MP3 Players

So probably about a year ago my iPod screen cracked. I've replaced the battery in my iPod before so I thought I could just buy a screen and replace it. Well it did not turn out so well. I would try doing it again if I had to but in the process of trying to replace the screen I broke a piece off of the logic board which connects to the screen. So now I have a broken screen and a broken logic board. I figure it is probably not worth saving. So I started shopping for something new. I ended up deciding on an iRiver E100 depicted to the left. I have really enjoyed this mp3 player and it was cheap.

Pros
The player plays ogg, mp3 and I think some others but I do not really use the others. It also can display videos, and pictures. The model I got is the 4GB version, but also has a slot for a microSD card which supports up to 32GB. It has an FM radio and a rechargeable battery. It supports drag and drop music management so it works very well with Linux and it integrates very well with Banshee. One of my most favorite features is the stereo speakers on the back of the player. I don't even need headphones to listen to music and it makes it very easy to listen to music with a friend. Also the overall quality of music is very good.

Cons
It is a little slow, or unresponsive. You have to wait a second to click your next action. The FM radio requires that headphones be connected to listen, because they act as the antenna. I have not figured out how to create playlists using linux. The SD card storage and the internal storage do not get treated as continuous storage and are always separate. The screen resolution does not seem to be great, but I do not really use it for pictures or videos so that doesn't bother me.

Overall though I love it and would buy another one. I love the fact that I got a 4GB mp3 player with more features than an iPod nano for $70 instead of the nano that would have cost me about twice that. The only thing the nano does better is have a better screen, but I will give that up easily for the ogg support, speakers, FM radio, and drag and drop management.

hpodder

I wanted to post here about the podcast catching client that I use. First of all I am a banshee user and my mp3 player is an iRiver E100, which I love, but will hopefully go over that another time. My iRiver only has 4GB of storage and a microSD slot, but the two are treated seperately by the iRiver. So I do not have enough storage on my mp3 player to just sync up all of my music. I had was finding it difficult to keep my podcasts and music seperate in Banshee, so I just decided to have another program manage my podcasts, enter hpodder. I am not a command line guy by any means. I have a GUI and like using it, but I am not afraid of the terminal. So when I found hpodder I decided to give it a try and it works great. After installing if you go to a terminal and type

hpodder

it will update all of your podcasts. To add podcasts you find out the feed address and type in

hpodder add [url]

you can also tell it to only get a certain number of the most recent podcasts, you can only update certain podcasts. There are a good number of simple commands that give good functionality to the program, if you ever forget what the commands are typing

hpodder lscommands

will show you all of the commands. I think hpodder is in the debian repos, it can be installed by typing

sudo apt-get install hpodder

Give hpodder a try if you are in need of a podcatcher it is simple and very fast.

Thanks and God Bless,
Aaron

Not Really Technology Related

I found this site while starting a paper today and thought about how great it is then wanted to share it with all of you.

http://www.easybib.com/

you fill out some information and it creates the bibliography info for you. Even better you can type in the ISBN number of your book and it will give you the info to throw into your paper.

100% free

I know I know. You are welcome :P

Thanks and God bless,
Aaron

Network Manager Shared Internet Connection

Ok so I have been wanting to do this for a while and I finally found a site that had easy directions to create a shared internet connection using your wireless card.
http://bigbrovar.wordpress.com/2009/01/17/share-you-internet-wirelessly-on-ubuntu/

all the info I got came from this site but I wanted to share it here also.
1. install dnsmasq-base on an ubuntu based system.
This can be done by typing sudo apt-get install dnsmasq-base
2. make sure your computer is plugged into the internet
3. click on the network manager icon in your system tray and then click Create New Wireless Network...

4.Create whatever ssid you want and if you want security enable.

That was it for me. I was then able to get on another system and connect then browse.

Thanks and God bless,
Aaron

More Details AWN

I received a comment from a reader wanting to know more info about the dock I have installed on the bottom part of my screen. So I wanted to write a post about how I got the dock working.

So the wiki installation page for Avant Window Navigator (AWN) is http://wiki.awn-project.org/Installation This place is really good for getting it installed.

Now this version of AWN doesnt provide any applets which to me are the coolest part of the dock. You will need to install AWN trunk version for applets, but don't do that yet. :P

The trunk version has trouble keeping icons on the dock, so let me tell you what I did. First of all I installed the standard version that the wiki provides. I then put all of my icons that I wanted on the dock. I then removed that version of AWN and installed the AWN trunk version. Which directions can be found http://wiki.awn-project.org/DistributionGuides#Testing_Package_Archive. This will provide you with cools applets like file managers, menus, weather icons. All sorts of cool stuff.

Thank you Jason for reading the blog and posting comments. Keep up with the blog because once I am done with school I am planning on updating this more often. Just very busy trying to do school and work at the same time.

Thanks and God bless,
Aaron

More on the new laptop

as you can see from my screenshot in the previous post it looks very OS X like. As I have said before I think Apple does a great job designing their hardware and OS in regards to appearance. So I loaded the dock called AWN. I originally just loaded the regular AWN, but it didnt come with any applets that I really wanted. You can find a link to get AWN installed here. I wanted the applets though and found them difficult to install manually. I ended up finding a repo that had awn-trunk to install. I think you have to add the ppa.launchpad.net repo, sorry I dont have better walkthrough available for this. The thing I found though is that the original AWN didnt have any applets and the trunk version didnt allow me to add shortcuts. It would add the shortcut but it would delete is after my session ended. The work around I found for it was to set up and install AWN and configure the shortcuts I want to it. Then when I load AWN trunk it would have those shortcuts saved and I could then add my applets on top of it. I'll keep talking about how I configured everything more and more, but I know that AWN is a popular program and many people really love it. I think it still needs some work, but am very happy with how I have it configured. I think the dock is a great idea as it keeps my desktop very clean, and some information I used regularly at my fingertips. I would suggest using it or at least checking it out.

God Bless,
Aaron

Been a while

So I got caught up doing a lot of stuff and my fiance was in a bike wreck and required a lot of care for a while.

Anyways the big news from here is that I am now officially switched to Linux. My work provided me with a "new" laptop. New to me but used. I did some research ahead of time and realized that I could run everything I needed to run for work from Linux just as well as I could in Windows. The only thing I can't do is run Visual Studio C# Express for school. I figured I could load up a VM with no problem and run it from within there. So I was thinking about running Ubuntu since that is what I am most familiar with but after hearing so many good things about Linux Mint I decided to at least check it out before I set myself up with Ubuntu. After running the live CD I was very impressed with the look of it. Everything worked right away except for wireless which had a proprietary driver that installed very easily. As a lot of you might know the worst thing about Ubuntu is that is just looks awful because of the brownish orange theme. Linux Mint however looked great. I also felt very comfortable with Linux Mint because it is based from Ubuntu. I have come to love Linux Mint for many more reasons besides looks since then but I plan on leaving some of these for a future post so I can hopefully keep this blog a little more up to date.

Anyways I have been running linux now and loving it. I joined a LUG and have been thoroughly loving it also. I encourage anyone else even if you arent running linux to join their LUG if they are remotely interested. It has been a great networking opportunity and very informative also.

Here is also a screenshot of my new desktop.

Also thanks to my friend Joyce for commenting on here. It reminded me to keep this more up to date.

God Bless,
Aaron

LVM Update

So I was able to get the whole process worked out and everything was ready to go, but apparently right now there is a bug in ubuntu that is not allowing LVM to work properly. I will try again maybe next version

Also coming up I am getting a new laptop and will be running ubuntu as my primary desktop. I will surely keep everyone updated on my problems and moments of bliss that I run across.

Aaron

LVM

So I am working on adding a 320GB drive to my MythTV box. I already know how to add the drive and create the mountpoint for it. What I really want to do though is make the computer not know the difference between the two drives. If it runs out of space on one it will just start using the next. I have figured out to do this I will have to use LVM(logical volume management (I think)) to do this. I will post directions once I figure this out. I am getting close but havent had time to follow up on some of the research I did recently.

Thanks and God Bless
Aaron

Facebook Chat

So for all you Facebook people out there as you probably know they just added a chat feature to the site. Well my only complaint is that you can not yet connect to this network except signed in through the site. Well I found a way around this. I found a windows program called Bubbles. It is kind of like Prism that google recently released except I found it a little easier. It just runs a webpage as if it was a desktop application. I have not tried to see if this will run under wine, but it seems to be using IE6 to render the web pages even though it is not my default browser, so it may need IE6 installed under wine to run properly.

thanks and God Bless
Aaron

MythTV upgrade transfer

I recently switched my MythTV computer out to a newer one, mostly because the new one is a dell and it much much quieter than the old one. There were two things I wanted to do to use this new computer. I wanted to transfer all my old recordings, and I wanted to transfer the database that tells mythtv what shows I have already recorded, what I have marked for recording and all that stuff. The first was easy I just hooked my hard drive up through USB and copied over all my recordings. The second took quite a bit of effort. I found a site (after quite a bit of searching) that walked me through it but I still had some issues.

http://mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-23.html#ss23.5

This was EXTREMELY helpful in getting my database transfered to the new computer. But there were a couple of things needed to figure out.

I didn't know the password for the database, but I think it was in /home/[username]/.mythtv/mysql.txt

I also copied over my whole home directory folder. For those that don't know almost all your installed program configurations and everything is installed into home.

Also in the tutorial linked above had two ways of getting data from your backup of sql data, and the second worked for me not the first. To sum up the link above these are the commands I used.

$ mysqldump -u mythtv -pmythtv mythconverg -c > mythtv_backup.sql
$ grep "INSERT INTO \`record\` "          mythtv_backup.sql > restore.sql
$ grep "INSERT INTO \`recorded\` "        mythtv_backup.sql >> restore.sql
$ grep "INSERT INTO \`oldrecorded\` "     mythtv_backup.sql >> restore.sql
$ grep "INSERT INTO \`recordedprogram\` " mythtv_backup.sql >> restore.sql
$ grep "INSERT INTO \`recordedrating\` "  mythtv_backup.sql >> restore.sql
$ grep "INSERT INTO \`recordedmarkup\` "  mythtv_backup.sql >> restore.sql
$ grep "INSERT INTO \`recordedseek\` "    mythtv_backup.sql >> restore.sql



Then to restore data type this on the new computer after moving the restore 
file to it.

$ mysql -u mythtv -pmythtv mythconverg <>

Thanks and God bless,
aaron

Installing Programs on Linux

One of the first things I found confusing was how to install a program. I am used to using Windows where I go out and download the exe file and install it. With Linux it is a whole different ball game. I suggest you refer to my package management post here. With Linux instead of an exe you install a package or install from source (which is the hard way). Usually a distro will provide you with an add/remove programs option or a GUI package management program so you can check and uncheck what you want to install and what you don't want to install. I will focus on how to install programs in Ubuntu since that is what I am most familiar with, but these suggestions will work with almost any Debian based distribution.

Add/Remove Programs...
Sounds very windows like doesn't it. Well in the Ubuntu menu in the top left of the screen there is a link to Add/Remove programs. This is the easiest way to install programs in Ubuntu. It lists all the programs that are available from the repositories (where the packages are stored) and you can just check and uncheck the programs you want to add or remove. Very simple.

Synaptic...
With synaptic you are given more control but still have a GUI. It lists every package including dependency files that are available for your distribution. You can check parts of programs that maybe aren't working to remove certain files, or add a certain dependency if you are installing software that needs the dependency. Synaptic gives you a lot of control in a nice interface.

apt-get...
The fastest way to install and remove programs. This is a CLI program. It is the hardest of the three to use but like I said the fastest. Many Linux enthusiasts are command line junkies and would easily give up any graphical interface for the command line. I have no reached that point yet, except with apt-get. I love popping open a terminal typing "sudo apt-get install firefox" and boom it downloads and isntalls really quick. You can also remove with this line by typing "sudo apt-get remove firefox" this will remove any program files that only firefox was using from your system. Apt-get is very versatile and very fast. The only part I have problems with is figuring out the names of something I want to install and then have to open synaptic to find the list of available packages.

Like I said this all applies to Ubuntu but can be applied to other distros as well, espcially debian based distros. Others have yum, or rpm, but I can not remember how to use them because I mostly use Debian based distros.

Thanks and God bless,
Aaron

Wubi

A couple of things out there scare people off from trying Linux, a couple of them being don't know how to install it, don't have an extra computer to install it on, don't want to deal with partitioning and dual booting. Well thanks to a program called Wubi and Ubuntu this has been resolved. Wubi was originally developed seperately from Ubuntu but in the newest version of Ubuntu they have included this program. OK so what is it? Wubi is a windows installer that creates an image file that acts as a hard drive. Now I know virtual machines have been doing that for a while now, but this gets better. Wubi then boots directly to the image. You DO NOT have to run Ubuntu inside of a virtual machine. You just install Wubi and then it walks you through getting it installed. NO more excuses installing Ubuntu is easy, requires no partitioning, and very little overhead compared to a virtual machine. I strongly suggest you give it a try.

For those who don't know Ubuntu is a version of Linux that I prefer. It is very easy to use and newbie friendly.The new version with Wubi built in is coming out in 1 week and I suggest you try it. If you are new to Linux this is where you should start, because it is so very easy. If you know how to burn an ISO file you can download the CD immediately, if you don't Ubuntu will send you the CD FOR FREE.

www.ubuntu.com

For the free Cd's go to https://shipit.ubuntu.com/

Thanks and God bless,
Aaron

Facebook and Picasa

So I use Picasa from Google as my photo manager. I wanted to add a Facebook button to Picasa. Facebook has a button that does this for you at http://apps.facebook.com/picasauploader/. This however did not work for me because my Firefox did not have a protocol for Picasa ( in other words the link says picasa://... which Firefox had no idea how to handle). I tried to add the protocol manually but was having no luck. So here is how I added the button without the install script. This worked on Windows for me but should work within any operating system.

Go to your Picasa folder. For me this was c:/Program Files/Picasa2. Then go to the buttons folder. Open up a text editor, ie notepad. Paste this code inside of the file.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><buttons format="1" version="1">
 <button id="custombutton/facebookupload" type="dynamic">
   <icon name="outputlayout/poster_icon" src="runtime"/>
   <label>Facebook</label>
   <tooltip>Upload photos to Facebook</tooltip>
   <action verb="hybrid">
     <param name="url" value="http://webkinesis.com/fbpicasa/picasa-post.do"/>
   </action>
 </button>
</buttons>

I got this code from http://www.webkinesis.com/fbpicasa/facebook.pbf and take no credit for it at all. Save this file as facebook.pbf. Restart or open Picasa.

Hope this helps anyone having problems.

Thanks an God bless,
Aaron

DistroWatch

So this post is mostly for the new linux user, as I believe most experienced linux users know about this website. The website it http://www.distrowatch.com. This is a site that just lists almost every linux distribution there is. Tells you when they have new releases and has a somewhat accurate list of the most popular linux distributions. Also when you click on a distribution for more details you get what version of the most popular packages/programs it has installed, how much the distro costs, how many cd/dvds it needs to install, any distribution it is based off of, and a discription about its main purpose. This is a great site for someone who needs to know more about a number of different disributions. It is also a good way to keep up with new releases and see what is going on in the linux distribution world out there.

Thanks and God bless,
Aaron

Linux Package Management

One of the main things I like to teach the new linux user is the idea of linux packages. The two main package systems out there are rpm and deb.

Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) - This is a package system that is based from the Red Hat Linux distro. This package management system is still heavily influenced by Red Hat. Any distribution that is based off of rpm packages is usually derived from Red Hat, or a derivation of a derivation or so on. In my opinion rpm based distributions usually have a more business feel to them. They feel little more professional oriented. They aren't done more professionally or look better per say but feel like they should be in a business environment rather than a personal desktop.

Debian Package Management (DEB) - This is a package system that is based from the Debian distribution. Most distributions based from the debian package system feel like they are made more for the personal desktop. Debian is a lot more community based than rpm based distros giving it more options it seems. Ubuntu is a debian based distribution. I prefer debian based distributions because it seems to work faster than rpm based distros when installing packages and seem more designed for personal use instead of the corporate situation. Part of this is also just because I have used debian distros more than rpm based distros so they are just what I feel more comfortable using.

There are other package systems too. Slackware has its own package system, as well as gentoo, arch and I am sure there are many others out there.

I am not really well versed in the different packages but that is a general idea of the difference.

With most debian distributions the way I install packages is by using the command apt-get.
In Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install *

In Debian:
you must have root privelages

apt-get install *

In RPM distros:
you must have root privelages

yum install *

I think these commands are right. I know the debian and Ubuntu commands are right but like I said I am not too familiar with RPM distros. Hope this informs and helps.

Thanks and God bless,
Aaron

3 Way Cage Match Part 3 of 3

Linux - My favorite operating system, but only because it suits me best. The thing I love the most about Linux is that you can do just about ANYTHING with it. I can make my Linux OS look fantastic, with lots of desktop effects, screensavers, and themes and almost always at no extra cost. Linux can revive old machines that can't run an up to date version of Windows. I have my mom using Xubuntu on a P3 dell laptop, because it was running Windows NT, and running it slowly. Linux doesn't just do desktops well it does servers extremely well. Also Linux is FREE(as in pizza and source)!!! Linux does not care what you do to it. I have run Windows on my main laptop computer because of work and school, and the lack of an ability to boot from a CD-ROM. I do however use Linux as a DVR using MythTV(another function of Linux). Linux suffers from some of the same pitfalls as OS X. People think they can't get viruses and spyware when really they can there just isn't anything out there that really targets Linux. It is a little more secure than the other two operating systems, but still vulnerable to attacks. Linux's biggest strength is also it's biggest weakness, because you can do anything with Linux people have and that puts a lot of non-standard parts of an operating system out there. There is no standard for linux because of this. Sometimes updates will break your Linux install, and because you can do anything it doesn't hold you back letting you mess up your install by changing a major OS file.

As you can see all of these operating systems fall into the trap of their strength is their weakness. They all have something to offer. In my opinion Linux is the best because it offers the most versatility for the best price tag. However for some people they do not need that versatility or the small price tag. Sometimes people want a standard like Windows, or they want the OS X world of great hardware design with a slick looking system that just works and has the backing of a major corporation out there.

I say to each their own, and I will choose Linux whenever possible, and Linux will probably work for you too.

<-Part 2

Thanks and God bless,
Aaron

3 Way Cage Match Part 2 of 3

Windows - Ah Windows. Mostly here when I talk about Windows I want everyone to assume I am probably talking about XP, but most of this will refer to Windows as a whole. Windows just works. Now I know there are a lot of people out there who will disagree with me but I feel this is very true. You have to load drivers sometimes, but usually drivers are easy to find since Windows is the dominant OS out there. Just like OS X this is Window's biggest strength and it's biggest weakness. Almost everything out there supports Windows, this also attracts hackers, viruses, spyware, pop-ups and all the bad stuff. Windows is good because it is familiar. It doesn't look the best, including Vista, it doesn't run the best, especially including Vista, but rarely does someone sit down at a Windows computer and have no idea what do to next. If Windows is used properly, it does not crash often; it will freeze from time to time and needs to be rebooted, but excluding viruses, spyware, and hackers, Windows doesn't break that much. It is usually something the user has done that broke it, and this applies to all operating systems in my opinion. Windows is not free (as in pizza or source), it does not let you tinker, Microsoft is king but their are a relatively fair ruler. Sure they think of themselves first, but they don't disregard the customer all together. Apple is the worst when it comes to this in my opinion, but I am not talking about them right now. Microsoft can be mean and controlling yes, but so are a lot of large companies.

<-Part 1 Part 2 ->

Thanks and God bless,
Aaron

3 Way Cage Match Part 1 of 3

So I have heard more and more talk about how much better one OS is than another. I used to feel that Windows was the best solution, Linux was just a crazy idea, and Apple was for artsy people. Since about 2 years ago my feelings definitely changed. Two things contributed to this: Apple switched to Intel, and I tried Linux. I started to realize that an operating system is just a tool to use a computer. Sometimes one is better for somebody than another. In most cases each operating system's strength is also it's greatest weakness. I am also going to do this in three parts so the posts aren't so long.

Apple - People are always saying I love apple because it just works, it doesn't come with tons of extra bloatware, and you cant get viruses or spyware. Well I am not going to say these aren't completely true, but there are reasons behind it. Apple just works because they come with almost all the software the general user needs in order to have a complete system, the problem with this is that you pay for all this software even if you don't use it. Not every user is going to create music with Garage Band or make movies with iMovie, but they still paid for it. The reason it doesn't come with tons of extra software is because Apple is the only company allowed to sell Apple computers, which also causes them to be more expensive. The reason they don't get viruses or spyware is because it is practically useless for someone to write a virus or spyware that only effects 5% (or whatever the market share is) of computers in the world. This is also the a drawback of Apple because why develop software for only 5% of the computers out there. Apple does a nice job of making people feel good about their Apples. They add a whole lot of ooh's and ah's both with hardware and software. All of this comes standard with Apple but at the downside of high cost and very limited options, both hardware and software.

Part 2->

Thanks and God Bless,
Aaron

Happy Pi Day

I wanted to just say Happy Pi day to everyone. Also I warned everyone this would be a geeky blog so you should have expected nothing less. Actually today was pointed out to me by someone else today and I thought it was very clever.