Blog.LesWang.Com

Tomorrow Google will release to the public it’s interenet browser.
They have released a comic here to explain and promote the browser.
It will be interesting to see what features they have and how it will be adopted in a world full of browsers already.
Stay tuned for a small review on the Browser after I test it tomorrow.

I tried to triple boot my mac a while back, but I realized later it wasn’t as easy as seemed since the mac uses a EFI loader instead of a BIOS and XP doesn’t really support multiple OS’s.
After trying different things and searching the net, I finally found a method that enabled me to triple boot my mac successfully.
Something to note when you reboot, you can always hold down alt/option and it will let you choose to boot to a CD or eject it if you need to switch.  Also if you install rEFIt, you will also be givin the choice to boot to the CD, but you won’t be able to eject and swap CDs once rEFIt loads.

Installing.

• First I installed rEFIt a boot loader which enables the mac to boot to more volumes than just holding down alt/option.  It has a cool graphical menu selection screen where you can choose the OS you want to start.  It is free and can be downloaded.

• Next I partitioned the Macs hard drive to add two more partitions.  I ran terminal commands to complete this:
  diskutil list
  diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 123.6G “Journaled HFS+” “Linux” 10G “MS-DOS FAT32″ “Windows” 15G
  The list command will show the partition and total size of partition 2.  You want to split it up so they add up to this size.
• Reboot and hold down alt/option when the boot sound comes and choose to boot to the Windows install CD.
• After agreeing to the user agreement choose to install Windows on the 4th partition you created that is labeled FAT32.  When it asks you to format it, choose NTFS or FAT32 and quick if you don’t want to wait a long time to check the disk for errors.  (FAT32 does not support file sizes greater than 4GB)
• After it copies files and asks you to restart, choose the Windows partition to boot in rEFIt and finish installing XP and do the same again after it saves all the final setttings so you can boot into XP and install the Bootcamp Mac drivers.
• Reboot and hold down alt/option and press eject if you need to change CDs and ut the Ubuntu disk in and choose to boot to the Ubuntu install CD. (It will say Windows CD)
• Choose English, Mac keyboard, and install and follow the usual install up until the partitioning selection.
• At the partition choice, press FN+CTRL+ALT (OPTION)+F2 to backup the MBR to a temp location.  At the terminal run: sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=/tmp/sda.mbr bs=512 count=1 . Then press FN+CTRL+ALT (OPTION)+F7″ to exit back to the installation.
• Choose Manual and the SDA3 choose EXT3 filesystem and format checkbox and mount point / then click ok then foward.  It will warn you about SWAP space, but ignore that click continue because with 2GB or more ram, you shouldn’t need a swap file for ram.
• Enter your name and password and I just skipped the migrate doc and settings part.
• At the READY TO INSTALL part, click ADVANCED and choose SDA3 to place the boot loader.  You can review the settings where at the bottom it should say the following partitions are going to be formatted and it should list sda partition #3 as ext3. Click install.
• When it says the install is complete you need to restore the Windows MBR.  Press FN+CTRL+ALT (OPTION)+F2.  At the terminal enter: sudo dd if=/tmp/sda.mbr of=/dev/sda .  Then press FN+CTRL+ALT (OPTION)+F7″ to exit back to the installation and reboot.

Hopefully you should have a triple boot going now and a bootloader to choose which OS you want at boot time.

Windows information.
After installing bootcamp drivers and everything, I still had a device in device manager with a exclamation on it.  I went to intel.com and downloaded the inf chipset file for the 960 chipsets and it reinstalled the chipset drivers and it seemed to take care of that.

Ubuntu options. Some of these I got from - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookPro
To show the temps in the top panel:

sudo apt-get install hddtemp

add this to /etc/rc.local :
modprobe coretemp
sensors -s

sudo apt-get install lm-sensors sensors-applet

Now you can right click the panel and add the sensor options.

Function Keys on Keyboard.

Pommed is a daemon to support extra keys on apple computers. These include the brightness, eject, volume and others. Releases of Pommed 1.8 or up fully support the MacBook and MacBook Pro keyboards. It can be installed with this command:

sudo apt-get install pommed

You can check your pommed version number with this command:

pommed -v

The default behavior on Apple keyboards is to have the top row keys primarily function as media keys (brightness, volume, etc), and have the expected function keys (F1, F2, etc) accessible with using the fn keys.

To reverse this behavior, edit the pommed configuration file with this command:

sudo gedit /etc/pommed.confChange the value of fnmode to “2″, and save. At any time, you can change this value back to “1″ to return to the default behavior.

Touchpad Fixes.

Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and replace :

Sections “InputDevice“

• Identifiers “Synaptics Touchpad”
• ..
• ..

EndSection

With :

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier      "Synaptics Touchpad"
        Driver          "synaptics"
        Option          "SendCoreEvents"        "true"
        Option          "Device"                "/dev/psaux"
        Option          "Protocol"              "auto-dev"
        Option          "LeftEdge"              "10"
        Option          "RightEdge"             "1200"
        Option          "TopEdge"               "10"
        Option          "BottomEdge"            "370"
        Option          "FingerLow"             "10"
        Option          "FingerHigh"            "20"
        Option          "MaxTapTime"            "180"
        Option          "MaxTapMove"            "220"
        Option          "SingleTapTimeout"      "100"
        Option          "MaxDoubleTapTime"      "180"
        Option          "LockedDrags"           "off"
        Option          "MinSpeed"              "1.10"
        Option          "MaxSpeed"              "1.30"
        Option          "AccelFactor"           "0.08"
        Option          "TapButton1"            "1"
        Option          "TapButton2"            "3"
        Option          "TapButton3"            "2"
        Option          "RTCornerButton"        "0"
        Option          "RBCornerButton"        "0"
        Option          "LTCornerButton"        "0"
        Option          "LBCornerButton"        "0"
        Option          "VertScrollDelta"       "20"
        Option          "HorizScrollDelta"      "50"
        Option          "HorizEdgeScroll"       "0"
        Option          "VertEdgeScroll"        "0"
        Option          "VertTwoFingerScroll"   "1"
        Option          "HorizTwoFingerScroll"  "1"
        Option          "SHMConfig"             "on"
EndSection

Edit the Font to match OSX more.

By default, Ubuntu uses a style of font rendering different than that used on Mac OS X. You may prefer fonts similar to those on Mac OS X, and you can have these on Ubuntu by doing the following:

1. Open the Appearance preference panel (System-Preferences-Appearance)

2. Click Fonts, and click on Details…, on Hinting select the “Slight” option.

Wireless Network Card:

Installed WICD to control network.

Bluetooth Mouse or Keyboard:

If having issues with connecting using the icon in panel.
Open terminal and type:
sudo hidd –search
It should scan for the mouse of keyboard then you can see the mac address of the device.  Next type:
sudo hidd –connect aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff
Where aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff is the mac address of the mouse or keyboard.
The mouse or keyboard should now be connected.  On the next reboot it will probably ask if you want to pair and connect on future reboots.

Printing to a Airport or Brother wireless printer.

Printing to a Apple Airport device is simple.
You just click add printer and choose AppSocket and put the IP of the Airport which is default 10.0.0.1 and port 9100 is default.  Choose the printer driver and it should work.

For my Brother Wireless MFC-665cw I went into Synaptics package manager and searched for MFC-665cw and it found two packages with drivers.  Installed those and then added the printer via socket like the Apple Airport.  Choose the correct driver and it should work also.

As I find more stuff I add, I will post it here as reference.
If you have any questions or comments, feel free to post them below.

With the release of the app store in iTunes I have been trying out so many different apps.
Here I’m testing the wordpress app to write this post.
Should make it easier to blog when I’m not by a computer.
Very cool.
You can find the app at the iTunes store along with many other useful and unuseful apps.

So I waited on line on the release day from 8am till 2pm and picked up a white 16GB 3G iPhone.
It was quite interesting, I got handed a T-Shirt from a guy who eventually almost fought mall security cause he was soliciting supposedly.  They also handed out free SmartWater bottles of water and as we got closer to the store in the mall, a starbuks person was handing out little small cups of lemon ice slushy drinks.

I got to the store, and was interviewed by a local paper. Newsday.com but handed it off to a friend I met on line instead who made a much better interview.  I was lol the whole time.  He called the iPhone sexy when the reporter asked him why he liked it so much. haha
I was about the 190th person to get into the store for the new iPhone at my local Apple store.
When I finally got in the store and swapped my old iPhone number to the new one and paid, I had to then either go home to try to activate it with iTunes, or try it in the store.  I figured try it in the store and after trying 5 times and going to a lucky MacBook Pro, I was able to activate it and was out of the store.
So far I really like how the 3G does not interfere with some speakers and how the GPS is now using satellites.
When they iron out the 2.0 bugs, hopefully it will be more stable.  I have had a lot of apps crash and have had to remove one or two and re-sync to get some to work.
Overall I’m happy even though it’s about $10 dollars more a month now.  Well worth it for the faster 3G service in my area.

Spore released the trail versions of the Spore Creature Creatore yesterday June 17th.
You can download both trial versions for the PC or Mac here - http://www.spore.com/trial
You can also purchase the full version of the Creator for the PC now.  The Mac version is coming soon.
On September 7th 2008, the Spore game will be released and the Creatures and Creations will come to life.

Help set a Guiness World Record on June 17th 2008 by downloading Firefox 3.

At WWDC 08 Steve Jobs annouced the new iPhone 3G.
What sells me on it, is the GPS functionality.
Much like CarPC apps, you can make location based internet apps that will be really cool.
The iPhone 3G will go on sale in 70 countries by 2009.
It will be released in the U.S. and a few other countries on July 11th 2008 and will go for $199 for a 8GB version and $299 for a 16GB version.
No word on a 32GB version, but I assume that will be released later on with a price drop possibly.

I made mount for my Slow Stick to hold my Canon SD1100 IS camera for Aerial Photography.
I used a HS-81 servo with fish airline tubing to press the shutter button.
I haven’t tested it yet, but when I do, I’ll be sure to upload the Aerial Photos to my Flickr.

http://dl.nin.com/theslip/

I maiden my new RC plane the Easy Star.
I put a pretty fast motor in this one and it moves fast.