This is useful for Japanese keyboards, but takes a little getting used to!
xmodmap -e “remove lock = Caps_Lock”
xmodmap -e “keycode 66 = underscore”
thanks to: http://www.columbia.edu/~djv/docs/keyremap.html!
To see which version of Centos a machine you are working on is running, at the command line type:
cat /etc/redhat-release
For me it was:
CentOS release 5.5 (Final)
There are a couple of options for installing Skype on Centos 5.5
http://www.skype.com/intl/en/get-skype/on-your-computer/linux/post-download/
Dynamic
Static
Dynamic means to dynamically link to libraries, and will require you to meet the dependencies of skype, while static is a larger package which meets those requirements. I went with static.
First, make a directory to download the code to (you can use /tmp if you want):
mkdir /usr/share/skype
wget http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-linux-beta-static
(alternatively: wget http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-linux-beta-dynamic )
#upack the download
tar jxvf skype_static-2.1.0.81.tar.bz2
cd skype_static-2.1.0.81/
less README
cp skype /usr/bin/skype
cp -r avatars/* /usr/share/skype/
cp -r lang/* /usr/share/skype/
cp -r sounds/* /usr/share/skype/
skype
And your skype should be up and running!
If you live in a foreign country companies such as Adobe like to enforce language choices with unforgiving redirects.
If you want to download Adobe Reader in English and you live in Japan for example, you will need to change the url they redirect you to from:
http://get.adobe.com/jp/reader/
to:
http://get.adobe.com/uk/reader/
Good news for our cricket team as Paddy Foleys registered their first victory of the season over the Predators.
Here is a little snippet from the second innings:
The next man in was one of their chief protagonists and Goldie noticing the lack of helmet promptly put a man close in at leg slip, sure enough a bit of chin music followed and the batsman was looking rather uncomfortable out in the middle. He did manage to stick around for a few overs but never looked like troubling the scorers eventually out bowled by John for a duck. The next pair put on 18 runs before Goldie picked up the next one caught behind. Goldie claimed the 4th as well LBW and we had them on the ropes at 4-30 but with opener Graeme still in and looking dangerous we new the job wasn’t done yet.
You can read the rest of Jeff’s elegant prose here: Match report: vs. Predators, Game 1 Japan Cricket League Division One, 25 April 2010. You can also navigate your way around the site to find out how you too can have a hit out.
I didn’t make it to the game – have been a bit busy with work as per usual. Will have to get out for a hit and add to my momentous tally of about 20 runs in Japan – not bad for 10 years!
Also, had a link from long white cloud meets rising sun : Tokyo Anime Center… and Volunteering in Japan. Looks like there is a new kiwi blogging in Japan. Looking forward to some entertaining tales there. You can check him out here: long white cloud meets rising sun.
Finally – Golden week is almost upon us. Time I think to finally build my first Linux distribution!
Issue 8 of the Denphone Digest is now available online – check it out here: http://www.denphone.com/denphone-digest-november-2009.
This issue features a really promising Japanese start-up – Inferret – who are doing some really interesting work in the field of natural language recognition for both text and spoken language. And we introduce a great little hotel IP phone made by Japanese manufacturer Nakayo (pictured above). While a lot of people still have a negative image of VoIP (due to cheap calling networks) this phone has top-notch sound quality and is a wonderful device. There is also a howto I wrote explaining how to get twitter feeds to display on Polycom phones (although it will also work on Cisco IP phones with a bit of tinkering).
Also, I should mention that we will be exhibiting at our first tradeshow –
Denphone to exhibit at Call Center/CRM Demo & Conference Tokyo
Denphone is proud to announce that they will be exhibiting at this years Call Center/CRM Demo & Conference Tokyo to be held November 12th and 13th at Sunshine City in Ikebukero.
The Call Center/CRM Demo & Conference Tokyo is Japan’s leading tradeshow for Call Center and CRM solutions with vendors exhibiting a wide range of hardware, software and services for the call center and customer center industries.
Denphone will be focusing their SIP and IAX2 trunking solutions, as well as managed voice services. This is a good chance to meet up with a representative from Denphone to find out how telephony related technology is moving forward and what new solutions there are now available to both reduce your company’s expenditure while increasing employee effectiveness.
Denphone will be giving away 2 IP phones to people who visit their booth – so visit us to be in to win!
The event will be held at Sunshine City Ikebukuro: (http://www.sunshinecity.co.jp/ (Japanese language only).)
For more information (Japanese only) please see http://www.callcenter-japan.com/.
Look forward to seeing you there, and I hope you enjoy Denphone’s magazine.
I picked up an Averatec netbook the other day – in Japan at the moment there are some great deals for netbooks if one signs up at the same time for a mobile broadband plan. If you get the broadband plan there are cancellation penalty fees, but these work out to be less than the savings on the netbook, making the process worthwhile from a financial perspective even if it is rather time consuming (much the same as getting a regular mobile phone in Japan).
I was planning just to return the mobile broadband device to Docomo yesterday, but we have a phone system install to do in a rural part of Japan over the weekend, and I found out that there wont be internet access on site while we are doing the install. As we are working with offshore vendors on this, not having the internet would be a hindrance, so I decided to keep the foma connection for a few days.
Thing is, I am not a big fan of Windows, so I wanted to be able to use the A2505 with linux. There isn’t much information around for setting this up (of course NTT don’t support Linux, and aren’t likely to until somewhere around 2030 – they are a little backward). There is a bit of information for setting up emobile clients on linux (here is a good article: http://nlweb.iii.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~iwase/tips/fc6emobile.html ).
After a fair bit of playing around (not least since the screen on the averatec 1000 is so small, but that is another story), we got it working on the netbook which is running Fedora 10.
To start off, from the command line, check dmesg to see if it recognizes the A2505 as a device.
Then from the command line type:
sudo modprobe vendor=0x16d5 product=0x6202
This will set tell linux what the device is.
If you want to, and you probably will, automate this (ie. so you don’t have to do it every time you reboot), create a file
sudo vi /etc/udev/rules.d/50-anydata-a2502.rules
and add the following:
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", SYSFS{idProduct}=="6202", SYSFS{idVendor}=="16d5", RUN+="/sbin/modprobe usbserial vendor=0x16d5 product=0x6202"
The next step to get it up and running is to go to System -> Administration -> Network
This will ask for your root password, then after you enter that it brings up the Network Configuration GUI.
Click on New -> Modem Connection -> Select Provider.
Add *99**4# in the space for Phone Number, and mopera in the login name and password fields. Add a provider name, but that can be anything. Hit forward and it brings up the dhcp settings - you shouldn't have to change anything. Keep clicking until you finish with the wizard. Hit the Activate button. And your connection should be working.
The connection with the foma a2505 seems quite fast. But if you have a choice you should probably go with the emobile offering - it wins on price and ease of installation.
Thanks to Hiwada-san for his help, and to the author of http://mizupc8.bio.mie-u.ac.jp/pukiwiki/?FOMA%2FA2502.
