YiBi's Life|Live Log

I just got myself a bluetooth keyboard to get rid of all the wires running on my desk. First thing I tried was to pair it with my notebook running Ubuntu 10.10. Pairing was ok. And that’s about it?! It was painful trying to get the keyboard properly connected. There’s no indication in dmesg that a keyboard is found, and after a few tries restarting bluetooth, restarting the keyboard, dmesg showed HID device detected, ie the keyboard, but it still doesn’t work.

At first I thought it could be the keyboard itself. Afterall, I got it from http://ww.taobao.com. So, I decided to pair it with my iPhone. Seamless. Paired, got it working right away. Switched off the keyboard, turned it on again and iPhone connected the keyboard automatically. My Macbook was the ultimate. Even in sleep mode, it was holding on to the connection to the keyboard. and I could wake the Macbook from sleep mode with this keyboard. The experience was perfect!

So, what’s wrong with Ubuntu? I know, with some troubleshooting and tinkering, I can definitely get it to work eventually, but it’s so much more troublesome compared to Mac. The Ubuntu desktop experience has improved and surpassed other Linux distros, but it’s still way way way behind Mac.

Enough of rants, I still need to try to get the keyboard to work. Shall update the blog once I solve the problem.

Recently got a mini usb bluetooth dongle. Sad thing is that I found that it doesn’t play well in the latest version of Ubuntu. Did a quick search on Google and found that it’s because of the new btusb kernel module in the latest kernels. The old kernels were using hci_usb.

I booted up Debian with kernel 2.6.24 to verify and the dongle works perfectly. I was actually worried that the dongle I got was faulty. Now I’m contemplating compiling kernel 2.6.32 to see if the problem gets fixed. Still reading through the release notes of 2.6.32 though.

Better ideas anyone?

As part of my effort to improve my physical fitness (and appearance), I have been getting into more activities. I’m jogging more regularly and bought a new mountain bike. And being a geek, naturally I would want to visualise the efforts in a geeky manner. So now I’m plotting my routes and paths with Nokia N95. Problem is, carrying my N95 while jogging is not that ideal. It’s relatively too thick and heavy. But I guess I found my solution.

Nokia is pairing up with Polar to provide a package which includes the Polar Heart Rate Monitor. The heart rate monitor will feed data to the N79 via Bluetooth and all the information gets recorded into the Nokia Sports Tracker software on the phone. This is cool, and really what I have been planning to do.

Watch this advertisement for the N79 Active. I do find it abit too cheesy at the ending though, too geeky..hehe..

Nokia N79 Active Advertisement

There’s only 1 problem now. Where can I get this from in Singapore?