Pedagogical Posturing » Uncategorized

YouTube Problem Resolved

voodooguru — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 03:56:53 +0000

For some time now, since I upgraded to the latest version of Ubuntu, I’ve had no sound while watching YouTube videos. I could download them and then watch and hear them without any problem but watching directly meant no sound. I’ve been too busy lately to worry about it but now, with a little more time on my hands, I’ve done a little research and found this piece of helpful advice here on Ubuntu Eee Forums. In the terminal window, you are advised to type:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

This apparently installs Java, Flash, some codecs and fonts. I tried it and it works, so problem fixed. My last remaining problem is with Skype. The last time I used it the sound quality was awful and I gave up, using my Windows laptop instead. Maybe with this recent tweak Skype will perform more satisfactorily.

Audio Anomalies in Ubuntu 8.10

voodooguru — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:40:41 +0000

Having just claimed that my Skype problems were fixed, I found the very next day that things no longer worked. Why? Well it turns out that in last night’s Ubuntu update, there was an attempt to fix the audio problems because the sudo alsamixer this time brought up only a single bar whereas there had been multiple bars before. In the audio options in Skype, there was now an additional choice called Pulse that had not been there last night. Choosing this instead of the default option in Skype seemed to fix the problem but the sound playback this time was not so good. On the way to discovering this, I tried sudo killall pulseaudio which brought back all the bars to alsamixer but did not resolve the problem. On rebooting the machine, the pulse audio is enabled once again and then I stumbled on the solution or what seems like the solution.

It will be interesting to hear how Skype holds up on the next occasion that somebody calls me. The sound recording from within Ubuntu (not from within Skype) now works whereas it didn’t before. However, the volume of my recorded voice seemed rather low, even at the maximum settings. It would seem that the audio situation in Ubuntu remains unstable. The lesson I’ve learned from this is not to jump in straight away and download the lastest release as soon as it appears on the Internet. It’s a good idea to give it at least a month so that some of the inevitable bugs are sorted out.

Skype Problem Resolved

voodooguru — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:14:03 +0000

Well it took a bit of tinkering and I’m still not sure what I’ve done but I finally got Skype to work. As I searched the Ubuntu forums and the Linux forum on Skype, it was apparent that many other recent updaters to Ubuntu 8.10 were having similar problems. Nobody seemed to have a solution. However, on the Skype forum someone had written that “a tech at Ubuntu helped me by having me go to Terminal and enter: sudo alsamixer. That brings up another version of the sound controller, and you have administrative privileges. Navigate to the input devices with the right/left arrows, and adjust the settings with the up/down arrows on your keypad”. I fiddled with the ‘knobs’ (not really knowing what I was doing) and then reset my sound in and sound out on Skype to the default device. After that the audio playback to Skype was OK and I could use the echo 123 service to test out whether my microphone was working. It wasn’t. However, my Acer PC has two microphone inputs and I was using the one at the front. I switched to the one at the back and everything was fine. So, all’s well that ends well.

Ubuntu 8.10 Problems

voodooguru — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 15:47:28 +0000

The changeover from Ubuntu 8.04 to 8.10 has not been without its problems. The first problem has been with sound. With flash videos on YouTube and elsewhere I’ve noticed that no sound can be heard when playing them in Firefox. However, if the flash video is downloaded, there is sound when it’s replayed. Worse still, Skype is complaining that there is a problem with the audio playback and it refuses to allow any calls. In fact, I’ve discovered that I can’t record any sound at all using either Sound Recorder or Audacity. I had none of these problems with the earlier version. Tonight I discovered that SketchUp, which previously worked under WINE, is now missing some Open GL drivers video drivers and won’t load. It’s annoying rather than life threatening and I guess I’ll find a solution to the problem if I poke around long enough. I should post some questions on the Ubuntu forum and see what responses I get.

Intrepid Ibex

voodooguru — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 03:51:18 +0000

Last night, I updated my existing Ubuntu 8.04 installation to the latest version 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex). It required a download of over 900Mb so I left it to run overnight and next morning, after a couple of confirmations, the installation concluded, the system rebooted and here I am. I’m certainly very comfortable with the operating system now and much prefer it over Windows Vista and Mac OS X. Ubuntu is now the most popular Linux distribution accounting for about 30% of desktop Linux installations. Linux of course is only installed on a small percentage of desktop computers. Here are the statistics as of October 2008 (apparently Windows Server 2003 can be run on workstations as well as servers, running faster and better than Windows XP according to one report):

Windows XP 72.2%
Windows Vista 14.4%
Mac OS 5.5%
Linux 3.8%
Windows 2003 1.7%
Windows 2000 1.9%
Windows 98 0.2%

Gspace

voodooguru — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 06:43:51 +0000

I stumbled upon a rather useful plugin for Firefox called Gspace, that allows you to use the unused space on your GMail accounts. On my main GMail account, I’m currently using 87Mb or approximately 1% of the 7219Mb of storage space allocated to me by Google. I have another two unused accounts and could have many more of course if I wanted to set them up. All you need to do is register your accounts with Gspace and then it enables you to drag and drop files from your computer to your GMail space. It means that you have virtually unlimited storage space for free.

The disadvantage is that it’s only available to you, although you could share the space by giving one or more other people login details to one of your GMail accounts that you don’t use for your regular mail. The other parties would need to be using Firefox and have the Gspace plugin installed on the computer that they were using. It’s not quite cloud computing because any computer that you use needs to be running Firefox and have the plugin installed. The good thing is that it runs on Windows, Linux and OSX and certainly doesn’t take long to set up.

You could gradually shift your entire music library online if you wanted to and listen to it using the Player Mode to create playlists that play directly from the Gspace flash player. There is a photo mode as well that allows to quickly view any photos that you have uploaded.

The Wonders of StumbleUpon

voodooguru — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 12:11:58 +0000

I was alerted via an RSS feed from Mashable that StumbleUpon had a toolbar that could be downloaded for Firefox running in Windows, Mac OS or Linux. As I started to play around with the toolbar, I became increasing absorbed by the random websites, photographs, videos and blogs that it keeps throwing up (once you’ve decided on your interests). The latest interesting site that popped up is called nuTsie and it allows users to share their music collections. The site also makes its own compilations such as the Top 25 Most Played that I’m currently listening to. I’m still a bit confused as to how it all works but as you listen to songs, you can download them with Firefox plugins like DownloadHelper or FlashGot. The files are in .3gpp format (MPEG-4 AAC audio), sampled in stereo at 32Khz, not CD-quality but nonetheless they sound very good and it’s a great way to find out what people are listening to and thus keep abreast of contemporary artists and even ones from the past that I may not be familiar with.

I can also thank the StumbleUpon toolbar for throwing up GSpace, another Firefox plugin, that allows me to make use of the vast amount of storage space that I have unused in my various GMail accounts. It’s as easy as drop-and-dropping files from the left window pane to the right. This random feature of StumbleUpon becomes quite addictive and it reminds me of how much is out there on the Internet that I don’t know about. At least I’ve finding some of them using this tool.

ScribeFire

voodooguru — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 04:33:23 +0000

I’m creating this post in ScribeFire which is a Firefox plug-in that allows you to post to your blog directly from a little pop-up window that appears when you click the ScribeFire icon in the browser. Let’s see how it turns out. Technologically, I created a video for YouTube yesterday, using my Sony camcorder. I imported the video in wmv format to my laptop using Windows Movie Maker. The video, just under 3 minutes in length, was about 33 megabytes in size and I used a program called Ultra Flash Video to convert the file to flv format, which is the format in which all videos are displayed on YouTube.

The program seems to be free but can only process one file at a time, whereas batch processing is enabled in the $29.95 version. I used the default settings are created a 3Mb flv video with terrible audio and video quality. I played around with the settings, some of which simply led to an error, but eventually I succeeded in producing a high quality flv video that was 18Mb in size using the following settings: Video frame rate: 30fps; Video bit rate: 1304, Audio sample rate (kHz): KHz, Audio bit rate: 160. 6Mb per minute is a little over the top for a 320 x 240 video but I was getting frustrated and finally settled on something that worked. I’m not overly impressed with Ultra Flash Video, which only works with Windows, and will look around for an alternative. Here’s the video anyway:

Don’t Tie the Knot

Ubuntu Progress

voodooguru — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 06:08:09 +0000

At last I finally have a dedicated and reliable computer on which to experiment with Ubuntu. My previous desktop computer, using an Athlon XP 1800+ processor, simply couldn’t handle flash videos. Anytime I wanted to view such videos, the browser would shut down. Analysis showed that the strain on the processor was too great. Even playing music proved unreliable. It was all very frustrating but not anymore. I ventured forth to Ratu Plaza yesterday and spied the compact AcerPower 2000 on sale for around Rp2,500,000. It came equipped with a 3.4Ghz, Intel Pentium 4 651 processor, 512Mb of DDR2 RAM, an 80Gb SATA hard drive, a DVD/CD-RW drive, integrated audio and video, and the Linux operating system pre-installed. I decided to upgrade the RAM to 1Gb for an extra Rp230,000 and before I knew it I was the proud owner of a new computer system with a conveniently small footprint.

Linpus Linux 9.3 was the particular variant of Linux OS that was already installed but the technician didn’t know the password to access the system once it had booted. In fact, he knew nothing about Linux and clearly had no interest in finding out anything more about it. On my return home, I decided not to bother with Linpus and instead installed Ubuntu 8.04 with which I was already familiar. I was reasonably confident that all the hardware that came with the computer system would be Ubuntu compatible and this proved to be the case. The installation went smoothly and to my relief all my old difficulties had vanished and I could view YouTube videos and play music.

Of course I had to remember to change the default download site from Indonesia to the main server (somewhere else in the world) because experience had taught me that the former could not be relied upon to supply all the programs and drivers that are available for the Linux community. The attitude in Indonesia amongst computer-literate people is that it’s easier to use pirated versions of Windows XP on personal computers rather than to come to grips with Ubuntu or other Linux variants. Non-technical computer users simply haven’t heard of this alternative OS. I was surprised when I looked at the System Monitor and it showed two processors, just as if I was using a dual core CPU. While the Pentium 4 651 is not dual core, it is a 64 bit processor and I can only surmise that the monitoring system is regarding the CPU as consisting of two virtual 32 bit processors. In any case, the performance seems to be better than what I get on the dual core processor in my laptop, so I’m naturally very pleased.

WINE – Windows Emulator

voodooguru — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 12:25:03 +0000

I’ve known about this software for years now but never used it and didn’t think of it when I started experimenting with Ubuntu. Instead I’d accepted that certain programs weren’t available for Ubuntu and that I’d just have to live with that. Google’s SketchUp was one such program. I’d been using it at school on the iMacs and on my laptop with Vista but there was no version of the program for Linux. However, after installing the WINE software from WINE HQ, I subsequently downloaded Google’s SketchUp for Windows and got it to run using the Wine program loader. There was no problem at all. Even my Astrology program, Astrolog, that I’d previously only run under Windows, is now running in Ubuntu. I feel stupid that I didn’t realise that I could do this earlier but at least I know now. This is quite a breakthrough.

Not everything works of course. For example, the Spider Solitaire game that ships with Vista doesn’t start up at all. However, the version for XP might work but I can’t access it on the computer I’m currently working on, even though it has a Windows XP partition. This is because last time I was using Windows it shut down without warning. Whenever that happens, Ubuntu is unable to “mount the volume” as it terms it because of the improper shutdown. The same thing happens when a memory stick or memory card is simply pulled out instead of ejected. It’s not possible to subsequently use the storage device in Ubuntu until returning to Windows and ejecting it properly. There’s a way of forcing the volume to mount but it’s a little complicated and I’ve not managed to get it to work yet.