November 2011 - luv-talk

Teaching children programming on mac
by jason＠docpc.com.au 29 Nov '11

29 Nov '11

I would like to start teaching my children programming. They have access to an iMac, I am thinking that now they old enough to learn a language. I've looked at the standard Mac programming. But it seems to complex to start them off on. Any suggestions? By the way the children's ages are 9 (boy) and 13 (girl). They are home schooled it would be great to be able to add another subject under their belt. If necessary I could create a virtual machine with linux running in it. Thanks for any suggestions.

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Burning bootable ISO's to Flash cards and USB sticks..why so difficult ?
by Rohan McLeod 22 Nov '11

22 Nov '11

Assembled cogniscenti; due to a problem with the USB DVD/ RW burner that I used to use for booting my eeePC 900; with various exotic OS's; I have of late been trying to 'burn' ISO files to flash-cards and USB sticks ie. SD memory. If I boot with EASEUS on a USB stick I can create an ISO image of a bootable drive; but when I come to 'burn' that image to a USB stick ; even when they do burn they mostly won't boot ........... obviously there is some complication which I am not understanding; thanks Rohan McLeod

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Problem:Constraining wireless access to router 'on-peak'
by Rohan McLeod 21 Nov '11

21 Nov '11

Assembled illuminati: The naive networking problem is this; I have a very low cap 'HomeFibre Starter Plus' account with iPrimus; low cap being: 5GB/month 'on- peak' (noon to midnight) 10GB/month (midnight to noon). Since it doesn't cost me anything more; I have elected to share this account via wireless with 2 -4 other users gratis.I would like to restrict their access to 'off-peak' only...but 1/-manually switchng off wireless access on the Linksys E2000 router is possible; but too tedious. -after consultation with Cisco(Aust) it seems this device does not have the capacity to unconditionally switch off wireless during certain hours -but it does have the capacity to restrict certain LAN IP addresses during certain hours Now given that the other users are even more naive than myself, that is asking them for their LAN IP addresses would not be an easy path; can any one suggest a method of gathering these addresses ? any suggestions welcome, regards Rohan Mcleod

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Ruxcon
by Russell Coker 18 Nov '11

18 Nov '11

I'll be at Ruxcon today and tomorrow if anyone wants to meet for lunch. NB It's fully booked so anyone who hasn't registered can't attend. But anyone who's in the area for other reasons could meet some of us for lunch anyway. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

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Retrieval of data from an old tape
by Colin Fee 18 Nov '11

18 Nov '11

I'm posting this on behalf of a work colleague who has asked the following: "Good Morning, I have a request from <name withled> to retrieve some data from an old tape reel. It's on a Memorex MRX-V half inch 6250 BPI (bits per inch) magnetic tape reel. The tape contains data from his PHD. He has had it mounted once here at Monash on a Burroughs machine in 1990. At the time he viewed the data through his Vaxc account. Can anyone recommend a commercial service to retrieve the data, or have access to a functioning museum relic that might do the job?" If anyone has anything they can add please contact Greg directly (I've set the Reply-to: to his address). Regards, Colin Fee.

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Site access problem
by Rohan McLeod 14 Nov '11

14 Nov '11

Just looking for some diagnostic suggestions: Problem: When trying to access my Telstra mobile account info at: https://www.my.telstra.com.au/myaccount/overview on two different machines 1/ both machines running XP (apologies) 2/ both machines running SeaMonkey and InternetExplorer(fall back only) 3/ both machines machines with ethernet connection to Linksys E2000; on Iprimus 'Home Fibre StarterPlus' account In both SeaMonkey and IE: -machine 1: old slow desk-top accesses site OK -machine 2 eeePC laptop just sits with circling dots..forever any ideas welcome thanks Rohan McLeod

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Phone with QWERTY keyboard and Pinyin support
by Peter Ross 12 Nov '11

12 Nov '11

Hi all, do you know about a phone with QWERTY keyboard and Chinese Pinyin support available in Australia? Thanks for recommendations Peter

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Advice on how to fix an invalid EDID on projector
by Edward Savage 12 Nov '11

12 Nov '11

Evening all, Sorry if this should have gone to LUV-Main instead. I'm not sure how Linux related it will end up being. I'm looking for a little direction on an issue with an Acer P1266 projector which won't work with PC devices plugged in using HDMI. My knowledge of HDMI and all of its standards and uses is very limited but I understand I should be able to plug in a PC and have it just work. The issue is that the projector will just sit on HDMI without attempting to mode set when a computer is plugged in. I was under the impression that the HDMI port was just broken until fiddling with the HDMI caused it to set a mode once or twice. What it set was something unexpected like 480x360 48.36 hz @ 85 and after reading the available modes for HDMI in the projector manual I found this was not one of them. Remembering something about EDID information I thought that the port might not be broken and that something else might be happening. Windows and Lion have woeful verbosity when things break so I got out a trusty Ubuntu computer and hooked it up to the projector to see what it could see. Here is what I found in the Xorg.0.log http://pastebin.com/iXU86awD (note I fixed the Validated Modes being wrong resolution and device after taking this log). The Nvidia manual allowed me to remove the first clear issue which is the conflict with Horizontal Sync in Xorg like so... Section "Monitor" ... HorizSync 15.0 - 50.0 # a guess based on xorg log output Option "UseEdidFreqs" "false" EndSection This cleared up all errors except... [ 19.896] (WW) NVIDIA(0): ACER P1266 (DFP-0)'s EDID does not contain a maximum image [ 19.896] (WW) NVIDIA(0): size; cannot compute DPI from ACER P1266 (DFP-0)'s EDID. [ 19.896] (==) NVIDIA(0): DPI set to (75, 75); computed from built-in default So I started reading into what EDIDs are and how to do anything with them. First priority seemed to be to get a copy and then work out how to fix this issue. Enter what I found when I output the EDID and parsed it http://pastebin.com/EtNtArfk I think this maybe the time to ask for some advice from some people who may have come across this before. The net gives me some suggestions but I've got no idea what to look into... * Continuing to look at how to modify the EDID that is there to set a maximum image size and load that EDID on the projector * Looking at taking the information I do have from the EDID and making an xorg conf that uses that * Not trusting the EDID source as advised by parse-edid Some extra notes: * The projector is out of warranty and Acer have never put out any updates for it. It was never very popular so it's entirely possible no one ever bothered fixing this issue. * Xorg.conf is totally stock standard with nothing strange apart from the above, I can include a copy if someone wishes to see it. * Xorg.0.log is totally normal beyond what's included in the above paste bin, I can include a copy of the entire thing if required. * I don't have any video devices that output to HDMI to test with as I believe this sends a separate EDID? * The PC devices can drive projector using analog connections. [1] http://pastebin.com/iXU86awD subset of xorg.0.log with stock standard xorg.conf [2] http://pastebin.com/EtNtArfk output of get-edid | parse-edid Thanks in advance if anyone has any experience with this, Edward

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