Tag: linux

  • Sushi Master

    Well not quite, but my sushi the other night was, if I do say so myself, bloody fantastic. When I tried it not long after preparation, it wasn’t all that. It tasted too seaweedy, which is not a taste you want in particular. I didn’t realise what it really needed was fridge time. The next evening we had some as a starter, and it tasted great, and bar my clumsy presentation looked like they should. So I’ve bought more stuff for sushi last night, including a bamboo mat (which I did have, but I think I cut it up to use for something else, some project or idea I really can’t remember). With bamboo mat I may yet attain perfection!

    Also starting to plan seriously for upgrading my computer at home. It is coming on for four years old now, has done sterling service, but is getting slow. I am not getting rid of it, but it can be a fileserver now, whilst I build a new computer. Decided to build my own from scratch again, I hopefully have a case coming from a friend that looks promising, have settled on an Intel Duo Core processor at the centre of the machine, which then helps you focus on which other elements you want to add in. I think graphics card is the toughest choice now, as I really don’t know how much I am willing to spend on that. You can easily spend the cost of a new Xbox 360 just on a graphics card should you chose, but I think I’d rather get something up to date but mid-range. I also this time need to take account of wanting to run Linux as my operating system of choice, I have been using Ubuntu for about 3 months now on all my machines, and I can’t see me going back to Windows now. Just so much cleaner and easier.

  • Using Brightside in Ubuntu

    A simple little app today, Brightside. What this does is to allow you to traverse your desktops in Ubuntu Edgy by mouse, so that you can use the mouse to scroll from one virtual desktop to the next. A colleague introduced me to this years ago on a Linux install, and I couldn’t find it on any others since, until today. I’m now back to the setup I had then, where I have 4 desktops in a square shape, and move around them by mouse. It also allows you to define custom actions for moving the mouse into corners of the screen, so now if I move the mouse to the top left the screensaver starts, if I move it to bottom left it mutes what is playing. Very nice features. Simple install:

    sudo apt-get install brightside

    Once it is installed, go to System > Preferences > Screen Actions to set up as you wish.

  • Dealing with no display in Ubuntu

    I thought I’d managed to kill Ubuntu today, reinstalled a sound driver that wasn’t working, rebooted and found that I could only boot to a command line. After a short and sensible period of panic, I booted into Windows and searched for a solution. The suggestion that worked was as follows:

    startkde had no effect once logged in (still in the command line only). startx launched, but I only got a cursor and a greyish screen, nothing else happened. So I reinstalled the desktop with:

    sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

    and strictly speaking you want a reboot, but I didn’t need it, startx worked fine for me from there.

  • Print Screen in Ubuntu Edgy

    Quick little tip, found this today when CTRL + Print Screen didn’t work for me. In Ubuntu, Print Screen will capture your whole desktop, whereas ALT + Print Screen will capture the live window. The latter being just what I needed.

  • Sync your podcasts to your iPod under Ubuntu

    This is a big deal for me, not so much getting it working, more that it is one of the few things I’ve been booting back into Windows for. I am hoping fairly soon to remove the Windows partition from the hard drive, and reclaim it all for Ubuntu.

    Anyway, the setup is this:

    1) Dock the ipod with Ubuntu open. This should place the iPod using the name you’ve give it previously on your desktop. Find the location it has mounted the iPod at using right-click and properties, and make note of this.

    2) If you don’t have it installed, sudo apt-get install amarok.

    3) Go to System > Preferences > Removable Drives and Media, and on the Multimedia tab, change the command for portable music players to /usr/bin/amarok (or whatever your location is for amarok)

    4) In Amarok, go to settings > Configure Amarok > media devices. Add device, choose the Apple iPod Media Device, and enter the name you gave the iPod, and its mount point.

    5) That is the main part done, now you need in playlists to add any URLs of podcast feeds, and configure each feed so that it automatically scans for updates, downloads when available, and adds to the media device transfer queue (just check each option when configuring the podcast.

    6) When you connect the iPod, it should now launch Amarok, and queue any new shows to transfer to the iPod. At the moment I just highlight the shows and transfer them, but I am sure I can find a command to do this automatically.

    So that is a bit of work to get sorted, but worth it to keep Ubuntu open! If you try this yourself, let me know how you get on.


  • Realplayer in Ubuntu Edgy

    I found this slightly trickier to set up than usual with Ubuntu, so I thought it was worth making mention of it. Basically, download from real.com and follow the instructions. The normal methods of installing such things (the package manager or using sudo apt-get install) didn’t work for me. Just saves a bit of faffing about I reckon.


  • UNIX Tutorial for Beginners

    A really nicely done guide to UNIX, lots of the basics covered and explained well

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