none of this matters

Brilliant.

So the newest version of Ubuntu (8.10) kinda sucks. I didn’t notice this until I wanted to use bluetooth.  I have the XBMC media center running on my home server attached to the TV and wanted to control it with a Nintendo Wiimote I had lying around. The computer REFUSED to pair with the wiimote. After messing around with the Bluez library and libbluetooth and all that shit thinking it was the problem…I finally found what was wrong.

Bluez and everything in userland were all fine, but in the 8.10 version, the Ubuntu team decided to compile the kernel with a new subsystem for Bluetooth, ‘btusb’. This is a new module compiled in to replace the older (and perfectly working, so WTF) ‘hci-usb’. So the new ‘btusb’ only works with some newer Bluetooth adapters. I had a cheapo little Chinese one (KY-BT100 is what lsusb says) that always worked in all previous Ubuntu’s just fine. New ‘btusb’ only seems to work for half or less of the adapters out there, and this didn’t concern anyone on the Ubuntu kernel team? Really?

So it was time to compile a new kernel. I copied the config from the default 8.10 one I had installed except I disabled ‘btusb’ and enabled ‘hci-usb’ back. After compiling and booting into the new kernel, everything worked perfectly again and Wiimote pairs nicely.

crackheads broke my window.

before

after

So i decided to give making-openmoko-a-wifi-AP thing another go.

The USB wifi card I bought (ChiefMax RaLink RT73) needs some special cross-compiled drivers to put the wifi in master mode in order to act as an AP. So i gave up that route and tried making it an ad-hoc peer-to-peer access point.

This (kinda) worked! but only connecting with another Linux computer and even then, NetworkManager’s DHCP screwed up the subnet mask and that needed to be set manually.

Trying the same in Mac OS X and Windows XP was a colossal failure. Mac OS X refuses to even accept a DHCP offer from the openmoko (openmoko is using busybox’s udhcpd) and basically same for Windows: it gives itself some crazy nonsense IP.

So best option is still to get some magic USB wifi card that can be set to master mode from the openmoko using the drivers already in the kernel. I’m not really sure at this point which chipset would do that.

Either way, I think windows and mac have (very) flawed wifi ad-hoc implimentations. Linux’s is a little better but not by much. I guess it’s the ‘forgotten mode’ of 802.11b/g.

So Google app engine seems to be cool when you’re too lazy to host.

This guy is fucking great. I really love his books. Haven’t seen anything like it.

I can’t complain

On a plain

Listening to some KMFDM. The beatings will continue until morale improves. This is a long message to test some thing that i think should be working. So it will be long and pointless but what the fuck.