Disable touchpad clicking/tabbing on linux

Here is a handy trick to disable your touchpad clicking, which always happens accidentally with my wrists.

synclient -l

This lists all the touchpad features.

You can control everyoption with synclient:

Code:

$ synclient PalmDetect=1 (to enable palm detection)
$ synclient TapButton1=0 (configure button events)
$ synclient TouchpadOff=1 (disable the touchpad)

Garmin Forerunner 405 Connect to OpenSuse linux

I just got my Garmin Forerunner 405 gps watch and it looks great, a little bit on the chuggy side for my wrist, but ok, what can we expect ;-)

I wanted to connect to linux to download my first workout.

lsusb did not recognise the stick at first. Only when I installed garmin drivers found at software.opensuse.org, it would recognise the stick.

Ok, so now what...
I downloaded and compiled gant, from: https://github.com/jamesarbrown/Gant

 make clean

make clean

make

Now to pair the device:

./gant -f mydevname -a auth405

Make sure your watch in settings has pairing on. This creates a tcx file, that you can import on endomondo, or garmin connect. 

The result:

Now I am just experimenting and seeing if I can get a browser plugin to work... http://software.opensuse.org/package/GarminPlugin looks promising...

Kobo Touch ebook reader

After considering somewhat all ebook readers, I just got a kobo touch ebook reader.

It supports all type of file formats (including pdf, epub, mobi and cbr which are the ones I use). Has wifi. Is superlight. If you look around it's even cheaper than the kindle. Advantage is that you are able to rotate the screen, which is a feature that is no longer available on the kindle. The system is quite stable, and battery life is ab. 1 month. It even has a social app to connect to facebook if you are into that.

And not to mention... it's superfun and nice to read... easy on the eyes... I love it!

Consider the Kindle Touch as an ebook reader

Seriously considering getting one of these:

The low price makes it a perfect option to stop printing out my pdf books... A friend of mine showed me his and I was seriously impressed by the e-inkt. It has 2Gb of storage (no sd slot), of which 1.2Gb at least free for books. It has touch, so you can annotate. The page turning speed is not that fast, but it is the book-reading experience... I read some other reviews and although I was also doubting the Kobo touch (both seem to be quite slow, slower that the kindle 4 which on the downside lacks good pdfs support and touch). 

I guess these days you should just look at an ebook reader as a cheap device that you take everywhere. It's not a tablet, but great to stop printing out what you have to read... Passing by the store later on...

----
Update: ok, noticed this nice gadget is 25 euros cheaper in the UK. Luckily I'm visiting a friend in Southampton next week... will pick one up there... 

MyBook Live for Linux/OpenSuse

I just spent a few hours reading up on the best way to connect my new 2T MyBook Live, NAS.

I first tried to mount the network hard disk manually, that when ok, except I couldn't get the permissions right.
I fiddled with fstab... couldn't get the permissions quite right... Installed smb4k... reading worked fine... no writing, even though the files are correctly chmodded...

So... then I fixed it in 1 minute...

Open Dolphin (file browser), click on network (in the places window). Add network folder -> Microsoft Windows Network Drive (even though the MyBook works with Lenny linux). Fill in the IP addres of your NAS (check this in your router table). And voila... done... omg... IT IS THAT EASY...