance.

Ubuntu is pretty good out of the box, but personally I need a few more things to make it feel like my computer. Before I start I install w32codecs and libdvdcss2 (on machines with a DVD drive) this allows me such wonders as DVD and MP3 playback.

Audio and Video

I remove

• Rhythmbox,
• Serpentine and
• Totem

and install

• Amarok,
• Grip,
• mplayer and
• acidrip (on systems with a DVD drive)

sudo apt-get remove rhythmbox serpentine totem totem-gstreamer totem-xine totem-mozilla
sudo apt-get install grip lame amarok mplayer

Firefox

I install

• Media Connectivity Plugin and point it to mplayer for playback and
• Adblock Plus and subscribe it to EasyList in order to avoid having to waste my time and bandwidth on adverts.

Then I swap the Google search engine for the Google UK search engine by clicking on the search engine drop down and clicking “Manage Search Engines”. I do the same for the Ebay and Amazon search engines.

Vim

For some bizarre reason Ubuntu comes with a crippled version of Vim that it calls “vim-tiny”. I replace this with vim-full

sudo apt-get remove vim-tiny
sudo apt-get install vim-full

and put the following in my .vimrc

syntax on
set expandtab
set autoindent
set tabstop=4
set shiftwidth=4
set textwidth=78

That way vim works in a way suitable for pretty much everything I use it for as soon as I open it.

Remote Access

If I want to be able access the machine remotely I install sshd then if it’s open to the internet I use iptables to block bruteforce attacks.

If I think of anything else to add here I’ll update this post.

If you want to take the above science “test” that I took you should do it before reading the rest of this post. 8th grade is usually attended by students aged 13-14.
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I’ve been running Various distros of Ubuntu linux for several years and have accumulated a long list of out of date kernels that I no longer use, this is not a problem except that I now want to add an extra boot option and don’t want disappearing to the end of the list, or having to search within the list for it.

Before starting this howto, please read it all and make sure you understand what is going on, I cannot be held responsible for anything bad that happens and there is a big chance of you breaking something if you do it wrong.

1. Backup the existing grub menu.

sudo cp /boot/grub/menu.lst /boot/grub/menu.lst-backup

2. Remove the old kernels and their supporting files.

Files starting with vmlinuz- are kernel files, there will also be files starting with abi-, initrd.img-, config- and System.map- for each kernel as well. My /boot folder, where kernels are stored for booting, had kernels dating from 2.6.12.

WARNING: Do not delete your current kernel or your computer will definitely not work.

Find out your current kernel version.

uname -r

My current kernel is 2.6.17 so I removed the ones lower than that.

sudo rm /boot/*2.6.12* /boot/*2.6.15*

3. Update grub’s menu.lst

sudo update-grub

This is a photo somebody took for me of the jukebox whose software I have been editing recently. I didn’t create the software or it’s interface, my involvement mostly centred on allowing the software to display non-ascii characters such as ñ as the machine is being sent to Costa Rica.

I also translated some of the text into spanish as the translations I had been given were woefully poor, saying things along the lines of “You have no credit on the left”, which would be fine if the machine was intended for use by right wing dictators. I also cleaned up the database so that the music categories made sense and allowed the Costa Rican colon to be used in the machine, previously there had been a limit on the value a coin could have which was not appropriate when 500 colons is the price of four jukebox tracks.

SmarterChild is an “automated service agent” that, since October 2006, is owned by Microsoft. You can talk with the bot in a fairly normal fashion and over time you learn certain commands for finding out information that you can get from Google anyway, for example

Sanity Strikes says:
what's the weather in Melbourne like?
- SmarterChild says:
Current weather conditions for Canberra, Australia:

Currently: 73 F
Condition: Clear
Heat Index: 71 F
Dewpoint: 39
Humidity: 29 %
Visibility: 6.21 mi
Wind: WNW/7 mph

as well as offering information on the weather, SmarterChild gives you the occasional adverts, quite how well these are targetted is questionable. It knows how old I am, and a few other things.

Sanity Strikes says:
what do you know about me?
- SmarterChild says:
Well, let me see... Your profession is Programmer. Your favorite hobby is bicycle
riding and your next favorite hobby is photography. You live in Canberra, Australia.
You really like Linux... That's about it.

“I can’t believe you’re not so into killing innocent women and children…”

I think it knows more about me than it is admitting to, but it certainly didn’t take what it knows into account when inviting me to join the US army.

Sanity Strikes says:
are you still here?
- SmarterChild says:
Yup, ready as I'll ever be.

>>> Join The United States Army! - Gain experience and skill in the US Army.
Visit today. --> http://web.smarterchild.com/ct?1077622225/0 (sponsorship)
Sanity Strikes says:
I'm not american, i can't join the US army
- SmarterChild says:
Really? That's fascinating.
Sanity Strikes says:
I'm not so into killing innocent women and children like american soldiers either
- SmarterChild says:
I can't believe you're not so into killing innocent women and children like american
soldiers either.
Sanity Strikes says:
you make me sick!
- SmarterChild says:
Yeah, I guess I make you sick.