Dispelled.ca

Ok. So there is no version of Mobile Media Converter (MMC) for Ubuntu Maverick (10.10) 64 bit, but there is a 32 bit version. To make it work for 64 bit, you need to force it a bit. Once again, please don’t take this as a real how-to. Actually, maybe that should be the tag line for this blog. I never really know what I’m doing, but I know what I want, and I manage to get there. Hey, it’s working, and here’s how I got from A to B.

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Computers, Phones, Ubuntu No comments

After looking all over to find some old episodes of Sesame Street for Anna, the only place I could find them were Itunes. I usually stay away from anything Apple, but there was a client for Windows and I loaded it up on the laptop. After purchasing a season (~20 bucks) I tried uploading them to our file server to play (Ubuntu). Nothing. Uh oh.

Most Itunes Videos (and audio) have DRM (Digital Rights Management) (Wikipedia). This is evil stuff. DRM is an encryption which only allows you to play the files on a computer with Itunes.

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Computers, Ubuntu No comments

First of all, Unity is not even close to being released on the desktop (it is scheduled for Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) in spring 2011).

I am previewing it by typing or pasting into a terminal:
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:canonical-dx-team/une
and then:
sudo apt-get install unity

Ok. Now that that is sorted, after a few days of testing Unity on Ubuntu 10.10, I would have to say that I agree with this.

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Reviews, Ubuntu No comments

Finally sorted out separate Wine prefixes for the games I’m running. Now I won’t break everything when an update comes in, or when I need to add dll’s and such. EverQuest is pretty touchy since it uses directX 9, and typing winetricks commands or adding dll’s to the system32 folder usually messes things up. Morrowind needs some dll’s added, and Lord of the Rings needs a few winetricks.

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Computers, Gaming, Ubuntu, Wine No comments

This is by no means trying to be a how-to, It’s just the way I got it to work.
Copy Install from Windows, Download PyLotro
Into a terminal one at a time: (Line 3 – change to your wine path)

wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks
chmod +x winetricks­
export WINEPREFIX=/home/somebody/.wine
./winetricks vcrun2003
­­­./winetricks d3dx9­

Same error. I Ran Pylotro and let it crash, then killed the processes. Then I tried a newer C++ runtime.
Into a terminal:

./winetricks vcrun2005

Run Pylotro again and let it crash a bunch, kill the processes each time till it works. Then set the resolution and key mappings.

Computers, Gaming, Ubuntu, Wine No comments

To reinstall:
Move Patched (120722) Bethesda Softworks folder into wine directory
Add MSVCP60.DLL from and old system32 directory
Run the game once at 1024×768 to create the registry entries
wine regedit – Local Machine / Software / Bethesda Softworks / Morrowind and set Screen Width to 1680, Screen Height to 1050
Run the game and start a new game then exit
Run the game and pick a save game to play
Alt tab and end pulseaudio (this gets past some problem pulseaudio is causing)
todo: edit key bindings

Computers, Gaming, Ubuntu No comments

OpenBSD 4.7 i386 and amd64, and Ubuntu 10.04 for PPC (an old Mac laptop) downloaded. Hashes checked with sha256 and md5, and ready to burn! Rock and roll!

Computers, OpenBSD, Ubuntu No comments

CONFIGURING X

This is assuming you have set up the restricted nvidia driver in Ubuntu, your LCD monitor is working, and you want to add a TV for playing movies. Open a terminal and type these three commands seperately. The first backs up your xorg.conf

sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.bak

The next one creates a working xorg.conf for us to use.

sudo nvidia-xconfig

And this one opens the nvidia settings tool with sudo so we can save our changes.

sudo nvidia-settings

Under X Server Display Configuration “Detect Displays”, “Configure…” and configure the monitors as “Separate X Screens”, set the resolutions right, and Save to X Configuration File. Here is how I set mine up.

Then open a terminal and type

sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

In my case my tv is CRT-0 with a resolution of 1360×768. My LCD is CRT-1 with a resolution of 1680×1050. Find the line than says

Option "metamodes" "CRT-0: 1360x768 +0+0"

and change it to

Option "metamodes" "CRT-0: 1680x1050@1360x768 +0+0"

This will squeeze the 1680 screen into a 1360 container (as far as I understand). Before finding this, I was missing the right side and bottom of the screen.

Restart X and you should have your regular LCD setup, and another X screen for your TV.

If you run into trouble editing xorg.conf, you still have a backup. Boot to a console and type

sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf.bak /etc/X11/xorg.conf

CONFIGURING VLC

Then in VLC, go to Tools > Preferences > Show Settings – All > Video, check Fullscreen Video and uncheck Embedded Video. This separates the controls from the fullscreen output so you can control it with your computer (my TV is in another room).

Then go to Output Modules, and select an output type (in my case XVideo) and then set it up to match your configuration. Here is mine.

You can find these values in nvidia settings to some degree, and the rest is just finding a match. I found I had to restart VLC after each change to take effect.

I had a lot of trouble with this before and was cloning the monitor output, then switching my resolution to 1360×768 each time. I find this to be a much better solution, but I can’t promise anything, it’s just the way it worked for me. Good luck!

Here is some links that I bookmarked along the way. Thanks to everyone that helped!

http://snippets.dzone.com/posts/show/6386
http://snippets.dzone.com/posts/show/2986
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/dual-monitors-with-nvidia.html
http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?t=31726
http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=54263
http://navetz.com/view.php?id=132
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=221174

Computers, Ubuntu No comments

From the minute I found this program, I loved it. It is now a permanent part of my desktop. Here is my .conkyrc file, if you see anything you want from it, be my guest!

alignment top_right
gap_x 30
use_xft yes
xftfont verdana:size=8
xftalpha 0.8
own_window yes
own_window_type override
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
double_buffer yes
draw_shades no
draw_outline no
draw_borders no
use_spacer none
no_buffers yes
uppercase no
 
TEXT
${color #5c4b42}${font StyleBats:size=8}A${font}  ${color #988378}CPU0: ${cpu cpu0}% ${color #5c4b42}${cpubar cpu0}
${color #5c4b42}${font StyleBats:size=8}A${font}  ${color #988378}CPU1: ${cpu cpu1}% ${color #5c4b42}${cpubar cpu1}
${color #5c4b42}${font weather:size=8}x ${font}CPU0: ${color #988378}${execi 5 /usr/bin/sensors | grep Core0 }
${color #5c4b42}${font weather:size=8}x ${font}CPU1: ${color #988378}${execi 5 /usr/bin/sensors | grep Core1 }
${color #5c4b42}${font weather:size=8}x ${font}GPU: ${color #988378}${execpi 5 nvidia-settings -q GPUCoreTemp -t}°C ${color #5c4b42}${font weather:size=8}x ${font}ACPI Temp: ${color #988378}${acpitemp}°C
 
${color #5c4b42}/              ${color #988378}${alignr}${fs_used /} / ${fs_size /} ${color #5c4b42}${fs_bar 5,120 /}
${color #5c4b42}/media/My Book ${color #988378}${alignr}${fs_used /media/My Book} / ${fs_size /media/My Book} ${color #5c4b42}${fs_bar 5,120 /media/My Book}
${color #5c4b42}/media/My Book 2 ${color #988378}${alignr}${fs_used /media/My Book 2} / ${fs_size /media/My Book 2} ${color #5c4b42}${fs_bar 5,120 /media/My Book 2}
 
${color #5c4b42}RAM Usage:${color #988378} $mem${color #5c4b42} / ${color #988378}$memmax - $memperc% ${color #5c4b42} $membar
${color #5c4b42}Swap Usage:${color #988378} $swap${color #5c4b42} / ${color #988378}$swapmax - $swapperc% ${color #5c4b42} ${swapbar}
 
${color #5c4b42}Name              PID     CPU%   MEM%
${color #988378} ${top name 1} ${top pid 1} ${top cpu 1} ${top mem 1}
${color #988378} ${top name 2} ${top pid 2} ${top cpu 2} ${top mem 2}
${color #988378} ${top name 3} ${top pid 3} ${top cpu 3} ${top mem 3}
${color #5c4b42}Mem usage
${color #988378} ${top_mem name 1} ${top_mem pid 1} ${top_mem cpu 1} ${top_mem mem 1}
${color #988378} ${top_mem name 2} ${top_mem pid 2} ${top_mem cpu 2} ${top_mem mem 2}
${color #988378} ${top_mem name 3} ${top_mem pid 3} ${top_mem cpu 3} ${top_mem mem 3}
 
${color #5c4b42}${font PizzaDude Bullets:size=8}v${font} Up Speed: ${color #988378}${upspeed eth1} Kb/s ${color #5c4b42}${alignr}Uploaded: ${color #988378}${totalup eth1}
${color #5c4b42}${font PizzaDude Bullets:size=8}r${font} Down Speed: ${color #988378}${downspeed eth1} Kb/s ${color #5c4b42}${alignr}Downloaded: ${color #988378}${totaldown eth1}
 
${color #5c4b42}${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 count} Outbound Connections ${alignr} Remote Ports${color #988378}
 ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rhost 0} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rservice 0}
 ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rhost 1} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rservice 1}
 ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rhost 2} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rservice 2}
 ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rhost 3} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rservice 3}
 ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rhost 4} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rservice 4}
 ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rhost 5} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rservice 5}
 ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rhost 6} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rservice 6}
 ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rhost 7} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rservice 7}
 ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rhost 8} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rservice 8}
 ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rhost 9} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rservice 9}
 ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rhost 10} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rservice 10}
${color #5c4b42}${tcp_portmon 1 32767 count} Inbound Connections ${alignr} Local Ports${color #988378}
 ${tcp_portmon 1 32767 rhost 0} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 1 32767 lservice 0}
 ${tcp_portmon 1 32767 rhost 1} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 1 32767 lservice 1}
 ${tcp_portmon 1 32767 rhost 2} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 1 32767 lservice 2}
 ${tcp_portmon 1 32767 rhost 3} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 1 32767 lservice 3}
 ${tcp_portmon 1 32767 rhost 4} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 1 32767 lservice 4}

And here’s a few screeners to show what it looks like.

Ubuntu No comments

I was surfing around this Saturday, and found this page Lifehacker – Top 10 Ubuntu Downloads – Ubuntu through Delicious.

Boy did that ever mess up my plans to get some things done around the house this weekend. This is the kind of program I love. I write a lot of CSS, which is Edit and View. It’s simple, there is no compile errors, and other than some ignorant FTP servers, it’s instant fun. So when I found that the program conky comes with a single configuration file (~/.conkyrc), naturally I am stoked. Edit, Kill, Run, View. It still works for me. Sure you can make it more complicated, but you can also break it down easy. I spent most of Saturday learning the variables you can work with, and now am getting back into shell scripting cause there is some amazing things you can do with conky plus a shell script!

Computers, Ubuntu No comments