sansa fuze — replace firmware with rockbox
just replaced the firmware (think operating system) on my sansa fuze v1 (8gb model) with the open source rockbox. when using the sansa’s original software i was getting jumpy playback and i wasn’t terribly fond of the interface.
rockbox has a vast array of features and can be customised and fine tuned to suit the user’s needs and tastes.
the firmware, currently, only works with the first generation of the sansa fuze (v1) not the second generation (v2) so check your players version before attempting anything. it also supports various other mp3 players so see if yours is supported…
there’s an automatic installer available but i chose the manual method.
really enjoy using it so far. lots of features to tinker with and last.fm scrobbling support!
a couple of screen shots of available themes…
Cabbie-enhanced-info by Bernd Fischer
FuzeRock by Terry Dale
upgraded to ubuntu 10.04 alpha 2
this isn’t a review but thought i’d write about the fact that i just upgraded to ubuntu 10.04 alpha 2 from ubuntu 9.04 on my main laptop (a dell inspiron 1545) and everything is functioning very nicely.
grab the iso here. i stuck it onto a usb key using unetbootin and was ready to go (obviously backing up all important data before proceeding!).
i keep my home directories on a separate (encrypted) partition so formatted / and /boot but left the rest alone.
the install really is beautifully simple…it’s been well streamlined over the years (a far cry from when i started using ubuntu back with dapper) and was complete in 10 minutes or so. all hardware was detected out of the box…the correct resolution set for the panel, network connections working (wired and wireless), sound playback and function keys all ok too. after running apt-get update quite a lot of updates are installed even though this is a recent release…after this is complete we end up with the 2.6.32–11-generic #15-ubuntu smp kernel.
happily using this as my main system…encountered very few bugs so far (and they were trivial).
vodka and coke with red straws
just a glass of vodka and coke. used a wide aperture to create a nice depth of field and then tweaked the colours using curves in the gimp.
anniesland court — high flat
anniesland court is a high flat (tower block) located in the west of glasgow, scotland. it’s glasgow’s only building of this sort to have ‘grade a’ listed status. some more info can be found here.
spinning fairground ride at night
visited winterfest in george square over the holiday period and tried some long exposure shots of the rides.
my first real attempt at this…i think they turned out ok. click a thumbnail for a gallery view.
running ps3 media server on linux
the hard disk on the ps3 has quite a limited capacity…especially after a few games have been installed that require a few gigabytes of storage. so instead of using the local disk i like to stream media from my laptop runing linux (currently ubuntu 9.10).
one solution is to use ps3 media server. grab the compressed files here and extract them to a directory of your choice.
firstly you may need to change the permissions on PMS.sh so that your non root user may execute it ‘sudo chmod 777 PMS.sh’. then run ./PMS.sh as a regular user to fire up the server. if your ps3 doesn’t appear like the screenshot here 
then go to the ‘General Configuration’ tab and enter the IP address of your linux box (NOT THE PS3) and restart the server…hopefully the ps3 should now be detected correctly. next step is to add your media shares. i edited PMS.conf manually with gedit (you could try browsing for your directories directly from the server interface but that didn’t work for me). after ‘folders =’ add the path to the media you want to share…for example if you want to add your music folder add this ‘\/home\/user\/Music,’. repeat this for all the folders you’d like to share with the ps3, save the file and then restart the server.
if you now go to the music section of the ps3 and scroll down the ps3 media server icon should appear and you can drill down the directories to find the music you want. i’ve shared music (mp3 & flac), video (various formats) and images. all have played back flawlessly. a great little solution to the problem of streaming to your ps3 from linux. i’m sure there are many other methods but this worked well for me.
