Phrank's Ubuntu Blog

I bought a couple of USB extenders on ebay the other day. It can extend a USB 1.1 device over cat5 cable up to 150 feet!
I was quite please - it worked well for my USB webcams that I'm setting up at the entry doors to monitor activity and see who's at the door when the doorbell rings!

Just upgraded my servers to Ubuntu LTS - 10.04 (Server edition, of course)

Right now they are:
shark
- Home automation
-- Web interface - apache2/php5/mysql
-- mysql - logs all home automation events
-- Bonjour IM server (Sends messages)
-- Mutt email - to send emails/sms
-- lptout - to control lights via parallel port
-- arduino - attached to usb serial port to monitor doorbell and washer/dryer
-- mgetty - gets caller id info from modem
-- many other things... I'll post updated home automation stuff later

squid
- dhcp
- time server
- dns
- pxe network boot

Got my EEE PC T91SA tablet netbook today.
Throwing Ubuntu 9.10 on it - Will update on how to get things working!

Video (Intel GMA 500): http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1378746&highlight=gma+500
Touch: http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:KbvsEge9UmgJ:setupguides.blogspot.co...

Just sold my older EEE PC 701SD and bought a refurbished EEE PC T91SA on ebay.

The T91 has a tablet mode and touchscreen - I'm gonna throw Ubuntu 9.10 on it, of course, and use it for class/ebook/browsing

I'll update this post once I get it and install Ubuntu with recommended apps for touchscreen

So my Dad's computer had a few Trojans on it - Such a pain, so much so, that he install Ubuntu!

But He still needs XP, so here's how to remove those nasty viruses with ClamAV

This would work from a Ubuntu liveCD as well, so you could just boot to a CD, and run these commands

Install ClamAV

Update Virus definitions

Find Windows Partition - You want the partition that is NTFS - That's the root windows partition - /dev/sda2 in this case

Just got a couple of old ZipIt wireless messengers off of e-bay.

Hoping to put a basic install of linux on them and use them for home automation.

fun, fun!

I have my front yard light connected to a outletbox controlled via a LPT port. And it's hooked up the the rest of the home automation system.

I was just having cron turn on and off the light a specified times. But a little script and a bit of help from a government website, the light turns off at sunrise and back on at sunset.

It's here! A Gnome Desktop theme save / restore solution.

Phrank's Theme Saver lets you save the following to a tar.bz2 archive, and restore it all with a simple script!
Saves: Icon, Mouse, GTK, Metacity, Sound themes - Splash and Background images - Panel Settings - Font Settings (But not font files)

You can send the archive to a friend, and they can theme their desktop with a few clicks! Works great for switching between themes as well.

Here's the idea - Have a dedicated computer/kiosk that displays the latest home automation notifications.
It's pretty simple - Use a full screen webbrowser for display - write a .cgi script that updates each time it's run.