Since I run Linux, I have somewhat special requirements. I didn’t want something that would be bound to iTunes or Windows Media Player. After careful Googling, I got a Sandisk, Sansa View. It holds 8 GB (and there is a 16GB version out as well.) It’s possible to mount the device as a USB drive, and to drag and drop files, so no special software is needed. A nice device, well designed, well built, easy to use.

What I learned. Media players communicate in several ways. There is a protocol or mode called Media Transfer Protocol and another called, I believe, MSC, where the device appears as a drive. Windows Media Player uses MTP to communicate. This allows transfer of playlists and other data besides simple song files. I was interested in standards based stuff, so I wanted to put the device into MSC mode and mount it as a drive.

The undocumented feature on the Sansa View is accessed as follows:

1. Turn on the Sansa View by pressing the slide switch UP.
2. Now put the player in Hold mode by moving slide switch DOWN.
3. When the Lock icon appears, hold the left button (left part of the thunbwheel) down until the padlock blinks off then on again.
4. Now plug in the USB cord to the player.

If you are running Gnome, or KDE, you should automount the player on /media/Sansa Disk. If not, you’ll have to locate it’s /dev/sdX device node and mount it somewhere. Note that this will also work on a Macintosh, since it’s really a Unix box underneath. Shhhh. Don’t tell!

Once I had the player mounted, I just used rsync to syncronize my music directory with the player:
$ rsync -rvp /path/to/music/* /media/Sansa Disk/MUSIC
This assumes that under /path/to/music, you have a directory structure full of MP3s.

When the rsync or other copy is complete, UNMOUNT the player (right click on the player icon, or use the umount command at the command line) Then unplug the player. A window will open on the player that says “Refresh Database.” There may be a long pause where you think that the player is crashed, but stay with it. You’ll be listening to music soon enough.

Remember to unlock the Hold switch, or you won’t be able to do anything with the beast.

Enjoy.

[Update: About three months later, I ditched the Sansa and bought an iPod.]

The dump got over 6,000 pounds (three TONS) ofjunk. Hats off to Cheap Hauling, for hauling the stuff away.

We’ll be here in Santa Clara Elks for the weekend, then back to Morgan Hill TTN for a few weeks.

I have two restaurant recommendations to post:

• Cafe San Jose, 1583 Meridian Avenue, San Jose, CA 95125. Cross Street Hamilton Avenue. Open 7 AM to 3 PM seven days a week. 408-265-3020. Really excellent breakfast. Care taken with food prep, service and presentation. I had steak and eggs. I was impressed with the cut of meat, with the spices and veggies in the country potatoes, and with the proper preparation of the eggs. The toast was buttered while warm, the lack of which is a pet peeve of mine.
• A Slice of New York (Pizzaria), 3443 Stevens Creek Blvd, San Jose, CA 95117, 408-24-SLICE. Real New York pizza, calzone, cannoli, garlic knots, etc. Manhattan Specials. Drakes Cakes! Superb.

We’ll be in San Jose Elks lodge next week. We’re no longer sleeping in the apartment, since doing so makes it impossible to pack.

The weekend in Santa Barbara was very good, if soggy. We celebrated Shabbos, and I went to services at Chabad of S. Barbara. As usual, I enjoy Rabbi Loschak’s services. Also enjoyed meeting Rabbi Mendel Loschak, who operates the Chabad at UCSB, as well as Rabbi Zalman, who runs the preschool.

Santa Barbara is always a nice town to explore, and we got out a little on Saturday night and Sunday.

On Monday, we traveled north, with minimal planning, and wound up in Lompoc. We stayed at the Elks Lodge, as usual. Lompoc is a very nice small town. Nicer than I expected. Small business – including a nice used bookstore, independent coffee shop, some enjoyable restaurants, etc. This is also a Mural town. Like 29 Palms and others, the towns is decorated by murals on the walls of both public and private businesses. We stayed for three nights. I worked. We tried to go to the Lompoc Museum, but it was closed for two weeks due to roof repairs.

On Thursday, we traveled north to Monterey, where we are encamped in the Monterey Elks Lodge. I attended services at Cong. B’Nai Torah, a conservative affiliated shul. The shul is lay-led. No rabbi. There are a bunch of well-skilled people who can lead services, read the Torah, etc. I was made very welcome, and I highly recommend a visit, for those who are comfortable in a conservative movemen, egalitarian, setting. One thing to note: Their website says 9:15. They actually start at 10.

A few good restaurant recommendations:

• American Host Restaurant, 113 N I St # D, Lompoc, CA 93436, (805) 735-5188. We had an excellent breakfast at this hole-in-the-wall, a block off the main drag.
• There is a really good mexican place in the Safeway shopping center on Canal Street in King City. I really wish I remembered the name. It’s located right at the entrance, near the pizza place, the Rite-Aid and the coffee shop.
• La Giostra (Tuscan Italian Restaurant), 1244 Munras Ave, Monterey, CA 93940, (831) 917-2661. A fine dinner. Minestrone was done so well. The broth was thick, and almost creamy, not watery at all. The vegetables were all fresh and crisp. Roseann had Penne Pasta with Mozzarella. It was not a melted cheese dish, but rather a pasta in sauce dish with small nuggets of fresh whole milk mozzarella cheese. I had a dish with shells, chicken, roasted garlic, sun-dried tomatoes and mushrooms in a white wine cream sauce. Very, very, tasty. We skipped desert, reluctantly.

Soon we’ll be back in San Jose. Thanks for riding along.

Encounters is an interesting experience. It is supposed to feel like you are dining in a flying saucer, floating above LAX. In fact, the food and service were quite good, and the kitchy atmosphere (lava lamps, blobs of color, curved walls, etc) make the experience a treat. The garlic fries are excellent.

On Friday morning, it still wasn’t raining, and I was considering that the whole thing might have been overblown, but decided to continue to take it seriously. After a quick fast-food breakfast, we hooked up and headed north on “the” 405 to “the” 101. (Southern California parlance is to refer to numbered highways as “the” whatever. We don’t do that in Northern California, leading one to take “the 5″ north, but when one gets there, one gets off “I-5.”) At about Calabazas we went over the first big hill and found the beginning of rain. The rain got heavier as we went west and it was coming down pretty good by the time we reached Oxnard.

We had identified that the coast was a better choice than the inland route – mainly because of wind warnings – and we had considered spending Shabbos at Oxnard or Santa Barbara. Both have Elks lodges with hookups, and both have access to a Chabad House for services. Since we were at Oxnard at about 10:30 AM, we kept going for Santa Barbara.

The rain got heavier, and we had to set up the trailer surrounded by some puddles, but we got safely set up, level, stable, hooked up and otherwise hunkered down for the big rain — and rain it did. All afternoon and all night. At one time, the news said we were getting an inch per hour.

This morning, it looks pretty wet out, but most of the puddles seem to have absorbed and we are expecting a 40 percent chance of showers. Meanwhile, in San Jose, they are expecting thunderstorms.

We’ll sojourn here, and consider moving on tomorrow. More as things develop.

Second, a doff of the hat to Bellew’s Hitch in Tacoma for a fine job on hitch and mirrors.

In other news, we moved again… from Escapees Evergreen Coho Park over to the Elks Lodge No. 317, here in Port Townsend (or “PT” as they call it.) Nice spot.

Elks 317 gets a doff of the hat (with bow) for helping us out while the RV was in the shop. After we had spent several hours looking around PT, we were both very tired. Marty, the bartender at the Elks Lodge welcomed us, and allowed Roseann the crash on a couch in the dining room. Later, when she awoke, Marty made her welcome, with numerous glasses of Diet Pepsi, and bowls of popcorn. She watch a Mariners game and some tennis (Serena Williams) while I went and dealt with the trailer.

The various benefits of belonging to a Fraternal organization take time to appreciate. Yes, it’s nice to find RV parking at the Elks Lodge, but the real lesson of being a member is when you show up at the Lodge and find a welcome, whether it’s for dinner, for refreshments at the Bar, or just for a place to sit. I love being a Mason, and I love being an Elk.

Once we were out on the main line, we were pulled, cab forward, from Mineral down about six miles to a large trestle (”old shakey.”) Then they ran the engine around, and pulled us back.

The train carried a musician, a singer-songwriter named John Sparrow, who entertained us with his own train-songs. John sat down with us for the return trip and told us some stories of his life on the road as a musician. He had set some of his experiences to song, and for an old folkie like me, the trip home was heaven. Thanks, John.

There are some short videos of the trip, but the Palm Treo saves them in an odd format and I haven’t been able to convert them to something standard yet.

Bob is a singer-songwriter that I’ve heard on XM Radio a bunch. He did about 15 songs in two sets including “Hard Love” and “Alleluia, the Great Storm is Over.” Also, “Love Bravely, Elizabeth.” Bob ranges from serious and sad, to funny. His wikipedia article tells a bunch more about him than I can. My own reaction is that I’m very glad we went.

The Matrix is a very eclectic place where you can hear a great variety of music. They do not serve alcohol, so their clientèle is much more interested in the music than in getting drunk. This also makes the crowd smaller, but hey, the important people were there. If you are in this area, it’s definitely worth checking to see what the Matrix has booked.

I don’t usually find my kind of folk music while we’re traveling, so this was a real treat.

I got a question today about my Linux laptop, so I decided to write about it here. About six months ago, I got a Dell Latitude D820 with a Dual Core 2.3GHz processor. It has 2 GB memory and an 80 GB SATA disk, turning at 7200 RPM. It also has the NVIDIA premium video, but I did not get the very high resolution screen since my 51 year old eyes can’t make use of it anyway.

My use goals were:

• Browser (Firefox)
• Email (Thunderbird)
• Office suite (Open Office)
• Linux software development
• Web development (Zend Studio)
• Network troubleshooting (Wireshark)
• Bookkeeping (Quickbooks – in a VMWare virtual machine)
• Music
• Video
• whatever else was to come along

When the laptop was received, I formatted the disk and installed Fedora Core 6. I then installed the native NVIDIA drivers. I got my Verizon Wireless Aircard working. Got VMWare installed, popped in an existing VMWare virtual machine containing Quickbooks, and I was on my way.

I didn’t do badly. I’ve been with it for about six months, and I have no desire to go back to native Windows (sorry, Bill.) I’m going to approach this three ways: What works, what doesn’t work, and what needed a workaround, or causes an inconvenience.

What works

The laptop works. Very well. It boots reliably, displays a stable raster, is responsive to keyboard, internal pointing devices and external mouse both USB and PS2. The OS properly handles everything that Xwindows is supposed to do.

Firefox and Thunderbird do their work perfectly. Well, almost. Firefox quits unexpectedly about once a week, maybe less.

The Aircard works. I use a set of standard PPP scripts to get it going. Note that a Windows machine is needed to set up the card, and to update the PRL every now and again, and Verizon is useless for support in the Linux environment. Note also that not every Verizon Aircard will work the same way. Mine is a 5220.

The internal wifi works. I had to download some packages from the Livna repository for this. There is an issue when the hardware wireless switch is set to “off.” The wifi software can cause one of the CPUs to lock up. I’m writing this in Starbucks, with the intent to upload it via Tmobile wifi.

The Speakup speech synthesizer works well too. This includes the TTSynth product which allows speakup to use the sound card. If you are blind and need a talking machine, this can save you over $900 as compared to Jaws on Windows.

What has unresolved issues

The sound has some issues. Playback is usually OK using ALSA. Recording works fine though the internal mike, but I can’t get any external mike to be recognized. This makes headsets for VoIP, or other speech apps, a problem. Bluetooth has yet to do anything useful, though I haven’t put much effort into it.

I can’t get my Palm Treo to sync over pilot-link or anything that depends on pilot-link. Debugging is just beginning and I’ll certainly post results here.

Added on an edit: I can’t recover from a suspend, and I have never tried to hibernate.

What needed workarounds

As mentioned before, NVIDIA drivers needed to be found. Since they are not released in source, RedHat doesn’t include them in Fedora. They have to be manually recompiled after each kernel update. We’re told that there is a workaround for this but we haven’t hunted for it yet.

I like dual screens when I’m docked. I have several configurations: One screen plus the laptop screen, or, two screens, with the laptop closed. X doesn’t know how to detect the monitor and manage this. The NVIDIA drivers support two screens, but I needed to create a separate X config file for each monitor configuration. Then, I chose to set Linux to boot into character mode. I log in, run a quick script defining where I am, then do startx. Those who want the full X experience, including a graphical startup, graphical login screen and full shutdown from X, will not like this configuration.

There may be a workaround, but I haven’t sought it out. I wasn’t able to get the Gnome widget for controlling a PPP connection to manage my Aircard. I start it with a script.

I wasn’t able to get the Gnome widgets for setting up wifi to work. I do my wifi setup from the command line, either before starting X or in a terminal window.

Conclusion

All in all, I love it. Compared to a Windows laptop, the following differences come to mind:

• It’s much more stable. Doesn’t freeze or go to sleep.
• I never get hit with an unexpected update that messes things up or saturates my connection.
• I’m not suspicious of the motives of the software providers.
• No viruses. No spyware. No malware.
• A super-secure firewall.
• Doesn’t accumulate as much cruft from installed software. The registry doesn’t get bigger and bigger. (There is no registry.)
• Packages install and uninstall cleanly.
• The contents of packages is clearly documented. No wondering what was installed.
• A massive amount of useful software is part of the Fedora (and most other) distributions.
• Much of what is shareware in the Windows world is available as GPLed software in the Linux world. I’ve stopped spending much money on software.
• I can change things if they don’t meet my needs. Everything is open and configurable.
• If things inexplicably don’t work, I can get the source and figure it out for myself, or even extend the capabilities and fix bugs. If I accomplish something useful, I can feed it back and it can become part of the next release.
• Much of what we used to do on hosted servers can be done (or modeled) on the desktop (laptop). Development and problem solving is improved.
• Lots of folks have tried to bring Unix/Linux capabilities to Windows. See cygwin, putty, etc. None of these are as good as the original.

My recommendations for doing this include:

1. Be committed to it. it’s not rocket science, but it’s not what you know either. There is a learning curve, and the development philosphy does not favor uninformed or uncaring users. You are much more responsible for your own successes.
2. Consider the new Inspiron offering from Dell with Ubuntu preloaded. One expects that all the hardware and drivers will work.
3. If you want to use VMWare and virtual machines, be sure youhave enough horsepower and memory. A dual core processor is great since your virt can grab and use one of the cores, while the rest of the machine uses the other.
4. Choose the right distro for your own temperment. I would saythat Debian, Ubuntu (or Kubuntu) or Fedora will be great.
5. Have a good support network. Try to develop some relationships so you are not relying on strangers in a forum to take an interest in you.
6. Google is your friend.

Peace, love and linux,

Ed

Update 2/28/2010:

This has been good to me over the years. I reformatted with later versions of Fedora Core, until this year when I installed Ubuntu 9.10. Ubuntu went in clean and just about everything works, except hot-docking while using dual monitors. Sound, nVidia, detecting hot-plugged USB devices, fancy keyboard buttons (sound, etc) all work. Network manager properly handles the aircard and the USB. I haven’t tried bluetooth. Also, I no longer use a Palm device, so I can’t speak about that support. It feels solid and stable, as if it were OEM.  Can’t say much more about something than that.

Dave recommended a replacement charge controller for me. A Xantrex C35. He charged me $100 even, plus $7 for shipping.

The device arrived when promised, and exceeded expectations for quality and usability. I installed it, and it immediately started pumping out 5 amps.

RV Solar Electric in Scottsdale AZ — highly recommended.