Category: Linux

Find Your Samsung Galaxy S4 Screenshots?

In case you didn’t know how to take screenshots on your brand new S4, here’s how:

  1. Press and hold the center key (at the bottom of the phone) AND the unlock key (right) at the same time.
  2. If your sound is turned on, you’ll hear a shutter sound.Your phone screen will also flash indicating that the screenshot was taken.

I have a 64GB microSD card in my phone which I use for my video/files/pictures. However, the screenshot utility saves the screenshots to the device’s built-in storage system. Specifically, it’s the Pictures/Screenshot folder if you’re browsing your phone’s content on the same phone or a computer. Here’s what it looks like when I browse my phone’s contents from my computer:UUxAPwBBzV

 

Don’t upgrade to Ubuntu 13.10 (yet)

I installed Ubuntu 13.10 on my HP dv7 3080us laptop. This laptop’s a few years old but it’s (still) a beast. Ever since I installed this version of Ubuntu, I’ve run into problem after problem. For the first time in a long while, I’ve come to regret upgrading to a new Ubuntu version. The main problems I’ve run into:

  1. Suspending my laptop causes it to crash [this almost never happened with 13.04]
  2. Sometimes, locking my laptop causes it to crash
  3. Crashes more frequently on cpu-intensive tasks like compiling than 13.04 did

As a developer, this is pretty freaking inconvenient. I’m not sure how this release got out of the gate but I sure hope that Canonical knows that no matter how pretty they make Ubuntu, it will turn off users if we can’t use it! As always, I’m dutifully submitting crash reports and even volunteering for further bug triage if necessary. Hopefully there is someone at then end of that line listening.

In summary, stick with 13.04. I wish I did. 🙁

Sending Files via Bluetooth in Ubuntu 13.04

Screenshot from 2013-09-13 08:18:06GNOME bluetooth on Ubuntu 13.04 (and up) doesn’t work. I’ve paired my laptop with several devices and I’ve been unable to send/receive files for a long while. I never bothered with troubleshooting because I could also connect said devices to my laptop with my USB cable. Why fix this now? Space is at a premium now  so I needed this problem to go away. The solution according to the linked LaunchPad page? install Blueman.

So, if clicking that link didn’t do anything for you, here are some ways to install software on Ubuntu:

  1. Use the Ubuntu Software Center and type “blueman”. into the search box (top right). It should be the first link.
  2. Go hardcore and use the CLI (command line interface): sudo apt-get install blueman
  3. Attempt to fix GNOME bluetooth yourself. 🙂

Screenshot from 2013-09-13 08:53:05

And you’re done. Oddly enough, after installing Blueman, certain GNOME bluetooth functions started working e.g. sending files from PC to device. And as I write this, Blueman just choked on a 513kb PDF file which GNOME bluetooth sent just fine so don’t uninstall GNOME bluetooth just yet.