Finally, got back the brightness control in windows 7 on my Vaio CS17

Had a tough time trying to get the brightness control to work after installing windows 7 on my Vaio CS17G, which came with vista originally installed.Every time i pressed the Fn+F5 or Fn+F6 the display bar moved by one block, but there was no change in the brightness. Windows mobility centre didn’t have the brightness option.

Finally got hold of the correct driver upgrade version from the Sony Australia, which did the job. 
Windows 7 Upgrade NVIDIA Graphics Driver Upgrade Version 8.15.11.8640
This program will upgrade NVIDIA Graphics Driver to version 8.15.11.8640.
Although it says that this is applicable only to VGN-CS36GJ, VGN-CS38GD, VGN-CS36TJ, VGN-CS36MJ, VGN-CS37GH, VGN-CS28GD, VGN-CS36SJ, VGN-CS27GJ: it worked without a hitch for me on my Vaio CS17G.

Now i have brightness changing with Fn keys and also on power on/off and i have brightness control from windows mobility centre as well.

Download the driver from here.

Ubuntu Natty Beta on Sony Vaio CS17

I am posting some screenshots of natty beta running on my sony vaio CS 17.

What works: Unity looks great, works after installing nvidia additional drivers.
                       Fn keys for volume work out of the box.

 Hiccups:     Brightness keys do not work, will try to tweak with nvclock.
                    Media keys do not work, pressing media keys brings up right
                    click menu.
                    Touchpad randomly stops responding and makes the box
                    unusable needing reboot.

will post in detail after i use it for a while...
                    

Fibromyalgia

Information to patients.

Up to 5% of the population suffers from fibromyalgia, which is a syndrome characterised by chronic body pain, fatigue, anxiety or depression, sleep disturbances.
Commonly seen in patients between 20 to 50, more in females than males at 9:1 ratio.
primary : not associated with other conditions.
secondary: associated with rheumatoid arthritis or SLE
Common symptoms associated with fibromyalgia with decreasing frequency are:

Condition                                % of FMS Symptoms

Muscular Pain                                         100
Fatigue                                                     96
Insomnia                                                   86
Joint Pains                                                72
Headaches                                               60
Restless Legs                                           56
Numbness and Tingling                            52
Impaired Memory                                    46
Leg Cramps                                             42
Impaired Concentration                            41
Nervousness                                            32
Depression (Major Depression)               20
can also be associated with irritable bowel syndrome, paraesthesia, genitourinary symptoms.

Diagnosis : There is no single test which can establish the diagnosis. It is more a diagnosis by exclusion. Do investigations to rule out all other rheumatological conditions.
Criteria used for diagnosis according to ACR are:

1. Wide spread presence of pain throughout the body present for more than 3 months.
2. Presence of tender spots throughout the body. At least 11 out of 18.

                           
Treatment: Mostly symptomatic treatment, options available are:

1. Medications: Tramadol, pregabalin, ketamine, gabapentin and others.
2. Exercises: Most important part of treatment. Aerobics, stretching and strengthening exercises, etc
3. Relaxation techniques to reduce the effects of stress: meditation, pranayama etc.
4. Antidepressants and muscle relaxants can also used.
5. Psychotherapy.

Another conky config showing date, time, stats, calendar, gmail and weather

Update: Conky weather no longer works, so i have used yahoo weather to get the same effect in my new config. Look here for details.

These are a couple of conkys showing you the date, time, stats, calendar, gmail and weather forecast.

You will need a lot of fonts and few scripts to run this successfully. 

Fonts used: 

1. Radio Space
2. hooge font
3. Poky font
4. Weather font
5. OPenLogos font
6. PizzaDude Bullets font
7. VariShapes Solid font
8. StyleBats font
9. DejaVu Sans
10. Liberation Serif

Google for them and download free from the sites.

Scripts used:

1. conkyForecast.py
2. conky3Days.templet
3. gmail.pl

Download the scripts from here.

Logo used:

.conkyrc for the first conky in the above pics is here.

And the .conkyrc for the second pic is here.

Download and save the fonts, scripts and logo.

You will need to edit the scripts and change the paths, to make it work.

If you need more info...... for 

Google calendar (gcalcli) go to http://www.webupd8.org/2010/08/display-google-calendar-on-your-desktop.html

Conky weather go to http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=869328

Have fun......

Ubuntu dark charcoal theme for chrome

Hi install Ubuntu darkly charcoal theme for chrome web browser. You can install it from the chrome web store for free. Go to https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jjekofhljmbijhelagbihakhbnognjfj to install. I liked the theme a lot, it looks great with a dark Ubuntu theme, take a look at the screenshot below.