Show and hide gnome panels using gconftool-2

I own an HP mini 2140 netbook and as you might know the 1024x576 resolution is a little bit annoying. In order to gain some space I removed the bottom panel and decide to hide the top. I really don't like the autohide method and I needed something to do it manually. Then I open gconf-editor to figure out the settings that gnome using to apply these methods. When I found them I created 2 new custom keyboard shortcuts and wrote the followings:

Hide Top Panel
gconftool-2 --set "/apps/panel/toplevels/top_panel_screen0/auto_hide" --type boolean "true"
Show Top Panel
gconftool-2 --set "/apps/panel/toplevels/top_panel_screen0/auto_hide" --type boolean "false"
By default the size of the hidden panel is 6 so to gain even those 6 pixels make sure you run this first to resize it to 0.
gconftool-2 --set "/apps/panel/toplevels/top_panel_screen0/auto_hide_size" --type integer 0
Under Ubuntu everything works great!

Oakley Minute 2.0

My favorite sunglasses firm is Oakley by far! After 9+ glorious years with Oakley Minute I step forward to the next generation Oakley Minute 2.0 Polarized this time! What can I say, sunglasses rocks and they're definitely deserve the term HDO (High Definition Optics).

Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) with 2.6.30.4 Kernel on HP 2140

Recently I bought an HP mini 2140 netbook and decided to install Ubuntu on it. As I browsing around for known issues on this machine I get into that with default 2.6.28.14 Kernel the Dual Core option from BIOS wouldn't work and installation crashed. After some readings I found that the latest Kernel (currently 2.6.30.4) fixed the problem so I proceed installation with Dual Core option disabled.

After that everything works like charm except wifi. I look around again in Ubuntu forums, blogs etc and come with this solution from Jocelyn's Blog. Let's see it step by step:

- Download and compile latest Kernel, or use my ready made 2.6.30.4

to install these files just run dpkg -i packagename.deb

- preparing the installation of STA Broadcom drivers

sudo apt-get install module-assistant
sudo module-assistant prepare

- download the Broadcom STA driver from
https://launchpad.net/debian/sid/+source/broadcom-sta/5.10.91.9-1

- the 32-bit driver:
https://launchpad.net/debian/sid/+source/broadcom-sta/5.10.91.9-1/+files/broadcom-sta_5.10.91.9.orig.tar.gz

- download also debian patches for this STA drivers version from:
http://patch-tracking.debian.net/package/broadcom-sta

mkdir wifi;cd wifi

# download all needed files

wget http://patch-tracking.debian.net/patch/series/dl/broadcom-sta/5.10.91.9-1/01-hidden-essid.patch
wget http://patch-tracking.debian.net/patch/series/dl/broadcom-sta/5.10.91.9-1/02-license.patch
wget http://patch-tracking.debian.net/patch/series/dl/broadcom-sta/5.10.91.9-1/03-2.6.29.patch
wget http://patch-tracking.debian.net/patch/series/dl/broadcom-sta/5.10.91.9-1/04-2.6.30.patch

mkdir hybrid;cd hybrid

# unpack the driver
tar zxf ../broadcom-sta_5.10.91.9.orig.tar.gz
cd broadcom-sta/

# patch the driver

patch -p1 < ../../01-hidden-essid.patch patch -p1 < ../../02-license.patch patch -p1 < ../../03-2.6.29.patch patch -p1 < ../../04-2.6.30.patch cd i386/

# make the module

make -C /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build M=`pwd`

# copy it to modules location and load the module

sudo cp wl.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/
sudo depmod -a
sudo modprobe wl

- in order to make sure the wl module is loaded after the reboot I’ve added wl to /etc/modules

sudo echo wl >> /etc/modules

Everything went well but wifi remained unavailable. I tried lspci -v and realize that Kernel driver was in use wasn't the wl but ssb (b43-pci-bridge). Then I read about KernelModuleBlacklisting from Debian Wiki and come up with the following solution:

sudo echo blacklist b43 >> /etc/modprobe.d/b43.conf
sudo echo blacklist ssb >> /etc/modprobe.d/ssb.conf
sudo modprobe -r b43
sudo modprobe -r ssb
sudo modprobe -r wl
sudo modprobe wl
sudo depmod -ae

- recreate initrd and restart Network Manager

update-initramfs -u
sudo service NetworkManager restart

and voila! wifi worked perfectly at last!
This tutorial will probably work for all devices using Broadcom BCM4322.

Got lucky with Kawasaki

Past Sunday (9 Aug 2009) a friend of mine went on vacations and left me his motorcycle a Kawasaki ZX-10 '07, so we arrange with another friend go for a ride and check it out. I was very exited because mine was out for service (Yamaha R1) and I had the opportunity to check out the ZX-10 and the GSX-R of other friend.

We went to Arachova and everything was great til returning. When we left mountains and lots of turns we rich the highway and decide in some part of the road to open the throttle a little bit, so we accelerate and at around 230km/h I realize that something was wrong with the back side and start decelerating but in 200km/h the bike started to "dance"! I tried not to panic and be as calm as I could to make very precise handlings in result to stop it.

Fortunately everything ended well and I'm just fine!

The mechanic told us that he found a piece of metal stuck in the tire and in combination with roads high temp it cause the tire to "burn".

Incident in pictures...