Sharper Image Bluetooth Speakers (Kubuntu)

I was able to get the Bluetooth 1.2 Wireless HI-FI Stereo Speakers to work on Linux, Kubuntu 7.10 to be a bit more exact.

I did not update or install any additional libraries.  The Sharper Image Bluetooth dongle works perfectly.  I found and followed the steps for Amarok here.

Side affects? Yup…Sometimes when another song begins to play, the sound begins playing back on my laptop speakers.  I go back into the settings and notice that they defaulted back to the non-bluetooth settings I just saved!

I haven’t found a resolution for it yet!!!

BasKet Note Pads

I was doing something useful and came across this application: BasKet Note Pads

This application provides as many baskets (drawers) as you wish; Several kinds of objects (texts, URLs, images,…) can be drag-n-drop’d into it.

I visited the website and had to give it a try.  I love to organize things.  And right now I feel like things are a little messy.  I have emails, docs, things are a bit scattered.

I am trying this little KDE app. right now, and I am very happy.

I have a projects “basket” and will soon be adding a Django one.  I have always wanted a quick place to put django snippets I use often enough to save and reuse, but haven’t found that magical place!

Listening to Christmas music via SHOUTcast on Chumby! Yeah for the holidays!

Kubuntu 7.10 Kaffeine Play Encrypted DVD

Taken from here.

1)  sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/install-css.sh

2)  In Kaffeine
Go to to Settings->xine Engine Parameters
Select “Media” section
Select the “Expert Options” tab
Find an option labelled “CSS decryption method”
Change setting from “key” to “title”.

It just works (after a few steps).

Dual displays

I was at the last Atlanta Python meeting this month, and noticed some presenters are still having issues getting dual displays to work. It is something I haven’t had to do in Linux. But I decided to try it out.

I found this video which explained how to do everything using nvidia-settings.

A time machine?

I have been once again led down an alternate path while working on something this evening. This time it has to do with how to revert installs on Debian (Ubuntu) based systems when an update breaks something. This can happen on servers, laptops/desktops, etc.I am not the normal (K)Ubuntu user running the Symaptic pkg manager for updates. I tend to always rely on the console aptitude. Some times you preform an upgrade only to find out things just broke and you want to revert.Aptitude records packages it installs in a log file (/var/log/aptitude). So I began to think of writing a quick solution, until I Googled aptitude rollback update. I found Flyback, TimeVault and Dirvish.

Why am I not using my Unison previously mentioned in another post? Unison does a fine job keeping things in-sync. I’m sure Unison could be twisted to act as a daily backup tool as well.  But I use it to keep one or more  filesystems up to date.

Kubuntu

OK, my last posting was written while I was experiencing a tad of frustration.  I Googled, jumped on an IRC channel and tried just about everything, including reconfiguring every package known to man.  I finally found a bug that resembled my exact trouble:

“Administrator Mode” button in “System Settings” does not work properly.

Simply the fix was:

kdesu kcontrol

I had ran kcontrol several times with sudo, but the problem was never fixed.  Running kcontrol with kdesu cleaned up old dead DCOP server files.  Something more than simply deleting he files.

Happy? No not yet, I still don’t know what provoked this.  It may not have been a package upgrade.

Kubuntu – I figured it out!

Don’t install patches, updates or anything upgrade anything already working on Kubuntu or other Linux distros when its finals, exams at college or just before the holiday break. It is the only reason I can think of that makes sense as to why things that worked are broken.Why can a perfectly good laptop running Kubuntu break after installing updates? No….I’m not happy. I’m dealing with this instead of working!!!

The FIRST active maintainer of Kubuntu to come forward and prove to me that he/she held back an update because it was not fully tested, I will send them $25!

Kubuntu 7.10 wireless works with Compaq Presario F572US

I purchased the Compaq Presario F572US from Staples two months ago, and have been using Kubuntu 7.04 (Feisty) ever since. The downside was I never could get the wireless to work properly.

When they released 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon, I immediately grabbed the Live CD and began testing it out. I still could not get the restricted drivers to work with the Live CD. I grew frustrated and restored back to factory settings (Vista) to make sure things (hardware) was actually working properly. I was tempted to just make this laptop a Windows laptop. Heck…I may have a use for the Windows side after all.

It must of been eating at me, because I grew tired of Vista after a night or two, and really wanted my programming Kubuntu laptop back. I hate writing Linux code C or Python on Windows. I just get use to having my common command line tools available to me on the development environment similar to the server environment.

I decided to shrink the Windows Vista drive, drop the D drive (HP uses this for recovery, but I still have the two DVD’s I burned when I first bought the laptop if I need recovery). I decided to dual boot and proceeded to install Kubuntu 7.10 again.

After going back to the internet and digging up various “how-to’s”, I followed this one, and it worked! I was not able to simply use the “restricted modules” checkbox included with the distro.  It in turn uses fwcutter, which would not work for this laptop under with all of the default options (using the default suggested driver too).

Cinelerra – not ready for prime time

I enjoy editing video.  I have used several home packaged typed software as well as a professional video editing suite and I have to say Sony Vegas has been my favorite so far.

I wanted to give Cinelerra a try on my laptop which runs Ubuntu Feisty (see this link).  I did, and I was quite impressed, but the program is just not stable enough.  It crashed on me several times.  After choosing a in/out point to play (for quickly reviewing a section of the video to play), it played normally at first, then after a few seconds it began to slow down and the playback speed began to crawl.

Now the tough decision.  Do I make this laptop a dual boot, putting Windows Vista back on it? Purchase the new Sony Vegas and edit my video when I want to on Vista? Or do I just limit my video editing sessions to the home office where one Windows XP machine is used for gaming?

I really hope Linux matures even more than it has, and products like Sony Vegas make their way to the Linux desktop.  I doubt that Vegas will however, as it appeared to be written in Microsoft’s .NET framework.  The new version did ask for permission to install C++.NET libraries.

Mono you say? I hear you, but I am guessing Sony leveraged Microsoft OS specific graphic layers.  I don’t know for sure.

Ubuntu fsck forced check at boot fails

I brought out my laptop yesterday to share with some of my Skydiving buddies a new website I am working on for a Skydiving club, and the laptop would not boot. I was getting this message:

* Checking root file system...
fsck 1.40-WIP (14-Nov-2006)
/dev/sda1 has been mounted 30 times without being checked, check forced.
/dev/sda1: |=========                                                     / 15.2%