Turn off the Backlight on a Notebook with Ubuntu

1. sudo apt-get install vbetool
2. sudo vbetool dpms off
3. sudo vbetool dpms on
4. sudo vbetool dpms off

Originally found at: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1097503

Latest PHP/Mysql/Apache From Source

I setup a new 64-bit virtual server running CentOS 5.6.    It was a pretty much vanilla install of CentOS minus Apache, PHP and MySQL

I  decided to compile MySQL, PHP and Apache from Source.  Everything was installed in /usr/local/ I created sym links to the version directories to keep a copy of the programs just in case anything went wrong.

ln -s /usr/local/php-5.3.6 /usr/local/php
ln -s /usr/local/mysql-5.5.11 /usr/local/mysql
ln -s /usr/local/httpd-2.2.17 /usr/local/httpd

edited /etc/profile to have /usr/local/mysql/bin and /usr/local/php/bin in PATH variable. Below was added to the bottom of /etc/profile

PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/mysql/bin:/usr/local/php/bin
export PATH

Steps to Install MySQL Apache and PHP from source

1. Had to install and compile Cmake first for MySQL from source (cmake.org).  I installed it to /usr to keep things simple.

• cmake .
• make -j3
• make install
• created mysql user and group
• changed ownership of data dir to mysql
• run mysql_install_db from MYSQL_INSTALL_DIR/scripts/mysql_install_db –user=mysql

2. Apache was configured with:

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/httpd --enable-ssl --enable-so --enable-rewrite
3. yum install libicu-devel
4. yum install libmcrypt-devel
5. yum install aspell-devel

6. For PHP, I used the following configure options.  Notice this is for a 64 bit install.

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/php --with-libdir=lib64 --with-mysqli=mysqlnd --with-pdo-mysql=mysqlnd --enable-sqlite-utf8 --with-apxs2=/usr/local/httpd/bin/apxs --with-mcrypt=/usr/local/mcrypt --with-openssl --with-bz2 --with-curl --with-freetype-dir=/usr --with-png-dir=/usr --enable-gd-native-ttf --with-gettext --with-gmp --with-iconv --with-jpeg-dir=/usr --with-openssl --with-pspell --with-zlib --enable-exif --enable-ftp --enable-magic-quotes --enable-sockets --enable-zip --with-pear --enable-calendar --enable-mbstring --with-ldap=/usr --enable-soap --with-xmlrpc --with-gd --enable-intl

Phone Drama

Battle of the Smart Phones

Before I switched from my beloved T-Mobile back in 2008 to get the iPhone from AT&T, I waited until the first Android phone was to be released.  I saw the FCC sketches and the prototypes of the G1 and I thought i was an ugly phone.   I didn’t like the “chin” and the sliding keyboard looked awkward.  I had the T-Mobile MDA so I was use to the sliding keyboard action.

I had been lusting after the iPhone since it came out in 2007.  I just didn’t have $600 to plunk down on a phone and I was still under contract with T-Mobile.  So when the iPhone 3G was released summer of 2008 I was excited, but not ready to part with T-Mobile just yet, I decided to wait to see what the G1 would be like.

Since I was disappointed in the design of the G1, I decided to make the switch to AT&T to get the iPhone.   I was sooo in love with the phone when I got it.  The day after, I couldn’t hardly get any work done.  There was some serious endorphins being kicked off owning the iPhone.  I never have felt so content in my life.  It was  weird feeling.  It was like the iPhone made my life complete.

In 2009, when the iPhone 3GS came out, I had new tech envy.  The 3GS proved to be a definite improvement over the previous generation in speed and memory.  I wouldn’t be eligible for an upgrade until March of 2010.  After agonizing over it a bit, I decided to just wait until the new iPhone would be release for 2010.

Forward to 2010

Back in December, the school board switch from Alltel to Verizon.  The Motorola Droid was the new hotness and I decided to get it as my work phone.  After using it for a couple of weeks, I hated it!  The screen was too narrow and the on screen keyboard was not very accurate.  Some parts of the UI were just awkward and inconsistent.  It just didn’t have that iPhone polish and granted, I was a little biased.  I passed it along to a coworker who is completely happy with it.  *kanye shrug*

Next I decided to try out the Palm Pre Plus.   The packaging of the Pre had the new car smell and inhaled the inside the box quite a bit.  It did smell good. *lol*  I thought the Pre was a nice compact phone but the keyboard was an issue for me.  The keys were just too small and I didn’t like having to slide open the phone every time I wanted to make a text entry.   I longed for an onscreen keyboard.  Voice recognition input would have been helpful.  The UI wasn’t too bad to navigate.  I found the notification system a little awkward; better than the iPhone’s but still awkward.  Still unsatisfied, I sent it back and opted for the Droid Eris.

I liked the Eris better than the Pre and Droid.  Even though the screen is smaller than the iPhone’s, but I got use to it.  The Eris, made by HTC, has the Sense UI “stuff” which adds some much needed polish to the Android interface.  It was alot better to use than the Droid to me, but it still had some UI issues.  The on screen keyboard wasn’t as much as a pain to type on as the Droid, but a pain nonetheless.  Adding shapewriter helped.  Overall, I think my Eris was a lemon.  Battery life was horrible (wouldn’t last a complete day, where as my coworker didn’t have any problems), and it didn’t like to hang on to the 3G signal when I was in Tuskegee.  In Auburn, it wasn’t much of a problem.  Also, the phone wouldn’t associate itself with a remembered wireless network automatically.

A month or so later, I discovered that Verizon would be releasing another Android phone called the Incredible which boasted some impressive specs.  It’s specs are very similar to the Nexus One and the Desire, which are considered to be the “best” Android phones out there.  I decided to give it a try.  I preordered the phone which arrived a day after the official release date.

So far, I’m really impressed with the phone.  It’s light, fast, and I really like the gorgeous OLED display.  Battery life is excellent even after heavy use.  Reception is pretty good as well.  The camera is light years better than the Eris or any mobile phone camera that I’ve seen so far.

Touch Decision

Lately, I’ve been debating whether I should stick with AT&T or not.  The only thing they really have going for them is the iPhone and their 3G speed.  I can consistently get 2MBps download speed in Atlanta and where I now live in Auburn.  I have the MyWi Wifi/USB tether app for the iPhone and it works really well as a hotspot for the iPad (drains the battery like crazy though).  My phone bill is $80+ a month and that’s with a discount I’m getting with my previous employer.  That $80+ is for the 450 anytime minutes, 1500 sms/mms for $15 and the mandatory $30 dataplan.  The $30 data plan is a rip off since I’m mostly on wifi when I’m at work or home and I don’t use anywhere near the 5GB cap each month;  I use less than 250MB per month on the data connection.  Since I have so very little daytime minutes, I use Skype alot during the week before 9pm and I’ve banked alot of daytime minutes in the process.  For a similar plan, I won’t get much of a deal with the other carriers.  Only Sprint and T-Mobile offer much better deals.  One issue with T-Mobile is that their 3G coverage isn’t as good as the others, but it’s no worse than AT&T’s in the area where I work and live.  My other issue I have with T-Mobile is the lack of any high end Android phones.

There is the rumor that the iPhone is coming to Verizon this year.  I don’t see that happening and this is why:  Apple and AT&T proudly shows that with the iPhone you can surf and talk at the same time over the 3G network.  Verizon or Sprint’s EV-DO network does not allow that and since that’s one of the marketing points of the iPhone, I doubt we’ll see a iPhone on Verizon’s 3G network.  That may be a different story when Verizon starts rolling out their LTE network and I can then see a Verizon branded iPhone perhaps next year.  And there’s also the issue of Apple’s supposedly 5 year exclusivity contract with AT&T.

Also, the HTC Incredible impressed me to take a second look at the Android phones.  The Nexus One looks bland to me and I don’t like the its stock Android UI.  I believe it has been rooted and it wouldn’t be a big issue to get Sense UI on it.   The Incredible and Nexus One’s sibling, the HTC Desire, should be coming to AT&T soon so says FCC approval on it’s 3G radio bands.

Sprint is coming out with with a high end Android phone called the HTC EVO 4G this summer.  As a carrier, Sprint probably has the best value in their plans.  Their 3G network is compatible with Verizon’s; so where ever big Red works, the Now Network should work as well.  I’m not currently covered by Sprint’s 4G network yet, but again, I’m mostly at home or at work where I have wifi access.  The EVO 4G boast some pretty impressive specs as well.  It doesn’t have an AMOLED display, so I’m not sure how well battery life will fair with it.

I’ve been thinking about going the prepaid route since I no longer have an interest in staying with AT&T and to ultimately save a few bucks.  I’m not that impressed with the iPhone 4.0 update coming out later this summer either.  There are some useful improvements, but not really enough for me to upgrade to the new iPhone.  I may try to cop a 3GS from eBay or Craigslist to get some extra speed.  The iPad pretty much satisfies my Apple gadget needs so I don’t feel compelled to stick out out with AT&T again for the new iPhone.

Code Code Code…

The past couple of days, I’ve been churning out some php code.  I’ve been making some modifications to the gallery code.  Mostly back end stuff.  I created a script where I can upload photos into a folder on the server and have a PHP page process those photos and add them to an album I created.  It’s alot quicker (and eaiser) than going the web form route.  I also ended up fixing some bugs and making tweaks here and there.  Still needs alot more work.

One of the major changes I made to the gallery site is how the photos were stored.  Before, I had them all lumped into one folder which would make trying to backup and restore the photos somewhere else a nightmare.  Now, they are all stored in folders named after the album they were created for.  Also, I created some code to automatically create a smaller version of the original photo if it didn’t already exist.  This would save time uploading my album to another host if I needed to.

Last night, I started working on another WordPress theme I’d like to use.  I saw it on another site and I sort of copped it.    I like the color scheme and all, but I will add my own unique touches to it.

I’ve been tweeting alot lately, perhaps for the past month or so.  I guess I can “blame” a friend of mine for that.  He suggested I follow a couple of his Oakwood buddies and they ended up being a very chatty bunch.  It’s been fun.  Meet some really cool people.  I’ve only been on Twitter and year, but it feels like it’s been much longer.   I guess because everyone is talking about it and doing it.  It’s the thing to do thanks to Ashton Kutcher and Oprah.

My car turned 40K yesterday somewhere on I-20 on the way to work.  I’ve had it two years and less than 3 months.  The amount of miles I’ve been putting on it a month have slowed down since I’ve moved to Atlanta.   All that traveling between sites with the previous job racked up alot of miles.  But she’s still holding together.

My Mazda3

Some Modifications

I decided to add a photo banner of the most recent photo sets I uploaded from my gallery site.

I like it.  Now I gotta think of some ideas to add some more color (tastefully) to the page.

New Theme

So, I wasn’t completely happy with the first theme I made, so I went and modified another person’s theme.  It’s very clean and simple and if I wanted to add a splash of color or a funky background to it, I can without too much trouble.

The bottom of this theme is where I made most of the modifications.  I decided to put the links to my other pages at the bottom, as well as my favorite sites, archives and a random photo viewer.  The photo viewer took a little php and css foo to get working and looking right.

I am alot happier with this theme and I will probably modifiy it soon to add some color.  Truthfully, the previous design looks like alot of other cookie cutter wordpress sites.  Wordpress is so flexible you can really make it look like anything.  I got some ideas in my head I might want to try next.  This is kind of fun.  

On Geek Celebrity

I forgot to mentioned in my last entry, that I attended an Apple seminar yesterday in the Library on iPhone and iPod Touch Development. From what I could tell, the attendees were mostly (if not all) GT people and mostly staff. I believe there were a few students there.

iPhone development involves learning Objective-C along with the Cocoa framework. I tried my hand at learning Objective-C a couple of months ago, but I was having a hard time getting a grasp of the syntax. After watching and listening to the presenters, I was encouraged to try getting back into it.

One of the speakers was Evan Schoenberg who happens to be one of the lead developers for Adium. He has also written several iPhone apps and is aparently doing well enough to help him pay off some medical school debt. He’s in med school at Emory and should be finishing up this spring and entering into a residency program somewhere in Florida. Dude is pretty smart! I was impressed!

Birthday Wishes

Another birthday has come and gone.  No one even called. I got a couple of birthday wishes, but after I told them it was my birthday.  I don’t know how I should feel about that.  I figure birthday’s get less important as you get older. My brother remembered and sent me an ecard.  My parents sent money (mostly to help out with rent and utilities), and Florida Grandma sent me some money as well (recieved it Friday).

I started working on Tuskegee’s University’s NSBE Chapter Web Site.  I really like doing web pages and can even see myself doing it for a living, but I much prefer messing around with Unix boxes and such.  The love I once had for electrical engineering is fading, though I still find some parts of it interesting. My goal is
to have my own buisness doing something, fulfilling a niche or something.  Me and Lutalo will have to do some braintstorming.  He has some ideas.

Got a call from the T-Cam Lab tonight. They need help with some license issues with their Sun Boxes.

My Mid term exams didn’t go well at all. I had a calculus II test Tuesday that I will be diligently preparing for. I may end up dropping Probs and Stats… What an icky class!!! It’s not likes it’s hard. I just don’t put alot of effort into it. What am I doing then…. *sigh* I am so tired of school.

We went to Hurtsboro this past Sabbath for their Youth Day. We had previously
plan to attend Bethany SDA Church in Montgomery, but Anthony spoke with Richard and told him that Youth Federation was next week in Montgomery.
So we decided that we’ll go next week. BIG MISTAKE.

Service in Hurtsburo was pretty dry and as usual, there wasn’t enough food. Still hungry, the college kids opted to go home and get some more food. On the way back, I became nausiated and was feeling pretty bad.

On the ride back, Zahra told me that Mono and Digliserides aren’t from pork as I had previous thought and was told.  She spoke with one of her professors and we had a little debate about it in the car.  I even asked Anthony while we were grocery shopping and he told me that it wasn’t from pork, but might as well be because it’s a bad fat. I’ve been avoiding it pretty much anyway.  Ah well.

Busy

Well, I am been pretty busy the past couple of weeks studying for test and doing homework.  School is becoming very demanding even with 16 hrs.  And all of those are tough classes.  But I am sucking it up because I want to get out of here.

John was by the house last night when I got back from a study session.  He, Othello and myself were talking about plans after school, like getting married, grad school and getting a job and stuff like that.

I’ve been working on Tuskegee University’s Solar Decathlon’s web site.  It is going pretty well.

I had three exams last week. They…. went….well, they just went!

Another school year has began….

I have neglected my journal again for a couple of days. Time to get back on track. Nothing much has happened since my last entry… Oh yeah, the movie is finished. Forgot to export it before Emmanuel wiped the iMac’s  hard drive so he could installed OS X Server. Everyone said they liked the movie, but I hated it. I hated doing it. I guess because of the time I had to do it. I stressed over it which also I hated and right before school.

So, I haven’t had a real vacation this summer.  Which is all good.

I am not registered yet, still waiting for this financial aid to kick in.  Registration is back in Chappie this year and they have done something a little different. Last Monday and Tuesday was registration for Freshman and transfer students. Wednesday through this coming Tuesday is registration for upperclassmen and freshman who haven’t finished registering yet. Upper classmen registration is going by alphabet according to last name and has been started at 2pm which is different. But all in all, registration seems to be a little bit more organized this year.

First week of classes went ok. I adjusted better than I thought I did.  Feeling kind of non-chalant about the whole experience. I also feel way behind since I wasn’t in school last semester. But I am looking forward in doing well this semester. I am taking 14 hours, which is the max I can take right now since I have some class conflicts with Physics 311  (which I really wish I could take this semester). Dynamics is showing up as 0 credit hours for me. I have to ask the registrar the deally with that.

I am also waiting on my contract. Ms. Chisolm signed the PAF, just waiting for it to go through personnel. *sigh*

This weekend, all the (church) students have made it back, except for Jason. He should be in soon. Sasha is back and her fiance is down as well visiting for a while. She has lost alot of weight. Saint is back. He is staying with me temporarily till he gets registered and when he finds a place.

Saw Jansen at Wal-Mart today.