Oct 31
Twacon Announced
Programming Comments Off
I’m proud to announce “Twacon“. Twacon is a twitter application that searches twitter for mentions of the word bacon and refreshes every 15 seconds.
Dec 16
I went to my local Best Buy to pick up a Sandisk 2GB USB thumbdrive. I noticed there was programs already loaded on it for the PC, but I wanted all of my $20 worth on this drive.
When I came home and plugged it into my Powerbook (g4 550) it mounted two volumes; a “NO NAME” image and U3 image. U3 was where all of the PC software was. My first thought was to open Disk Utilities (in Apps folder) and just format the drive. The people at Best Buy said I can return it, so I had nothing to loose.
I come to find out that I couldn’t trash or format the drive because I didn’t have the proper permissions. I’m the one who bought the thing on my laptop, I have the permission. After that short outburst I put my thinking cap on.
I figured out that if you unlock the U3 application (apple + I or CTRL “Get Info”) I could open up the Finder window for that app. I clicked on the little lock (which was engaged) to unlock it and it worked. I then trashed the file and other folders on the drive. Then I was able to format the drive in Disk Utilities.
Now I have all 2GB of storage to work with and more important: NO Windows apps that will pop up when I plug my drive in at the office.
Nov 09
This page is meant to mirror http://www.kdrt.org/resources/Rivendell.
Introduction
The following packages for Ubuntu differ from the 0.9.80 version of Rivendell as follows:
- Ogg-Vorbis read/write support
- Mpeg read only support
- When using Ogg-Vorbis for the library format mpeg and ogg-vorbis files are copied in (no transcoding). All other formats transcoded to Ogg Vorbis.
- For more details see Compiling Rivendell with Ogg-Vorbis and Mpeg Support
Install Packages
Download and install the Desktop version of Ubuntu. (currently tested with Edgy.) Go do that. Come back here when you’re done.
If using gpio and/or a audio science adapter refer to http://rivendell.tryphon.org/wiki/index.php/Install_Rivendell_on_Ubuntu and install the gpio and hpklinux packages for Ubuntu.
Download and install libhpi_3.05.10-2_all.deb.
Download and install librhpi_0.94.8-0_i386.deb.
Download and install libradio_mad-ogg-0.98.0-0_i386.deb.
Download and install librivendell_0.9.80-0_i386.deb.
Download and install rivendell_0.9.80-0_i386.deb.
Tip: when installing the Rivendell package you will be prompted for a few options. During the install process click on “terminal” so you can see the configuration screens.
Another helpful thing you can do is fire up the terminal and configure debconf. To do that copy and paste the following into the terminal and hit enter.
sudo dpkg-reconfigure debconf
For the frontend choose either ‘gnome’ if you have the regular install of ubuntu or ‘kde’ if you installed kubuntu.
You can also set the priority level. The lower the level the more questions you will be asked when configuring software. More info can be found here.
Next run rdadmin (Applications->Sound->RDAdmin.) It will prompt for a user and password for installing the Rivendell database. Use root for user and leave the password field blank. Before doing this, you might want to read the Ubuntu documentation about setting a password for root in mysql.
Press ‘Ok’ and a dialog should come up saying “Successfully created Rivendell database.”
You’ll then get a login. By default Rivendell adds two users for you, admin and user with no passwords.
At this point you’ll want to read through the Rivendell Operations Guide. You’ll get a feel for the tools included with Rivendell.
Before you are able to record or play audio you have to configure your sound card. Most computers just have one stereo output and one stereo input. However, there are many soundcards on the market with multiple inputs and outputs.
Then setup your jack connections:
If you have only one soundcard with one stereo in and one stereo out then use this.
[JackSession] Source1=rivendell_0:playout_0L Destination1=alsa_pcm:playback_1 Source2=rivendell_0:playout_0R Destination2=alsa_pcm:playback_2 Source3=rivendell_0:playout_1L Destination3=alsa_pcm:playback_1 Source4=rivendell_0:playout_1R Destination4=alsa_pcm:playback_2 Source5=rivendell_0:playout_2L Destination5=alsa_pcm:playback_1 Source6=rivendell_0:playout_2R Destination6=alsa_pcm:playback_2 Source7=alsa_pcm:capture_1 Destination7=rivendell_0:record_0L Source8=alsa_pcm:capture_2 Destination8=rivendell_0:record_0R
If you have a card with multiple outputs and inputs try this one:
JACK Session Management ; ; See the 'JACK.txt' file for details on how this works! ; [JackSession] Source1=rivendell_0:playout_0L Destination1=alsa_pcm:playback_1 Source2=rivendell_0:playout_0R Destination2=alsa_pcm:playback_2 Source3=rivendell_0:playout_1L Destination3=alsa_pcm:playback_1 Source4=rivendell_0:playout_1R Destination4=alsa_pcm:playback_2 Source5=rivendell_0:playout_2L Destination5=alsa_pcm:playback_3 Source6=rivendell_0:playout_2R Destination6=alsa_pcm:playback_4 Source7=alsa_pcm:capture_1 Destination7=rivendell_0:record_0L Source8=alsa_pcm:capture_2 Destination8=rivendell_0:record_0R
Package notes
To add more audio and video playback capability use Easy Ubuntu.
Oct 28
Although I’ve found a way to share user files on my PowerMac G3 (B&W) running OS 10.4 I found it nearly impossible to find anything online that would allow me share the secondary drive on my Vista laptop.
Enter SharePoints. This program allows someone designate a mount point for your share in the System Preferences of your OS X computer. You can browse to the share that you want and name the point whatever you want. Make sure to enable Windows Sharing within the SharePoints pane.
When you head to Vista’s networking window type in your username and password and you’ll notice your new share point is within the bulleted points of the network share. Enjoy.
There are much better instructions on the SharePoints page.
Oct 19
I bought a laptop a few weeks back and it was preinstalled with Vista. Vista was the only supported OS on the laptop (no XP drivers wouldn’t work). I quickly found out that my Blue Mic Snowball USB mic would not work in Vista.
Since I noticed the mic wouldn’t work with Vista I’ve been looking at Blue update page. It looks like today I struck gold (or Blue in this case). It looks like the low gain firmware update seemed to work with Vista.
I followed all of the on-screen instructions, after the download, and everything installed like a champ. I even ran Cool Edit and ran two mics through (for my podcast) and everything worked OK. My only complaint is that the low-gain upgrade brings the levels of the mics way down. Hopefully Blue will certify the high-gain option for Vista soon.