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When Gutsy came out recently I decided to make the switch from Gnome to KDE. Overall I like it, but there are some things that are driving me nuts. One of them is that there seems to be no way to change the default action of the power button on my laptop. This was easy to change in Gnome, but requires more trickery in KDE.

After a while of searching around in control panels and on Google, it became apparent that the answer I sought did not lay in a GUI. Thankfully, the acpi config files are very easy to edit.

All you need to do is go to /etc/acpi/events and find the file named powerbtn. It's good practice to make a backup at this point. Copy the file to something like powerbtn.bak. Now click the handy "edit as root" button in Dolphin.

Alternately, if you're comfortable in a terminal, it's much simpler to just issue the following command: > sudo cp /etc/acpi/events/powerbtn /etc/acpi/events/powerbtn.bak && sudo kate /etc/acpi/events/powerbtn Once in there, find the line action=/etc/acpi/powerbtn.sh and change it to the following: > action=/etc/acpi/hibernate.sh Save it and you're done. You'll need to restard acpid (or just reboot the whole os) before the change will take effect.

What this change does is, instead of telling the system to run the "ask the user what they want to do" script when the power button is pressed, it tells the system to run the "hibernate now" script when the button is pressed.

I've been lax in posting about it, but a few weeks ago I finally bought my first motorbike. I've been moving towards this for years, but it hasn't come together, mainly for reasons of money. I finally pulled the trigger on a Sachs Madass 125. It's a little bike, but it has a few main attributes.

• It's cheap. $3500 on road.
• It's light, so it's dead easy to ride and manouver.
• The build quality is great. The frame has some really pretty welds.
• It's cheap.
• The engine is a knock off of the Honda CT110 with a bigger head on it, so it's pretty much bulletproof.
• It looks awesome.
• It's cheap. I can definitely see myself picking up a bigger bike in the future (the Triumph Scrambler, Husqvarna SM610 and the Honda CB1300 spring to mind. Mmmmmm.) But while I'm at uni this little machine is great for getting me around.

I'm also having a hell of a lot of fun riding it. My skill levels are improving constantly, and I'm pushing myself harder and harder to get better. Also, I dragged off a bloke on a Suzuki Across on Saturday. Sure, he was a learner who seemed to be struggling really badly, but I beat him nonetheless.

My technolust is raging for the Neo1973 from FIC and OpenMoko. It's a Linux based smartphone with a retardedly high resolution screen, coming out in October. The developer version is already out (this isn't vapourware), but it lacks a few features like WiFi.

I'm just really, really excited for a completely open phone. I'm currently using a Sony Ericsson k800i, which is a great phone, but it's loaded with this goddamned Optus My Zoo Now java app that can't be removed. The shortcut to it is located on the same softkey as the hang up button, meaning that if someone I'm talking to hangs up a call before I do, it loads. This wouldn't be too much of a problem, except that it's really, really poorly written and takes a good few minutes to load, during which time you can't do anything else on the phone. If you try and kill it early, it usually crashes the phone. This is very frustrating behaviour.

Having a completely open phone will mean that crap like this doesn't happen. Having a phone that runs on Linux will mean that I can use tools like cron. My dream is to have the phone set to automatically mirror smh.com.au/text every morning while it's at home on my home WiFi network. That's the main thing I use my data connection for anyway, and it doesn't change throughout the day. I could have the entire newspaper sitting locally on my phone, loading lightning fast, and it wouldn't cost me a cent. If I could get that set up the lack of UMTS wouldn't even bother me.

Also, it would support SyncML meaning I could sync it up with whatever I please. No vendor lock-in like with ActiveSync, gah.

All in all, October is going to be a great month for geekery. Gutsy Gibbon drops and the consumer version of the Neo1973 is released to market. Glee!