Mounting USB Drives Under Ubuntu

I backup daily to a USB drive, at work with git push. But the last couple of days, I've been home, sick.

I called in to ask Mike to stick in my USB drive, and he did, but it didn't automount. The automounting seems to be a Nautilus thing, and requires being logged in at the console. (I lock my screen when I leave at night.)

Humph.

I made him a login, so he could get in, and that got us farther, but when it mounted, it was owned by him.

I tried mount -o remount,uid=1000, but that didn't work. The mount command showed two uid= arguments -- the first, his. (If I did it again, there were three. The first one was still his, so he still was owner.) Okay.

I jotted down the name of the device, /dev/sd1, unmounted it, and remounted it by hand, as me. Ta-da.

Helping My Girlfriend with Google Docs Templates

I was up past midnight beating out a first-cut resume for my girlfriend.

She's getting laid off, so she needs a new job. Her resume, built from an academic CV, is so big and impenetrable it needs to include bookmarks.

Sometimes, a job's so big that it's hard to start it yourself, so I told her I'd do it. I reasoned I could get it close enough that she could finish it up.

I started with Google Docs, which now has templates -- including, it turns out, resume templates.

A few hours playing, cutting, and pasting, and she has a first-cut that looks reasonable.

If you know someone who wants to hire a biologist, don't hesitate to post a comment.

Fixing the Default ISO App in Ubuntu Jaunty

I just changed the default application for handling .iso files under Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope back to what it was under Intrepid Ibex. With clicky stuff.

I've been making a deliberate effort to become more comfy with GUI tools. I've been a command-line guy forever, which works fine for me, but not so well if I'm trying to help my girlfriend, or other folks who are more used to GUI, user-friendly, point-and-click interfaces.

Every Monday morning, I burn a pair of ISO images to back some stuff up to DVDs. My scripts put them onto my desktop, and I just double-click on the Destktop icons, which launches a disk-burner. (See? GUI!).

Except that this morning, I double-clicked on an iso-image icon and ... Whoops! A behavior change. It mounted the ISO.

Can I fix this by clicking? (Not "Can one?" but "Can I?")

Yes.

Right click on the ISO to get a context menu. Click on "Properties," down at the bottom, then on the "Open With" tab. Sure enough, it's now set to Archive Mounter. Switch this to "Disc Burner." (And how did "disk" become "disc"? Is this a South African thing?)

Ta-da! The default for ISOs now is to burn them to disk, which is usually what I do with them.

I'm comfier with clicking all the time, which means I'm a better support guy for my friends.

Setting envelope-from on Ubuntu

After my Jaunty Jackalope upgrade, at work, some of my command-line mail tests were bouncing. Why? My sending address didn't have a Fully-Qualified Domain Name (FQDN). Some sites bounce mail that doesn't have a valid domain name in the field.

Sure enough, dnsdomainname returned ... nothing. And uname -a gave me a machine name, but not an FQDN.

I use Gmail for almost all my routine email, at home and at work. Gmail doesn't complain.

I also use command-line email in shell scripts, but that stays inside my LAN, which doesn't care about FQDNs either. I could probably have lived with the problem, but I wanted it fixed so I started poking.

I set the domain in /etc/hosts. That fixed the output of dnsdomainname,
and the From: field in the email was set correctly.

But not the mail problem. Envelope-from was still wrong. The mail to my test, outside hosts still bounced with the same complaint.

I restored the old hosts file and got Dean, our sysadmin, to give my machine a domain name through DNS. That was a little more work but it worked ... and also didn't solve the mail problem.

Finally, I stumbled over /etc/mailname. Putting an FQDN in there does the trick. The man page provides details.

Cat Skinning, Made Easy

[Click on the story, above, to enlarge it.]

My friend, Debi, wants to put a newsletter article about herself on her LinkedIn page. All she has is the pdf for the entire magazine issue. She doesn't even have a PDF writer on her Windows box.

Impossible?

Piece of cake.

1. She mails me the pdf.
2. I use Ubuntu's Document Viewer to bring up the PDF.
3. I print page 2 to a file, as PDF.
4. I use convert(1) to turn that pdf into a png.
5. I import the png into my blog.
6. We verify that she can see it, and that it suits her needs.
   
7. We use Blogger to create her a blog, put the same png into her own blog entry, and point to it on her LinkedIn page.

Google Voice

Well, okey doke. Google's finally bringing GrandCentral back as Google Voice.

Let's see if their new call button works.

Grand Central

I'm not posting regularly, but once in a while something is a must-post. This is one.

In the Marine Corps I was a radio operator, which required acquiring the skill "push to talk." Finally, this reflex returns in a way I wouldn't have predicted.

Jeff Bezos has a call-me button? Me, too.