This means I tend to have bothкомпютри Pidgin and Skype active at any one time. As well as having a single consolidated view of all my I.M. accounts… I personally prefer the Pidgin interface;

Just came across Skype API Plugin for Pidgin – created be Eion Robb.

UPDATE: after using this for a few days… I turned it off again. Pidgin was unstable, Skype didn’t always start automagically in the background.

Whether I tried vlc / totem / ogle / mplayer – I was getting the following hard crash

X Error of failed request:  BadAlloc (insufficient resources for operation)

I was running my Sony SZ Laptop in ’stamina’ mode – which uses an Intel i810 graphics card. I had to sift through quite a few pages before I came upon a solution that worked:

Add the following line to the Device section of your xorg.conf file:

Option "LinearAlloc" "16000"

Also checked out bluetooth-alsa again – came across this site to ease the installation of a2dp (stereo bluetooth headset) on Linux. Worked incredibly well – comes with a nice script to toggle between speaker/headset. VLC & Amarok play nice as soon as you select the ASLA device as ‘bluetooth’.

(Watched a fair bit of TV over the weekend; West Wing, Lost, Southland Tales, Meet the Spartans, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)

Now couple the “3 Ireland” data price plan with the Linux + Bluetooth + Mobile + GPRS tutorial below and I’ll be laughing.

1. Turn on bluetooth on your mobile phone (ensure visibility is enabled)

2. Find out your mobile phone mac address is:

sean@viper:~$ hcitool scan
Scanning ...
        00:19:2D:43:00:D9       button

3. Find out what channel DUN (dial up networking) is running on your device:

sean@viper:~$ sdptool search DUN
Inquiring ...
Searching for DUN on 00:19:2D:43:00:D9 ...
Service Name: Dial-Up Networking
Service RecHandle: 0x10002
Service Class ID List:
  "Dialup Networking" (0x1103)
Protocol Descriptor List:
  "L2CAP" (0x0100)
  "RFCOMM" (0x0003)
    Channel: 2
Language Base Attr List:
  code_ISO639: 0x454e
  encoding:    0x6a
  base_offset: 0x100
Profile Descriptor List:
  "Dialup Networking" (0x1103)
    Version: 0x0100

4. Establish a connection with your mobile’s DUN. With Ubuntu Feisty this will trigger an automatic pairing of your device if you haven’t already done so. Also this will automagically create a /dev/rfcomm0 device if all goes well.

sean@viper:~$ sudo rfcomm connect 0 00:19:2D:43:00:D9 2

5. Configure wvdial (this is how I do it at the moment – should be trivial to configure Ubuntu’s swish NetworkManager applet to do the same with a similar configuration). I’ve included both Vodafone and 3 Ireland settings below for completeness – both have been tested and work well.

sean@viper:~$ sudo vi /etc/wvdial.conf 

[Modem0]
Modem = /dev/rfcomm0
Baud = 115200
SetVolume = 0
Dial Command = ATDT
Init1 = ATZ
Init3 = ATM0
FlowControl = CRTSCTS

[Dialer vodafone]
Username = "vodafone"
Password = "vodafone"
Phone = *99#
Stupid Mode = 1
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
Init3 = AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","isp.vodafone.ie","",0,0
Inherits = Modem0

[Dialer three]
Username = "none"
Password = "none"
Phone = *99#
Stupid Mode = 1
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
Init3 = AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","3ireland.ie","",0,0
Inherits = Modem0

6. Launch wvdial

sean@viper:~$ wvdial vodafone

7. Ping google.com and shout “I am so wireless right now”

With all of the above in mind – why would one want the USB/PCMCIA GPRS modems these operators offer – which in some cases are more expensive?

The first thing I did was upgrade my Dapper Drake install. Helluva lota updates in two weeks! And guess what – some kind soul has put compiz in the universe repository… Wobbly windows and cube goodness! It really is slick and the F12 zoom feature is very genuinely useful. It all made me a bit woozy though – looking at those windows womble about the screen.