Monday, December 28, 2009

Pimping: Mobile Media Converter = Free video and audio converter.

The other day, I was in a situation where I had a lot of time on my hands. A LOT of it. I sometimes get that with my job. (Trucking, meh, it pays the bills) And All of my Linux Journals had been gone through at least a couple of times. My first smart-phone is a Crackberry, er, BlackBerry Curve. It's the device that is most likely to go wherever I go. Laptops, NetBooks, Magazines, etc, might not make it into my pocket.

I needed / wanted something to watch. I went on a quest on how to watch something on the BlackBerry. I tried different converters, etc, I guess you're supposed to be able to watch an .AVI file on the phone, but I didn't get the format right etc, for it to work on the first or second try.  Then I found Mobile Media Converter. I think that Pat from TLLTS has mentioned it also. How their site proclaims the program.

The Mobile Media Converter is a free video and audio converter for converting between popular desktop media formats like MP3, Windows Media Audio (wma), Ogg Vorbis Audio (ogg), Wave Audio (wav), MPEG video, AVI, Windows Media Video (wmv), Flash Video (flv), QuickTime Video (mov) and commonly used mobile devices/phones formats like AMR audio (amr) and 3GP video. Also, iPod/iPhone and PSP compatible MP4 video are supported.


An integrated YoutTube downloader is available for direct downloading and converting to any of these formats. Also, you can trim your clips for ringtone creation or any other purpose and crop your videos for removing up/down black bars or other unwanted parts of the image.
The program has a very easy-to-use and simple GUI (Graphical User Interface) that helps even the most amateur user. Most of the times, the only data that you must enter is the input file(s) or just drag 'n' drop the input file(s)! The 3GP and AMR formats are used by mobile phones for MMS, video and sound recordings, etc.





At first, I didn't think that it would convert .ogv video files (aka, ogg theora) to .gp3 files, or to anything for that matter. It doesn't default to recognizing the .ogv format, and I couldn't add them via it's own file manager. And it didn't really make mention of support of .ogv files. So I didn't think that it would be a simple one-step solution to putting something on my phone to watch. But it is. What worked for me (Also maybe I should mention that I'm running Intrepid, Ubuntu 8.10) is to just add Mobile Media Converter to the files properties option in Nautilus. [Open With] tab in Nautilus. It takes a right click on the highlighted file to get there, BTW. 


The [Open With] tab in Nautilus.

Highlight and add the files you want to convert...


And Viola! It'll crunch and spin the 1's and 0's into a format that my Freedom Hatein' phone will digest and spew out on my screen. Granted, watching a Screencasters or Meet the Gimp episode on the phone isn't ideal. But it's something to look at, and if I DO happen to have a laptop with me, I can watch something, and hopefully learn something while I'm twiddling my thumbs, and harass friends on twitter or identi.ca a little less.. Heck, I might even get around to putting something like a movie on the phone to watch...


Sunday, October 18, 2009

Redmond's Lucky 7 or 7 up?

Microsoft and retailers are pimpin' Windows 7.  Yea Redmond?   I've not looked at the software, nor have I been a user of  Vista.  I don't expect that I will be soon.  I take a look at their price tag, and think.  Blech. Why would I want  to pay $80.00 to $300.00 for their software?  

Shortly prior to the release of Vista. I discovered the open source world and Ubuntu.  I'm So Glad that I did.  Couple of years ago, I do I admit, I did recall feeling a bit smug looking at the boxes as I wandered around my local Big Box Store, and saw the boxes of Vista Locked up, and put in a cage. Right where they ought to be. Out of the users reach. They're pretty proud of the work that they do in Redmond.

So this little advertisement gets in my email. 




It caused me to wonder how the the page on canonical.com's site looks? They've got this right near the top of the page..

Here you can buy CDs or DVDs of the distributions in bulk. To download a distribution or get your 
FREE CD please Click Here



It would appear that you CAN pay for Ubuntu of you want.  In fact, it might be a good idea to spend some money on the site if you WANT to. But do you HAVE to? Nope.  There is that link to download the software for free. OR even have a free disk sent to you.

So, if you've not used Ubuntu, why not?  Wouldn't it be worth it to at least try it?  If you're not trying out the offerings of open source, why not?

If you do, you might even have some money left over to spend on another 7 (or two) out there...




Cheers!

Monday, July 27, 2009

A must read and DO for anyone who forwards email

This is a must read and DO for anyone who forwards email. Please feel free to make a copy for future reference...


AN OPEN LETTER TO ALL MY FRIENDS:


Do you really know how to forward e-mails? 50% of us do; 50% DO NOT.

Do you wonder why you get viruses or junk mail? Do you hate it? Every time you forward an e-mail there is information left over from the people who got the message before you, namely their e-mail addresses & names. As the messages get forwarded along, the list of addresses builds, and builds, and builds, and all it takes is for some poor sap to get a virus, and his or her computer can send that virus to every E-mail address that has come across his / her computer.

Or, someone can take all of those addresses and sell them or send junk mail to them in the hopes that you will go to the site and he will make five cents for each hit. That's right, all of that inconvenience over a nickel! How do you stop it? Well, there are several easy steps:

  1. When you forward an e-mail, DELETE all of the other addresses that appear in the body of the message (at the top). That's right, DELETE them. Highlight them and delete them, backspace them, cut them, whatever it is you know how to do. It only takes a second. You MUST click the "Forward" button first and then you will have full editing capabilities against the body and headers of the message If you don't click on "Forward" first, you won't be able to edit the message at all.

  2. Whenever you send an e-mail to more than one person, do NOT use the To: or Cc: fields for adding e-mail addresses. Always use the BCC:(blind carbon copy) field for listing the e-mail addresses. This way the people you send to will only see their own e-mail address If you don't see your BCC: option click on where it says To:and your address list will appear. Highlight the address and choose BCC: and that's it, it's that easy. When you send to BCC: your message will automatically say "Undisclosed Recipients" in the "TO:" field of the people who receive it. If that phrase does not appear, type your own email address in the "TO" field, but put everyone else's in the BCC: field.

  3. Remove any "FW :" in the subject line. You can re-name the subject if you wish or even fix spelling.

  4. ALWAYS hit your Forward button from the actual e-mail you are reading. Ever get those e-mails that you have to open 10 pages to read the one page with the information on it? By Forwarding from the actual page you wish someone to view, you stop them from having to open many e-mails just to see what you sent. (AMEN!) If you can't forward from that page, "Copy" the info and then open a new email blank page and "Paste".

  5. Have you ever gotten an email that is a petition? It states a position and asks you to add your name and address and to forward it to 10 or 15 people or your entire address book. The email can be forwarded on and on and can collect thousands of names and email addresses A FACT: The completed petition is actually worth a couple of bucks to a professional spammer because of the wealth of valid names and email addresses contained therein. If you want to support the petition, send it as your own personal letter to the intended recipient. Your position may carry more weight as a personal letter than a laundry list of names and email address in a petition. (actually, if you think about it, who is supposed to send the petition in to whatever cause it supports? And don't believe the ones that say that the email is being traced, it just ain't so!) One of the main ones I hate is the ones that say something like, -Send this email to 10 people and you'll see something great run across your screen.-Or sometimes they just tease you by saying something really cute will happen. IT AINT GONNA HAPPEN!!!!! (Trust me, I'm still seeing some of the same ones that I waited on 10 years ago!) I don't let the bad luck ones scare me either, they get trashed. (could be why I haven't won the lottery) Before you forward an Amber Alert, or a Virus Alert, or some of the other ones floating around nowadays, check them out before you forward them. Most of them are junk mail that have been circling the net for YEARS! Just about everything you receive in an email that is in question can be checked out a Snopes. Just go to http://www.snopes.com/ . It is really easy to find out if it is real or not. If it is not, please don't pass it on. So please, in the future, let's stop the junk mail and the viruses.

Finally, here's an idea!!! Let's send this to everyone we know (but strip my address off first, please ). This is something that SHOULD be forwarded. Amen!

Sunday, July 26, 2009

gPodder and Enqueing your Oggcasts / Podcasts

Updated 07/26/09

(First Post Date 5/14/09)

I was fooling around trying to figure out how to use a lightweight media player, such as XFMedia Player a few days ago, trying to figure out how to enqueue / en-queue / que / en queue a file to the play-list from within gPodder without overwriting the current file. Unfortunately, in my opinion, it seems that most of the Linux Media players behave that way by default, Save Amarok. "Enqueue In SMPlayer" works well also. But I had started a hunt, and off I went. I never did find the one line command line fix to use XFMedia, but I did find a couple things that I didn't know about.


Aqualung

aqualung -N0 -E

This option loads the files, but does not start playback automatically, you can try the -L command for that, but that tends to start playback on the last one loaded. For more info look here. Options for remote cue control
Since I was looking for a lightweight media player I've kinda grown fond of Aqualung. It does provide some Podcast Support and also has a cool and funky way of adding media to it's Media List. I discovered Aqualung when I was testing out Sidux XFCE a month ago.


For VLC 0.9.9 fans, Try:

For Linux

vlc --playlist-enqueue --started-from-file

For Windows

"C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" --playlist-enqueue --started-from-file

For Audacious

audacious --enqueue

Seems to work ok, but seems to be "skippy" Audacious wouldn't be my first choice.

I welcome any hints tips, comments or other tricks that I might have missed,
Randy



PlayOgg

Join PlayOgg, a campaign to promote the use of free media formats including Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora.



Sunday, May 24, 2009

Sansa e200 Seires not mounting: Bug #355998 in linux (Ubuntu): usb-storage

For anyone that has a Sansa e200, e250, e270 etc, series, and they've upgraded / updated to Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope, you may have run into some of the issues that I did. - The thing just won't mount. Sorta kills the gPodder and OggCast joy. So I found this patch that solves the problem. Yet you'll get prompted to update the new patched code. I know there's away to stop that, but I'm not sure how, at this moment. I tried the Synaptic Force Version, and I ended back up with a new version. So... I'm not the one to ask about that. But this link, is the one that helped out.

Bug #355998 in linux (Ubuntu): “usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning”

Please note, you need to have the Source Code option turned on in your Software Sources. - something most people don't have turned on.



I spaced out this little checkbox, ran into errors, it wasn't working for me at first. I needed the source code. DOH!


cd /usr/share/hal/fdi/preprobe/10osvendor/
sudo apt-get install build-essential devscripts

apt-get build-dep libgphoto2
apt-get source libgphoto2
sudo wget http://launchpadlibrarian.net/25783305/libgphoto_sansa.diff
sudo patch -p0 -i libgphoto_sansa.diff
cd libgphoto2-2.4.2
debuild -uc -us
cd ..
sudo dpkg -i libgphoto2-2_2.4.2-0ubuntu4_i386.deb


And you'll get a screen full of stuff like this:

It'll take a little time...

From Synaptic Package Manager I've tried to "Pin" it, and lock it, and I'm not doing something right, as I keep getting an update prompt... Sigh...

R_

Saturday, May 02, 2009

Alarm Clock Program causes Ubuntu 9.04 to Lock up / Freeze after upgrade

I ran into an Upgrade Snag when going from Ubuntu 8.10 to 9.04 I Googled " Old Alarms preventing logging in to Ubuntu " and found this:

Bug #321176 in alarm-clock (Ubuntu Jaunty): “[Jaunty] alarm-clock causes screen to freeze” after upgrade.

I'd like to (need to) file or confirm a proper bug report on this. But as I'm pressed for time, I promised the son some Sub-Urban Golf today, I'm going to post this here, and if someone comments, or finds this useful cool. That's why I did it.
(note to self, DO get learned on proper bug-report filing, soon)

I ran into a problem using the upgrade button on my secondary laptop, I was going from 8.10 -> 9.04 Jaunty. I had a utility on the computer called Alarm Clock, Also know as Alarm-Clock. My computer went through the proper upgrade without a hitch, but this utility cause my machine to freeze while booting. With little work or though, I found that from the GRUB menu I could boot into:

Ubuntu 9.04 kernel 2.6.28-11-generic (recovery mode)

Pick Root [drop to shell prompt]

From this Shell Terminal do a:

Apt-get remove alarm-clock

Exit back out and boot into my System

All things back to normal, minus the Alarm Clock on the panel.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Freenode's staffblog - 2007 - March NickServ is your Friend

While Trying to figure out how to recover my password, I ran into this article, and thought that others that are new to IRC might find it useful. - No, I still haven't figured out what I did with that password, but I probably saved it to my Gmail Account, and flushed that saved message out by accident. IMAP is very powerful, LOL...

NickServ Is Your Friend Saturday, March 24th, 2007

Nickserv, unbeknownst to many, has many useful features. In addition to handling nick registration, it allows you to change your password, hide certain information about your nick and online status, recover your nick from another user who is using it (or a dead computer connection), turn on/off the ability to receive and be notified of new memos. Here are some of the major features of nickserv. Don’t be afraid to poke around with /msg nickserv help.

The Whole Entry from the staffblog, 2007 March

Saturday, April 04, 2009

Sidux 2009-01 Xfce4

So, Here I am. A Geek, and awake at 7am on a Saturday morning. I don't want to go back to bed, as I'll probably have to get up at 3am tomorrow, and that would just screw up my sleeping pattern even more. Having entered the Linux world just a little over 2 years ago, I found Ubuntu to be very friendly, and usable. Very well designed for the noob. Any Kind of Noob. :) I figured it was time to look into another Distro, in depth, to see how it did things.


I had installed Sidux, the XFCE (complete list ) version on my hard drive a few weeks ago, and hadn't given it much of a go, as while it was Debian based, they're doing things different from the folks over at Canonical.


I've found myself with Ubuntu Gnome as my primary main machine. It's ease of use and support make it such a joy to learn Linux with. Another one of the nice things about Linux is that one can have as many distro's on their box as they desire. So, I decided that I wanted to to take a little more in depth look into Sidux, XFCE. I figured maybe it'll make it simple to boot into it, and run a full backup on the Ubuntu side while I'm fiddling around on the Sidux side. That Means, that I want a browser, and all of it's trimmings. IE Java, Flash, (yea, freedom hatin' me) and my Google tool-bar.


One of the first things I notice with Sidux is that it uses Iceweasel, not Firefox. That's cool. But my Google Tool bar doesn't know what Iceweasel is, or how to install to it. So I need to use the About: command and change the identity of Iceweasel. I feel like I'm committing some kind of identity theft, but meh, it's only my browser lying to Google, and lord knows they already know enough truth about me. It's just that Iceweasel won't get the credit for being used as a browser. Sigh.


OK, got that done. Wow. Where' s my Add-Remove program? Not in here. Ok so I look at their manual and find that I need. Debian Package Search. Cool, something different. A bit more lightweight, but it looks usable.


I've got Debian Package Search installed, yea, it wasn't part of thier distro packaging.


Just flashed on the screen and showed very little info, when I tried to install Java. A Little bouncing around in the menus in Debian Package Search I notice that I had the ability to copy a and paste command into the terminal window. When I did copy it into the terminal. I got:


/usr/bin/apt-get install sun-java6-jre

But it should have read

apt-get install sun-java6-jre


Not sure what that happened, or if I messed up or missed something but eh, small glitch either way.

Now that I have Java installed. I want test it. I go to JuicedPenguin.com to see if I can get the ogg file to play in a pop-up window. Nope. Iceweasel wants more plug-ins. Another Search with Debian Package Search and I find the Sun-Java6-Plugin, to add Java support for Iceweasle Or any Mozilla Browser, and install it, and now I'm able to listen to that fine Ogg Media via a dandy pop up, if I so desire.


Oh! Also missing, from the "out of box" experience, was a spell checker with AbiWord.


I've yet to get around to playing around with a backup scheme for the system... I'll have to come up with a second part for that. But so far. Yea, I do like it. For some reason this XFCE experience seems a little more fluid then when I'm using Xubuntu, and I'm not sure exactly why. Or it could be that I've become more accustomed to XFCE?


And with that, my fee time is no more, and I need to get out the door.


Bottom line. I like it. Not sure that it would be my first choice to recommend for a newcomer to the Linux scene, but it would have to be a consideration if weak hardware were a concern.


Monday, March 23, 2009

Get Android’s fonts on Ubuntu [HOW TO]

Get Android’s fonts on Ubuntu [HOW TO]

These are some GOOD fonts. I added them to my older machine that has a smaller "square" screen, and reduced my desktop font down to 9 (that alone would have helped) and garnerd more desktop space. I'll be adding them to my main machine also. Just due to the fact that they do save some space.


- I wish I had time to create some oddball fun fonts...

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Download - Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference

Download - Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference

Or for $9.94 you can get a paper edition. - I've put this on my wish list... I'd like to get it. :)

Single on/off switch for conky - Ubuntu Forums

And oldie but goody from the Ubuntu Forums. While I was looking for a command line switch to turn conly on or off, I found this:
[save the file in your home folder, and name it something like Conky-on-off.sh]

Single on/off switch for conky - Ubuntu Forums:
"Single on/off switch for conky Here's a simple script to turn conky on and off. Just copy the script to a empty text file and make it executable(properties>permissions)->




#!/bin/sh

# click to start, click to stop

if pidof conky | grep [0-9] > /dev/null
then
exec killall conky
else
exec conky

fi



Then just create a single launcher for it(right click panel/desk) and point it to what ever you named your file, add a icon and your all set. I use mine so i can change my .conkyrc to try things and skip using the terminal to kill conky and start conky, clicking on the icon is way faster.
Last edited by kerry_s; October 29th, 2006 at 02:40 AM.."

Sunday, February 08, 2009

OPML 2 HTML via JS

OPML 2 HTML via JS

This is a simple site, that will take an OPML file and convert it into an HTML file. Great if you want to create a list of links real quick from your OPML reader. And, I suppose one could do this, and edit out the links that they don't want, or split them up into more categories. - Something that I need / want to do to make up a quick page of what podcasts I listen to, etc. - Yea, I'm posting this here also to remind myself that It's on my "to do" list... :P - Oh - AND I think you can save the HTML page so that can use it on a local machine or on your own Blog or... whatever.


- It might also make a quick and dirty HPR episode? ? Hmm..

Issues with Linux Mint (or Debian Linux) and Xsane

#notetoself So, today, I was playing around with a new PC setup. And of course there was an issue with the HP Scanner. - I generally use Xsa...