more US wireless money-saving options

while doing research for my own clean break with verizon, I stumbled upon some great deals with various US wireless carriers that I thought I'd share with others out there who are looking to save some money: simple mobile: $40 unlimited everything simple mobile's $40/month plan now includes unlimited 3G data. so that's unlimited talk, text, and 3G data for just $40 per line. that's nearly the cheapest deal you'll find anywhere in the US right now. walmart family mobile: unlimited talk and text, free data for 3 months the first line is $45/month,...

saying goodbye to verizon :)

I cannot wait. in just a few weeks, I'll be saying goodbye to verizon wireless for good. I'm essentially following my own advice, starting at step 1 (don't renew your contract), and I couldn't be happier, for several reasons: Verizon (and the other major carriers) forces you to have a data plan if you have a smartphone. okay, so I thought they did this so they would get their money back on subsidized phones. wrong. they're just greedy. I say this because you can't even go out and buy a used smartphone on craig's list and put it on one of the...

Living with less (or no) data on Android

So I promised a little while back that I'd write up a post on some great Android apps that work offline. Of course many apps fall into this category, but these in particular are replacements for apps that otherwise normally rely on a data connection: Aldiko I'm guessing most book reader apps will let you read books offline (once you've downloaded them), but this one is so good I haven't tried any others. I love it because it has a lot of public domain books for free, like many of the older classics. CoPilot Live (link to USA version 8 ) Did...

Ubuntu 11.10 brings with it more Vala

I've talked about Vala a couple times on this blog, and the release of Ubuntu 11.10 tomorrow brings with it another Vala app and more attention to this incredible programming language. The app is a backup client called Déjà Dup. You can read more about it here and see some screenshots here. While I'm at it, here are some other cool vala apps I've run across: Geary (email app)Yet another app by the Yorba team, who has been prominent in promoting...

How to reduce your cell phone bill

Note: while this article is mostly specific to US wireless providers and practices like subsidized phones, many of these tips could probably be applied anywhere. Don't renew your contract Saving money on your cell phone bill will take some time and research, and the last thing you want to do is get locked in again to your overpriced contract. You'll want to be especially on your guard against "deals" your wireless company may offer, such as the ability to get a new subsidized phone by renewing your contract as early as six month before it expires. Shop...

coming soon: memory-mapped db for OpenLDAP

short version:I just ran across a site with news of a new database backend for OpenLDAP that's designed to be completely mapped to memory and is supposed to be faster, more memory efficient, and much easier to configure:Memory-mapped Database for OpenLDAP long version:I'm a huge fan of OpenLDAP. not only is it the fastest and most scalable implementation of LDAP (see at the bottom for sources), best of all it's open-source. configuring it for optimal performance, however, is easier said than done. you have to configure indexes, the database...

A few good open-license Arabic fonts

Edit: I went ahead and put these here so I can maintain them more easily: Open-license Arabic fonts Did you know the Arabic script is the second most-used writing system in the world? (source) In case you happen to be looking for a decent Arabic font for your website, software, or publication, I've run across a few good ones that have an open license: DejaVu Sans and DejaVu Sans MonoThese fonts support a lot more than just Arabic, but they do Arabic quite well. They come bundled with most GNU/Linux distributions. There are other DejaVu fonts,...

How to save money when shopping online

I thought since I referenced it in my last post, albeit subtly, I should mention retailmenot.com, which has saved me a ton of money when I shop online. Just shop like you normally would from your online retailer of choice. When you're checking out, stop by retailmenot.com, type the name of the site in their search bar, and see if there are any available coupon codes for that site before you complete your purchase. It's completely free. No, I'm not getting paid by retailmenot.com to say this (not that I would turn down such an offer ;)), but...

Cheapest way to unlock GSM phones

Looking to unlock your GSM phone? One word: ebay. Of course you should always shop around and do some googling, if for no other reason than the fact that some phones can be unlocked for free, in particular many nokia models: Free Nokia Unlock Codes But if you do end up having to pay, ebay can save you a lot of money. For instance, I recently unlocked a Motorola Defy using a code I bought off ebay for $8 by searching "motorola defy unlock code." By comparison, this is what some of the unlock sites charge for a code to unlock that same phone...

re-enable second monitor in linux after it goes blank

solution: if your resolution was also changed, restore the original resolution:xrandr -s 0 re-enable your second monitor:xrandr --auto restore any special setup. for example, I have my second monitor to the right of my first, extending my desktop. this is what I did to get it to work:xrandr --auto --output DFP2 --right-of DFP1DFP1 and DFP2 are the names of my monitors, so that command probably won't work for you. in order to get the names of your monitors, in a terminal, run this command to list the connected monitors:xrandr -q | grep " connected"if...

an intriguing look at software patents

When Patents Attack!Why would a company rent an office in a tiny town in East Texas, put a nameplate on the door, and leave it completely empty for a year? The answer involves a controversial billionaire physicist in Seattle, a 40 pound cookbook, and a war waging right now, all across the software and tech industries.listen to it online now, or you can download the podcast for free for a short time:http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/when-patents-att...

Python mysqldb UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte

Solution: If you run into the error mentioned in the title of this post using python's mysqldb module version 1.2.1 or less, decode your data/query first: mydata.decode('utf8') (modifying 'utf8' to whatever encoding your data happens to be in) Details: So I was writing some code in python on Ubuntu, and it was working just fine. When I went to run it in RHEL, I got this error: Traceback (most recent call last):File "", line 50, in ?File "/usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages/MySQLdb/cursors.py", line 146, in executequery = query.encode(charset)UnicodeDecodeError:...

R.java: No such file or directory

solution: run this in a terminal:rm ~/.android/debug.keystore rebuild your project: go to Project --> Clean --> Clean projects selected below --> check your project --> OKbackstory:okay, so I was tinkering with android today in Eclipse, and all of a sudden, my android project shows it has an error. not on any particular file, but on the project itself. normally when I get random errors, I select the project and go to Project -->...

nullege.com: search python source code

the title sums it up pretty well. I know you can find just about anything using google, but supposedly nullege.com is a little smarter when it comes to python. it's a cool idea, at any rate. I haven't had a need to try it out yet, but I'm sure I will before long:http://nullege.c...

let FCC know how you feel about AT&T/T-Mobile merger

as is most everything I post here, this isn't recent news, but the FCC has a comment filing system where you can let them know how you feel about the proposed acquisition of T-Mobile USA by AT&T. go here:http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/ecfs/hotdocket/listand select proceeding number "11-65".source: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/FCC-Wants-Your-Thoughts-On-ATT-TMobile-Merger-114...

libgssapiv2.so.2: undefined symbol: gss_nt_service_name

More compiling woes... This time I was compiling cyrus-sasl 2.1.23 for use with OpenLDAP. I got it all compiled, and tried to run and ldapsearch using GSSAPI, but I got this error: $ ldapsearch -b dc=example,dc=com -LLLldap_sasl_interactive_bind_s: Unknown authentication method (-6) additional info: SASL(-4): no mechanism available: No worthy mechs found When I looked at /var/log/messages, I saw this: Apr 6 16:42:01 ldap ldapsearch: unable to dlopen /usr/local/lib/sasl2/libgssapiv2.so.2: /usr/local/lib/sasl2/libgssapiv2.so.2: undefined symbol:...

elementary OS: T minus 9 hours and counting

if you've been to the elementary OS website lately, you've probably noticed it now consists of a countdown timer:http://elementaryos.org/it looks like it's counting down to midnight (00.00) april 1 (UTC), so I'm guessing that's when elementary OS will finally be released.I can't wait! with a slick, clean interface and many of the elementary team's apps that I've posted about before, this just might be good enough to replace Ubuntu. I know I'll definitely be checking it o...

heimdal 1.4 missing lib/otp/version-script.map

I was compiling Heimdal kerberos 1.4 on RHEL 5.6 and got the following error: /usr/bin/ld: cannot open linker script file ./version-script.map: No such file or directory After some poking around, it appears that lib/otp/version-script.map is missing from the 1.4 source, which is weird since I downloaded it right from the big "Download 1.4" link from their website (http://www.h5l.org/), which links to http://www.h5l.org/dist/src/heimdal-1.4.tar.gz. So, to fix the problem, you can download the missing file right from their git repo, here: https://github.com/heimdal/heimdal/raw/e3044663df2cfcafd5bf4e2ea6f2a1ba1503d8ea/lib/otp/version-script.map Just...

AT&T to purchase T-Mobile; corporations: 1 consumers: 0

With the recently announced purchase of T-Mobile USA by AT&T, it's evident that the only winners are going to be AT&T and T-Mobile themselves.There's nothing good in this for the consumers. T-Mobile is the cheapest out of the four major nationwide carriers in the US. They're definitely cheaper than AT&T. With them gone, US customers will be forced to pay higher rates. AT&T claims that by acquiring T-Mobile they can lower their costs, and supposedly (1) they're going to pass on some of that savings with the customers. Sure they...

Make free wifi/data calls on your android device

Update: I've blogged more recently on better ways to do this, so you might want to head here instead:  Free wifi/data calls on your smartphone, part 2 Note: this will only allow you to make calls to US numbers, excluding Alaska and Hawaii, as that's all the Whistle Phone service supports. See the last paragraph of this post for alternative options. Go to whistlephone.com, download their software to your desktop, and register for a...

windows woes

It's days like today that I'm grateful I'm only a minimal Windows user... I decided to reformat my Windows XP virtual machine today, and I've spent half my day installing updates, rebooting, installing more, over and over again. I literally don't think I can count on one hand the number of times I've had to reboot. Which seems crazy to me considering I started out with SP3.Then I get to deal with the frustration of downloading software that's bundled with other software I don't want. Take Adobe Reader, for example. First of all, it comes bundled...

python's only problem: concurrency

python has its naysayers, but that's what jealousy will do to you :) seriously though, python does have one major issue: concurrent/parallel programming. now I'm no engineer, and I'm sure this is an oversimplification, but three ways of accomplishing this are: using multiple threads using multiple processes event-based programmingthe main killer out of these three is trying to do multi-threaded programming in python. the short answer: don't. when Python was designed, it was given the philosophy that people using it should have to worry about...

Python and MySQL autocommit

Solution: If your MySQL database is using the InnoDB engine, commit your changes after database transactions: cursor.connection.commit() Or just turn on autocommit to automatically commit after every database transaction: cursor.connection.autocommit(True) Details: So I was using python's MySQLdb module to edit a mysql database, and I noticed that even though python was telling me my modifications were taking place, I wasn't seeing any changes. in addition, when I would log onto the database from something other than python and try to make...

Vala, Vala everywhere!

...okay, okay, maybe not everywhere. But since I posted on Vala a while back, I've noticed a couple of teams in particular seem to have embraced it wholeheartedly. What's really cool is that these teams have been writing some really impressive software for GNU/Linux in Vala. Nearly all of these software projects were started within the last year or two, and these aren't your grandma's Linux apps. These are sleek, fast, and have a strong focus on...

python for the win

well, this isn't exactly recent news, but Python won in two categories in the Linux Journal's 2010 Reader's Choice Awards: best programming language and best scripting language.what more is there to say? :)http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/readers-choice-awards-2010#N0x6d6a890.0x7349...

Connecting to a Windows machine via RDP from GNU/Linux

For a while I used a program called Terminal Server Client (tsclient), a frontend for rdesktop, to connect to Windows machines from GNU/Linux using native Windows RDP. While it worked, it wasn't the greatest. For one, it seemed that in order to save my connection settings, I had to save a separate .rdp file for every server. And then if I wanted to connect to another server with its saved settings, I'd have to open the .rdp file for that machine....

Why I'm probably switching from Ubuntu, pt 3 (future)

In my last post, I discussed why the direction Ubuntu's taken recently has left me less than satisfied.The future?In short, I'm not really sure.I think I've been using a Debian-based distro for so long that it'll probably be something along those lines. I did use Fedora for a while (6 months-ish) when I came to my present job. Honestly one of the most frustrating things was there seemed to be a major fracture in it's external repositories. Maybe I was just trying to install some weird stuff, but it seemed to me like a lot of what I wanted was...

Why I'm probably switching from Ubuntu, pt 2 (present)

As I was saying in my previous post, some things began happening with Ubuntu that I haven't particularly been too fond of, especially recently.To sum it up, I think the focus of Ubuntu has moved away from a distribution which is easy to use while still pretty stable, to one that is more concerned with features. It seems to me that the developers, and probably the leadership, are more concerned with adding new bells and whistles than they are with spending time making sure what they have works. And that's pretty frustrating when you use Ubuntu...

Why I'm probably switching from Ubuntu, pt 1 (past)

I feel like I've recently begun a journey, and although I'm not sure where the destination will be yet, I'm pretty sure it doesn't involve Ubuntu. Before I go into why I'm considering switching from Ubuntu, I suppose I should start with how I started using it.When I started using GNU/Linux (henceforth abbreviated to Linux, cause, well, I'm lazy) in the late 90's, there weren't many options. I tried Red Hat, but even the most basic tasks (like flash or mp3 support) seemed to require a gajillion commands that I frankly wasn't familiar with nor...