Posts
Fixing "connection refused" error in fetchmail on Ubuntu Jaunty / Linux Mint 7
Today I installed fetchmail on Linux Mint 7, which also brought in postfix as the mail transfer agent. I’d used this combination on Linux Mint 6 with no problems, but on Mint 7 (which is based on Ubuntu Jaunty), fetchmail printed this error message: fetchmail: connection to localhost:smtp [::1/25] failed: Connection refused. The error was caused by fetchmail attempting to make an IPV6 connection to postfix on the local machine. Postfix refused the connection, so fetchmail then attempted an IPV4 connection, which was successful. The mail was delivered, but the error message was annoying.
March 15, 2010
The iPad is not a Kindle killer
The blogosphere is now full of ecstatic praise for the still-unavailable Apple iPad. Much of the commentary follows this pattern: a recitation of the known facts about the iPad (fast, multipurpose, “cool”), followed by the unwarranted conclusion that these facts make it a “Kindle killer”. This argument is similar to debates about religion, in which it is assumed that belief systems are a zero-sum game where there can be only one winner. But what is most noticeable about this argument is that it ignores some crucial facts. This isn’t too surprising, given the rich-geek myopia and herd mentality that pervades Silicon Valley culture. Here are the issues the geeks are ignoring:
February 4, 2010
Fixing the default shell in Ubuntu / Linux Mint
Several years ago, the Ubuntu developers made a horrible decision to make dash the default shell instead of bash . This breaks numerous shell scripts, and I recently discovered it also broke one of my own Ruby scripts that depended on bash’s signal handling. The problem here was that when a TERM signal is sent to dash, it doesn’t kill off its child processes.
February 3, 2010
Improving fonts in Ubuntu/Linux Mint
By default, Linux Mint 6 and 7 (and presumably, Ubuntu 8.10 and 9.04) come with a minimal set of somewhat ugly fonts. There are two things that can be done to improve the situation. First, install the Microsoft TrueType fonts: sudo aptitude install msttcorefonts Then, if you are using an LCD monitor (e.g., a laptop), enable anti-aliasing (smoothing). On Linux Mint, start the Control Center from the main menu, then select Appearance. (On Ubuntu, I believe this is done using System > Preferences > Appearance.) Click the Font tab, and under Rendering, select Subpixel Smoothing.
December 30, 2009
Viewing sheet music on a Kindle 2
The screen on the Kindle 2 is really too small for reading music at the piano, but it can be used as a replacement for the small pocket scores that are used for study. The trick is to convert the sheet music PDF file into a series of JPEG picture files. Here’s how to do that on Linux: First, create a separate directory on your Linux machine for the sheet music score that you want to convert. This avoids clutter and accidents.
October 24, 2009
Getting a refund on the Windows Tax
It’s nearly impossible to buy a PC without Windows unless you build it yourself. But one persistent person managed to get a refund from Dell , after only twelve emails back and forth and a lost day of work. That was easy!
October 16, 2009
Automatic data loss on Windows
My employers have given me a Windows XP-64 machine, which sits 3000 miles away on the opposite coast. Operating it remotely using TightVNC isn’t anywhere near as fast or convenient as ssh, but at least it works. The machine seemed to be working fine when I disconnected from it on Saturday night. When I reconnected on Sunday morning, my session with all of its terminal windows was gone, and the login screen was showing. Today, after poking around with the Event Log GUI (nothing so easy as sudo less /var/log/messages), I figured out what went wrong. A process called the Windows Update Agent started running at 3 AM Sunday morning, and after five minutes it rebooted the machine. So apparently Windows has an automatic data loss feature that is built in and enabled by default.
October 13, 2009
Bye bye Kindle
I’ve used the Kindle DX for a week, and it’s a lovely device despite the limitations I’ve been pushing against. I spent a few days vacationing in a town that has Sprint cell service, and can say that the Whispernet really is the killer feature that sets this device apart. I also tried it as a sheet music viewer at the piano, and it was fine for that, though I think it’s best used as a reminder tool for music that you already know; paper is still best for pieces that you’re actively learning.
October 13, 2009
The Kindle and HTML links
I had heard that the Kindle would recognize (and display correctly) HTML documents, if you renamed them to have a .txt filename suffix. My hope was that it would also recognize internal and external links. If this were the case, then it would be possible to write scripts that would help with the lack of organizational tools. These scripts could walk the documents directory tree and construct HTML files that represented that tree. It would also be possible to extract metadata (such as author, title, and keywords) and represent them appropriately in HTML.
October 8, 2009
The Kindle DX and PDF metadata
One of the most common complaints about the Amazon Kindle is its lack of support for “folders”. In Linux terms, this means that the Kindle flattens your “documents” directory tree when it displays the list of your books on its home screen. However, a directory-browsing UI would be much less flexible than a tagging system, because it would require you to impose an arbitrary hierarchy on your documents. Fortunately, there is a workaround for this that implements a kind of pseudo-tagging using annotations . The advantage of this workaround is that it’s performed on the Kindle and doesn’t require a separate computer.
October 6, 2009