gregoa's blog

I borrowed a webcam (labtec webcam pro) from a friend yesterday & installed it today. & yeah — it works. some steps:

• get spca5xx-source.
• enable v4l in your kernel if it's not there already.
• unpack /usr/src/spca5xx-source.tar.bz2, create the kernel module with module-assistent (m-a prepare; m-a a-i spca5xx).
• modprobe spca5xx.
• well, that's all. use the cam (/dev/video0 or similar) with qtwengophone, camstream, gqcam, or (nice!) camE. — webcamd (or xawtv/v4lctl) doesn't like it.
• for the microphone you need snd-usb-audio in your kernel; then use /dev/dsp1 or hw:1,0 or similar.

now I've ordered another cam of the same type for the friend who officially still owns "my" cam ;-)

& maybe you'll find something on http://info.comodo.priv.at/webcam/ sometimes ...

on other news: cpulimit has entered the Debian archive yesterday.
& today tony mancill has uploaded jabref — thanks!

good will & efforts are not enough. I sent 3 bug reports today: #370733 is not reproducible (not even by myself), #370729 is a duplicate^Wtriplicate^Wquadruplicate^Wyou-name-it-plicate, at least #370741 is still alive ...

a small consolation: cdck has entered the archive yesterday.

receiving more & more trackback spam I got more & more annoyed; the idea from de.alt.soc.blogs came quite handy: only allow trackback pings were the URL of your own blog is in the submitted page.

so I've implemented this feature in nanobloggertrackback today & released a new version (tarball, Debian package).

today in the morning (in his timezone: yesterday in the evening) tony mancill uploaded another of my Debian packages: cpulimit. — thanks alot, tony!

the overall current state is now:

• fullquottel, & mimetic are in unstable and testing.
• mailtextbody, cdck, & cpulimit are waiting for ftp-masters' approval in the new queue.
• & then there are several perl modules I co-maintain within the Debian Perl Group (project home page, project info on alioth).

in case you're interested you can follow the development on my Debian quality assurance - packages overview page.

/dev/hda was my old windows disk. unused for over a year.
I wanted to ritually delete the partitions, & format new ones with ext3 on some suitable occasion. but today I needed disk space — so I just did it.

& it feels good ;-)

wrote a plugin for nanoblogger that shows the temperature in $METARCODE in my blog's sidebar.

$METARCODE for innsbruck is e.g. LOWI. cf. for example the US national weather service for finding out the weather/METAR code for your city/airport.

I've just written a tiny nanoblogger plugin that shows the "last movie" I've seen (taken from my movie diary feed) in my blog's side bar.

ignoramusses shouldn't play with iptables; I just locked myself out from the Debian box at the office (while flushing(!) a chain).

*sigh*

update:

1. went to the office & did a hard reset on the server. *urgs*
2. played with iptables again. now the portforwarding stuff works.

— 2006-04-23

upgraded to x.org 7 today. no big deal, some minor adaptions were necessary, then almost everything worked. with one exception: my hand-crafted xkbd-variant is not "found" anymore. & xmodmap -e 'keycode bla = foo bar baz' was not my friend either.

& I had to accept the removal of mgp & xli due to unsatisfied dependencies. & I lost axyftp but that was my own fault.

well.

update: fixed the keyboard: xlibs -> xkb-data, /etc/X11/xkb/ -> /usr/share/X11/xkb/. not really difficult ;-)
& I substituted xli with xloadimage at the only occurence where I used it. — 2006-04-23

during the easter weekend I had fun (more or less) with our three Debian packages (fullquottel, mimetic, & mailtextbody — cf. my last blog entry on this subject). a short chronology:

• I had contacted debian-mentors@l.d.o on staturday one week ago in order to find sponsors - no reaction; I tried it again this saturday.
• on saturday afternoon tony mancill contacted me & said that he would upload fullquottel and check the other two packages as well. shortly afterwards he uploaded fullquottel; thanks!
• a short time later I got two REJECTs - one for fullquottel ("is already in the NEW directory"), & one for mimetic ("missing .orig.tar.gz").
• it was not until sunday morning that I found out that christoph haas was the one who had uploaded these two packages; thanks! — no further actions on sunday except for some mails & me preparing a new version of the mimetic package.
• on monday I suddenly got two new mails concerning uploads: a confirmation for mimetic & a REJECT for mailtextbody: ".orig.tar.gz is already in the NEW directory". this time it was martin würtele who did the uploads; thanks!
• no further actions up to now except from a clarification mail from me to our three sponsors on monday ...

summary of the weekend: 3 days, 3 packages, 3 sponsors, 5 uploads, 2 confirmations, 3 REJECTs.

situation: fullquottel's new revision is in unstable, mimetic is in the NEW queue waiting for ftp-masters' approval, and mailtextbody is in the NEW queue with an obsolete version, the new revision needs to be uploaded at the latest when mimetic is accepted.

it's almost like a thriller :-)

update: tony mancill has uploaded the new version of mailtextbody; thanks! so everything's done at the moment; mimetic & mailtextbody are awaiting ftp-masters' approval. — 2006-04-21

update: mimetic has passed ftp-masters' approval & has entered unstable. — 2006-04-30