canon powershot G7

i recently bought myself a Canon Powershot G7 and i’m really pleased with it. great camera with the retro looks of an old analog cam.

it handles macro shots really good, i was playing around with it for hours and made a bunch of nice pics which i posted in this gallery.

i also bought the WP-DC11 marine kit.
wp-dc11
which is loads of fun. we tested it at a friends pool party and made tons of fun pictures (this example doesn’t have the best colors but you get the point)
underwater sample

for anybody that doesn’t want to buy a single-lens reflex (SLR) camera this is one that gets pretty damn close to it!

enabling desktop effects ubuntu 7.04 nvidia

well since ubuntu has the new little desktop-effects menu in system -> preferences i wanted to try it, but i kept getting this:
munzli@freddy:~$ /usr/bin/desktop-effects
modinfo: could not open /lib/modules/2.6.20-15-386/volatile/nvidia_legacy.ko: No such file or directory
modinfo: could not open /lib/modules/2.6.20-15-386/volatile/nvidia.ko: No such file or directory
modinfo: could not open /lib/modules/2.6.20-15-386/volatile/nvidia.ko: No such file or directory
nvidia hardware not available
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

my system has been upgraded from previous releases and already had beryl and compiz running before upgrading to feisty and has tons of dead entries and packages. the solution was actually quite simple, but here’s all the steps i did.

first i removed the nvidia restricted modules (as you can see i still had others from previous kernels so i removed them as well) and nvidia kernel drivers (this step is probably not necessary but i did it anyway to make sure)
sudo apt-get remove --purge nvidia-kernel-common linux-restricted-modules-2.6.15-23-386 linux-restricted-modules-2.6.17-10-386 linux-restricted-modules-2.6.17-11-386 linux-restricted-modules-2.6.20-15-386

then i reinstalled the packages (you can take the generic package but i used the 686 package since i have a P4 here at the office)
sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx-new linux-restricted-modules-686

make sure you have the nvidia specific stuff in your xorg.conf, if you don’t, the easiest thing to do is run:
sudo nvidia-xconfig --composite
sudo nvidia-xconfig --render-accel
sudo nvidia-xconfig --allow-glx-with-composite
sudo nvidia-xconfig --add-argb-glx-visuals

restart X and you should see the nvidia module, easiest check is running System -> Administration -> Restricted Drivers Manager. it should look like this (you only need the nvidia driver in there):
Restricted Drivers Manager

well i didn’t have it loaded at first and noticed that it was still missing the /lib/modules/2.6.20-15-386/volatile/nvidia.ko file, so in that directory i noticed the nvidia_new.ko so i just made a symbolic link:
ln -s nvidia_new.ko nvidia.ko

after that it still wasn’t working! well here’s the final and real step that made it work and you might only have to do this!

check the gconf-editor and make sure that no dead plugins are loaded, mine looks like this now:
active_plugins
mine still had “animations” and “3d” in there, and after removing animations it worked!

a nice way to waste some time ;)

if your cube doesn’t rotate, then also make sure that the key /apps/compiz/general/screen0/options/hsize is set to 4 or more. for others plugin go check the compiz site.

final shot

google’s personalized startpage (iGoogle)

today i noticed that google changed it’s personalized startpage to the name iGoogle (it’s probably been like this for a while, i just didn’t notice). it’s themeable now, here’s a screen shot:

iGoogle

the background image changes every two hours ;) for example, the teahouse theme at 10am and then at noon

go check it out! there’s a bunch of new content that can be added and you can now even create new tabs.

ubuntu dist-upgrade with an iso image

well since ubuntu feisty fawn 7.04 is out, i thought i’d go for the distribution upgrade… so i downloaded the iso.

upgrading through the online repositories usually is pretty time consuming so i wanted to upgrade through the iso without burning a cd, who needs cds anyways ;)

the only way i got this going was to mount the iso into a directory (in my case: /media/ubuntu)
sudo mount -o loop -t iso9660 /path/to/my/iso/ubuntu-7.04-desktop-i386.iso /media/ubuntu

then edit the sources.list in /etc/apt and replace “edgy” with “feisty” and add this line to the top
deb file:/media/ubuntu/ubuntu feisty main restricted

not very nice but the cdromupgrade is missing in feisty!

now do a:
sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get -f install # optional
sudo dpkg --configure -a

HINT: “sudo apt-get -f install” is only needed if you get errors during the dist-upgrade.

for some reason i also needed to uncomment the normal “main/restricted” package source because it still wanted to download every package.
# deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu feisty main restricted

if anybody has easier ways, please tell me!

replacing the display of your iAudio X5

well i ruined my display and finally was able to get a new one.

the X5

since i thought it was no biggie to replace myself i started disassembling my X5.

step 1

after opening the next step was removing the hard drive.

step 2

i had to complety remove everything to reach the display.

disassembled X5

the replacement display in place i put it together to check if it worked. i wasn’t carefull enough so i had to solder the battery cable back on, because i accidentally tore it off (so be careful if you plan on doing something like this too).

and when i turned on the device the backlight seemed to work but my display didn’t. :(

testing the display

looks like i’m gonna have to send it in for repair anyway since the display controller seems to be broken too. always fun to look into electronic devices though ;)