Got me a(nother) mousy

Yeap, the thing with the mouse is pretty hard to stop it.

All the Amazon reviews seem to concur, it looks like a good purchase.

Got me a ballsy mousy

My mouse fetish goes on and on and on.
Been toying with the idea of getting one of these for a while (epinion's reviews are mostly good to very good), so well, today got it; I'm still trying to get totally used to the little beast.
Seems to go fine, so long only test it on Thor, that is on Os X; later will take it for a spin with Tango on Ubuntu; on Os X, NuclearMouse it is a real help, let me tell you.

(Incidentally, it seems like the NuclearMouse's site is either down, or they have left the building... Another reason to keep local copies of that little, mostly free & totally useful small programs that you find on the web... If you are gone NuclearMouse, you'll be remembered)

Uncompressed (and cropped) copy on ImageShack

Vacation hardware

Another journey of traveling Trantor begins...
And the first step is replacing this dreadful mouse I got, with this hotness, for me, regarding mouses, cable is where is at.

Yes, my vacation time has started.

One drag to rule them all

I just found another program that will allow you to mimic the "Alt + drag" of X 11 on Windows, that is, to move or resize a window like you can do on X Window. Like this one and this one does for Os X.

It is called "Taekwindow" and it does this:

"is a simple, lightweight and free program that allows you to manipulate floating windows in Microsoft Windows in a way similar to many X11 window managers."

It is good to see that there are more of them, I was aware of only for Windows.

The return of Odin

Installed OpenBSD 4.3, -fresh from the presses, it only has 9 days since release...- on Odin, my Compaq Presario 1200 piece of crap laptop; who already has a FreeBSD, and a Ubuntu incarnation.

Briefly played with Ubuntu 8.04, but I wanted to test something new on my dear laptop.
Everything seems to be working OK, from the USB ethernet adaptop, to the soundcard, and even the mouse, I mean a Ps/2 piece of crap one, that didn't work on Ubuntu, without performing a little bit of tweaking.

Here is the dmesg:

OpenBSD 4.3 (GENERIC) #698: Wed Mar 12 11:07:05 MDT 2008
    deraadt@i386.openbsd.org:/usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/GENERIC
cpu0: Intel Pentium III ("GenuineIntel" 686-class, 128KB L2 cache) 698 MHz
cpu0: FPU,V86,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,MMX,FXSR,SSE
real mem  = 326660096 (311MB)
avail mem = 307400704 (293MB)
mainbus0 at root
bios0 at mainbus0: AT/286+ BIOS, date 11/03/00, BIOS32 rev. 0 @ 0xfd720, SMBIOS rev. 2.3 @ 0xebdb0 (14 entries)
bios0: vendor Phoenix Technologies LTD version "4.06" date 11/03/2000
bios0: Compaq Presario
apm0 at bios0: Power Management spec V1.2
apm0: battery life expectancy 93%
apm0: AC on, battery charge high, charging
acpi at bios0 function 0x0 not configured
pcibios0 at bios0: rev 2.1 @ 0xfd720/0x8e0
pcibios0: PCI IRQ Routing Table rev 1.0 @ 0xfdf70/112 (5 entries)
pcibios0: PCI Interrupt Router at 000:07:0 ("VIA VT82C596A ISA" rev 0x00)
pcibios0: PCI bus #2 is the last bus
bios0: ROM list: 0xc0000/0xc000
cpu0 at mainbus0
pci0 at mainbus0 bus 0: configuration mode 1 (no bios)
pchb0 at pci0 dev 0 function 0 "VIA VT8601 PCI" rev 0x05
agp0 at pchb0: v2, aperture at 0xf8000000, size 0x10000000
ppb0 at pci0 dev 1 function 0 "VIA VT82C601 AGP" rev 0x00
pci1 at ppb0 bus 1
vga1 at pci1 dev 0 function 0 "Trident CyberBlade i1 AGP" rev 0x6a
wsdisplay0 at vga1 mux 1: console (80x25, vt100 emulation)
wsdisplay0: screen 1-5 added (80x25, vt100 emulation)
pcib0 at pci0 dev 7 function 0 "VIA VT82C686 ISA" rev 0x22
pciide0 at pci0 dev 7 function 1 "VIA VT82C571 IDE" rev 0x10: ATA66, channel 0 configured to compatibility, channel 1 configured to compatib
ility
wd0 at pciide0 channel 0 drive 0: 
wd0: 16-sector PIO, LBA, 19077MB, 39070080 sectors
wd0(pciide0:0:0): using PIO mode 4, Ultra-DMA mode 4
atapiscsi0 at pciide0 channel 1 drive 0
scsibus0 at atapiscsi0: 2 targets
cd0 at scsibus0 targ 0 lun 0:  SCSI0 5/cdrom removable
cd0(pciide0:1:0): using PIO mode 4, Ultra-DMA mode 2
uhci0 at pci0 dev 7 function 2 "VIA VT83C572 USB" rev 0x10: irq 11
viaenv0 at pci0 dev 7 function 4 "VIA VT82C686 SMBus" rev 0x30: HWM disabled: 24-bit timer at 3579545Hz
auvia0 at pci0 dev 7 function 5 "VIA VT82C686 AC97" rev 0x20: irq 9
ac97: codec id 0x41445348 (Analog Devices AD1881A)
ac97: codec features headphone, Analog Devices Phat Stereo
audio0 at auvia0
vendor "Conexant", unknown product 0x2013 (class communications subclass miscellaneous, rev 0x01) at pci0 dev 9 function 0 not configured
cbb0 at pci0 dev 10 function 0 "TI PCI1410 CardBus" rev 0x01: irq 9
isa0 at pcib0
isadma0 at isa0
pckbc0 at isa0 port 0x60/5
pckbd0 at pckbc0 (kbd slot)
pckbc0: using irq 1 for kbd slot
wskbd0 at pckbd0: console keyboard, using wsdisplay0
pmsi0 at pckbc0 (aux slot)
pckbc0: using irq 12 for aux slot
wsmouse0 at pmsi0 mux 0
pcppi0 at isa0 port 0x61
midi0 at pcppi0: 
spkr0 at pcppi0
lpt0 at isa0 port 0x378/4 irq 7
npx0 at isa0 port 0xf0/16: reported by CPUID; using exception 16
fdc0 at isa0 port 0x3f0/6 irq 6 drq 2
fd0 at fdc0 drive 0: 1.44MB 80 cyl, 2 head, 18 sec
usb0 at uhci0: USB revision 1.0
uhub0 at usb0 "VIA UHCI root hub" rev 1.00/1.00 addr 1
cardslot0 at cbb0 slot 0 flags 0
cardbus0 at cardslot0: bus 2 device 0 cacheline 0x0, lattimer 0x20
pcmcia0 at cardslot0
biomask ef7d netmask ef7d ttymask ffff
mtrr: Pentium Pro MTRR support
url0 at uhub0 port 2 "Linksys Linksys USB LAN Adapter" rev 1.10/1.00 addr 2
url0: address 00:10:60:e7:25:5a
urlphy0 at url0 phy 0: RTL internal phy
softraid0 at root
root on wd0a swap on wd0b dump on wd0b

Bad mouse, bad!

The rodent, in the end, turned out to be a piece of crap, I mean the one I bought...

The wheel button started to work bad, to the point where it doesn't work, you have to press it like Godzilla to make it work (luckily, the wheel itself does without any problem)

I can't vouch for the magnifier, because since I don't use it, I haven't installed the software not on Tango nor on Thor. (but that has nothing to do with the wheel button problem)

The whole mouse feels a little clanky, and way too plastic like for my taste.
Any way, I'll use it till I destroy it for good.

My advice, if you can, stay away from this mouse.

Mouse Nirvana

Well, I finally found it: NuclearMouse, so, all my rants about Move/resize windows a la X Window on Os X are finally over.
On top of all, it is free; tested on Thor, running Tiger, all patches applied, no problems at all so far.

Exodus programs

A couple of programs I forgot to add to the list of the ones I have installed on my Vista sandbox.

- Win32WM (Direct link)
It gives you the most practical thing that ever came out of X Window, but on Windows -get it?- :p
The ability to move a window by grabbing it anywhere not just the title bar.
You click anywhere on the window, press the Alt key, and you can move the window.
Like I said before , I really don't understand why Os X doesn't have this built in & from the get go.


- XKeymacs
If you are an Emacs junkie -like I am-, then this is the one for you.
It gives you Emacs keyboard shortcuts on all Windows, on everything, form Notepad, to explorer.exe, amazing, I know, I know :p
The programs needs tweaking, -perhaps a lot-, but that's what Emacs is all about, and, if you add Windows to it, and a lot of different programs, well, you'll have to expect to configure a lot :D
The tweaking part is not because it is complex, but because many of the built in Emacs shortcuts, enabled globally by default will conflict with the behavior you expect from some programs; nothing extreme, but your usual keyboard shortcut might not work until you configure it a bit.

Got me a new mousy

It's official, I have a rodent fetish, and no matter what, I'm proud of it.
Today bought a new one, because, not only my fight to death, and later defeat; but also it is very likely that my employer will give a Windows laptop on the next days, one of those that comes with Windows Vista pre-installed (and I hope) not too much crapware beneath it.

Goliath Vs. OpenBSD: configuring X

Well, today, I took sometime to configure X, as you can see on the screenshot, I still have a loooong way to go... That's twm window manager running (and it is Ok for your eyes to bleed a bit), a minimalist window manager (way before Blackbox and Fluxbox make it fashionable to be 'lightweight')

Configuring the mouse, I have a plain vanilla Serial one, a Genius NetScroll, on the console was easy, typed this as root:

wsmoused -2 -p /dev/cua00 -t microsoft


And added this to the '/etc/rc.conf.local' file to automate the execution:

wsmoused_flags="-2 -p /dev/cua00 -t microsoft"


Now, getting to work on X was a little more trickier, but not much, it looks like you can't run the console mouse service 'wsmoused' as well as X, so, I have to kill the console service, before starting X. There is a somehow lengthy discussion/ post about it here

On the xorg.conf file, the mouse is defined like this:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse1"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "Microsoft"
Option "Device" "/dev/tty00"


I have yet to get the mouse wheel working, and install another lightweight desktop environment, maybe even Xfce, I'm seriously thinking in getting more RAM for Goliath, if I can maxx it to 768 MB, and get a faster CPU (like a 700 MHz one), I can easily use it as a desktop, 'always on' kinda box.
The main advantage is that it uses the same RAM than my QuickSilver box, Thor.

Adventures in Ubuntu Land: chasing the mouse

Finally got the PS/2 mouse up & working on Odin, my Compaq Presario laptop. The problem was simple, but it took a lot of researching, fumbling & Googling to find out about it.
The thing is, the 'psmouse' kernel module needs to be mounted with an option passed, that's all, so, you have to unload the module:


sudo modprobe -r psmouse ENTER


And then mount it once again, passing the option:


sudo modprobe psmouse proto=imps ENTER


That's it, the PS/2 pops back to life. Automate that so you don't have to type it each time that you reboot, and you are done.

Found the answer on this August 2006 Forum list archive: ps/2 mouse

Now the little laptop got a much, much useful, I finally got everything I was having already working on FreeBSD, but running Ubuntu (one might think that the other way around is how things should go, but...)

Move/resize windows a la X Window

One the things I missed the most when I moved to Os X was the ability to move and resize any window like you can do on Linux, running X11; where you can simply grab a window and move it by pressing a keyboard/ mouse combination anywhere on the given screen.
I looked all around for such an option, but couldn't find none, even on Windows there is such a thing... win32WM

Yesterday, by mistake, I found a couple of programs that can do that:

WindowDragon

WindowDragon   Musings from Mars blog post/ review

WindowDragon  MacUpdate download page

WindowDragon  Status-Q blog post/ review

GeekBind

Share/ Payware

MondoMouse Resize, focus follows mouse, etc.

MondoMouse Mac Os X Hints - Resize and move windows via mouse drag

OCSmart Hacks