(the beacon light on an emergency phone near Smith Hall)

John Stewart was on CNN Crossfire earlier this week and although he is just as partisan as he accuses them of being, he makes some great points. You can read the transcript and download a torrent of the segment.

An Epox Bluetooth wireless mouse. Uber cool. And only $41 on Newegg.com

I also found it quite easy to get working on Linux. Read on for directions…

I’m running Debian Linux and kernel 2.6.8.1 on my Thinkpad X31 with a built in USB Bluetooth chip. If you’ve got something else in your machine, I can’t guarantee that this will work…

Steps:

1. Go to http://www.bluez.org/patches.html and download the latest BlueZ patch for kernel 2.6.8. It applies cleanly against 2.6.8.1 with the exception of one line in the kernel Makefile which doesn’t matter anyways. Make sure you’re building all the bluetooth modules, and recompile your kernel.
2. Edit /etc/default/bluez-utils and change HIDD_ENABLED to 1 (this is very Debian specific… basically you need to make sure hidd is started at boot). Then restart the bluez tools (/etc/init.d/bluez-tools restart).
3. Move the mouse around and then use hcitool scan to figure out the BD address of the mouse (its like a MAC address but for bluetooth).
4. Run hidd –connect bd_address. Ta-da! Your mouse should work now.
5. Now move it around and click on things. You’re done.

Now who says Linux is hard to use?

Pretty cool, eh? I finally stripped down an old Thinkpad i1400 that had been waiting to become a digital picture frame. Right now it’s without an actual frame, so I’ve got the components zip-tied to a wire panel from one of those dorm-style bookshelf kits.

The Hardware

Its based on a hand-me-down Thinkpad i1400 from my father, minus the DVD, floppy, battery, case, keyboard, etc etc. Basically all thats left is the motherboard and hard drive attached to the LCD without the bezel. Its got a nice big 15″ LCD, so it looks quite good displaying digital photos. An old D-Link 802.11b card allows me to SSH in to add photos and configure it.

The Software

Linux, of course. I use a slimmed-down install of Debian unstable to keep things familiar. On top of that runs Freevo in framebuffer mode. Freevo is a great all-purpose HTPC system written in Python. Usually it’s used as a free-software Tivo alternative, but in this case I’m using it for its photo-album plugin. That also means that I can also take advantage of its great MP3 jukebox, weather, or RSS feed plugins if I want to. Could be really cool to have hanging on the wall in my bedroom so I can check the weather and Engadget when I wake up in the morning.

The Spare Parts

Anybody need any repair parts for a Thinkpad i1400? I’ll sell em cheap…

Update: I’ve finally resurrected this project and finished it up using a newer laptop.