Shami's Blog

If you’ve used Linux as a desktop, you’ll know it’s only playing catch-up when it comes to instant messaging. I’ve been using Pidgin since was called Gaim, I think I started using it back in 2003. I love how minimalistic it is. Sadly the developers are going nowhere with it, at least that’s my (as well as a few others) humble opinion.

I stumbled upon this post which mentions a new (or maybe just new to me) client called Empathy. After playing with it for a few days now I think it has great potential. It’s still pretty basic but also under heavy development. It’s very minimalistic and uses the Telepathy library, which IMHO is a better approach than Pidgin’s libpurple.

It still doesn’t have proxy support, but you can work around that, at least for MSN and Gtalk, the protocols that I use. Here is how I did it it:

Gtalk: Just create a tunnel with SSH

ssh -C -q -f -M 0 -N -L 5223:209.85.137.125:5223

Where 209.85.137.125 is the IP address of talk.google.com, then set the account to use localhost as a server

MSN is a little different, this trick didn’t work because the client connects to a login server, which redirects the client to a different server. MSN is implemented using the telepathy-butterfly executable. Just use a socks server like this:

mv /usr/lib/telepathy/telepathy-butterfly /usr/lib/telepathy/telepathy-butterfly-old
vi /usr/lib/telepathy/telepathy-butterfly

#!/bin/bash
exec /usr/bin/tsocks /usr/lib/telepathy/telepathy-butterfly-old

chmod +x /usr/lib/telepathy/telepathy-butterfly

Enjoy

This is a shout out to my old friend Tamer, yet another fallen soldier from the ranks of bachelorism. We attended his wedding last night it was awesome!

Congrats man and good luck on your new life

So I finally coughed up the money to get an Xbox 360, the thing is, every store that sells the Xbox in Jordan is highly overpriced (423$ as opposed to 199$ for the Arcade version) and the consoles are VERY old, dating back to 2007. This means they are using the old chips which are highly not recommended. A friend of mine, Tamer, came from Bahrain Friday and was kind enough to pick up the console for me. Thanks man ^_^.

I just had to take some pictures of the event. Enjoy

Weird title, I know. It’s the title of a ShowTime series hosted by Penn & Teller, which I thought was appropriate for this rant. The thing is, I hate it when people act like jerks.

I work in Shmeasani, one of the busiest neighborhoods in Amman. It’s so jammed you can barely find free parking, and if you go with paid parking, you can pay up to 3 times the normal fees. As always, some people think they are better than everybody else, they erect poles and chain them together in front of their houses so people can’t park there. What kind of attitude is that?

I have seen this with my own eyes, when someone wants to visit this guy, they park in front of one of the neighbors’ houses. Quoting Penn. “And then there’s THIS a**hole” who actually has blocked parking in front of his house, where does he park? You guessed it, in front of his neighbor’s.

Does it annoy me when lots of people park in front of my house, yes, because I can’t park, but it’s no big deal. Does it happen? Sometimes. What do I do about it? Nothing, people need some place to park.

Word of advice, don’t do to others what you don’t like happening to you, A**hole!

I came across this guide about installing Google Chrome under Ubuntu. It is somewhat slow, slower than Windows and much slower than Firefox but it still works, well, kinda. You have a few problems with fonts, as well as sites that don’t work properly with Chrome yet. I’m sticking with Firefox for the time being, but at least I have an option for those sites that aren’t compatible with it.

I wrote this post from Chrome, so yeah, it does work

EDIT: This post only covers IPv6, please check the update post which covers IPv6 and Firefox

Today when I rebooted to my Windows installation which I very rarely do, I noticed that browsing under Windows feels much faster than under Ubuntu. After booting back to Ubuntu I noticed the “looking up domain.tld” part was taking a lot of time, which seemed a little odd.

Anyways, after some googling I found out that Debian enables IPv6 by default and uses that before and uses it before IPv4. A quick remedy was:

sudo vi /etc/modprobe.d/bad_list

#Add this line
alias net-pf-10 off

After which you should reboot your system. Now browsing feels much faster. To speed it up a little I installed a local caching DNS server which works like a charm. A quick HOWTO can be found here

Hope this helps.

I’ve owned a Microsoft MultiMedia Keyboard 1.0A for years now. It’s a well belt keyboard to say the least. Only one problem though, the “F Lock” key. As a Linux user I have no use for the “Special” keys Microsoft added to the keyboard, and the button always starts turned off, no way to fix it.

I used to keep my PC on at all times so I only needed to press that button every couple of months, or when I want to take a screenshot, but now I started to turn it off at night, and having to press that stupid button every time I boot my system is a huge pain in the butt.

I found a fix for it here and thought I should share

vi /usr/local/bin/f_lock_fix
setkeycodes bb 59 # Help  -> F1
setkeycodes 88 60 # Undo  -> F2
setkeycodes 87 61 # Redo  -> F3
setkeycodes be 62 # New   -> F4
setkeycodes bf 63 # Open  -> F5
setkeycodes c0 64 # Close -> F6
setkeycodes c1 65 # Reply -> F7
setkeycodes c2 66 # Fwd   -> F8
setkeycodes c3 67 # Send  -> F9
setkeycodes a3 68 # Spell -> F10
setkeycodes d7 87 # Save  -> F11
setkeycodes d8 88 # Print -> F12
chmod 700 /usr/local/bin/f_lock_fix

Now add this to your startup file “/etc/rc.local” or equivalent

if [ -x /usr/local/bin/f_lock_fix ]; then
	echo "Fixing the F-Lock scan codes for F1-F12 keys...";
	/usr/local/bin/f_lock_fix;
fi

Congrats Faris on your wedding. I wish you and your wife all the happiness and prosperity this world has to offer.

Good luck

So I log in to my Facebook account (Which is something I very rarely do) and I find a friend invitation from a very famous singer, Ragheb Alama.

I was very excited. So excited I ignored him faster than he could say: “Nasini Edonia”. As if someone like him would wander around in Facebook to add friends . Even if he was the actual Ragheb, I’m not even a fan

Have a great day everybody.

An hour ago I needed some sticky notes for a project I’m working on. Since it was past 9PM the nearby stationary shops were closed, so I had to go to one of the mega stores in Amman.

When I reached the cashier lines I was holding a pack of sticky notes, a roll of tape and a pen. Looking at the lines I saw one that had a sign above it that read “Express Line, 10 items or less”. The other lines had people with lots of stuff in their carts so I thought I should go to the “Express” line to finish faster.

This is not the first time this happens. Apparently this store always makes the SLOWEST employee handle the Express line. He was so slow, so clumsy and so inconsiderate that the so called “Express” line was in fact slower than the other lines. This line should be labeled “The extra slow line, use it if you have time to waste!”.

I guess those of you who go to that store will know which one I’m talking about.