Bob's Own Blog

Netbooks and KDE network manager

I’m currently running an ASUS eeePC 1201n netbook/laptop. It has a 12″screen and a full sized keyboard; sort of on the border between a netbook and a laptop. It’s small enough to carry around comfortably and large enough to see and type. I tried running openSUSE with KDE on it,but KDE has a major problem with the network manager. It cannot connect to a wireless station with a hidden SSID. Bug 209464 has been open on KDE since October 2009 and still marked NEW with priority HI and severity NORMAL.

My wireless station is not broadcasting the SSID and is using WPA/WPA2 personal with a pre-shared key. I’m not about to change that. There is no point in broadcasting the SSID and letting the neighborhood know that wireless access is available to anyone with a good key cracker.

There are some workarounds which I’ve tried with limited success. The Gnome network manager works fine. I’ve also tried LXDE and Enlightenment successfully. Come on KDE,that bug has been open over a year and a half. If Gnome and the others can do it,look at their code and fix it.

Continue reading Netbooks and KDE network manager

Back to KDE on openSUSE 11.3

I did finally get openSUSE 11.3 to run on my dual screens,by installing Linux Mint 9 and copying the xorg.conf file back to openSUSE. That solved one display problem,but there were more to come. Skype,which I use a lot to talk to family and friends,installed. It needed a bunch of 32-bit libraries to run. Once I got it running,it kept dropping sound or locking up the system to the point of needing to power off. The sound hardware finally stopped working.

Continue reading Back to KDE on openSUSE 11.3

Conversion from DBTextworks to Koha

Some (possibly) helpful hints in converting DBTextworks to Marc records.

We have cracked the problem I had with converting the DBTextwork file I had created (which looked fine until the Marcedit was run over it and all the fields just ran into each other)) by doing the following in Marcedit

Continue reading Conversion from DBTextworks to Koha

I Switched to the Gnome DesktopI Switched to the Gnome Desktop

I’ve been using SuSE or openSUSE since Caldera Open Linux shut down about 10 years ago. I liked the KDE desktop and YAST (Yet Another System Tool.) YAST concentrates all the system tools into a common graphic interface,which makes configuring the system easy.

I’ve since upgraded my hardware many times and now have a dual monitor display. I have a slide show of photographs I’ve taken as the background image spanning both monitors. KDE3 was a very comfortable desktop. It was much more flexible than Gnome. I had a number of icons scattered around the periphery of the desktop so that I could get to frequently used applications with one click. My panel spanned both screens at the bottom.

OpenSUSE 11.1 and 11.2 had early versions of KDE4 which were not ready for prime time. So I stuck with 11.0 and KDE3. I did have Qt4 installed and have converted my programs to run on it. Now openSUSE 11.0 has reached the end of support.

With some trepidation,I installed 11.3 with KDE4. I quickly discovered that configuring it was a real PITA. It does not handle multiple screens well,if at all. It will not allow a background image to span the two monitors. It will not let you move icons from one display to the other. Just getting them on the desktop is frustrating. Panels cannot span both displays. Wobbly windows do not improve productivity.

Over the years,Gnome has improved a lot. I reinstalled openSUSE 11.3 with the Gnome desktop. I still needed some KDE4 libraries to run KMyMoney,the best open source replacement for Quicken.

I do have my pictures in a slide show spanning the two displays and icons scattered around edge of the desktop. It won’t let a panel span the two displays. So,I put a panel at the bottom of each display. Most of the fixed stuff goes on the second screen.

My RosesMy Roses

It all started a number of years ago when I went to get a bush to hide the second air conditioner from the street. I had a black thumb. There was a potted umbrella tree in my house that was dropping leaves–and it’s plastic. When I explained this,they showed me a cocoplum bush. On the way to pay for it,I passed some rose bushes. They suggested a Duchess du Brabant rose bush. The Duchess has been flattened by three or four hurricanes and was under the tent along with the cocoplum when I had the house tented for termites. They both are doing fine. The Duchess is blooming its head off most of the year.
Continue reading My Roses

Going Live–Part 1

We did the patron and loans conversions and went live about a month ago. The staff have all been enthusiastic about Koha. So far,we’ve done two custom modifications:Membership cards and labels and full Gaylord book labels. Continue reading Going Live–Part 1

Koha TrainingKoha Training

I will post the Koha training manual here in draft until I have time to review it next week with key folks to insure we get the right information posted. Unfortunately,the only Koha documentation available is web based,so I am converting their web documentation to .pdf files,so that they can be customized and printed for our use. Please feel free to post your comments here regarding the training documentation.
Koha Training Draft v1.4.
Chuck Shuttle

The manual is a direct crib from the Koha 3.0 manual put into a PDF form with our Library’s logo on the cover. We really need to revise it soon for 3.2.
Bob

Imager by L. E. Modesitt,Jr.Imager by L. E. Modesitt,Jr.

Rhennythyl is the son of a wool merchant and is a journeyman portrait painter when he causes his master’s house to blow up. He discovers that he is an imager,one who can create things by imaging them. He goes off to the Collegium Imago on Imagisle and is trained as a covert imager (read spy).

There are three threads in the story:

His training
5 attempts to assassinate him
His family and his new girl friend ( a Pharsi although she is a 3rd generation local)

Most of the story is about his training. The questions that his teacher makes him think about are fascinating.

Is our government good?
Is it better than the others?
What are the best characteristics of a covert imager?
What is the real purpose of a quorum call?
Why is government necessary?
…

I couldn’t put it down and will have to go back and re-read it to think more about his training.

The assassination attempts provide a bit of action and mystery which will have to be solved in a later book in the series.

His interplay with his family and his girl friend’s family is very well written.

Book Catalog ConversionBook Catalog Conversion

The catalog records for books are selected and exported. DBTextCatalog will convert them into MARC records,which can then be bulk imported into Koha. The MARC record will have a 952 field for each physical volume.

Continue reading Book Catalog Conversion

Converting the DBText Borrower DatabaseConverting the DBText Borrower Database

The DBText borrower database needs to be converted into a comma delimited file in the proper format to be loaded into Koha via Import Patrons in the Tools menu. Most of the fields can be mapped into the corresponding Koha fields. The branch code and an initial password need to be added. We have added a number of fields to DBText that will be needed by Koha.

DBTextMembers is patterned after DBTextCheck. It can be downloaded here. It does some formatting checks on phone numbers and dates.

Continue reading Converting the DBText Borrower Database

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