Dissociated Press

This month I wrote about ApacheTop and iftop, two really cool proggys that let you see what’s going on with Apache and your network interfaces, respectively.

Bought the Belkin Nostromo n52 Speedpad the other day. It’s a device for gamers, primarily. Connects via USB and it comes with software to customize the keys and buttons to make it easier to play various games.

I had assumed, since it came with special software to customize the device, that its keys had “special” keycodes that needed to be programmed. Nope — it essentially emulates the left-most keys of a standard keyboard from the Tab key to the “c” key, with a directional pad that serves as the arrow keys and a few other buttons.

The good news is that it works just fine in Linux without any need for software, except the additional scroll wheel which doesn’t seem to produce any events that XFree86 can “see.” I plugged in the USB connector, heard a tiny beep and it was working — no need to install any software or anything. The bad news is that I was hoping the buttons would produce special keycodes, so I could program it with XBindKeys for general use under X.

The device is okay. I think it’ll still be handy for playing Q3A and Unreal Tournament, but it’s not the best device I’ve ever purchased. The keys have lousy feedback, they feel spongy and generally “dead.” The lower thumb button in particular has poor feedback.

Interesting little tidbit: You can use the keypad on your keyboard as a mouse-substitute on Linux by hitting Ctrl+Shift+NumLock. Then movement corresponds with the position of the keys: 1 moves the cursor down and left, 2 moves the cursor down, 3 moves the cursor down and to the right, etc. The 5 key equals a button press, mouse button 1 by default, but it can be toggled using the /, *, and - keys. The / key sets the 5 key to button 1, * sets the 5 key to mouse button 2 and the - key on the numeric keypad sets the 5 key to mouse button 3. Pretty useful stuff for folks who don’t like to use the mouse…

February’s “Open Road” column has been up for a while, this one’s on using ccache. Nice schtuff for anyone who spends a lot of time re-compiling and testing C/C++ apps.