Come far funzionare la Olicard 100 della Tim su Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala)

Un post in Italiano perché credo questa cosa possa interessare per lo più utenti Italiani.

Ovvero.. come far funzionare la Internet Key della Tim Olicard 100 su Ubuntu 9.10 Netbook Remix!! (Almeno.. ha funzionato per noi, ma è stata dura >.<).

1. Occorre inserire la nostra Olicard nel netbook e questa verrà vista come volume usb. Dentro ad essa vi sono i driver necessari al suo funzionamento. Dalla cartella Linux → Ubuntu, installare il pacchetto .deb cliccando anche su “Install Package”.
Fatto questo è consigliabile smontare il volume e riavviare il sistema operativo.

2. Una volta riavviato il pc inseriamo la chiavetta, smontiamola e scriviamo sulla shell il comando lsusb. Questo ci permette di vedere tutti i volumi collegati al nostro pc tra cui la nostra chiavetta della Olivetti.

3. Fatto questo scriviamo sulla shell:
sudo modprobe usbserial vendor=0x???? product=0x????
Dove al posto dei punti esclamativi inseriremo i numeri che erano risultati scrivendo lsusb relativi alla olicard con questa formattazione xxxx:xxxx.

4. Ora andiamo sulle Connessioni di rete, che troviamo sulla barra in alto oppure nel menu System, selezioniamo Mobile Broadband e clicchiamo su Add. A questo punto dovrebbe già riconoscere il nostro dispositivo e possiamo quindi proeguire a dargli le informazioni mancanti, sul gestore telefonico, etc. Per Tim l'APN da indicare è ibox.tim.it e il numero *99# è lo standard e va lasciato com'è. Gli altri campi possono rimanere vuoti.

5. Fatto questo proviamo a togliere fisicamente la chiavetta e reinserirla. Se tutto va per il verso giusto dovrebbe inizialmente vederla come disco e un istante dopo scomparire e risultare come modem. Torniamo in alto sulle connessioni di rete sulla barra in alto, clicchiamoci su con il tasto sinistro del mouse e dovrebbe apparire il nome della connessione. Cliccandoci sopra dovremmo riuscire a connetterci. A volte il primo tentativo non va per il meglio, a quel punto conviene togliere e reinserire la chiavetta e riprovare. Purtroppo pare sia necessario ad ogni riavvio ripetere il punto 3.
Per ovviare a quest'ultima scocciatura è possibile creare uno script che ricordi la riga di comando in automatico.

6. Anche se a questo punto la connessione sembra andare, Firefox sembra avere dei problemi a riconoscerla. Per risolvere anche questo problema occorre aprire nuovamente la shell e digitare:
sudo gedit /etc/resolv.conf
Che aprirà l'editor di testo e il nostro nuovo file. Ovviamente anche l'uso di un altro editor di testo va bene.
A questo punto scriviamo nel documento le seguenti due righe:
nameserver 213.230.130.222
nameserver 213.230.155.94

Salviamo e chiudiamo. Tuttavia sarà necessaria un'altra operazione affinché questo file di testo non venga automaticamente modificato. Quindi di seguito sulla shell scriviamo:
sudo chmod a-w /etc/resolv.conf

Quest'ultimo comando impedisce che il file possa essere modificato.
Ora proviamo a connetterci a Internet e ad aprire Firefox e tutto dovrebbe funzionare!
Buona fortuna!!

Un ringraziamento alle persone che scrivono nel forum di Ubuntu.it!!

EDIT
Grazie ai commenti di Rogier mi sono accorta che le precedenti istruzioni erano incomplete poiché in effetti abbiamo dovuto fare degli ulteriori passaggi affinché non fosse necessario ripetere il comando modprobe ad ogni riavvio.

Ecco delle ulteriori istruzioni per cercare di ovviare al problema:
Consiglio, invece di usare il comando:

sudo chmod a-w /etc/resolv.conf

di usare questo:

sudo chattr +i /etc/resolv.conf

che è più forte e non dovrebbe permettere al file di essere modificato.

Per non dover ripetere il comando di modprobe, scrivere nella shell:

sudo gedit /etc/modules

e aggiungere al documento:

sudo modprobe usbserial vendor=0x???? product=0x????

con i relativi codici vendor e product.

Salvate il file e ora dovrebbe caricarsi automaticamente all'avvio!

----------------------

English version ~ In case someone needs it!

How to make the Interner key Olicard 100 (offered by the provider TIM) work on Ubuntu 9.10 Netbook Remix version (This worked for us at least!).

1. You need to insert the Olicard in your netbook and it will see it as a usb key. Inside it there are some drivers neccessary for Linux. In the folder Linux → Ubuntu, you'll find a package .deb, click to install it and also on the button 'Install package'.
After this I sugget you to unmount the key and reboot the operating system.

2. When it has loaded again, insert the usb-key, umount it and write on the shell the command lsusb. This will show you all everything connected to the netbook, included the Olivetti key. .

3. After this, write on the shell:
sudo modprobe usbserial vendor=0x???? product=0x????
Where instead of the question marks you'll write the numbers and letters that appeared on the results given by the command lsusb, in the format xxxx:xxxx.

4. Now let's click on the Network Connections, on the bar on the top of the screen of in the System menu, select 'Mobile Broadband' and click on Add. At this point it should recognise the device so we can go on and insert the missing information about the provider, and so on,
Tim's APN is ibox.tim.it and the number 99# is standard. The other fields can be left unfilled.

5. After that we can take off the key and insert it again. If everything is ok it should be seen as a usb device for a moment and then disappear and become a modem. Let's go back to the Network Connections and there clicking in the bar with the left button we should see out connection's name.
Clicking on it we should manage to connect to the Internet. Sometimes if it doesn't work the first time it's better if we take off the key and try again. It seems that at every reebot it's necessary to repeat point 3.

6. Even if now the connection seems to work, Firefox may have some problems dealing with it. To solve this problem we need to open the shell once again and write:

sudo gedit /etc/resolv.conf
That will open the editor and our new file. Of course other text editors work fine too.
Let's write in the file this:
nameserver 213.230.130.222
nameserver 213.230.155.94

Let's save and quit. Although, we need to do one last thing to be sure that the file won't be automatically edited. So we'll write on the shell the command:
sudo chmod a-w /etc/resolv.conf

This last command makes the file impossible to edit.
Let's try to connect to the Internet, open a Firefox page and hopefully everything should work!
Good luck!!

--------- EDIT January 14th 2010

Thanks to Rogier I noticed that the previous instructions had some flaws cause the modprobe command had to be repeated at every reboot.
So here are some further (and hopefully more useful) instructions:

In order to make it work better I suggest to use instead of the command:

sudo chmod a-w /etc/resolv.conf

this one:

sudo chattr +i /etc/resolv.conf

that is stronger, and in that way the file should not be edited anymore.

About the modprobe, type in the shell:

sudo gedit /etc/modules

and add to the document:

sudo modprobe usbserial vendor=0x???? product=0x????

with the correct vendor and product codes.

Save the file and it should now be loaded automatically at every reboot.

Impressionist art in Villa Manin

Hi!
I went to an art exhibition today and I really enjoyed it. Luckily the weather was very fine, a sunny, cool day, more similar to Spring than to the beginning of Autumn.
The exhibiton took place in the beautiful villa Manin Passariano in Codroipo (Udine) and contained mainly impressionist and realist paintings.

The paintings were not as many as I thought they would be, but there were some really beautiful pieces of art mainly by French, Russian, Hungarian, artists. There were also very famous artists like Monet, Renoir, Pisarro, Serov, Levitan, Courbet, Van Gogh, l'ecole de Barbizon.

The impressionist and the realist paintings were not divided in two separated areas but organised in different themes like: water, farming, portraits, etc, and even if this could be quite confusing at first, I liked this choice, it gave a nice organisation to the exhibition.
Some impressionist paintings had a wonderful light and bright colours, at the right distance you could say the movement contained in the scene and all that brushstrokes and stains took the form of a field with flowers, a railway, a forest.
I'm not the biggest fan of Realist art but there were some really impressive pieces, especially some landscapes, so realistic to seem photographs.
Behind the Villa there was a big, beautiful garden where we took a nice walk; a big lawn and many trees created a very relaxing atmosphere, there were two little lakes, squirrels and some statues.

Here there are some of the paintings that I loved the most:

Pierre Auguste Renoir - Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil


Monet - Morning On The Seine


Monet - Tulips field in Sassenhein near Leiden


Jòsef Chelmonski - Jay in the forest

Goodbye!!! (^___^)/~

Chéri - a short review

Hi!

Here I am, writing a short review of the film Chéri. It wasn't easy to find it after the italian release, because it was scheduled only in a few cinemas.

I've been completely satisfied by this adaptation, it is a beautiful, beautiful film!!
They respected the plot completely and took into account all the little decorative details that made the story unique and original and gave importance to the development of the characters' personalities. The characters were just perfect!!!
Michelle Pfeiffer was wonderful and brilliant, she gave to Léa her strong personality, her beauty, her motherly attitude and her frailty. I had a huge surprise with Rupert Friend, finding out he was just the perfect Chéri I had imagined reading the book. Perfect, both in beauty and in attitudes. He had the perfect looks, the perfect childish attitude, the charm and the weakness of a spoiled child. Felicity Jones played the part of Edmée and she surely was the right choice. After seeing her in Northanger Abbey she was perfect in the role of the little, unexperienced yet patient girl.

The scenography was beautiful and as I said for the book, everything seemed a XIX century's painting, with bright colours, a sweet and shallow atmosphere with a soft light and a quiet movement, yet, able to show us the dramatic and subtle experience of Léa, experiencing love and all the pain it carries, for the first time now that is a grown up bautiful woman, and the one of Chéri, immature young man unable to find his way without her motherly attentions. The director was particularly good in showing us she signs of this nostalgia and the time that flows: a beautiful decaying rose in the garden that Léa admires in a moment of desired loneliness, her beautiful eyes in a mirror which reveals to us the signs of the old age that is approaching. Léa, so intelligent, so superior to all that shallow gossip and that 'vanity fair' feels like she's falling into mediocrity, and not even her will be spared by the rules of the world.

The love story is not banal at all thanks to the particular personalities of the characters, it's painful and yet very sweet and passional. Colette with her small details of everyday life and odd conversations that occurs between people, creates for us a familiar atmosphere that seems still, unable to move toward the future.

I have only two critics to the choices made by the director:

1) Why using an omniscent narrator at the beginning and in the ending of the film? He probably added to the story the sensation of it being a 'tale', but I think it wasn't needed.. the images spoke for themselves, we didn't need a description of the characters' mind! And we're not at Colette's time, so a justification of events is not needed. I can see the narrator was useful in the very last scene, but then again,
2)Why even if the ending was perfect and just like Colette's Chéri's ending, the narrator felt the need to go on with the story and summarise in a sentence all 'The end of Chéri' (a following book in which the War arrives and the Belle Epoque is no more)? I thought the ending was perfectly dramatic and beautiful also without that.

Anyway, an intense, beautiful film, I'm completely satisfied.
The dvd is being released on 21 September here, on Amazon.co.uk and I'm surely going to buy it as soon as possible!! <3

Bye!

Never be the same - Becoming Jane

A fanvid, yes, another one!!! ^-^
This time... Becoming Jane
I love this film...



Bye!!!

You and me - Mr Bingley and Jane + films' reviews

Another fanvid I made ~ this time it's about Lost in Austen and in particular about Jane and Charles's relationships <3 because they're just so cute and they're my favourite characters in the book!!!
For further information see the video description <3

Enjoy ~ !

.. and now, a short review about the last film I've seen at the cinema: S. Darko.
Unfortunately it was quite disappointing. Despite all the bad reviews I had heard I went to the cinema trying to have no prejudices about the new film, but I can see why the new project was not blessed by the writer of Donnie Darko, Richard Kelly. Because Donnie Darko didn't need a sequel.
The plot of the new film had way too many things copied from the previous one and often they were not just sentences or similar things that could be useful to excite Donnie Darko's fans, they were entire scenes filmed just in the same way, only with different characters!! Not really original.
What's more, the characters were not very well developed, the conversations not brilliant and they didn't give me any particular issue to wonder about, maybe with the only exception of a phrase said by Jeremy, not too original though.
Unlike the previous film, this did not contain a real critic about society, except for some element against preachers and religion already present in Donnie Darko. Finally, someone can explain to me why, if in the previous film we have been said something about the Philosophy of Time Travels described in the book by Roberta Sparrow, now no one follows any rule to create a time vortex and just have nightmares that lead them in the past??
After seeing the film I was just confused and couldn't figure out was I was missing.. but I'm afraid that this film's plot is just too weak to be a real sequel of Donnie Darko and probably there's not really so much to understand.

Anyway, the next months seem to be full of great events for what concerns cinema and films!!
There are quite a few that I'm not gonna miss!! :D
For what concerns Italy, here in September there's the release of Cheri, with Michelle Pfeiffer and Ruper Friend and the Ice Age 3. The latter should be fun as usual, but I'm really curious about the first one. I've just read Colette's book, Cheri, and I enjoyed it quite a lot. It was poetic, sad and at the same time bright, soft and frivolous. Like the director said, Colette describes things like an impressionist. You see the mouvement of the light and the colours and everything is so sweet, so shallow yet so dramatic. I think that the choice of Michelle in the role of Léa is just perfect and Rupert seems to make a very good Cheri. I'm looking forward to see it ^^

Then, a new film directed by Tim Burton will be released on 09/09/09 but strangely enough no one is talking a about it now.. the title is 9 and it is an animated film, apparently very visionary and with a lot of action. Then in October it's the turn of Parnassus, a new film by Terry Gillian, another film full of visions, imagination, adventures starring the Heath Ledger in his last great performance, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law. The trailer is just amazing, I can't wait to see it!!!

Another film I'm waiting for in October is Dorian Gray, starring Ben Barnes. I'm a huge fan of Oscar Wilde's book and I think that Ben is so handsome he fits Dorian perfectly... even if I'm afraid the director did not respect the book's plot very much. The trailer seems more extreme and what's more they added a character that did not exist: Sir Henry Wottom's daughter. Why is that??

Others films released in November/December are Hachiko, a dog's tale starring Richard Gere (the trailer made me cry already), Avatar directed by James Cameron and... last but not least, coming on 5th March 2010 is Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland!!!
I'm waiting from this film since it was announced and I think it's going to be fantastic!! I really would like to see it in 3d at the IMAX (possibly in London, eheh) and the cast is great *-* Johnny Depp, Helena Boham Carter, Anne Hathaway..
Burton seems to have made a mix between Alice in Wonderland and Through the looking glass (like Disney had already made in his cartoon), all in his unique and particular dark and visionary style.

Well, goodbye until the next video!! =)

The End ~ A Dr Who fanwork

I made my first fanvid and it's about Doctor Who season 2!! ^__^
Being my first music video it not very accurate, but I had a lot of fun!
Enjoy ~



Credits: The song is "The End" from the videogame "Drawn to Life", sung by Hayley Chapman and David J. Franco, the lyrics are in the description.
All Doctor Who's copyrights belong to BBC ^^