R. wins 423-397

R. wins 423-397
Originally uploaded by achmorrison.

We had quite a game today. Actually, R. had quite a game today. She got three bingos: dieters, grunted, and bonkers. I was only able to come up with one bingo: sluices.

A. wins over the family

A. wins over the family
Originally uploaded by achmorrison.

Friday night scrabble with the family.

Skype with the sister.

Skype with the sister.
Originally uploaded by achmorrison.

Renae's computer has a built in camera so we can video chat with Jennette.

All the cool kids are doing it, so here's my personality mosaic:



1. Castle Ruins - St Andrews Scotland, 2. Lunch, 3. ic0452.JPG, 4. oh... the blues, 5. Danica McKellar at Microsoft, 6. cup of coffee, 7. Istanbul Train Station, 8. pie ala mode on laptop on irc channel #sf-raves - dscf0334, 9. Covering Third, 10. HAVING FUN BEING A KID AGAIN !!!, 11. Uncertain Future, 12. at The Beat Museum, San Francisco: Hunky Jim Morrison of the DOORS band

Now you go get one!!

A. wins 377-372

A. wins 377-372
Originally uploaded by achmorrison.

Late Friday night game. We each got a bingo (R. with 'camions' and I had 'goodies') but R. let me win tonight.

Sync an ipod with iTunes on a linux computer!

Back in March there was some excitement when one of the WINE developers got an ipod to be recognized by iTunes running on linux with WINE. He posted his patch, but it has yet to migrate to the binary releases. So, unless you fancy patching and compiling WINE on your own, iTunes with WINE is not a great option.

I learned about VirtualBox about the same time, and it occurred to me that I could have a small Windows XP guest OS running on top of my Ubuntu install.

I installed the PUEL (non-free) version from Sun and followed the standard installation procedure. After applying a ton of XP patches, so that I could get to the point where I could use the guest XP install, I was able to download and install iTunes. I followed the instructions on the ubuntu site to get USB to work so the ipod was recognized. Here's a screenshot:


I wanted the ability to share folders between the guest and host OS and after a bit of struggling was able to get that to work (see note below). The bonus of getting the folder sharing to work was that I had to enable mouse sharing, which allowed for the "windowed" mode that you see in the screenshot.

I know that this is not the "free as in speech" way to use an ipod, but I also have a Nike+ that I would like to sync with the runnerplus website on a more regular basis. It was starting to be a pain booting into Windows to sync the ipod to have my stats saved to the website. Also, I have yet to find a linux tool that handles smart playlists of podcasts correctly. So far, this option seems to be the closest to what I've been looking for. And, I haven't seen anyone else do this in linux, that I know of. :)

Some notes:

1. USB permissions are not persistent after reboot. Further, you need to set the permissions AFTER plugging in the ipod.
2. The linux host can grab control of the sound card making the XP guest unable to play music. One way to fix this is to shutdown the program in linux that grabbed control of the sound card (if you don't need to use it) and restart the XP guest.
3. Installing Guest Additions seems to be critical for folder sharing! (Some people have posted that it is optional.) In my case, I had to install it TWICE to get the folder sharing to work. (There are other people who report similar behavior.
   

A. wins 341-307

A. wins 341-307
Originally uploaded by achmorrison.

We each got a bingo tonight: R. with 'favorite' and I had 'joisted'. Quiet night at Fusion Brew, but I got to try the mango jelly texture for the first time.