A linux utility to manage brightness on Apple Cinema Displays. I got it to work perfectly on my Ubuntu set up.

(I have been experiencing an incredible error in my OS X set up for the past 2-3 months that I haven’t been able to crack. It seems to be a random system freeze where nothing crashes, the computer simply locks up and remains somewhat responsive (ie. the mouse works). It’s a long story that I’ve been documenting for a while and hope to fix soon enough.)

For now, I have jumped back on Ubuntu for the next week or two full time while I get through some important projects. I spent some time today setting up all my stuff, including my two external Apple Cinema Displays but there is no support for brightness control through the system. Thankfully somebody has written up a piece of code to solve the issue. It’s called ACDControl and I am documenting it here for my own future reference:

ACDControl

Examples:

acdcontrol --detect /dev/hiddev*
Perform detection, which HID device is actually your display to be controlled.

acdcontrol /dev/hiddev0
Read current brightness parameter

acdcontrol /dev/hiddev0 160
Set brightness to 160. Note, that brightness setting depends on your model. Generally, this parameter may get values in the range [0-255].

acdcontrol /dev/hiddev0 +10
Increment current brightness by 10.

acdcontrol /dev/hiddev0 -- -10
Decrement current brightness by 10. Please,note --!


I want to share these two books in case you are interested in the same things I am.

Mark Pilgrim’s Dive Into HTML5 has already proven extremely useful to me through the website and the published chapters (on HTML5 video in this case). Mark is a great writer and this is one book I can’t wait to read. Pre-order it now.

The other book is Craig Hockenberry’s iPhone App Development: The Missing Manual. What you should know: Craig is one of the first iPhone developers and is behind the amazing Twitteriffic, his track record is fantastic and his website Furbo is a valuable resource. SUffice to say, the book should cover everything you need to know about this.

This is a quick note to keep track of what’s just happened on this site.

I just lost two years of comments and files hosted here. Long story.
My desktop blogging apps had my posts (from the last two years) backed up which I’ve now just re published (so I apologize for all the old content showing up in the feed).

I’ll be tweaking the site and going through small problems here and there, but for the most part the site is the same, except with less comments.

Live and learn.

From an email I sent a friend today:

I have been trying to use a calendar for 10 years and I still consciously believe I am capable of remembering everything without writing anything down.

I —honestly— feel like whenever I write something down in a calendar, I am killing neurones; whereas if I try to remember, I am putting 100 of them on a treadmill counting down the minutes, thus keeping my brain young and fresh.

Make sense?

Yeah…

I have resorted to carrying a fucking memo book with me at all times to write shit down.

And instead of writing things down I draw web pages.

Sigh.

Blue beanie day, originally uploaded by josue salazar.

Monday, November 30, 2009 is the day thousands of Standardistas (people who support web standards) will wear a Blue Beanie to show their support for accessible, semantic web content.

This hat —which my wife happily made— actually reads XHTML. It’s a good way to talk to people about web standards when you otherwise wouldn’t. I am happy to support this cause.