ZAreason's BigLap & The Verizon VX9800, Part 2

When we last left our hero, bitpim was installed and he had to run off to Cooper 35 for $4 drinks and free edamame. We now resume out story.

8:06 PM Run bitpim! Type 'bitpim' in the terminal window. Then 'ctrl+z' to suspend the application, and '%1&' to resume it in the background.
8:08 PM Take the tour
8:09 PM OK, that was irritating. Bitpim is an application with its own window. And there's an underlined 'tour'. So, I click it to take the tour. And I click it again. And again. And againandagainandagainandagain. And each time I click it, Firefox loads a new tab with the tour in it But, since I'm not looking at Firefox, I don't know this has happened.
8:10 PM Actually start the tour
8:11 PM BitPim is a program that allows you to view and manipulate data on cell phones. This includes the PhoneBook, Calendar, WallPapers and RingTones, as well as the embedded filesystem (for expert users).
That sounds hopeful.
8:13 PM I'm ignoring the part about needing a cable. I'm going to connect my phone to Kijamaa over bluetooth, and see if the one can detect the other.
8:21 PM That totally didn't work out. Cable is now connected to phone, let's start BitPim again. (I have to kill it as it won't dismiss a modal dialog box it popped up when I tried to get it to automatically detect the phone before it was plugged in.)
8:23 PM OK, 'find phone' didn't launch the dialog box this time. It's green!
8:24 PM I ask it to get the address book, wall paper, calendar, ring tone, memo, SMS, Call History, and Play List. I expect the memo and play list to be pretty sparse.
8:27 PM It's still got a ways to go, phone list wise. It doesn't seem inclined to download my photos or movies, so I may need more solutions.
8:33 PM It's finished! I'm going to check out the data.
8:35 PM Sweet. It downloaded the photo of this girl I met in the PATH station Wednesday. This was, I hasten to add, not my wallpaper. I don't see the movie I shot of her, though. Maybe I didn't save it... No, it's on there.
8:39 PM You know, there is this big crown thingie with the right date on it. Maybe there's just no thumbnails in BitPim.
8:40 PM I saved it to a desktop, but right-clicking it doesn't give me an application to play it. Hold on, I'll look around for a player application. There's this. Not much practical help, but interesting.
8:48 PM Score one for Yahoo! Answers, which directs me to Best All Video Converter. Of course, I don't really know what I'd convert it to. What can Kijamaa play?
8:50 PM I find an application called 'Movie Player' in the Applications menu. It doesn't display the 3g2 file in its browser, suggesting it doesn't support the format. I'm going to look for a player, but I now have this fall back plan of converting it to different formats until I find one that Movie Player can play.
8:52 PM Hey, what about Real? sudo -i apt-get install realplayer fails with

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Package realplayer is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
E: Package realplayer has no installation candidate

which suggests it exists somewhere. OK, that's another plan.
8:57 PM OK, this post in the Ubuntu forums says Totem player will work, but with no sound. I'll give it a shot, then convert.
9:03 PM OK, Totem player is the Movie Player I opened before, which took me surprisingly long to realize. So, I choose 'All Files' in the file browser, and load the 3gs file. It suggests I get me some new codecs, and when I send it to find them, warns

GStreamer plugins for mms, wavpack, quicktime, musepack
GStreamer plugins from the "bad" set
GStreamer is a streaming media framework, based on graphs of filters which operate on media data.
Applications using this library can do anything from real-time sound processing to playing videos, and just about anything else media-related.
Its plugin-based architecture means that new data types or processing capabilities can be added simply by installing new plug-ins.
Gstreamer Bad Plug-ins is a set of plug-ins that aren't up to par compared to the rest. They might be close to being good quality, but they're missing something - be it a good code review, some documentation, a set of tests, a real live maintainer, or some actual wide use.
Version: 0.10.4-1ubuntu1 (gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad)

9:06 PM I had to attest I'm using this for research purposes. Which I am, I guess, although it may see other purposes later.
9:08 PM It didn't help. Error box says I need the QCELP and MPEG-4 decoders.
9:16 PM Can't find these decoders, and wouldn't know how to get them into the player if I did. I'm going back to the conversion idea.
9:34 PM OK. That converter was only for Windows. The Ubuntu forums suggest replacing Totem with mplayer.
9:47 PM Yeah, that was for the Firefox plug-in, which I could conceive caring about at some other time. sudo apt-get install mplayer

rionn@ubuntu:~/Desktop$ mplayer *.3g2
MPlayer 2:1.0~rc1-0ubuntu9.1 (C) 2000-2006 MPlayer Team
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T5500 @ 1.66GHz (Family: 6, Model: 15, Stepping: 6)
CPUflags: MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 1 SSE2: 1
Compiled with runtime CPU detection.
Can't open joystick device /dev/input/js0: No such file or directory
Can't init input joystick
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.

Playing 0725072335.3g2.
ISO: File Type Major Brand: 3GPP Profile 2
Quicktime/MOV file format detected.
VIDEO: [mp4v] 176x144 24bpp 7.500 fps 0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s)
open: No such file or directory
[MGA] Couldn't open: /dev/mga_vid
open: No such file or directory
[MGA] Couldn't open: /dev/mga_vid
[VO_TDFXFB] Can't open /dev/fb0: No such file or directory.
[VO_3DFX] Unable to open /dev/3dfx.
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
Selected video codec: [ffodivx] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg MPEG-4)
==========================================================================
==========================================================================
Forced audio codec: mad
Opening audio decoder: [qtaudio] QuickTime Audio Decoder
Win32 LoadLibrary failed to load: QuickTime.qts, /usr/lib/win32/QuickTime.qts, /usr/local/lib/win32/QuickTime.qts
failed loading QuickTime.qts
ADecoder preinit failed :(
ADecoder init failed :(
Cannot find codec for audio format 0x706C6351.
Read DOCS/HTML/en/codecs.html!
Audio: no sound
Starting playback...
VDec: vo config request - 176 x 144 (preferred colorspace: Planar YV12)
VDec: using Planar YV12 as output csp (no 0)
Movie-Aspect is 1.22:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect.
VO: [xv] 176x144 => 176x144 Planar YV12
V: 15.5 114/114 0% 0% 0.0% 0 0

Exiting... (End of file)

9:52 PM I need a joystick? OK, there was definitely sound. I can hear it on the phone. I guess I should read DOCS/HTML/en/codecs.html. Which could be a problem because "sudo find / -name codecs.html" has no results.
9:59 PM A site called '411 for sex' offers a lot of codecs. Wow. I guess there really is
porn on the internet.
10:13 PM Can we just recap? I've got BitPim installed, and I can download my calendar, pictures, address book, videos and what have you. I can play my videos, yet without sound. So, I'm going to table the sound thing and move on to Bluetooth.
10:21 PM I wonder what would happen if I put a memo on my phone? Ah. BitPim crashes when I try to save it. So much for indirectly adding phone features.