Changing the Wallpaper to Scaled in Ubuntu 13.04

After upgrading to Ubuntu 13.04, I lost the ability to scale the desktop background.  At first, I tried just saving the image at a different size, but it kept cropping it in ways I didn't like.

Solution was pretty simple (though it should have still been available in the UI):

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-options "scaled"

Unable to open MTP device '[usb:003,021]'

Recently I upgraded my Samsung Galaxy Note to JellyBean. Around the same time, I also upgraded both the desktop and laptop to Raring Ringtail.  When connecting the device to the dev boxes, the laptop continued to work. The desktop however would give me a never ending loop of popups like this one:

Unable to open MTP device '[usb:003,021]'

While trying to resolve it, I found this fix about the ASUS Transformer...

I followed the same instructions with a few slight tweaks...

/etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules:

# MTP Settings added by Malachi
# From dmesg:
# [  166.765498] usb 3-4: reset high-speed USB device number 20 using ehci-pci
# [  166.845468] usb 3-4: USB disconnect, device number 20
# [  167.084889] usb 3-4: new high-speed USB device number 21 using ehci-pci
# [  167.219607] usb 3-4: New USB device found, idVendor=04e8, idProduct=6860
# [  167.219609] usb 3-4: New USB device strings: Mfr=2, Product=3, SerialNumber=4
# [  167.219611] usb 3-4: Product: SAMSUNG-SGH-I717
# [  167.219613] usb 3-4: Manufacturer: samsung
# [  167.219614] usb 3-4: SerialNumber: 2a4c2c04
ENV{ID_MODEL}=="SAMSUNG-SGH-I717", ENV{ID_MODEL_ID}=="6860", ACTION=="add", RUN+="/usr/bin/sudo -b -u malachi /usr/bin/go-mtpfs -allow-other=true /media/SGH-I717"
ENV{ID_MODEL}=="SAMSUNG-SGH-I717", ENV{ID_MODEL_ID}=="6860", ACTION=="remove", RUN+="/bin/umount /media/SGH-I717"

in /etc/fstab:

DeviceFs(SAMSUNG-SGH-I717)    /media/SGH-I717   fuse.DeviceFs(SAMSUNG-SGH-I717)    allow_other,rw,user,noauto    0    0

Now, when I connect, I get about 50 popups but then ADB works again.

Android Studio desktop entry

I've been using IntelliJ for my Android development from the beginning.  The new from #io13 that they were switching to an IntelliJ-based IDE was awesome.  Of course, I had to download it and try it out.

First thing to note is that although the Ultimate edition of IntelliJ is supposed to have the same support; the two are not exactly the same.  Creating a new project in Android Studio has a different wizard (at least today).

I installed Android Studio in /usr/local/android-studio.  Upon launching Android Studio, I decided to try to do the "Configure | Create desktop entry".

This unfortunately caused an exception:

[  10724]   WARN - tions.CreateDesktopEntryAction - Unable to locate suitable startup script in '/usr/local/android-studio/bin'. java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to locate suitable startup script in '/usr/local/android-studio/bin'. at com.intellij.ide.actions.CreateDesktopEntryAction.prepare(CreateDesktopEntryAction.java:148) at com.intellij.ide.actions.CreateDesktopEntryAction.createDesktopEntry(CreateDesktopEntryAction.java:99) at com.intellij.ide.actions.CreateDesktopEntryAction$1.run(CreateDesktopEntryAction.java:82) at com.intellij.openapi.progress.impl.ProgressManagerImpl$TaskRunnable.run(ProgressManagerImpl.java:493) at com.intellij.openapi.progress.impl.ProgressManagerImpl$2.run(ProgressManagerImpl.java:185) at com.intellij.openapi.progress.impl.ProgressManagerImpl.executeProcessUnderProgress(ProgressManagerImpl.java:226) at com.intellij.openapi.progress.impl.ProgressManagerImpl.runProcess(ProgressManagerImpl.java:175) at com.intellij.openapi.progress.impl.ProgressManagerImpl$8.run(ProgressManagerImpl.java:400) at com.intellij.openapi.application.impl.ApplicationImpl$8.run(ApplicationImpl.java:458) at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:471) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:262) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1145) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:615) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:722) at com.intellij.openapi.application.impl.ApplicationImpl$1$1.run(ApplicationImpl.java:154)

The solution is just to create the desktop entry manually. Create the file ~/.local/share/applications/android-studio.desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Comment=Develop Android with pleasure!
Terminal=false
Name=Android Studio
Exec="/usr/local/android-studio/bin/studio.sh" %f
Type=Application
Icon=/usr/local/android-studio/bin/idea.png
Categories=Development;IDE;
StartupNotify=true
StartupWMClass=jetbrains-idea

That's it. Depending on your OS version and window manager, you may need to restart X and/or log out.

Upgrading the Galaxy Note to Jelly Bean

I received an SMS from AT&T today telling me that I could upgrade to JB using KIES. Enough acronyms for you?

Rebooting into Windows so that I could launch Kies....
Starting Kies, it detected that it was out of date and updated.
Afterwards, plugging in the phone, it detected the firmware was out of date and tried to update.
That's where things got redundant.  I got in an infinite loop that kept stopping at:

Now, don't get me wrong. My first thought was maybe I was down to 100MB internal storage again. I do tend to install a couple hundred apps.

But, now according to the file manager:

So what's going on?

After a few attempts, I went to Settings | Storage | Unmount SD Card

After that Kies was able to upgrade the device.

ia32-libs

Android is full of 32-bit tools and dependencies.
Running on x64 can be problematic unless you install ia32-libs.
Unfortunately, Ubuntu has been having issues installing it lately.

After 2 days, I finally found the solution here:

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

After that, everything installs fine.