Logitech Quick Cam Pro 5000 on Windows 7

Well, I had a little bit of a bout with the Logitech Quick Cam Pro 5000 on Windows 7 where Windows 7 didn't seem to have any drivers to load.  What I did was download this from the Logitech FTP site.  I used Wine on Linux to run to exe and find its working directory and copy the Drivers folder.  Then on Windows 7 (64-bit), I plugged the webcam and let it search for drivers.  Open the Device Manager and right click on the unknown device to update the driver software.  I navigated to the x64 folder and used Pro464 folder and let it install that driver.  Voila, Logitech Quick Cam Pro 5000 running just fine on Windows 7.

New story, Dark Age Chronicles: The Awakening

I so forgot to post this so I'm going to quickly post links to the next chapter in the series.  The Awakening itself is split into two stories.

• Shadows of the Dead
• Lifting the Shadows

Enjoy!

Asus ZenFone 2's Battery Life

I bought the Asus ZenFone 2 (ZE500CL) purely because I was drawn by its Intel Atom processor and it seemed like a decent device.  The one thing that really got to me was the woeful battery life.  I had the choice of getting the ZE550ML one which had a bigger battery (2500mAh vs 3000mAh). However, it has a bigger screen and houses a quad core processor.  I don't need a quad core phone and the 5" screen can barely fit in my palm so a 5.5" screen is way worse!

I've shut down a lot of services but I could barely get half a day out of my phone without needing a charge.  It got to the point where I was bringing my charger where ever I go.  Sometimes, a USB power bank as well.  Then, I discovered that I had GPS and location turned on.

I had not realized how much this thing sucks the life out of my phone battery.  Turning it off makes the phone last quite a bit!  What an amazing discovery and also a massive face palm on my part.

Flashplayer and Linux Mint

So a vulnerability was found on Flash that made Firefox disable the Flashplayer until people updated their plugin.  Adobe released an updated version of the last non-Chrome version of Flashplugin for the update but I seemed to be running into some issues with the browser not picking up the latest version.  So, what I did was re-download the latest version of Adobe flashplayer.  Then, I copied libflashplayer.so into /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so and /var/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so.  Then, restarted Firefox and checked the add-ons.  Finally the latest version was recognized.  Back to regular programming.

Android and GPS

So, I've been traveling way more frequently than I used to and I figured having the GPS on my Android devices could be handy.  However, I realized that my Acer Iconia Tab A500's GPS never actually worked.  Also, the MoveTab had GPS that worked really well and then suddenly stopped working.  If I remember, GPS never worked for my Samsung Galaxy Pocket either.  All of these nonfunctional stuff got me reading and investigating just how to use this equipment.  Read that after the jump!  Note that a lot of the focus of this article is on my poor Acer A500 and its horrible GPS.

Random Thoughts: Samba, Cinnamon and Android Insufficient Storage Space Error

So I've been using Linux Mint a lot and there's been some adjustment.  I find Cinnamon to be a total regression to Unity's dock.  I've complained a bit about this but fortunately, someone pointed me to Cairo which is a decent replacement.  It's not as slick as Unity's Dock, but it's functional and familiar enough.  I just cannot go back to that old Start Menu, Taskbar thing.  Feels cluttered and useless.

While we're in the subject of Cinnamon, when the laptop wakes up from suspend or sleep, sometimes, Cinnamon starts acting very weird.  None of my mouse clicks the menus, Cairo's task switching doesn't really work.  The only way I got to recover from it was to kill Cinnamon.  

killall -HUP cinnamon

Then, there's samba.  In the university I work at, we have some specific configuration and Cinnamon's connect Windows Share interface is a bit wonky.  Turns out when I specify the server name, I have to leave out the slashes (e.g. //).  Then specify the share to use.

Lastly, there's a common problem on Android where the storage space is always running out.  This usually manifests itself when attempting to install apps.  Google Play Store will complain "Insufficient Storage Available" which is a real pain especially when you own those Chinese OEM tablets.  I've learned since that Android will build up junk cache over time and can easily chew up GB of space after prolonged use.  You can use any cache cleaner app and run your device through it.  I use the Clean Master but I'm certain there are better lightweight apps available.  I ran my cleaner app and it showed me the junk I should clean up.  Tapped clean and I was able to install the apps I wanted just fine.

That's a wrap!  Ciao!

FGLRX Issues and Linux Mint

After installing Linux Mint 17.1 on my HP laptop, I noticed that the fglrx-updates package doesn't detect my AMD display drivers.  That's very disappointing but there's no release notes for the Catalyst driver yet (15.3?).  So, I'm not certain if AMD is supposed to drop support for the 7xxM series.  To install fglrx, I had to use the regular fglrx release from Linux Mint.

Then, of course, the Ubuntu fglrx issue dual monitor hit me hard with the flickering desktop.  Sheesh.  From my additional research however, I've found this blurb from the Arch Linux article.

When using a PowerXpress laptop in AMD-only mode (ie, setting the discrete card to render everything) you sometimes run into issues with artifacting/duplicating between displays. This is a known issue, and seems to effect 7xxxM series cards.
The artifacting disappears when you transform one of the monitors by either rotating or scaling. So you can use xrandr to fix this

So, I used the xrandr command they supplied and massaged it to my own case and came up with this:

xrandr --output LVDS1 --primary --mode 1366x768 --pos 0x0 --scale 1.0001x1.0001 --output VGA1 --right-of LVDS1 --scale 1x1 --mode 1024x768

This is not quite what I was hoping for as the second screen seems to display one half of my first monitor display.  After playing around with xrandr, I found the command that would fix it here.

xrandr --output LVDS1 --primary --mode 1366x768 --pos 0x0 --output VGA1 --right-of LVDS1 --scale 1.0001x1.0001 --mode 1024x768

The other caveat on Linux Mint seems to be the installation of the bcm4313 drivers, but that's easy to resolve.

Google Play Books and Google Play Store

It was annoying that I could not clear my downloaded Google Books from the Play Store and recently, I discovered that to get rid of them, you had to download Google Play Books and then view your library.  You'll see all your books that you can then delete.  This clears up the recommended list that spams the Play Store.

Random Thoughts

This edition of Random Thoughts is regarding two things.  First is Assassin's Creed: Director's Cut and the Fast Travel feature.  I had made the mistake of fast travelling from Masyaf to Damascus and wondered of a way to fast travel to Acre.  Apparently, if you look at the map, there are icons for "To Kingdom" which when you leave the map through those points, you'll be asked for the option to fast travel.  This only works after Memory 3.

Second is researching on updating the Eken W70 firmware.  The tablet isn't listed in the Eken site anymore and the firmware update files are all bunched up together in the most confusing manner in their FTP site.  As far as I can tell, the W70 and W70+ are similar tablets but the W70+ has a rear facing camera.  I did some research with the Web Archive and this link to identify the proper firmware.  The correct firmware it seems is: W70-1.5.5-1680-NO-WIN8-1.10.zip and the ftp link isn't included as Eken seems to change ftp IPs all the time.

Here are the instructions for Firmware Updating:

1. Download the firmware file
2. Unzip the RAR file to a folder.
3. Open the zipped folder and copy all content in it to an empty SD or Micro SD card.
4. Turn off your device and then insert the SD or Micro SD card into it.
5. The upgrade process will get started automatically when you turn on your device.
6. When the upgrade is finished, remove the SD or Micro SD card from your device.
7. The device will automatically restart again.

That's it!