Get Scroll Mouse to Work on Ubuntu 7.10 and VMWare Fusion

I'm using Ubuntu 7.10 running under VMWare Fusion on my Mac for a project. I couldn't get the scroll mouse to work. A bit perplexing given that it is a very generic Logitec Optical mouse.

Well I finally found a fix on this page: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/VMware/Tools.

Just change the Protocol line for your mouse device in your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file to:
Options "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"

That seems to do the trick

Google AJAX Feeds API

This weekend I was planning to do some coding work on my home page. I wanted to add an RSS/Atom feed from my blog to the front page of blue sky workshop. To do this, you just need a simple proxy script to grab feeds from the web and cache them. Then write some AJAX code to request the feed and pull it down to your web page. Of course being lazy in the Larry Wall sense, I first tried find someone else's code to perform this task. I couldn't really find anything suitable and had pretty much settled on writing my own code.

However on Saturday by accident, I stumbled across the Google AJAX Feeds API:

http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxfeeds/.

Basically, Google has gone and written the whole thing for me already. Thank you Google! It took me about half an hour to modify their code and get it working on my home page. To see the code, just do a "view source" on the Blue Sky Workshop home page. The AJAX code is all in the head section of the page.

Since I'm using an Atom feed, the HTML markup I put in my posts is sent for each of my entries. So if I added the post description as a text node, the HTML is ignored and just shows up as text on my home page. But by setting description.innerHTML = entry.content, the HTML is incorporated just fine.

Very slick Google. For any future projects, I plan to check your site first to see if there is any other code I can steal... I mean use for my site. :)

Featured Gadget: Pollen.com - Pollen Levels

Posted by Kathy Walrath, Technical Writer

This blog periodically features a Google Desktop gadget and a quote from someone who uses it. If you'd like to recommend a gadget, send an email to desktop-gadgets AT google DOT com.

Kev Sherman, an application developer and father of two who lives just outside Philadelphia, says: "It's simple and easy to use. The pollen forecast really helped me prepare for my seasonal allergies. I was able to plan for when to take medication before my symptoms acted up. I can also check the pollen levels for when I'm traveling."

An anonymous reviewer says: "Great tool! I have it set up on both my home and work computers, with each set to their local zip codes. It�s interesting to see the difference in the Pollen 4-day forecast between these 2 areas."

More information | Download gadget

Getting a Start with Rails 2.0

Arun Gupta has a nice short post on how you can download JRuby 1.1 and and get started using Rails 2.0. Very helpful.

Greece v Germany

Found this on YouTube and though I should share. One of my favorite Monty Python clips. Greece v Germany in Soccer Final

Sun Purchases Virtualbox

I have been in some excellent training this week and didn't have a chance to look into this announcement. But after reading a few reviews, I am pleasantly surprised. The company that developed the software, Innotek, was also a co-developer of Virtual PC. So they definitely have some experience in the field.

Virtual Box is virtual machine software much like VMWare or Virtual PC. The difference is, the software can run as a host operating system on just about any operating system and the software is open source. My takeways from a little reading is this:

• Performance is on par with VMWare. Pretty impressive given the VMWare product has been around a lot longer.


• The UI is pretty good and the software is very stable. However there is still room for improvement here and there.


• Innotek is working on a server version of their product that would be similar to VMWare ESX. This would allow you to run a number of virtual machines a single host for web hosting applications for example.

For more information, take a look at these links.

Blog Review by Liqudat - Includes performance numbers

Techworld Review - Very recent

Infoworld VM Product Comparison

Commentary by Infoweek

Valentine's gadgets

Posted by James Yum (Google Desktop Team)

When I was a kid, Valentine's Day meant a lunch bag full of chalky candies and paper cutouts. While candy and paper hearts are still options, now you can celebrate digitally with Desktop gadgets. Here's a romantic rundown of some sugar-free recent additions.

	Daisy-gadget By Teodor Filimon This gadget brought back childhood memories of playing "she loves me, she loves me not" in the schoolyard. It's pretty accurate � she loves me not. :( But if I choose the "Always perfect ending" mode from the Options dialog, then she loves me, after all. Windows
	Love Quotes By Bijoy Thangaraj and Narasimhan DL Warm your heart this Valentine's Day with inspirational love quotes. My favorite: "Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence." Mac, Windows
	Love Meter By Vishnu.S Type in two names, and the gadget calculates a love compatibility score. Mac, Windows
	Sweethearts! By Bijoy Thangaraj and Narasimhan DL A lovely photo frame for you and your sweetheart. Drag and drop your pictures onto the gadget. Watch what happens when you fill the frames! Windows
	Valentine's Day Countdown By Vishnu.S This gadget is for you lucky people with big plans this February 14th. Mac, Windows

For yet more gadgets, see last year's Valentine's Day post. Happy Valentine's Day from the Google Desktop Team!

The Future of Languages

This link is a little old, but I came across it at a work presentation and thought I should blog it for future reference. This is a blog post from O'Reilly detailing the trend in book sales for 2007 for programming languages. Not surprisingly, only two languages are showing growth, Ruby and Javascript. Something to keep in mind when improving your skills.

Who cares about Fermilab? (Part II)

In an earlier post I pointed out that the entire computer industry owes its success to high energy physics (HEP); that medical imaging would not be where it is today without physics research done a few generations ago. In this second installment of "Who cares about Fermilab?" I raise awareness of research in retinal implants and track their development back to, you guessed it high energy physics.

In a 2007 article, written by Emily Singer, that appeared in the MIT Technology Review, she interviews Alan Litke, a physicist at University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) who's applying his particle detector expertise to neurobiology in what is titled the Retinal Readout Project.

Litke and his collaborators modeled their [artificial retinal] chip after the silicon microchip detectors that line supercolliders to capture signs of elusive, high-energy, subatomic particles, such as the Higgs boson.

So once again I ask "Who cares about Fermilab?" The answer might just be we all do, or should, because we just never know what good may come from deep under the ground where particles collide at near light speed.

Deadline Extension for the Android Developer Challenge

Deadline Extension for the Android Developer Challenge to 14 April 2008.

details

HP Laserjet 1020 on OS X Leopard

Need to get your HP Laserjet 1020 working on OS X Leopard? Just go to this link: http://www.railsguru.com/articles/2006/8/26/hp-laserjet-1020-on-osx

You have to install an old Laserjet 1022 which he has link to. Follow the simple steps and you are all set. I love the Internet. :)