Super conversion script

I’ve written a script to convert .flac files to .mp3 and retain a useful directory structure. This is mad-handy for my w800i phone. source_path="${1%/}/"; dest_base="${2%/}/"; bit_rate=$3 if [ ! -r "$source_path" ]; then echo "Source path not found." exit 2 fi if [ ! -r "$dest_base" ]; then echo "Destination base path not found" exit 2 fi if [ ! $bit_rate ]; then echo "No bit rate specified, defaulting to 128kbps" bit_rate=128 fi artist_album=`echo "$source_path" | sed 's:^.
[Read more]

Server migration

Right, I’m moving john-hunt.com over to a new much much much faster server than this one. This will also save me £20 a month. You may experience problems trying to access the site over the next couple of days, but don’t worry, it will return! Update: All done, there shouldn’t be any loss of service, you should just notice it speed up a bit when your ISP’s master dns records get updated!
[Read more]

Audio CD checksum database

While extracting one of my favorite cds today and noticing it had heavy scratching on it, it occured to me it might have loads of errors while extracting. So I thought “I’ll just run an md5/sha1 checksum on it and verify it against CDDB’s checksums…” CDDB doesn’t have checksums for cd tracks. This is crazy. I might have to set up my own database….if I ever get time. Please let me know if you know of one.
[Read more]

Sony Ericsson w800i

I recently got a w800i mobile phone and I’ve been playing with it for about 24 hours now. It’s not bad at all! If you’re looking for an mp3 player phone thing, it’s rather perfect. Works with Linux too (mass storage device stylee!) What’s really cool is you can bluetooth your tunes to other people. More here soon, maybe some pictures also. Or perhaps just check out the w800i forums!
[Read more]

Suspend S3 on IBM Thinkpad R50e

Well, this one has had me stuck for ages…but Antoine from the linux-thinkpad mailing list managed to help out (thanks v.much!). This mini-howto should help you get suspend working on your R50e, and perhaps many other laptops with the intel extreme graphics 2 chipset. The main problem is that the display is not restored properly or at all and you’re left with a blank screen. Another symptom (that I was having) which was really frustrating me was I was left with a
[Read more]

Jabber (not the hutt)

People ought to stop using MSN. Did you know that Microsoft legally own everything you write on there? Start using the Jabber IM protocol. There are various clients out there for windows, one of them is called exodus which looks alright. Myself, I use gaim, which is primarily a linux client although I think there may be a windows version around. It’s a good idea to start using something else, otherwise you’ll find microsoft taking over your lives even more.
[Read more]

Rhythmbox 0.9

Version 0.9 of Rhythmbox is out! Requires a lot of dependancies, but I’d recommend it. Or get the source here: Rhythmbox download page
[Read more]

Wireless networking in Gentoo

This is a work in progress Fire up dhcp on the wireless interface: dhcpcd eth1 (that should create the device also kinda thing) The init script (/etc/init.d/wireless) #!/sbin/runscript # Copyright 1999-2005 Gentoo Foundation # Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2 depend() { before net.eth0 } start() { #! /bin/sh # wifi: wpa_supplicant init echo " * [Wifi]: Enabling WPA supplicant..." if [ -x /sbin/wpa_supplicant ]; then wpa_supplicant -B -i eth1 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.
[Read more]

Gentoo on Thinkpads

While setting up my new laptop, I’ve found quite a handy guide for getting Gentoo working on IBM thinkpads: Gentoo Linux on IBM Thinkpad Hope it helps you as much at it helped me.
[Read more]

GlacsWeb

I’m going to Norway at the end of the week to work on the GlacsWeb sensor network project. Very exciting, basically I’ll be helping out to recover last year’s sensors that are 70 or 80 metres under a glacier in Briksdalsbreen and then helping to put some new ones down (in a nutshell!) There’s a lot more detail to it.
[Read more]