HOWTO run Firefox2 in Ubuntu 8.04. If you’re already running Firefox3, the Firefox-2 symlink will not start the right version of Firefox until you shut down FF3. Now I can test sites in FF2 again without booting my 2k VM.

I used to have to boot to my Windows partition regularly to charge my iPod touch, a feature that’s been added to Ubuntu 7.10. Now I only need to reboot if I need to resync it, which I do far less regularly. Yes, I’ll be buying a Mac this year¹.

1. which fixes the problem ↩

I borrowed a serial UPC scanner from work today for some Friday night hacking. It’s a ReaderWare LaserChamp/Flic Barcode reader re-branded under the SerialIO name. It came with a standard serial cable and didn’t have a manual.

First, I booted to my Ubuntu partition to see the raw data from the scanner.

$ cat /dev/ttyS0

No dice. I did some searching and found that the scanner likely ran at 4800 baud.

$ setserial /dev/ttyS0 baud_base 4800
$ cat /dev/ttyS0

^B043396143234

Ah, some data. I removed the control characters and had myself a UPC symbol. I wrote a script and scanned a bunch of books, CDs, and other crap sitting on my desk. I also found a manual for the scanner, which had some settings symbols¹.

I booted to my XP partition and started Cygwin. I wrote a Perl script to mimic what I did on Linux, except using the Win32::Serial module. I fired up CPAN to grab the library, but CPAN was down. I switched to ActiveState’s Perl distribution and grabbed their Win32:: PPM. I finished the script and tested it. It worked.

A while later I checked CPAN again, grabbing the Win32:: module using Cygwin’s Perl. It didn’t build. This seems typical for Cygwin and CPAN/Perl modules². I moved on.

I switched to C# to see how it compared to Perl and the Linux/Bash hack. I whipped together a simple application³ that listened for data on a serial port, cleaned it up, and copied it to the clipboard. It worked⁴.

I also attempted to hook the C# code up to the Amazon API (to get ASINs), but found the networking libraries more complicated than I had time for⁵.

My favorite approach? Hands down, I liked the Bash script⁶ best. It was one line of code, including cleaning it up with sed. It’s not something I can ship, but it’s the way I’ll scan all of my books/CDs/DVDs.

The Perl Win32::Serial hack was longer (a dozen lines), but it also worked. It was no better than the 1-line Bash script, so I tossed it.

The C# hack consisted of a single form and its supporting class (a few dozen lines of code). It worked, and is easy to distribute. I’ll use this if I’m stuck doing something in Windows.

Total time for all 3 hacks? 3 hours and 25 minutes⁷.

1. You print the page and scan the symbols to change the scanner’s settings ↩
2. Most of the tests failed for the Win32::Serial module ↩
3. And the .NET build of it ↩
4. C#’s serial code was nicer than Perl’s, but not as nice as the devfs hack ↩
5. Perl’s networking is much nicer than C#’s ↩
6. Bash and devfs’s /dev/ttyS0 ↩
7. My wife and kids were out for the evening ↩

Here’s a handy sources.list generator for Ubuntu, which includes a number of bleeding edge software sources.

A Ubuntu tool for generating boot timing charts.

Ever wonder how to get the important C/C++ compiler bits installed quickly on Ubuntu/Debian? There’s a meta package for it:

sudo apt-get install build-essential

Meta packages wrap an important set of related packages, and should normally be used instead of picking packages by hand.

Democracy TV’s Ubuntu repository. Democracy is a cross platform internet-abled video player.

Here are a few possible fixes for the “Error activating XKB configuration” popup that appears after updating from Ubuntu 6.06 to 6.10.

HOWTO: run your existing Windows installation in VMWare Player.

Installing Ruby + Rails on Dapper and Edgy. I was missing bits using just the obvious packages.