It allows you to mask both your usernames and passwords (both optionally) from the top-level view. It has clipboard capabilities, so you can just copy your password to the clipboard by clicking a button, and never see it on the screen in plain-text. Their security is really well-done. But the big realization today was that they have an Android App! This app only need the kdb file from any instance of the application, and of course the password to decrypt it. It’s available in the market too! But, how do you sync changes between your main desktop and your phone? Dropbox! Using the dropbox mobile app, I simply synced the kdb file onto the phone, and then opened it. KeePassDroid popped up and asked if I wanted to make it the default database, and I checked the box. Done.

Now, whenever I make a change, it syncs over Dropbox like magic.

• Get bdtools. I got Version 1.4. You can find it here.
• ./configure && make && sudo make install
• Try running mpls_dump. I got this error when running:

  mpls_dump: error while loading shared libraries: libbd-1.0.so.1: cannot open shared object file:
  No such file or directory

• To fix it, do this:

  echo "/usr/local/lib" | sudo tee -a /etc/ld.so.conf
  sudo ldconfig

1. Download Version 1.8 source from here.
2. unzip clit18src.zip -d convertlit
3. sudo apt-get install libtommath-dev
4. Download this to the convertlit directory.
5. patch -p1 -i clit18.source.patch
6. You should see the clit18/Makefile was patched
7. cd lib && make && cd ../clit18 && make
8. the clit binary should be available in the clit18 directory
9. sudo cp clit18/clit /usr/local/bin/
10. Use it!

Now I just have to figure out how to convert it to epub.

sudo apt-get install pavucontrol
pavucontrol

Then, go to the Input Devices tab, and unmute the sound (click the little speaker with a red X until the controls at the bottom are enabled). Then, change the Port setting until you can see the bars move when you tap the microphone. Then try Skype. This worked perfectly for me – it’s too bad it’s not connected to the KDE sound mixer, but oh well. Maybe in the future that will happen.

• sudo apt-get install lirc
• Make your /etc/lirc/lircrc look like this:

##### GLOBAL #####
begin
  flags = startup_mode
  mode = smplayer
end

begin
  remote = PackBell
  button = Aux1
  mode = smplayer
end

begin
  button = Mute
  prog   = irexec
  repeat = 0
  config = amixer sset 'Master' toggle
end
begin
  button = VolUp
  prog   = irexec
  repeat = 2
  delay = 1
  config = amixer sset 'Master' 1+
end
begin
  button = VolDown
  prog   = irexec
  repeat = 2
  delay = 1
  config = amixer sset 'Master' 1-
end

##### MPLAYER #####
begin smplayer
  begin
      remote = PackBell
      prog = irexec
      button = Down
      config = if [ $(ps -eo cmd | grep -c ^smplayer) -eq 1 ]; then (smplayer -send-action rewind2); fi
      repeat = 3
      delay = 1
  end

  begin
      remote = PackBell
      prog = irexec
      button = Up
      config = if [ $(ps -eo cmd | grep -c ^smplayer) -eq 1 ]; then (smplayer -send-action forward2); fi
      repeat = 3
      delay = 1
  end

  begin
      remote = PackBell
      prog = irexec
      button = Right
      config = if [ $(ps -eo cmd | grep -c ^smplayer) -eq 1 ]; then (smplayer -send-action forward1); fi
      repeat = 3
      delay = 1
  end

  begin
      remote = PackBell
      prog = irexec
      button = Left
      config = if [ $(ps -eo cmd | grep -c ^smplayer) -eq 1 ]; then (smplayer -send-action rewind1); fi
      repeat = 3
      delay = 1
  end

  begin
      remote = PackBell
      prog = irexec
      button = Display
      config = if [ $(ps -eo cmd | grep -c ^smplayer) -eq 1 ]; then (smplayer -send-action fullscreen); fi
      repeat = 0
      delay = 0
  end

  begin
      remote = PackBell
      prog = irexec
      button = CHUp
      config = if [ $(ps -eo cmd | grep -c ^smplayer) -eq 1 ]; then (smplayer -send-action next_subtitle); fi
      repeat = 3
      delay = 0
  end

  begin
      remote = PackBell
      prog = irexec
      button = CHDown
      config = if [ $(ps -eo cmd | grep -c ^smplayer) -eq 1 ]; then (smplayer -send-action next_audio); fi
      repeat = 3
      delay = 0
  end

  begin
      remote = PackBell
      prog = irexec
      button = LMB
      config = if [ $(ps -eo cmd | grep -c ^smplayer) -eq 1 ]; then (smplayer -send-action pl_prev); fi
      repeat = 3
      delay = 0
  end

  begin
      remote = PackBell
      prog = irexec
      button = RMB
      config = if [ $(ps -eo cmd | grep -c ^smplayer) -eq 1 ]; then (smplayer -send-action pl_next); fi
      repeat = 3
      delay = 0
  end

  begin
      remote = PackBell
      prog = irexec
      button = Zero
      config = if [ $(ps -eo cmd | grep -c ^smplayer) -eq 1 ]; then (smplayer -send-action next_aspect); fi
      repeat = 3
      delay = 0
  end

  begin
      remote = PackBell
      prog = irexec
      button = One
      config = if [ $(ps -eo cmd | grep -c ^smplayer) -eq 1 ]; then (smplayer -send-action rewind3); fi
      repeat = 3
      delay = 0
  end
  begin
      remote = PackBell
      prog = irexec
      button = Two
      config = if [ $(ps -eo cmd | grep -c ^smplayer) -eq 1 ]; then (smplayer -send-action play_or_pause); fi
      repeat = 3
      delay = 0
  end
  begin
      remote = PackBell
      prog = irexec
      button = Three
      config = if [ $(ps -eo cmd | grep -c ^smplayer) -eq 1 ]; then (smplayer -send-action forward3); fi
      repeat = 3
      delay = 0
  end
end smplayer

• sudo /etc/init.d/lirc restart
• You should see the irexec daemon start
• Start smplayer and make it play something
• Push the AUX1 button on your Packard Bell remote
• Now push other buttons.  It should all work.

Thanks to all the blog posts and forum conversations that helped me figure all that out.

All I had to do to convert my M1530 running Ubuntu over was use the cp command:

mkdir /mnt/root && mount root_partition /mnt/root
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/target
cp -a /mnt/root/ /mnt/target/

You might also have to repeat for other partitions like boot and home. cp -a is awesome. It does exactly what you need for this process. Now my computer runs perfectly (other than me having to tweak grub a little for the right boot options). The only issue is you will have to move the contents of /mnt/target/root in this case to /mnt/target after this is done, as there’s an issue with dotfiles being copied in the root directory of the source.

1. Open System -> Preferences -> Keyboard and go to the Layouts Tab.
2. Click Layout Options
3. Pull down the Adding the EuroSign to certain keys list, and pick one. I chose the E key.
4. Now, pull down the Third level choosers list.
5. Select a key.

Mine looks like so:

Close it, and now you can type the € character at will!

I attended quite a few talks, grabbed a lot of swag, and entered a few contests. I ended up buying the Arduino Starter Kit from MAKE so I can do some awesome embedded Ruby like I saw at FOSCON. It looks really fun – I can’t wait to try it out.

The talks I attended were half-way decent, but I learned a lot more on the first day.

Hadoop and EC2

A good overview of how one can use Amazon’s S3 and EC2 services to cheaply process and store data on a pretty large scale. The New York Times digitized hundreds of years of articles in a single day using these services and some awesome C++ code.

Open standards in cloud computing

This ended up being a marketing talk. I don’t know what it had to do with cloud computing, and I didn’t stick around to find out.

Ruby 1.9: What to Expect

An awesome overview of all the new stuff in Ruby 1.9 given by Sam Ruby. I had no idea they were changing so much, and this was a good dive with code examples into that. There was some discussion among everyone in the middle on whether for loops should work like .each blocks with regards to scope. I happen to disagree with what ended up being the popular thought on this subject. Most were advocating that a for loop constitutes a block, and that scope variables and iterators should be localized inside of it. This is contrary to almost every language, which I brought up using the example of C. Yet, when you iterate with .each, you immediately define a block and a scoped iterator, which, if it has a conflicting name with the outside world, it doesn’t matter since that’s out of scope. The only thing this changes is the value of a variable outside after the loop finishes. I think leaving the ability to modify a variable external to the loop is very convenient – in summary, leave it how you’ve done it in Ruby 1.9 already.

Ubuntu on the Go: Subnotebook and MID technologies

This was an interesting session on where Canonical is taking mobile technology, and what the community can do to help. They seem to have a pretty neat subnotebook coming out soon.

Python, C++, and SWIG

This could have been one of the best talks, but the speed at which it was given and the lack of enthusiasm in the presentation left most of us either bored or unfulfilled at the end of the talk. He spent the first half explaining what Python and C++ were, then he got to what SWIG is. The end was a quick dive into an extremely complicated bunch of files that didn’t help very much. In the future, it would be helpful to go to a SWIG talk that details how to make a simple Python extension with SWIG. I may have to throw that one together myself…

I also attended the tail end of Designing Political Web Apps for MoveOn.org, but I didn’t take any notes.

We ended up going to dinner at Widmer Brothers, which was pretty awesome. I had the Pork Schnitzel, a very tender piece of meat if I do say so myself, along with 2 Full Nelson IPAs. Afterwards, we caught the bus from the convention center to BeerForge and the SourceForge Community Choice Awards party. Beerforge was a blast. I ended up talking to Jean-Baptiste Kempf, one of the developers of VLC, for hours – a truly great guy. I learned a lot about France and the French people, but also about VLC. Apparently, you can use VLC from the command line much like mplayer, which I did not know. Yet, he explained that they removed Directshow support from VLC in Linux in favor of open source alternatives, which in part I can understand. Yet, the only codec available that is able to smoothly play 1080p h264 video is closed source (CoreAVC), and until the ffmpeg avc codec catches up, I’ll have to continue using mplayer. When I can play everything back smoothly with VLC, I may consider switching.

The beer at BeerForge was pretty good – I had the IPA. SourceForge had some sort of mixed drink which wasn’t too great. All in all, a good day, but now I’m dehydrated…