Corro Cantcode Is No More

My fellow readers, I have been pondering a long while about a potential new name and an easier address to shout out to people about my corner on the interwebs.

So, behold the new ramaro.net. Original, I know. But it's an easier to remember address and it does connect better with my name.
Read you there!

Unlocking The Power Of Caps Lock

The caps lock key is probably the most useless key in our keyboards. So why not use it for something else?

This is one of those things I've resisted for years but I finally bothered and made the change - Hey, let's assume it is the first of a very late New Year resolutions set.

I've recently changed it to function as another Control key and it's been great so far. Suddenly I can afford to use my pinkie finger without all those contortionist gymnastics.
GNU screen magically gets more comfortable, reverse-searching and movement in Bash is awkwardly nice, switching Spaces is natural.

Configuring it is dead simple. In a nutshell:
System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Modifier Keys
and remap de Caps Lock key.

At work, I'm required to use a Windows desktop machine and have been using a remapped Caps Lock key for years now.
But not as a Control key. Enso Launcher is my tool of choice and the natural behaviour for the Caps Lock key under Windows.
Enso's quasimodal behaviour is something I've yet (and wish) to see on Alfred and the moribund QuickSilver.

Caps Lock is the cleanest key in our keyboards. It's only obvious we must make regular use of it (and spread the bacteria).

Simplifying The Iphone 4 On T-Mobile Uk

So after a month of waiting and constantly refreshing the Apple Store order tracking website, I finally received my iPhone 4.

What a piece of hardware.
The design is amazing, the Retina display is even better than I thought it would be, the battery life is way longer than my previous 3G and the performance just rocks. Honestly, the reception issues are visible in the (buggy?) signal meter but I could not actually feel any performance degradation on both calls and data usage.

One thing though. The idea of cutting my SIM card to fit into the iPhone 4's micro sim card tray was not pleasant at all.
In an interconnected world, the idea of damaging my SIM and having to ask and wait for another one freaks me out.

As I could not find any example of a T-Mobile UK cut SIM card, here's my notes on how to cut your own sim mod(have a look at the pics in the bottom):

1. Have a good look at the picture at the bottom of the article
2. Place your SIM card so that the cut corner is on the top-left
3. Observe the horizontal, parallel continuous lines on the SIM circuit
4. Put the tray on top of the SIM card and align it so that the SIM circuit does not seem outside of the tray area
5. While the tray is on top the SIM card, align it with the bottom of the card so that the circuit horizontal, parallel continuous lines appear inside the tray area
6. With a sharp knife (I used a swiss army knife) and a ruler, mark a line at the right bit of the SIM card plastic 1mm after the circuit.
7. Mark a line at the bottom of the card, very very close to the circuit
8. Take a deep breath and with a scissor cut the SIM card along the marked lines
9. Round the new (bottom-right) edge by cutting a very small bit of it
10. Have a look at it, make sure it looks good enough to continue
11. Mark a line at the top of the SIM card plastic, 1mm after the circuit
12. Cut the the marked line with the scissor
13. Round the new (top-right) edge by cutting a very small bit of it
14. At this point, you can attempt to fit part of the card into the iPhone's tray
15. Look at the SIM circuit inside the tray and observe if the horizontal parallel continuous circuit lines appear inside the tray
16. If you need to adjust it, try to cut any excess plastic in the bottom of the card
17. Once you managed to partially fit the SIM card into the tray, confirm, again that the horizontal parallel continuous circuit lines appear inside the tray
18. Go ahead and mark a line in the left part of the SIM card, 1mm after the circuit
19. Cut the edge of the top-left corner of the card, 1mm after the circuit
20. At this point you can attempt to place it into the tray
21. Should any adjustment be needed, just file the excess plastic and constantly attempt to fit it

This worked flawlessly for me.
The 'No SIM card installed' message immediately disappeared once I popped it into the iPhone.

Ubuntu Lucid Fix

There's always nice and not so nice surprises when you upgrade your OSes.
If you just upgraded your shiny eeepc 1005HA to Canonical's latest and greatest Lucid Lynx, you probably have noticed that, annoyingly, the sound volume Fn keys are now dead.

At first I thought that they just weren't mapped any more, but after running xev and hitting the flawed keys for a while, I concluded that they were actually not active at all.
My next step was to try and load the eeepc-laptop module, which modinfo's description is "Eee PC Hotkey Driver" and that did nothing but complain:

$ sudo modprobe eeepc_laptop
FATAL: Error inserting eeepc_laptop (/lib/modules/2.6.32-9-generic/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/eeepc-laptop.ko): No such device

Apparently the kernel is ignoring some fn key acpi events on this version. The fix for this is to append some acpi boot options on grub as described here.

In a nutshell, the quick and dirty fix is pretty much:

$ sudo vim /etc/default/grub

Append the acpi options to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT var, mine looks like this:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_osi=Linux acpi_backlight=vendor"

Finalise it by forcing ubuntu to accept the grub configuration change:

$ sudo update-grub

Everything should be rocking (depending how loud or not you rock) after a reboot.

The Bosee Remote

I'm a huge fan of the Boxee "social" media center and have been using it almost since it got out.
XBMC did a great job for years running on my now deceased, modified, abused, original Xbox (remember the days when the term jailbreak did not exist?). The luxury of playing SMB/CIFS mounted media on TV from that do-everything headless Linux box is something I consider a basic need (almost next to water), really.

Boxee runs great on any intel Mac (it's also great on Linux and Windows they say) and it definitely does not disappoint on a Mac Mini. It does have its bugs and annoyances, but most you can live with, especially because I'm sure the cool cats at the Boxee HQ are working hard to kill them all (\m/).

Perhaps the biggest annoyance of them all is the fact that Apple, or His Highness El Steve, silently decided that from OSX 10.6.2 everybody would have to buy the new, 2nd generation Apple Remote.
And what an Epic What The Fuck Moment (tm) it was when I updated the Mini to 10.6.2 and was convinced that my Bose Remote stopped working. Then, after finding my 1st gen Apple Remote in the middle of nowhere (these things have legs, lots of them) and being totally convinced the Mini's infrared receiver was dead, I decided to google for "10.6.2 remote".
Where there's Google there's hope and the value-added solution is Candelair. Free, simple and problem solving.

Speaking of the Bose Remote, I've configured mine to control Boxee.
Controlling Boxee with the Bose Remote is quite easy. If you have a V-class Bose Lifestyle entertainment system, this will work just fine if you:

1. Press the "System" button on the Bose Remote
2. Select the "Remote Control" section on your screen
3. Select your Boxee connected source (I use DVD)
4. Set "DVD Device" to "Music Player"
5. Set "DVD Brand" to "Apple"
6. Set "DVD Code" to "1115"
7. Don't forget to point the Bose infrared emitter to the Mini
8. Select "Star Wars Episode V" from the Movies section and then press the "Play" button

If you feel annoyed by the fact that pressing the "Menu" button can still sometimes open Front Row in the middle of some Boxee browsing, the easiest thing to do is to move/rename it from /System/Library/CoreServices/.