I just replaced my headphone connector on my 1st Gen iPod Touch when I had it open to replace the battery. Now I can actually use it as an iPod again. Good timing too, because the dock connector on my 1st Gen iPod Nano that I had been using to listen to podcasts is now pretty much shot, so I have no choice but to use my iPod Touch as my sole device for podcasts.
Even if I had a computer running Windows, I would refuse to degrade it by installing the piece of crap Apple calls iTunes, so the only way I can get podcasts on the iPod touch is using the iTunes store on the device itself. The problem is not every podcast is listed on the iTunes store. There’s no way to get non-iTunes approved podcasts on the device. I found a work around using Dropbox. I remembered that Dropbox on the iPod Touch will play any media file located in the dropbox. So I set up a folder called Podcasts and sub folders for each podcast in my dropbox and told my podcatcher (Amarok) to download the renegade podcasts there. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by benjamen as Amarok, Dropbox, iPhone/iPod Touch, podcast at 4:35 PM UTC
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You want to do something as simple as moving the directory Chromium uses for cache and you wind up learning more about the XDG Base Directory Specification than you wanted. I wanted to move Chromium’s cache so that I didn’t back up these unimportant and constantly changing files during my hourly backups. Backing up all these files not only takes up extra space, but it also annoyingly slows down the backup.
I needed to figure out where the cache directory was located and how to move it. Moving the cache directory in Firefox is simple, you just goto about:config and change the value of browser.cache.disk.parent_directory. Heading over to the Chromium Project I found a page that described where the cache was located for Linux:
~/.config/chromium/Default
It turns out that Chromium follows the XDG Base Directory specs. Applications that follow these specs will store config, data and cache directories in the locations specified by their corresponding environment variables. The thought behind this structure is to clean up the user directories and make the different desktop managers play nicely with each other. From the specification:
$XDG_DATA_HOME defines the base directory relative to which user specific data files should be stored. If $XDG_DATA_HOME is either not set or empty, a default equal to $HOME/.local/share should be used.
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME defines the base directory relative to which user specific configuration files should be stored. If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is either not set or empty, a default equal to $HOME/.config should be used.
$XDG_DATA_DIRS defines the preference-ordered set of base directories to search for data files in addition to the $XDG_DATA_HOME base directory. The directories in $XDG_DATA_DIRS should be seperated with a colon ‘:’. If $XDG_DATA_DIRS is either not set or empty, a value equal to /usr/local/share/:/usr/share/ should be used.
$XDG_CONFIG_DIRS defines the preference-ordered set of base directories to search for configuration files in addition to the $XDG_CONFIG_HOME base directory. The directories in $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS should be seperated with a colon ‘:’ If $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS is either not set or empty, a value equal to /etc/xdg should be used.
$XDG_CACHE_HOME defines the base directory relative to which user specific non-essential data files should be stored. If $XDG_CACHE_HOME is either not set or empty, a default equal to $HOME/.cache should be used.
Bingo! $XDG_CACHE_HOME sets the location of the cache files and if it isn’t present it defaults to where the Chromium project says the cache files are stored.
The final piece of the puzzle is figuring out where to put the environment variable so that next time you log into your desktop it actually gets set. This is where the Ubuntu Community Documentation saved me. It turns out that there is a file in each individuals home directory called:
~/.pam_environment
It may or may not be present. If it isn’t just create it. This file is specifically for setting environment variables. It’s not a script file like .profile, so stick to variable assignments.
So I set:
$XDG_CACHE_HOME=/tmp/benjamen/.cache
and deleted the default .cache directory in my home directory. Now when I back up my home directory I don’t waste time and space backing up the cache files.
References:
User Data Directory [The Chromium Project]
XDG Base Directory Specification [freedesktop.org]
Environment Variables [Ubuntu Community Documentation]
Posted by benjamen as Chromium, Ubuntu, freedesktop.org, linux at 2:08 PM UTC
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For a while my computer has had the annoying habit of rebooting whenever I tell it to shutdown. That doesn’t sound so bad does it? What it means is that I need to be present at the machine if I want to turn it off. I can’t tell it to turn off after midnight or after a hour of being idle (and forget suspend, that’s never worked right).
On and off for the past few weeks I’ve been crawling through the system logs and BIOS trying to find an ACPI error or other warning that would explain why the kernel feels like it needs to reboot. Then on a whim I turned off Wake On LAN.
I had turned on WOL because I thought it would be cool if I could turn on my computer from another computer, netbook, or mobile device before I go downstairs to use it. It turns out that WOL on this particular motherboard doesn’t work the same as other computers. Usually you need to send a magic packet to wake a computer up, but for some reason my computer wakes up with a simple ping or any other traffic sent to it’s address.
Turning off WOL did the trick, the computer actually shuts down when I tell it to shutdown. So, either there is some traffic from the network directed at my machine or the same flaw that makes the motherboard wakeup without a magic packet keeps it from powering down.
Posted by benjamen as Karmic Koala, Kubuntu, computer, linux, network at 9:30 AM UTC
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I’d been having a chronic problem of shimmering red dots appearing on my LCD screen every time I tried to use a DVI cable instead of a VGA cable. The dots appear around areas of high contrast like the border between a window and the background or even in the wallpaper itself.
I had previously tried many different graphics cards and a new power supply and finally came to the conclusion that it must have been something to do with my motherboard since my wife’s computer with nearly the same monitor didn’t have the same problem. It really didn’t occur to me that it could be the cable.
So what’s wrong with using the VGA cable, well for one I was losing a few lines of my desktop on the top edge of the monitor, you’d think that the resolution would be 1:1, but evidently something is lost in the digital to analog to digital conversion. I could live with it, but it constantly annoyed me every time I noticed the tops of windows being cropped.
A few days ago I was particularly annoyed, so I did some more research and I found a few other possible causes besides overheating graphics cards and bad power supplies. There were posts about some bad nVidia graphics card drivers, but I wasn’t running the specified version. So on a whim I took the DVI cable from my wife’s computer and replaced mine. What do you know, it worked.
Until now I didn’t think that the quality of the DVI cable mattered. It’s a digital signal so unless the cable is very long one cable shouldn’t be any better than another. Evidently I was wrong. I purchased a cheap DVI-I single link cable from Best buy and now my display runs just fine over DVI.
Posted by benjamen as DVI, VGA, computer at 1:10 PM UTC
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I’m not sure what changed, before I wasn’t able to forward my voicemail from my Tracfone to my Google Voice account, but now it just works. I had previously done some research on the web and found that Tracfone doesn’t allow call forwarding which precludes using another voicemail service
So I was playing around in my Google Voice account and for the heck of it decided to see what would happen if I clicked on the “Activate Google voicemail on this phone.” At one point I know Tracfone was using T-Mobile in my area, so I had tried using the T-Mobile settings to forward voicemail, but Tracfone must have changed to AT&T, because I tried using the AT&T instructions and it just worked.
Initially I tried calling my cell from my land line to test the voicemail switch, but for some reason instead of getting a greeting I went straight into the voicemail backend, you know the “you have X new messages” part. It turns out that I have direct access to Google Voice enabled on my land line, so it was going through some sort of causality loop. I temporarily un-enabled GV on my land line and called my cell again — this time I was greeted by my on cheery voice telling me to leave a message. Unfortunately (or fortunately) this means if my wife calls my cell phone from our land line she can’t leave a message, but I’ll still get a missed call notification
Posted by benjamen as Google Voice, Tracfone at 2:50 PM UTC
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I installed DOSBox on a Kubuntu Karmic machine to play The Incredible Machine, but I couldn’t get the sound working. I read a ton of forum posts about trying to get DOSBox working with Pulseaudio to no avail. Then I discovered that my Pulseaudio wasn’t working anyway.
I needed a way to tell the SDL (Simple Direct Media Layer) that DosBox should just use my soundcard like KDE was doing. One of the steps that kept coming up in the PulseAudio “fixes” was to type the line:
export SDL_AUDIODRIVER=pulse
or
export SDL_AUDIODRIVER=esd
before running DOSBox. I wondered if there was another setting for soundblaster or intel. So I googled SDL_AUDIODRIVER and found that there was a dsp option. So I typed:
export SDL_AUDIODRIVER=dsp
before starting DOSBox and viola I have sound.
*I’m not entirely sure it was necessary but in the process of trying to get Pulseaudio working I installed libsdl1.2debian-all.
Posted by benjamen as DOSBox, Karmic Koala, Kubuntu, Pulseaudio, linux at 12:56 PM UTC
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First let me just let me say that Amarok 2 blows! Why they screwed up such a great program is beyond me. You can always install Amarok 1.4, but why go backwards when players like Songbird are moving forward.
Unfortunately Songbird doesn’t seem to work out of the box with Kubuntu, the correct GStreamer packages don’t seem to be installed — even when you use a debian package! Maybe it’s just me but I’ve tried it on a Jaunty machine and a Karmic machine and I couldn’t get music to play back on either. It would just give me some cryptic error about alsasink and auotaudiosink. So here’s my short tutorial on how I got Songbird working.
- First I removed all GStreamer packages. This step may or may not have been necessary, but I mucked about for long time before I decided to start from scratch. It has the side effect of removing openoffice.org too, but you can just reinstall it when you’ve got songbird running.
- Reinstall GStreamer with this command:
sudo apt-get install libgstreamer0.10-0 gstreamer0.10-x gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gstreamer0.10-plugins-base gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev libgstreamer0.10-dev gstreamer0.10-plugins-good gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly
- Install the correct songbird package from Skyzim
sudo dpkg -i <package name>
- If you are using NVidia drivers remove the libvisual plugins.
sudo apt-get remove libvisual-0.4-plugins
That did it for me.
References:
Installing Songbird [Ubuntu Documentation]
GStreamer Setup [SongBird Wiki]
NVidia Driver Issue [edsalisbury.net]
Songbird Installer [Skyzim]
Posted by benjamen as Jaunty Jackalope, Karmic Koala, Kubuntu, Songbird at 9:05 AM UTC
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I’ve posted about finding tracfone promo codes on Fone-Review.com, but I found an even better site PrePaid.com.
I just added minutes to my Tracfone today and the Fone-review site failed me — now of the codes worked. So I did a Google search for “tracfone promo codes” and the PrePaid.com site came up.
They have a gigantic table of codes and listed next to the code is the last date it was tried.
UPDATE: Unfortunately this site seems to be gone now. Back to my friend Google I guess.
Posted by benjamen as Tracfone at 1:15 PM UTC
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Does it annoy you that the print preview window has been neutered in Firefox for Ubuntu? You may have this problem in other Linux distributions or operating systems too. Here is what it looks like:
Thanks to a little help from Only Ubuntu Linux I fixed the problem on my system by setting “print.whileInPrintPreview” to true.
Now my Print Preview window looks like it should:
HOW TO Enable Additional Print Preview Buttons in Firefox
Posted by benjamen as Ubuntu, firefox, linux, printing at 2:04 PM UTC
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I’ve been using eReader to read eBooks on my iPod Touch, but a recent update removed the ability to load your eBooks onto the iPod from your own webserver. They claim they’ve fixed it now, but instead being able to browse directories for books you have to create some convoluted file linking to each book.
The next best reader is Stanza, but it only takes books of the epub format. Thanks to calibre, you can convert most formats to epub. As a bouns you can turn on a server that allows you to connect with your iPod and download the books you converted.
What I don’t understand is why so many people praise Stanza. Compared to eReader it’s bloated and slow. For no reason in the middle of the book, the spinning wheel appears and you have to wait 30 seconds to get to the next page. Same thing if happens when you start the program, turn on the iPod, or go to a bookmark. eReader did take a little while to load a book, but once it was loaded, there were no more delays. I’ve read 4 books with Stanza and it is just barely usable.
From what I understand part of the problem with eBook readers is that Apple limits their functionality. I think that the other problem is the companies who develop these programs want to lock you into their system and make it difficult to use books from any other source. There’s really no reason to lock you into a single format or limit the places you can get books from other than corporate stupidity. It’s sad really. The iPod Touch and iPhone could be really great platforms for reading books.
Posted by benjamen as Stanza, eReader, iPhone/iPod Touch at 6:33 PM UTC
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