billpratt.net

So far, I love my Eee PC 1000 but the keyboard has one very annoying design flaw.  In order to maintain a proper inverted ‘T’ arrow key layout, the shift key was moved to the far right of the keyboard.  This is highly annoying since I hit the up arrow while intending to hit the right shift key.  I have read many other posts regarding this issue, but no solutions so I decided to fix it.

Please follow the below instructions at your own risk as they will probably set your monitor on fire while making that unreachable spot on your back itch.

The following  steps were performed on Eeebuntu Standard and have not been tested with any other distrobution.  If you get this to work on another distrobution, please comment to let me know and I will update the post. Ok, here is the meat of it:

1. Backup the /usr/share/X11 directory. (i.e. tar -cjvf ~/usr_share_x11.tar.bz2 /usr/share/X11)
2. Using your favorite editor, open the file /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/us and after the closing curly brace of the first xkb_symbols block (line 68 for me) add the following lines and save and close the file.
   

   //Bill Pratt - tired of the eeepc 1000’s poor layout
   partial alphanumeric_keys modifier_keys
   xkb_symbols “eee1000″ {

   include “us(basic)”
   name[Group1]= “USA”;

   key <RTSH> {[ Up ]};
   key <UP> {[ Shift_R ]};
   };

3. Edit the file /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev.lst and add the following line on the line following the first line that looks like “! model” then save and close the file.
   

   eee1000      Eee PC 1000 that swaps right shift and up arrow

4. Edit the file /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/xorg.lst and add the following line on the line following the first line that looks like “! variant” then save and close the file.
   

   eee1000         us: Eee PC 1000 that swaps right shift and up arrow

5. Edit the two files /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/xorg.xml and /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev.xml. Look for the <layoutList> section below and add the bolded lines as shown. TDo this for both files.
   

   <layoutList>
   <layout>
   <configItem>
   <name>us</name>
   <shortDescription>USA</shortDescription>
   <description>USA</description>
   <languageList><iso639Id>eng</iso639Id></languageList>
   </configItem>
   <variantList>
   <variant>
   <configItem>
   <name>eee1000</name>
   <description>Eee PC 1000 that swaps right shift and up arrow</description>
   </configItem>
   </variant>

6. Now, logout of your current X session and log back in. After logging in, choose System -> Preferences -> Keyboard and click the “Layout” tab.
   

   

7. Click the green “+” and choose “United States” and “USA Eee PC…” then click “Add”. Notice the swapped right shift and up arrow keys in the layout below.
   

   

8. Next, highlight the old keyboard layout (typically “USA”) and click the red minus sign to remove it.
9. Finally click “Apply Site-Wide” and then click “Close”. You should now be using the improved layout.

Well, thats it. Hopefully this helps return your sanity. Please report success or failures to me and I will fix anything necessary.

Ok, so my eee pc 901 is out for delivery, I’m totally excited, this day could not get better. I’m drinking my coffee and reading my email when I open up Newegg’s deal of the day email. Hey, whats that on top? Is that the eee pc 1000 for $20 less than I paid for my 901? WTF? Ok, RMA time! I called B&H first just to make sure I could rma it, they said to just reject the shipment from UPS and all would be good. I immediately ordered the 1000 from Newegg and overnighted it to be sure I would have it for the weekend. The 1000 has a much larger, more usable keyboard, 1″ larger screen, a 40G SSD instead of 20G and is only .5lbs heavier at 2.9 lbs. The ram and SDHC card I ordered will work just fine so no issue there. More to come when I get it tomorrow…

I have always wanted a pool table and I finally have one. I have played pool off and on since 1991 and having a table in the house is just awesome! I have been shooting a lot of practice drills from both Nick Varners Pro Skill Drills (both dvd & book) and Play Your Best 9 Ball. Besides perfecting the skill in the drill itself, the most frustrating part of shooting drills is the time it takes to setup certain drills. You have to place multiple balls in a straight line, or one on each diamond, etc. A tip I found in Play Your Best 9 Ball saved the day…use reinforcement labels! Reinforcement labels are those little “donuts” that are used to keep paper in 3-ring binders from tearing. I use them everywhere on the table and have not had any problems. They say “permanent” on them, but apparently that applies to only paper as I add and remove them all the time. The labels are so thin, that they do not disrupt the roll of the ball. I have Simonis 860 felt and they have caused no damage, but use at your own risk!

Yay! I am getting a “fine ebony” (aka black) Eee PC 901 Linux edition for Christmas (ok, early Christmas) and it will be here on Thursday 12/11. I ordered it from B&H for $419 w/ no tax. This was the best price I could find and $100 under some places. I also bought 2G DDR2 667 ram to upgrade the 1G that comes standard and a 16GB SDHC card to bring the total solid state storage to 36G. If you are not familiar with the Eee PC line from Asus, you can learn more from Asus’ website and also at Wikipedia. The basic’s are simple. The Eee PC 901 is a “NetBook” sub-notebook computer that uses solid state storage instead of a traditional hard drive and weighs in at a mere 2.4 pounds and measures 8.9″ x 0.8-1.3″ x 6.7″. It has a small, 8.9″ display with a respectable 1024×768 resolution. Two version of the 901 are available, one with 12GB of storage and Windows XP, and another loaded with a custom version of Xandros Linux and 20GB of storage which I opted for (I will install Fedora 10). The machine has 802.ll b/g/n wireless, bluetooth, 3 usb ports, an ethernet port, and a memory card slot that supports MMC as well as SD / SDHC cards. The battery is a 6600 wah battery which supplies enough power to run the Eee PC up to 7.8 hours on one charge making this an ultra portable machine. I plan to use this in school for taking notes as well as a general purpose surfing / playing machine. I will definitely post some pictures and my experiences with this new toy so stay tuned.

I started Object Oriented Analysis and Design a few months ago and have been reading it in what spare time I have. I sought out a book to help further my skills in software design practices, especially in object modeling and overall object oriented software design. After reading almost two-thirds of this book, I have learned a lot. The book is very thorough, very technical, but very well written. Reading this book twice is a must as there is not intro to some of the terminology used throughout. It is not hard to follow by any means, however, a second reading will undoubtedly result in a more thorough understanding of the concepts and how to best apply them. A detailed journey into the world of UML is a bonus, and as some have called it, a “mini-book” within this book. If you are unfamiliar with UML, or just want to learn it from one of it’s creators, these chapters will be a tremendous asset to you. Grady Booch is know as the father of the object model and is an expert in object modeling, patterns, and UML. He was the developer of the UML. I have not made it to the sample applications included in the book so watch for an update once I finish the book.

This is funny…

I have a laptop configured as a trade show demo that uses html & cgi files copied from a live web site along with the accompanying mysql data copied to a local mysql instance and a few host entries changing public resolving host names to point to localhost. This all worked well until I upgraded to Firefox 3 (laptop runs Fedora 10) and then the “Work Offline” issue started. By default, if Firefox does not detect an active network link, it forces the browser into “Work Offline” mode. It’s easy to work around, you simply uncheck a setting in the File menu (File => Work Offline.) But, this is ugly if you launch Firefox in front of clients who want to see the demo as the page Firefox displays looks very similar to an error. I found a fantastic solution from someone at Yellosoft.us that had the same problem. You can install their “Always Online” plugin which prevents Firefox from entering offline mode (who uses offline mode anyway?). I hope this helps someone and props to those who authored this plugin at Yellosoft.us.

Jana, Tony and I all flew to Buffalo over the fourth of July holiday for a Cellino family reunion. Everyone was great and we had a blast. We visited Niagra Falls (although we almost weren’t allowed to cross the border), Tony smuggled in some Cubans, and I can’t play Can Jam to save my life (although I kick ass at Beer Pong). I have the pictures converted to Tiff’s, although none of them have been touched up yet. You can download the pictures, but be forewarned, they are HUGE. Each image is around 23MB, and the total zip archive is about 7GB. I will eventually go through these images and clean them up, remove duplicates, then post them here as a gallery. When I will have time I’m not sure (it took me this long to just get them posted!) Sorry it took so long to get them posted, but we have been really busy and this stuff gets back burnered quickly.

Let me know if you have any questions or want a particular image in it’s native .cr2 raw format, want one touched up, or want them sent to you on 2 dvd’s.

I have finally found some time for myself. Jana and I are spending 13 days in Tahoe with Sean, Nicole, Thomas, and Sean’s Parents. We stayed at the cabin next door and have had a great time. I had some time Friday and today to shoot some photos, specifically macros in the woods. I found an interesting knot hole, some sap leaking out of an injury on a pine tree, and some electric green moss. I shot these with my Canon 20D, Canon 24-105L IS lens wih Kinko extension tubes and Sigma Ring Flash on a Gitzo carbon fiber tripod. I battled with the wind a lot. With this high of maginification, it does not take much movement to render a blurry image. I have smaller copies of some of the interesting images in the Macro Images in Tahoe page. Please leave a comment telling me what you think.

I wanted something similar to Keychain on OSx for Linux and I remembered a shell script from years ago. I did a quick yum search and found a keychain package managed by Gentoo. You can find the full how-to here, but the basics are simple if you are familiar with ssh keys at all. First, install it using sudo install keychain. After it’s installed, add a line to your ~/.bash_profile that looks similar to:

/usr/bin/keychain ~/.ssh/id_dsa
. ~/.keychain/`uname -n`-sh

Then add the following line to .bashrc as some terminals (gnome-terminal for one) do not log in each time and will not see the sourced environment variables above:

. ~/.keychain/`uname -n`-sh

You can add as many paths to private keys as you want. Now fire up a terminal, and you will be prompted for you passphrases as if you had run ssh-add. From now on, any terminal you start will have your keys loaded. It works well and I have not had any problems yet. See the man page or the link above if you want further information as there are options that I have not mentioned here that you may be interested in.