Irssi, Irssi Proxy and Bitlbee

Posted by on August 7, 2009 No comments

Quick summary: How to make communications as convenient yet convoluted as possible.

In my seemingly endless desire to play with changing the way I do things, I have modified the way I use instant messaging. While at work I am constantly connected to IRC in order to keep up (in realtime!) with things going on in the real world. Yesterday we were comparing the benefits of irc and xmpp trying to determine which technology is cooler. One of the nice things most Jabber servers have going for them is the ability to connect to other networks (AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, etc). As I normally have two clients open for this very reason (xchat-gnome for irc and pidgin for regular IM) I decided it was time to try out BitlBee. BitlBee is basically a lightweight service that creates an IRC interface to various IM networks (including all of the examples above).

Setting up BitlBee (at least in my case) on Ubuntu was absurdly simple.

  1. Install BitlBee
  2. Start the service (sudo /etc/init.d/bitlbee start)
  3. Connect your irc client to localhost port 6667
  4. Type help quickstart and follow along

The way I handle IRC is a bit more complex than many people, so I had a few additional steps. I use irssi and irssiproxy running in screen to stay connected 24/7 (or close enough). The only extra thing you need to do to make that work is add a port to irssiproxy_ports for your bitlbee network.

Vista won’t turn off the monitor

Posted by on June 29, 2009 No comments

I run Vista at home primarily for gaming purposes (and I like uTorrent). One of the problems I had with it lately was it not turning off the monitor when the power saving plan was supposed to. I would watch it try and turn off, but usually wouldn’t quite succeed. Eventually I determined the problem was having the screen saver set to activate at the same time the monitor was supposed to turn off. I set the screen saver to activate 1 minute earlier and everything is now working correctly.

OpenDNS kills Google

Posted by on May 13, 2009 No comments

Yesterday I was having problems getting to Google. The rest of the internet worked fine, but I couldn’t connect to Google. It struck me as unlikely that Google would be down and check with Down for Everyone confirmed that it was just me.

After much digging and a bit of thinking, I discovered google.com was not actually resolving to google.com. It was resolving to an OpenDNS service. Apparently they do some proxying of Google to make sure some of their advanced features keep working. To fix the problem, I just had to turn of the proxy and everything was golden.

To turn of the proxy:

  1. Login to OpenDNS
  2. Go to Settings
  3. Go to Advanced Settings (the link is on the left)
  4. Turn of the proxy
  5. Enjoy

Adobe Air in Jaunty (Ubuntu 9.04)

Posted by on April 24, 2009 1 comment

I just finished reinstalling Ubuntu 9.04 and was trying to install my air applications. Not terribly difficult…

  1. Download the installer from: http://get.adobe.com/air/
  2. Install ia32-libs
  3. Install lib32nss-mdns (from http://tr.im/jCFs )
  4. Install your apps

I got stuck on the third step when I was going through things. I could install Adobe Air applications, but they had no network access. Installing that library corrected the problem.

Arch Linux

Posted by on January 26, 2009 No comments

I decided that I would like to try a Linux distro that was less “do it all for you.” After consulting with the people I consult with on things like that, I decided to try out Arch Linux. So far I am pretty impressed. It is definitely a DIY distribution, but they have documentation to help you through just about everything.

I am running it on an Acer 5672 laptop. I will post here with possible problems I find and any solutions…

  • Special keys (Play/Pause, Stop, Volume, Mute, etc)
  • Card Reader
    • Run the following command: sudo setpci -s 09.0 4c=0x22
  • Webcam
    • Add gspca_vc032x to your modules list in /etc/rc.conf. You can also just modprobe it to test. If compiz is enabled, the picture will flicker unless you modify  your xorg.conf.
    • Section "Device"
      ........
      Option "VideoOverlay" "off"
      Option "OpenGLOverlay" "on"
      Option "TexturedVideo" "off"
      .........
      EndSection
  • No Automounting in Gnome
    • Make sure your /etc/fstab file does not contain entries for the cd/dvd drives. Removing those had it working immediately for me