Ubuntu tip: Name your USB Camera

OK, here is the situation:
I've got my camera which I connect to my ubuntu computer via USB. It automatically shows up on the desktop when I plug it in. However, it's kind of hard to find on my desktop (I have a cluttered desktop) because it shows up with the default ubuntu name "256mb volume" or some other non-descriptive title like that. This isn't ubuntu's fault, if doesn't have a better name for your camera device. A serial number would hardly be better - but still maybe confusing.

No matter, you can name your camera and have it show up as the name you want on your desktop.

The way to do this is by naming the filesystem used by your camera. Typically naming a linux type of filesystem such as ext3, ext2 one uses tune2fs which is a very handy command line program. The relevant commands would be something like tune2fs -l /dev/sda1 (change sda1 to the relevant name for your disk use the gnome-system-monitor to find it) to list the filesystem's information. Then you use tune2fs -L yourdiskLabel /dev/sda1 to change the label. Of course you need to be super user (sudo) if you want to mess with the filesystems and use tune2fs.

The hard part the camera usually isn't formatted in a linux/unix style filesystem. It is usually but something like vfat (a fat32 and fat16 compatable open source clone) which is to make the camera compatable with the common windows computer OS. You probably shouldn't try to reformat your camera because the software that resides on the computer might not like it. Even if the camera could work you will make the dumb windows computers you come across unable to read the camera (without updating windows first) which isn't ideal for a portable device.

Enter the solution: mtools
This program is avaliable in the main ubuntu repository
This will work for mp3 players, DOS floppy disks or anything else with a MS-DOS type of filesystem.

The difficulty using this program is that mtools doesn't read devices (such as your camera or hard disk) in the linux way but in the MS-DOS way. So you need to do some special things to get the program to know what you are telling it to rename.

So, in our example we'll use the gnome system monitor to find out want the linux device name for the camera is. This will be something like /dev/hda1. In this example let's say the camera is mounted as /dev/sde1

Now we have to make up a MS-DOS style drive letter for that. Let's say drive E: for simplicities sake (though it could be any letter you choose)

Here are the steps after you have installed mtools using synaptic
or apt-get install mtools

first you open a terminal and run mtools once so that it creates the default config file and to make sure it is there. Type:

mtools

then copy the default config file into your home user directory so that your new disklabel will be visable to you:

cp /etc/mtools.conf ~/.mtoolsrc

Now, edit mtools config file: (Or use any other text editor)

gedit ~/.mtoolsrc

Enter 2 lines at the end that just say

# # camera
drive e: file="/dev/sde1"

That was the hard part (configuring mtools) Almost done!
Now, you use the utility mlabel (a subset of mtools) to actually rename/relabel your MS-DOS device (camera)

First initialise the device in mlabel:

mlabel -s e:

Then finally, rename it!

mlabel e:yourdisklabel

All done!

Note that MSDOS disklabels are not case sensitive and usually just show up at all capital letters.

Now unplug and replugin your device and you should see it automatically showing up on the desktop with the new name you have set.

baby divorce

So I forgot to eat again, and I forgot to sleep. But I will be typing.

This normal state of affairs survives the summer heat. Content are we to spew vitriol and seed discontent all over the internet until the people rise up and turn it off and go to bed so they can get to work on time the next day. We have work to do in this nowtopia. We must never stop the working for the naked midnight bike ride will fulfill all the promises that we missed out on last year. Even if it is raining and Samba du Soleil sinks into the pond - we will cycle this road home. Once an abused father sat with his children and cowered under his wifes steady blow. Men and women don't do that - the river only flows one way nudge nudge. After all, who is the millionaire in this equation. The last thing we need is another mountain bike to add to the recycling heap. I was the first one to put things there and now the space is all filled up. Dill grows up between the cracks in the ashphalt. Or is it just fennel? Either my assshat shall feed thee gentle critter of the lane.

We sit there on the concrete as the sun bakes us into the road. It's a public thoughroughfare but ever since that bicycle cop fell down here and spun his body bloody the ground. The young men were not sympathetic and jeered. I felt sorry for the poor copper buttoned do-gooder but I never stopped to help him up. Now the road is painted with a bike lane to ward off the jeering leopards and the latest macintosh SUV computer climbs the curb and must park itself elsewhere. Diesel fuel made from the original 1890s era peanut oil has fed the peasants everywhere. From the undercarriage drips the greasy goo. Progress is in the biofuels literature. 10% off the price at the pump after all. We are soon going to pay more for bottled water than the gasoline of experience. Newbilez!

Bile wells up in my soul and I splatter this all over that asphalt burning the dill or fennel where it sits. The depaving party lasts all afternoon and we made a video for the intermowebs to fill it up. 4 entire dumpsters! Underneath the concrete is good fertile soil ready to grow the vegtables that will burn in your gas tank tommorrow. We will have the energy independance that we deserve. Guantanamo Bay is here for us to discover how free we can make ourselves of the Iraqi Oiolle.

Slick that, the last man standing was the police man who woke up. He mounted his motorised bicycle steed and raced down the sidewalk as fast as his little 1000cc engine could carry him. The pedestrian fellows out for a walk in the parkway had a nice time of diving into the bushes to avoid his highness crashing into them. The gumshoe boo boo we called it - legitimate dissent comes from asking permission.

Persimmons want a divorce from my baby mother. Do you know what happens when a bridge ceases to function? Swimming pools. Do you know what happens when a mommy and daddy stop from the love each other? The crash and burn of lads running by themselves. Our honey drips from the false precipce . What What>?

No, I think i need a partner to sleep myway through this winter. Watermellon isn't free you know? Tony rides my bicycle like a pony. The superhero of the wild Eastern Kalle Lasn lookalike. We have to sell something after all.

Where? You forment it. The divorce that is. Forget about the patch up i am checking myself into a mental hospital as soon as the Bakery opens. Canada Day is a bad time to visit a liquer Store. the staff just don't feel right bout selling out that patriotic duties. For me, chicken and handburgers are all the same. Lesbian erotica will sell, but not to the right kind of people. We use vacuum cleaners on our carpets in here.

For me that was enough to have said. After all, I never knew what it was I was doing. My son was feeling very welcome to the machine. I told you where to have been. Filling your time. Providing for the toys and scouting for the punishment of her ma. But now the wind picks up and my bladder is full enough to burst a racehourse (on the hour)))

(herries aren't yet ready this time of year though they are my favourite berry I won't buy them unless they are Ourganic because they spreay those with the besticides about 6 times a year on average and more on normal years.

Forget about the strawberries and the organice brown rice cereal. Dumm girl. GC ain't me shouldn't your kind in Rundmc band practice. That is all the prestocide the class will tolerqate.

Facke chlorinated sugars. Maltitol is actually a sugar alcohol.

wow, go to bed.

I have become - now that I am so buzy - addicted to the feelings of being tired and able to go to bed and to sleep - but not doing it. I stay up very late. Recklessly so. And then I can enjoy that tired feeling. It's quite pleasant to feel tired and to savour that when you are not prevented or being forced to withhold....Self-destructively also!

At least that is my excuse anyways. I'm really just addicted to the computer:

As a person who is interested in everything I feel that I am on the vanguard of something that is going to happen to everyone. You will be enveloped and enslaved by your computer. Not your body, but your mind. The God Box they call it.

And at first it was a joke. 70GB of music which equals about half of all the songs I have ever heard in my entire life. The other half, say 35GB, I haven't even listened too. So potentially the box has the power to know all the music have known or ever will. Music, the greatest of the art forms in Winniefred's teuristic tautological heirarchy of culture. The pinnacle of our human acheivement. In my God Box. Which is obsolete in 3 years to be replaced by one 4 times as much. And that's not only or even it. We all have one. We are all networked. And the network gets thicker and thicker...

Eventually it will all be there. Already it already is so much. But that is not the point. It will never be the all or close to it even. It will soon and forever be enough

to

suck you into the hole.

My mind is gone now. I am in the machine. The memory I have is his. My wife too. Who only a few years ago would shun uninterested the God Box for the most part. Now she quarrels bitterly with me about my late night addictive use of the cooperative TV screen. But it is not the flaggelation and irresponsibility of my actions upon her and uopn our fledgling family, No. That is a good excuse and the concern for change in genuine. But the emotional impetus in the arguement is the simple. Conflict. "I want it too."

Now she is interested and drawn in. Cannot live without. Looking up what if how who when the the so so yes me I am I know you I read see sleep with thinking you same presence. God the Box. A false idol no longer? Because our mind is frozen in the flux of it. The 60 cycle hum amplified in frequency by the billions. We are one and all of this. We are the box.

So there we have it. This is my warning to you bored people. The kind only intereted now in YouTube. The kind not keen on everything else before that:

ESCAPE WHILE YOU CAN.

The Internet is called a free space. But as the Emperor told you before the meaning of that word is off now. On is the binary mode of being. You cannot be without. The mental space is where much of your soul live in because we are social mental creatures not known for physical prowess of any kind bodily. No, we are artificial. The artifice of the mind. The artifice of the written word that preserves and so enhances to multipy our mind and productivity. To factor the production of our hands into peices that will fashion a whole new worlds - all in cgi. All one and forever the same as the trapped individualist alone forever dying of lonely unable to reach out and touch or even breath. For the binary can only ever simulate that.

What of the woman with herpes. She is denied the lusty carefree touch of her passion. I am mind I am me - I am more than the body - she says. So off we go into the blinkingverse. The ether other electron. Digital movies, digital music, digital porn , digital pirate rebellion thoughtful behooven the worst way forward up the down best SPAM has rewritten our own thoughts and turned them into the blind software of tomorrow.

My mind isn't empty and it will never be so. The meditations of yesterday are erasure. We forget that singing stills the soul and is not barterable by file extensions. The best is yet to come but also the worst with it.

Forget me now and go back to your newfangled web surfing. We can't overcome this thing because it is bigger than we even think we are and after that bigger still. Reality is the communication and now that we can manage it we can control it or we are nothing. The truth is we don't know how so nothing we remain.

Where does that leave us? I don't know. Google Earth is very pretty but the pictures come from last year. Also, only the roads for cars are mapped there so you have to drive one. Be one. fuck my car in the tailpipe whydon'tyou. The earth is warmer and we all talk about it and do the collective echo of our own self hiding away from real.

ice travel

we goin onna treep 2 th ceter of th unidverse:

that baby brother is the reason we are all here to be fair. What is more the idle emissions will be decreased. The snow must melt from intense salt application Today is the 289 of march and we are going in for spring snow from siberia. Because it will stick to the black and white roof. Roofular monacles. The last timez anyways.

happy poy

for shizzle

my nizzlwe

officially

but so

therepy

musical instruments

tuba

unicorn halloween costume for newborn babies

cat eating my lungs

to go to the vancouver 2008 international auto show

we have so many green options this year

and the til is still ringing even after the bubble burst

main street is out spending wall street

because of the 1930s bank buyout

this car has a leafy green shoot coming out of the gas guage needle

paid for by canadas federal government

ontario needs the cars bailed out

otherwise the economy will tank and we will have to...

become humans without that pedalfoot

$2000 is you buy a car with green paint on the windows

whitewash the fences protecting out road

keeping the public transit at bay

two double the price of bus fare

fairly well keep us from having to make more busses

that keeps numbers low even if gas prices skyrocked

we can still have enough room on the bus

and only 7 bike racks

as long as the fares are high enough to deter riders

from choosing to buy a bicycle

the we are all safe

communism has been throughly discredited

in fafvour of

home made T-shirts will liberate us all!

once and forever

nostalgia is better than now

and the computer is better than doing it

because we are free in our minds now

and that is all that really counts

the freedom to be anything we want to be

to dream, perchance to notice

what colour is in the air now

forever unlimited

fantasy is better than politics

'd religion is obscolete

thge taliban is the enemy

morphine for all hospital birth epidural blocks

breastfeeding shameful

sugar is sin

sugar and ethanol prices are skyrocketing

flour prices are way up

prices are at their highest and reseerves at a 60 year low

becauseee nowww weee don't need bread

all we need now is the time to scan the file
a digital revolution

revolverution

like that one italian horror action film from the 70s

that was like so radical and punk

we bought that t shirt and stole a cola
and the man was scared of us while we shopped

for whatever

biofuel is a good think to spend our food on

better to drive cars
than to be fat from eating
and if we get fat anyway

because the cars make the muscles go away

then we can always use olestra or nutrasweet

the holiest of foods

is the artificial sugars that are not so base as this earth

but arise from gods holy lamb trinity

the mind of ah-damn eve ery where.
an upside down peters projection map of the world
laminated and lasting for years

will put us all in our place

and our sense of place
will be rekindled

like the dying embers of the light brown skinned presidential candidate
and her heroic husband

who symbolically presented the face of real emotional change
for the better superdelegates

to prefer to fundraise 53 million dollars
of tv ads

that tell us to vote
becauswe voting is useful

and icebergs are pretty in obsolete hddvd format

when only blue ray admits to global climate change

because we are driving a hybrid anyway

and the bike lane is for parking your green machine

when you have to overtake the critical mass
which isn't meant to slow you

you after all bought a car for at least 60000 doll hairs
and that means you care about your green footprint
at the 2006 academy awards

where al gore got a prize
for not being the prez
and the best britney sprears underdress photograph
couldnt forget us all to see

the snow in april
that wasn't supposed to melt until june
and we said that we didn't have to wear parkas
and our media was bought out
and the phone company taxed the p2p BT which was all pirates anyway

so lets get a rootget drm package
and be done with that
the flatscreen monitor in the landfill
is so much more efficient I'm so glad we aren't throwing out the big chunk CRTs anymore

serious business

Just backup every paragraph seriously ok otherwise you are dead from the autosave. It has happened more than 3 times!

a future investment in this country is the reason why we are having kids. My lunar new year stat holiday cookie fortune says "golden investment opporunities are arising." And immediately I think about what the return on my baby will be. How much do you think I can get for him. How much will he pay me when he grows up and is instructed in how to be productive. You can't do nothing anymore christopher robin. It is now the time to become the night and use a stick. The hospital requires a blue ID card.

Labour is as labour was