Xorg causing keyboards and mice to not work

There was a power outage at my house during the early morning hours of Halloween. My computer was off and I had to turn on my computer again. At the KDE login screen, my keyboard and mouse failed to work.

I went through an interactive bootup and chose not to load kdm, taking me to a regular console, and my keyboard worked just fine. I tried looking for solutions (and missed the correct solution, which I'll get to later), did not find one that worked, and decided to reinstall Gentoo.

I decided to go with a 64 bit installation this time, but still ran across the issue of my keyboard and mouse failing. Finally, I find that Xorg started to use HAL. Putting the line
Option "AutoAddDevices" "false"

in the ServerFlags section of xorg.conf fixed this.

Now to find out how to get my dual monitor setup to work like it did in my old machine, despite using the same xorg.conf (minus the line added above) from my old setup.

Autumn Leaves

Taken this week.

On-Camera Flash by Neil van Niekerk

I've been slowly going through the book On-Camera Flash by Neil van Niekerk - I'm not even halfway through it yet - but I've been very pleased with it so far. He is able to explain flash in a way that makes sense to me and finally makes it click. I don't do as much portrait photography as I might like, though I do get the opportunity to take photos of people at work, though only on a point and shoot camera, but I feel like I am already doing a better job at taking photos with flash.

The iPhone: Not Necessarily For Work

I had my first hands on experience with the iPhone yesterday, setting one up for someone at work, and I have to admit that for what time I have spent with it, I am not impressed.

First of all, the requirement of having iTunes installed on a computer, and then connecting the iPhone to the computer to be able to use the phone functionality is ridiculous. iTunes installation is blocked at work and I doubt that it is that unusual in the workplace.

Second, the keys on the iPhone were not always responsive to my touch. And when it was, once in a while it would press the incorrect key.

Third, not all of the functionality is as intuitive as it should be. Pressing the phone button was unresponsive or cause all icons on the screen to shake...no phone pad to dial a number to call was in sight. Phone functionality should not be that difficult to find or use.

I have no desire for any kind of "smartphone", but even if I did, this experience would turn me away from going with the iPhone.

Experience with the Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000 on Linux

I recently purchased the Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000 to replace a very old 3Com HomeConnect webcam. I received the July 2008 version of the webcam, of which I was disappointed and surprised about considering that I purchased this in August 2009. This version apparently has some incompatibilties with many host controllers on Linux, so your experience may vary.

The install was simple enough. I compiled UVC support into the kernel, rebooted, and my camera was detected. The image quality is great - I am really pleased with it. When it comes to using it with applications, however, I have mixed results.

• Skype - works fine


• Cheese - Sometimes it works fine, sometimes it doesn't. The colors seem a bit off.


• Camorama - Fails to connect to the device. I think this is more a problem with the program than the webcam.


• Luvcview - Sometimes it works fine, sometimes it doesn't. The colors seem a bit off. This is not marked as stable in Gentoo and the program showed errors while trying to adjust settings.


• Kopete - Works fine. I was able to adjust setting for the webcam here.


• Flash - Webcam crashes a few seconds after starting it. This appears to be specific to Flash on Linux, as I had the same problem on my Kubuntu laptop. I plugged the webcam into my Powerbook G4 running OS X and it worked fine there.

I hope to try it in Pidgin 2.6.1 or higher once it becomes stable to see how well it works there. I rarely use a microphone so have not tested it's functionality yet. I'm disappointed with the problems I'm seeing in Flash and hope future updates to Flash and/or the UVC drivers fix this.

Is my DSL Modem Dying?

For the past couple of days my connection would be slow to connect to sites and downloads. Once a download started, however, the download speed was fine. I rebooted my DSL modem and it appears to have fixed the problem. But my modem is six years old. I'll have to see if it starts having this problem often, like I did with my old router before it slowed my connection down.

Zumbox - The Paperless Postal System

Zumbox supposedly has an email address for every street address in the United States and is secure enough to meet PCI and HIPAA compliance.

An interesting concept, though I am a bit hesitant on using it for those purposes. While they may meet the same security standards as banks, I would rather not rely on one site for important mailings.