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Wednesday, June 17th, 2009
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Sometimes you just see something and immediately assume that it works a certain way and when you later find out that it doesn't and at the same time realize that it may lay within your power to change, then if you're like me, your inner "hacker" child takes over! I actually did this a while back, but just now decided to post it here.
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Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009
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I really liked the old, now defunct "xmms" music player software. A fork of it seems to have replaced it called "Audacious". I gave it a try, and it seems to really work and sound well, much better than "vlc". Anyway, a couple of annoyances have crept into it as of the latest version 1.5.1:
1) The "File Open" window pops up when specifying the cdrom (cdda://) as the play target on the command-line.
2) Starting Audacious without a play target (music files, playlist file, url, or cdd*:// device) causes the last played playlist to start up automatically. That's well and good, but I wanted a way to start up Audacious with an empty playlist.
3) For some strange reason, you can stream audio, at least mp3 from a url, but NOT from STDIN?!
I found a patch here that partially addresses (1) here: http://atheme.org/attachments/15/1.5.1-commandline-options.patch Thanks Tony Vroon! I applied this, but it did not fix 1 completly, so I developed another patch based from this one to fix (1) and add a "-c/--clear" command-line option to address (2). I also patched the plugin file (stdio.c) to address 3. Whilst I was at it, I decided to also add the ability to pipe in a playlist (list of files/urls to play) into STDIN as well! For piping a song, one needs to append the extension to the STDIN filename ("-) in indicate to Audacious what type of file it's processing. I ended up having to hack several of the plugins, so that it now works (tested) for ogg, wav, and mp3-ish files.
I ended up having to also include the "file://" prefix since otherwise Audacious thinks "-.mp3" is an option. Anyway, these patches are against Audacious v. 1.5.1 (audacious_1.5.1.orig.tar.gz) and Plugins, v. 1.5.1 (audacious-plugins_1.5.1.orig.tar.gz).
To pipe in a song, do:
cat ~/mymusic/coolsong.mp3 | audacious file://-.mp3
To pipe in a play list, do:
ls ~/mymusic | audacious -
Now I can do cool things like stream radio that is in a format that Audacious can't play, like "asf" through Audacious without filling up my hard disk, ie.:
rm -f /tmp/fifo.wav
mkfifo /tmp/fifo.wav
cat /tmp/fifo.wav | audacious file://-.wav &
sleep 1
mplayer -msglevel all=-1 -nojoystick -nolirc http://68.142.72.75:80/citadelcc_WBAP_AM?MSWMExt=.asf -vc null -vo null -ao pcm:waveheader:file=/tmp/fifo.wav &
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Recompiled from source obtained here: http://packages.debian.org/source/testing/audacious
Also found this cool streaming radio site while testing: http://scfire-ntc-aa03.stream.aol.com:80/stream/1018
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Thursday, April 16th, 2009
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I have long been a fan of Swiftfox, a prebuilt binary version of Firefox optimized for specific processor platforms. I seems though that Swiftfox is no longer being updated (v3.0.4pre1 is latest). I then tried "swiftweasel", a similar program for "iceweasel" that is more current, but, even though faster than Firefox, gives me some scrolling problems (page sometimes keeps scrolling after releasing mouse-wheel and sometimes scrolls up and down, which is very annoying). So, I took the plunge and downloaded the source for Firefox and built with similar options to Swiftfox (see "about:buildconfig"). This seems to work well for me so far! Here's what I did:
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Thursday, April 9th, 2009
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Thursday, April 2nd, 2009
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Thursday, March 5th, 2009
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"If a Nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be ... If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed."
Thomas Jefferson
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Thursday, February 12th, 2009
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UPDATE (2009/04/27):
Changed "AccelMethod" from "EXA" to "UXA".
--------------------------------------
I found this sped up my intel graphics by about 45% from 1100fps to over 1550fps:
1 (xorg.conf):
Right under
Driver "intel"
Add line:
Option "DRI" "true"
Note: a 2nd line (Option "PageFlip" "true") did not work (was not honored by xorg).
2 (xorg.conf):
In the "Screen" section, added (4 lines, just after "DefaultColorDepth 24"):
Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
Option "ExaNoComposite" "false"
Option "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy"
Option "Accel" "true"
3) /etc/environment (created this file to contain the following 1 line):
INTEL_BATCH="1"
That's it!
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Wednesday, January 28th, 2009
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Script to perform photo compression:
I wrote this script to auto-compress the huge images that my daughter downloads from our digital camera and uploads to Facebook. It automatically reduces any new image added to ~/images/Facebook/ by about 85%. I include it in a shell-script that first invokes gthumb (the program she uses to download and view photos) so that when gthumb exits, this script is invoked.
JP
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Tuesday, January 20th, 2009
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I found this today at: http://linuxshellaccount.blogspot.com/2009/01/extracting-different-file-types-on.html
Courtesy of: Mike Tremell
This will uncompress just about any file type (add to ~/.bashrc):
function extract()
{
if [ -f "$1" ] ; then
case "$1" in
*.tar.bz2) tar xjf "$1" ;;
*.tar.gz) tar xzf "$1" ;;
*.tar.Z) tar xzf "$1" ;;
*.bz2) bunzip2 "$1" ;;
*.rar) unrar x "$1" ;;
*.gz) gunzip "$1" ;;
*.jar) unzip "$1" ;;
*.tar) tar xf "$1" ;;
*.tbz2) tar xjf "$1" ;;
*.tgz) tar xzf "$1" ;;
*.zip) unzip "$1" ;;
*.Z) uncompress "$1" ;;
*) echo "'$1' cannot be extracted." ;;
esac
else
echo "'$1' is not a file."
fi
}
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Monday, January 19th, 2009
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For those few of us NOT looking forward to the big inauguration tomorrow, a bit of Humor made from a Bible passage in Matthew (24:15):
"...When ye see the Obamanation of Desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the high place (where he aught not to be - whoso readeth, let him understand), then let them flee into the mountains (or maybe Costa Rica, Canada, etc.), let him which is on the housetop not come down to take anything out of his foreclosed house. Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes...For then shall be great depression, such has was not since the 1930s to this time, no nor ever need be. And except those days be shortened, there should no taxpayer be saved."
And this borrowed from 1 Kings, 12:13:
"...And the king answered the people roughly and forsook the old men's (Reagan, et. al.) counsel that they gave him (smaller government, lower taxes, supply-side economics); and spake to them after the counsel of the young men (bigger government, bailouts, higher taxes, keynesean economics, wealth redistribution) saying, My predecessor made your yoke (national debt, taxes, regulations) heavy, and I will add to your yoke..."
"We were singing Bye Bye Mrs. American pie, drove my chevy to the levy but the levy was dry (global warming of course); And good old boys drinking whiskey and rye saying This will be the day that I die!"
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Monday, December 29th, 2008
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Protecting your computer from your browser
As an IT professional, I am aware of the potential malware threats to computers that exist on the internet. Even though the threats are considered minimal for us Linux users, I'm still paranoid enough to try security fixes that are not too difficult and that don't impair my own usage. For example, I had thought about running my webbrowser as a different user but had figured that it would be a hassle to copy/move the profile and settings over.
Anyway, the other day, I found this (http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanb/documents/firefox_for_paranoid_people) and decided to give it a shot! The idea is to set up another user who is not a member of the default group ("users") and that can not overwrite any of your or the system's data. The alternate user has minimal privileges (it's own group, and no login password). The only way to log in is to su root, then su <user>. NOTE: I decided to name my user "browser" and create a separate "group" that the user was a member of also called "browser". I also had to add "browser" to the "audio" group in (/etc/group) in order for firefox to be able to play sounds. You can use whatever username you wish.
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Sunday, December 14th, 2008
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Just after we built this sun room a few years back, around New Years, my employer was having a garage sale of sorts to rid themselves of stuff they had no use for. I saw a box of these things and immediately thought of a use for them - lowering the Christmas lights I had just taken down to where they could be seen from inside the sun room! I bought the entire box for a buck, brought them home, checked them out and thru them into the attic for next year. Suffice it to say, they worked perfectly for hanging Christmas lights. This came to mind the other day when I contacted the manufacturer to try to obtain some more (a few had broken over the years and now I have no more extras) and they said they had discontinued them - bummer ¡ :( Anyway, I decided to post this here because I think it's a neat, weird and unintended application for something otherwise mundane.
What "togglebolts" are (intended to be) is a way to bolt something into a sheetrock wall. The plastic piece is used to hold it until you screw in a bolt, then is pulled off and discarded. In my case, the plastic part is the useful part - it snaps perfectly around a C9 bulb socket and is the perfect length and flexibility to hold each light in just the right position. I could not attach the lights in the lower position otherwise because the facia is "Hardiplank(tm)".
Anyway, for whomever's interested, you can obtain similar ones here (but the metal brackets are larger (3/8" instead of 3/16"): http://anchorco.com/hollowHeavy.html or http://www.toggler.com/products_hwh_technical.html
JP
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Thursday, November 13th, 2008
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Building on the success of getting my usbkey and HDs to mount automagically, I decided to try the same w/my digital camera + digikam. This "just worked":
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JP
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Tuesday, November 11th, 2008
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I dug up this gem I wrote way back after my lappy completely shut down when the battery ran out w/o warning to prevent this from happening again, after modifying to use ACPI:
( View Script )
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I stumbled across this little gem last nite for making the trackpoint on my Dell laptops scroll when moved with the right mousebutton held down (instead of the normal action of moving the mouse cursor):
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My full Xorg.conf file for my Dell D620 for your viewing pleasure:
( View Xorg.conf )
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I use HAL/IVMAN to mount CD-roms, DVD's, and Music-CD-s by setting the following in ~/.ivman/IvmConfigBase.xml:
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Woo Hoot - Just got me a new lappy, a Dell D620. Tested out at the store (Mr. Notebook, San Antonio) with the latest SimplyMepis 8beta4 liveCD and everything, including suspend and 1440x900 resolution worked OOTB except wireless whilst @store! :) Now, box had broadcom chip, which suck w/Linux, but I got em to switch out for an Intel 3495 in the store (which had been known to work w/Linux). Still couldn't get to work, but could w/Antix (older Mepis - ipw3995 driver), so I KNEW it could be made to work, so I bought!
Got home & got everything installed & even wireless working, but only sporatically. Anyway, to make a long story short, I wrote a script to set the wireless parameters AFTER bringing interface up & now seems to work fine! For details and the script code, go here: http://www.mepislovers.org/forums/showthread.php?t=18245
This seems to be a very good Linux laptop, but make sure you have Intel wireless, not Broadcom, ymmv. Only other thing was Conexant HDA D110 modem, reportedly only works with crippled closed-source driver from LinuxAnt, but for small fee can be "uncrippled" to work @56k, but I quit using modems long ago :)
More posts to follow!
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