Keyboards 🙂 .. No matter if you love or hate them… you have to use them. And it is of keyboards this little rant is all about. Forgive me any typo's but my mind is doing backflops getting used to this new inexpensive and total crap keyboard I am using.. While trying to get back on the azerty track after being stuck with a US keyboard layout on this machine for the last three days. Yes.. My adventures in ubuntuland did get of to a rather bumpy start after the belgian keyboard layout did not want to join the party. First I was happy as hell to get the classic compact mac keyboard working on my ubuntu. In command line mode it worked like a charm. However .. Where the hell is the insert key on a little keyboard like that ? Allthough it made the estetic ensemble complete together with the blue and white tower .. and did fit in perfectly with the studiodisplay screen… it just was not very convenient. So I changed it with a spare usb PC keyboard I had lying around. (its total crap and I am having wristpains as we speak) No matter.. Because to add trouble to insult (Is that the phrase ?) ,one I booted into GUI (graphical) mode the system refused to give me a BE keyboard layout. It insisted on the US layout and made my fingers crawl with frustration to get stuff right… To no avial (a bug in Ubuntu 5.10 on the mac). But to everything there is an answer.. When clicking fails.. try the uber-powerfull command line. So with a help of a friend I started to look for the file that tells linux what keyboard is attached (Linux would not listen to the mouse .. Time for the CAT ) So i did a Cat on the xconf.org file (which is fancy linux speak for : i opened the file in notepad and read what was inside) Then i used VI (an editor) to open the file and change the US to BE .. It took me two seconds to do that .. It took me ten minutes to figure out how to OPEN vi ( vi "filename") Edit it (press INSERT… not found on mac keyboard) change it (us to be) save it ( :w ) quit ( :q ) and restart the graphical interface (CTRL ALT BACKSPACE) So now its behaving like it should and my mind needs a hack to switch back to azerty. All in all the command line is NOT easy BUT pnce you get the hang of it …. it s mighty powerfull.
Oh yes : The episode 23 of the Knightcast IS ready … but I will have no time to post it untill next saturday. I'm just swamped with work and stuff to do .. Add misery to cacaphony … My office is in shambles.. Me and Nayana are redesigning the office into a small work area / living room where we both can hang out together as we do our favorite stuff.
So its of to another busy day with the happy comfort that my little ubuntu project has gone beyond the first bump in the road.