Motorola e815 and bluetooth

I chose my new phone (Motorola e815) over all the others for 3 reasons.

1. Reception
2. Works with my previous cables and chargers
3. bluetooth

I've been satisfied with the first two since I got it – it does have excellent reception and work with my old stuff. But #3 left me disappointed. I found out (after I bought it) that Verizon cripples their phones, making them basically useless as bluetooth devices. Shame!

As it turns out it is not too difficult to hack the thing to get it to work like it is supposed to. I found a site with wealth of downloads for the e815, and I followed these instructions to enable file transfers, uploading this saved seem settings file to enable iSync (here are some alternate instructions). I did already have a windows PC and the necessary USB transfer cable. I would have been very annoyed if I didn't.

Now I can transfer files to and from my phone, sync automatically with my OSX address book, all while the phone is still in my pocket. I am also now able to use it as a modem with my laptop on the road. It is surprisingly usable. It claims to be connecting at 225 kbps!

On a side note, this phone is a bit of a tank, but that means it is rugged and has a decent battery life. It's only slightly bigger than by previous phone – a Motorola T730, which was junk. I like this new phone now as much I like liked my StarTACs back in the day!

freePBX

I just installed freePBX on a test system and was so impressed I put it on my main asterisk system (asterisk at home 2.7 with packages further updated manually) . It is a much needed overhaul of AMP. AMP was useful but a little clunky and sometimes needed prodding to work properly. freePBX has a much slicker feel, and a few great new features.

To install, download the freePBX tarball from sourceforge and get it onto your server (I use fugu for such things).

Unpack it in the /usr/src directory.

from a terminal:

amportal stop

cd /usr/src/freepbx-2.0.1

./install_amp

amportal start

Point your web browser at it.

Go to setup:module admin

I installed and enabled everything but Online Support. On hold music may have been a mistake, as it blew away my nice music settings. I'll need to fix that. Not surprisingly, the MP3 support is as poor as before.

You need to go to inbound routes right away and add a default route that all unspecified calls go to. Of course you need to enable any Queues and IVRs if you used those before. I was up and running in 15 minutes! 
I really like the new conferences interface, and it looks like there is a good start toward a useful administrative users interface.

Good stuff!

Note:

One bit of weirdness is the Asterisk@Home Maintenance tab disappears – you can still type /maint manually to get to it though.

asterisk on via c3

Edit the Makefile in the asterisk installation folder.
scroll down to this area:
ASTCFLAGS=

# Pentium Pro Optimize
#PROC=i686

# Pentium & VIA processors optimize
PROC=i586

#PROC=k6
#PROC=ppc

Uncomment the “PROC=i586″ line before compiling and all will be well. Otherwise after compilation, you will get an error message simply stating “Illegal instruction” when trying to run asterisk.

Updating asterisk to version 1.2.7.1

Copy link to current version from asterisk home page. This example uses 1.2.7.1 – adjust for current version.

Terminal commands:

cd /usr/src
wget http://ftp.digium.com/pub/asterisk/releases/asterisk-1.2.7.1.tar.gz
tar -zxvf asterisk-1.2.7.1.tar.gz
cd asterisk-1.2.7.1
make upgrade
make clean; make install

Zaptel:
cd /usr/src
wget http://ftp.digium.com/pub/zaptel/releases/zaptel-1.2.5.tar.gz
tar -zxvf zaptel-1.2.5.tar.gz
cd zaptel-1.2.5
make clean; make install

Libpri:
cd /usr/src
wget http://ftp.digium.com/pub/libpri/releases/libpri-1.2.2.tar.gz
tar -zxvf libpri-1.2.2.tar.gz
cd libpri-1.2.2
make clean; make install

Addons:
cd /usr/src
wget http://ftp.digium.com/pub/asterisk/releases/asterisk-addons-1.2.2.tar.gz
tar -zxvf asterisk-addons-1.2.2.tar.gz
cd asterisk-addons-1.2.2
make clean; make install

Sounds:
cd /usr/src
wget http://ftp.digium.com/pub/asterisk/releases/asterisk-sounds-1.2.1.tar.gz
tar -zxvf asterisk-sounds-1.2.1.tar.gz
cd asterisk-sounds-1.2.1
make clean; make install

Reboot:
shutdown -r now

Thunderbird upgrade for Ubuntu 5.1 (Breezy)

Ugrading Thunderbird to 1.5 from the 1.07 version in Ubuntu Breezy is very easy. Many of the new extensions and themes do not work with the older version. link

OSX 10.4, Fink, and SoX

I decided to embark on getting some of the linux tools I’ve been taking for granted working on my OSX (Tiger) machines. Particularly SoX, which I’ve recently become fond of. We do almost all telephony audio file processing on various Mac based applications anyway, and it would save some file shuffling to have SoX on those machines also. It’s been a while since I’ve done this and it’s a little tricky, so here’s the procedure:

1. Install Tiger Xcode tools. This is simple, but takes a little while.
2. Install Fink

Sox is in the unstable repository so you need to enable that.

3. From a terminal, sudo nano /sw/etc/fink.conf
4. add unstable/main and unstable/crypto to the Trees: line
5. Exit via Control-X and answer Y to save the file
6. Copy FinkCommander to the Applications folder, and run it
7. Wait for it to update the tables
8. Do a search for sox – hey it’s there now!

There are also thousands of other applications available now. Have fun!

ThinStation rdesktop syntax

I spent a while struggling with syntax in the thinstation.conf file to start a shell application. Backslashes in the application path were troublesome. Here is an example of the syntax that finally  worked:

SESSION_2_TITLE="FileMaker"
SESSION_2_TYPE=rdesktop
SESSION_2_SCREEN=1
SESSION_2_SCREEN_POSITION=1
SESSION_2_RDESKTOP_SERVER=10.0.1.102
SESSION_2_RDESKTOP_OPTIONS="-g 1024×768 -u 'Administrator'  -a 16 -s 'C:\\\\\\\\Program Files\\\\FileMaker\\\\FileMaker Pro 7\\\\FileMaker Pro.exe'" SESSION_2_CUSTOM_CONFIG=OFF SESSION_2_AUTOSTART=OFF
SESSION_2_ICON=ON

That's a lot of backslashes! 

New Flickr photoset

Flickr is really growing on me. I love to take digital pictures, but never quite knew what to do with them. Now there is this incredible sharing interface with fat bandwidth and a database of meta information. It has just all come together for me.
I just created a new annotated set about tools. I plan on adding to it regularly.

 I just checked some stats and the set has been viewed 4 times already in half an hour. My Tornado set has been viewed 934 times in less than a week!

Group policy objects

Here are some group policy settings that solved some problems on a windows 2003 terminal server:

add local servers to:
User Configuration\Windows Settings\Internet explorer Maintenance\Security zones and Content rating\Local intranet

(kb article 815141)

Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Terminal Services\Automatic Reconnection: Enabled

Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Terminal Services\Client/Server data redirection\Allow audio redirection: Enabled

Tornado in Iowa City

We rode out the storm in my basement bunker office last night. We were surprised when the phone started ringing early this morning from friends and family checking up on us. We didn’t know it at the time, but a tornado tore right through Iowa City, within a few blocks from here.

My friend Jim Cochran just rode his bike through town and took some pictures. I uploaded them to flickr.

Update: I went out myself and took some more pictures. I added them to flickr