Calibre offers the capability to bulk-convert a lot of books in parallel, but at least on my system it quite often froze after a couple of minutes. Calibre also lets you convert books from the command line with the ebook-convert command. Combined with a simple find and GNU Parallel it can be used to convert massive collections with a one liner:

find $your_library_location -type f -iname "*.mobi" | parallel --timeout 120 --progress "/Applications/calibre.app/Contents/console.app/Contents/MacOS/ebook-convert {} {.}.txt"

Parallel will try to saturate all the available CPUs on your system and can even scale out to other machines with a little more tweaking. The --timeout option will kill off any spawned sub-process that takes longer than the given ammount of seconds, which is nessecary, since sometimes the conversion seems to hang for no apparent reason. The option --progress will give you an idea how many jobs have been completed yet.

Parallel can be installed via the excellent homebrew project by running brew install parallel. The location of the ebook-convert command may vary on other systems, if I remember correctly Ubuntu sets it up correctly when installing Callibre via APT, so you can omit the path.

For me this works well enough and seems a little more robust than Calibres own job-scheduling mechanism. Hope this helps someone else.

My problem, however, was that the process described in the rooting section of the page did not work for me. I could log into my device via adb, copy the exploit files over, execute them, but they had no apparent effect (apart from outputting a “doing my thing”-message and disconnecting the adb session”). I had to search for another way to root the phone and stumbled upon SuperOneClick which, apart from being written for Windows, is an awesome tool and worked without a flaw.

So if you’ve got a Motorola Defy and the rooting-method described in the CyanogenMod-wiki does not fly, try this guide. Also consider donating to the author of SuperOneClick and CyanogenMod for putting in the effort that your phone manufacturer isn’t.

Out of the blue the (software) keyboard on my HTC G1 / Dream stopped working. Basically I got force-close messages as soon as I booted the device. Re-flashing Cyanogenmod (5.0.8) didn’t help. After running the log collector and sending myself the logs and spotted the following:

07-04 17:08:13.770 E/Database( 558): android.database.sqlite.SQLiteException: file is encrypted or is not a database
07-04 17:08:13.770 E/Database( 558): at android.database.sqlite.SQLiteDatabase.native_setLocale(Native Method)
07-04 17:08:13.770 E/Database( 558): at android.database.sqlite.SQLiteDatabase.setLocale(SQLiteDatabase.java:1759)
07-04 17:08:13.770 E/Database( 558): at android.database.sqlite.SQLiteDatabase.(SQLiteDatabase.java:1709)
07-04 17:08:13.770 E/Database( 558): at android.database.sqlite.SQLiteDatabase.openDatabase(SQLiteDatabase.java:739)
07-04 17:08:13.770 E/Database( 558): at android.database.sqlite.SQLiteDatabase.openOrCreateDatabase(SQLiteDatabase.java:761)
07-04 17:08:13.770 E/Database( 558): at android.database.sqlite.SQLiteDatabase.openOrCreateDatabase(SQLiteDatabase.java:754)
07-04 17:08:13.770 E/Database( 558): at android.app.ApplicationContext.openOrCreateDatabase(ApplicationContext.java:473)
07-04 17:08:13.770 E/Database( 558): at android.database.sqlite.SQLiteOpenHelper.getWritableDatabase(SQLiteOpenHelper.java:98)
07-04 17:08:13.770 E/Database( 558): at android.database.sqlite.SQLiteOpenHelper.getReadableDatabase(SQLiteOpenHelper.java:158)
07-04 17:08:13.770 E/Database( 558): at com.android.providers.userdictionary.UserDictionaryProvider.query(UserDictionaryProvider.java:133)
07-04 17:08:13.770 E/Database( 558): at android.content.ContentProvider$Transport.bulkQuery(ContentProvider.java:117)
07-04 17:08:13.770 E/Database( 558): at android.content.ContentProviderNative.onTransact(ContentProviderNative.java:98)
07-04 17:08:13.770 E/Database( 558): at android.os.Binder.execTransact(Binder.java:287)
07-04 17:08:13.770 E/Database( 558): at dalvik.system.NativeStart.run(Native Method)
07-04 17:08:13.840 E/SQLiteOpenHelper( 558): Couldn't open user_dict.db for writing (will try read-only):
07-04 17:08:13.840 E/SQLiteOpenHelper( 558): android.database.sqlite.SQLiteException: file is encrypted or is not a database
07-04 17:08:13.840 E/SQLiteOpenHelper( 558): at android.database.sqlite.SQLiteDatabase.native_setLocale(Native Method)
07-04 17:08:13.840 E/SQLiteOpenHelper( 558): at android.database.sqlite.SQLiteDatabase.setLocale(SQLiteDatabase.java:1759)
07-04 17:08:13.840 E/SQLiteOpenHelper( 558): at android.database.sqlite.SQLiteDatabase.(SQLiteDatabase.java:1709)
07-04 17:08:13.840 E/SQLiteOpenHelper( 558): at android.database.sqlite.SQLiteDatabase.openDatabase(SQLiteDatabase.java:739)
07-04 17:08:13.840 E/SQLiteOpenHelper( 558): at android.database.sqlite.SQLiteDatabase.openOrCreateDatabase(SQLiteDatabase.java:761)
07-04 17:08:13.840 E/SQLiteOpenHelper( 558): at android.database.sqlite.SQLiteDatabase.openOrCreateDatabase(SQLiteDatabase.java:754)
07-04 17:08:13.840 E/SQLiteOpenHelper( 558): at android.app.ApplicationContext.openOrCreateDatabase(ApplicationContext.java:473)
07-04 17:08:13.840 E/SQLiteOpenHelper( 558): at android.database.sqlite.SQLiteOpenHelper.getWritableDatabase(SQLiteOpenHelper.java:98)
07-04 17:08:13.840 E/SQLiteOpenHelper( 558): at android.database.sqlite.SQLiteOpenHelper.getReadableDatabase(SQLiteOpenHelper.java:158)
07-04 17:08:13.840 E/SQLiteOpenHelper( 558): at com.android.providers.userdictionary.UserDictionaryProvider.query(UserDictionaryProvider.java:133)
07-04 17:08:13.840 E/SQLiteOpenHelper( 558): at android.content.ContentProvider$Transport.bulkQuery(ContentProvider.java:117)
07-04 17:08:13.840 E/SQLiteOpenHelper( 558): at android.content.ContentProviderNative.onTransact(ContentProviderNative.java:98)
07-04 17:08:13.840 E/SQLiteOpenHelper( 558): at android.os.Binder.execTransact(Binder.java:287)
07-04 17:08:13.840 E/SQLiteOpenHelper( 558): at dalvik.system.NativeStart.run(Native Method)

With adb I was able to pull the file from the device but still unable to open it. SQLite on my Laptop gave me the same error message Unable to open database “olddict.db”: file is encrypted or is not a database. Looks like something messed up my dictionary-file, but since I did not use the software-keyboard much anyway and my dictionary wasn’t even remotely useful I decided to just delete it.

Voila, everything went back to normal. No more force-close-messages all the time, software-keyboard works again.

This should also be fixable with a full-wipe, but I didn’t want to go through the hassle of setting up all my apps again. Also right now I don’t see any suggestions when typing with the software keyboard, I don’t know if they will ever come back (I for one don’t care), but keep that in mind before trying this.

gitk looking like crap

I found the solution for this in a blog entry of the Navarra Group. All you have to do is sudo aptitude install tk8.5 and sudo update-alternatives –config wish (here you select wish 8.5 from the list).

gitk looking good again

Neat!

For some reason I don’t even remember I’ve been a bigger fan of tracker anyway for a while. Installing on a fresh Karmic works like this: sudo apt-get install tracker tracker-search-tool tracker-utils.

If you, like me, frequently use Deskbar, you might also want to install the package libdeskbar-tracker. This enables you to get search results from tracker as you type. If the tracker daemon does not start automatically, you can start it by hand running /usr/lib/tracker/trackerd. To all I know the tracker applet also refuses to start, untill the daemon is up and running.

Der Duden Korrektor für Openoffice und Staroffice läuft, auch in der aktuellen Version 6.0, nicht ohne weiters unter 64 Bit-Versionen von Linux.

Um der Openoffice-Erweiterung von Duden 64-Bit “beizubringen” muss, wie unter diesem Kommentar beschrieben, lediglich das Installationarchiv leicht angepasst werden. Mit einem ZIP-fähigem Archivmanager muss die Datei description.xml im Wurzelverzeichnis der Datei duden-korrektor-openoffice.oxt angepasst werden.

Das Attribut value des Elements platform muss angepasst werden. Aus dem dortigen <platform value="linux_x86" /> macht man einfach ein <platform value="all" />. Damit lässt sich die Erweiterung auch unter 64-Bit Systemen installieren.

Einen weiteres Problem hatte ich, als Openoffice bei der Installation der Erweiterung das fehlen einer Java-Bibliothek namens LuceneHelpWrapper.jar bemängelte. Unter Ubuntu Karmic hilft, so dieser Kommentar, das Installieren des Paketes openoffice-java-common.

Soweit ich sagen kann läuft der Duden Korrektor für Openoffice mit etwas Hilfe auch unter 64 Bit-Systemen fehlerfrei. Ob dies auch unter Windows ein Problem ist bzw. der Lösungsansatz dort auch funktioniert kann ich, mangels Testsystem, nicht sagen.

via Slashdot Technology Story | Google Open Sources Etherpad, Piratepad Launches.

Wegen gefährlicher Körperverletzung wurde ein 62-jähriger Heilpraktiker aus dem Ostallgäu zu einer Haftstrafe von zwei Jahren und sechs Monaten verurteilt. Das Kaufbeurer Schöffengericht hielt es für erwiesen, dass der Mann im Mai 2008 einem Urlauber-Ehepaar aus dem Raum Trier zum abrupten Absetzen der Epilepsie-Medikamente seines behinderten Sohnes (28) geraten hatte.

via Heilpraktische Lebensgefahr « Brights – Die Natur des Zweifels.

Für persönliche Freigaben gibt es keinen Eintrag in der allgemeinen Konfigurationsdatei /etc/samba/smb.conf. Statt dessen wird für jede dieser Freigaben im Ordner /var/lib/samba/usershares/ eine eigene kleine Textdatei mit den nötigen Angaben angelegt. Diese ist Besitz des jeweiligen Benutzers; nur dieser kann sie verändern oder löschen.

via Samba Server GNOME › Wiki › ubuntuusers.de.

Meinen ersten glorreichen Versuch könnt ihr hier bestaunen.