So I’ve bought an IPod, eventually as some might say, after fighting at least 4 or 5 years against it. I came to the conclusion to buy one because simply all of my friends have one, and surely they can’t all be blatantly wrong. Some of them are even hardcore nerds. My only condition was to find a mp3 player that has a good Linux support, good in terms of not having to search 1 week or more to finally get this bastard working. And to be fair, the Ipod was the one, and after almost one week of using it – you can’t beat it. The IPod works out of the box, as the mac people would say, on Linux. Brilliant.
Here’s a quick tutorial on how you get it working on Linux – I’m using Kubuntu Hardy Heron.

List of installed packages:

• ipod *tool for retrieving information from iPods
• ipodslave *kio-slave for iPods
• libgpod3-nogtk *a library to read and write songs and artwork to an iPod
• libipod0 *ipod library
• libipoddevice0 *library for retrieving information from iPods
• podsleuth *Tool to discover detailed information about Apple iPodsdon’t know if they’re all necessary, but this is what I have installed!

Here are some extra applications, that you might find useful:

• gpixpod *Organize photos on your iPod, freely! (pretty unnecessary, it didn’t work for me!)
• hipo *iPod Management Tool (pretty unnecessary as well, as it just manages music…..I’m not using it anymore because Amarok is so much better)

Once you’ve installed the above mentioned packages and libraries, you’re pretty much good to go.

I’ll now show how you can mount and access your iPod pretty easily.
Just mount your connected iPod in your file manager (I’m using Krusader but Dolphin or any other file manager will do as well). Once it’s mounted you can access your iPod via ipod:\ (where you immediately see the folders and mp3s just like any mounted usb drive/stack). Whereas when you just access /media/ipod you only see the file structure from the ipod e.g. Calendar, Contacts, Playlists…..basically cryptic info that you don’t wanna see anyway.

So now, if you want to shuffle music onto your iPod you could do it by copying them directly over the ipod:/ slave or by using your music player like Amarok or Rhythmbox. I’m using Amarok, and it works like that:

1. Start Amarok and connect and mount your iPod to your computer.
2. In Amarok go to Settings –> Configure Amarok –> Media Device (the last one)
3. Click on “Autodetect Devices”, if it’s not autodetected add it manually (if added manually choose the iPod plugin from the dropdown menu and select /media/ipod (or whatever your iPod is called) as your mount point.
4. On the lefthand side menu in Amarok, select Devices, and click on “Connect” in the top bar.
5. Now go to “Files” (also in the lefthand side menu) and select the tunes or albums you want to transfer to your iPod. By right clicking them you can select “Transfer to Media Device”. Once this is done, you have to go back to “Devices” and right click the queue, easier if you press ctrl+a, and right click to “transfer” them.
6. Now you’re done. There’s nothing else to do, if you’ve finished transfering the songs, you need to click “disconnect” to unmount the device.

You might ask yourself how you can transfer Photos and Videos to your iPod?! Well, let me know once you’ve found it out, because I still haven’t found a way to transfer pictures or videos. The aforementioned gpixpod didn’t really work for me, it said the pictures were transfers, but I’m yet to find them on my iPod, which basically means they are not there. God only knows where they are now
Digikam or Gwenview Users, apparently there is a way to transfer pictures by using the kipi plugin “transfer to iPod”, I tried it but it didn’t work for me. Any ideas?!

Edit: Like a visitor just stated in the comment section below, GTKPOD is capable of transfering photos and videos (persumably in mp4 format) onto your iPod. Hip-Hip-Hooray!

As for videos, you’d need to convert your videos first into mp4 videos, which is a bit of a pain in the arse on Linux, you can use ffmpeg [1] or mplayer, but they just don’t look any good. So basically once you’ve converted them into mp4, you might be able to transfer them via Amarok. But that’s just an assumption.
Please let me know, if you’ve got it working!

Contacts, Events in your Calendar….I have found a way to “synchronize” my events and contacts to my iPod. Just export your contacts into a vcard file, and your events into an ical file. Kontact and Evolution should be capable of doing it. The popular calendar tool Rainlendar2 stores the events and to do’s in a ical file as well, so you can just transfer this ical onto your iPod as well.

That’s it basically, iTunes might be a load of crap, but in the end you will have to use it at some point, e.g when you want to upgrade the Firmware, or if you just want to reset the iPod.

Any comments are welcome! Please let me know!

[1] FFMPEG FAQ: http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/faq.html#SEC25

It’s been a while since I last blogged, because I’ve been quite busy lately and haven’t found an interesting topic to blog about.

I’ve asked my good friend, Bernd, to write a small application for me that would let me edit the EXIF data of my photos. He wrote me this basic tool that pretty much just adds a comment to the EXIF data of my photos.

You start the application, then a little pop-up dialog appears and asks you to type in the text for your comment field. After choosing the right text you click OK, and then you can select the photos you want to provide with this comment. It’s very easy, and very similar to ID3-tagging with mp3s.

The tool is written in Python, which means it’s platform independent and you can run it everywhere where Python is installed. It depends on the following packages zenity and exiv2, so make sure you have these installed before running the application.

Download the source code from here and then rename it from ‘ec.sh.txt’ to ‘ec.sh’. You can now run exif comment from your console by typing sh ec.sh or simply make a shortcut on your desktop to ‘./ec.sh’. As said before this will run anywhere and you don’t need to install it, just run it as it is.

If you know a similar tool, that is even more powerful, then please let me know. Also if you have any ideas on how it could be improved let me know and I’ll pass it onto Bernd.

Enjoy your Exif Comment!

Ok, this time I’ll show you how to make one of these bad boys, an animated banner logo. Like this or this. The first one is actually a bit trickier as it involves a lot more layers than the other one, but I’ll explain that later.

What you need first to make these cool banners is,

1. a cool font
2. GIMP 2.4
3. and a good idea, what you want your Banner to look like

Here’s a screenshot, what GIMP will look like, once it’s installed on your machine!

To start a new banner project click File >> New (or simply press Ctrl+n) and then this dialog box should pop up:

Make sure you select the Web banner huge template, in the template drop-down box! This will be the ideal size for your banner, web-standard apparently!

Now you can start laying out your banner, make sure you use a new layer for each frame you want to use.

So basically I used a layer for

1. SEASON
2. -TURN THE CORNER
3. coming soon
4. www.season.org.uk

Tip: Always keep the layer box (ctrl+l) handy (next to you!).

An example of my layer box is here:

As you can see I’ve used quite a few layers……this layer box is for the 1st banner….since I wanted to “Turn The Corner” bit separated, I had to create a new layer for every letter. I wish there was a simpler way of doing that, but alas I don’t know how. If you know how to make this easier, shoot me an email or drop me a comment. PLEASE!

Anyway, once you’ve created all your layers and text, you can start moving onto animating it. But be sure to save it first as a raw file (.xfc) which is the counterpart to .psd in photoshop. Because if you don’t like the animation, you can always go back and change the individual layer or animation effect.

Ok, once that’s done, go to Filter >> Animation >> and then choose whatever Effect you like. GAP (the animation program in GIMP) comes with a bunch of different animation effects.
I recommend the “Blend” effect, that’s what I have been using. Here you can choose the “Intermediate frames” and the “maximum blur radius“. Just play around with it a bit to see what you want. The higher you go up with the Intermediate frames, the slower it will fade. Doesn’t necessarily mean that it will stay longer, in fact it won’t!
I’ve been told tho, by various Gimp Experts, that by changing the layers name to e.g. “Layer 1 (500ms)” that it will stay longer than the standard time, which is around 100 or 200ms. I’ve tried that, but it did NOTHING for me. So maybe I missed something, or it just doesn’t work. If you find out how to make a certain layer stay longer than the other, drop me a comment please!

Once you’ve found the right configuration for your banner, save it as a gif file. File >> Save As… (Shift+Ctrl+S)
Select .gif and then the Export File Dialog box should appear. Make sure you select “Save As Animation“. Then this last dialog box should pop up.

Make a few adjustments if you like, and then click to “Save” and voilà your brand-new sexy animated banner is done!

Well done!

PS, if you’re using GIMP in a foreign language and want to start it in English for taking screenshots and all that, simply just type

LC_MESSAGES=en_EN gimp-remote

into your konsole. I don’t know if this actually works on Windows, but it worked for me on Linux.
Actually took me hours to find that out, so I’m posting it here if anyone wants to know it.

You might have noticed that the suspend and hibernation function in ubuntu/kubuntu won’t work. While there’s no official fix, you might find this work around helpful, hope you enjoy!

Most people need hibernation for their laptops.
step is to install a tool called «uswsusp»

sudo apt-get install uswsusp

And by typing the below command you check if the suspend function works now….
sudo s2ram
Same goes for hibernation

sudo s2disk

Now once this is done, and all of the above commands work, they can be replaced with the old non-working commands that come with ubuntu.

But attention, before editing the system files, always make sure you back up the files in case something goes completely wrong.

sudo cp /usr/lib/hal/scripts/linux/hal-system-power-suspend-linux /usr/lib/hal/scripts/linux/hal-system-power-suspend-linux.bak

sudo cp /usr/lib/hal/scripts/linux/hal-system-power-hibernate-linux /usr/lib/hal/scripts/linux/hal-system-power-hibernate-linux.bak

2. step is to replace the old commands with the new commands in

hal-system-power-suspend-linux

sudo nano /usr/lib/hal/scripts/linux/hal-system-power-suspend-linux

paste the following:

#!/bin/sh
/sbin/s2ram –force

hal-system-power-hibernate-linux

paste the following again:

#!/bin/sh
/sbin/s2disk

Good Luck, let me know if you come across any problems!

Ever asked yourself how you can get your band logo onto your Myspace Band Profile rather than just a simple text displaying your band’s name?

It’s pretty easy, especially if you already have an existing band logo.

However, if you don’t already have a band logo, you can easily create one by using GIMP or Photoshop Elements. But let’s skip this step, i might post a tutorial how to create a neat band logo at a later point.

Useful hint: if you want your logo to have a transparent background, save it either as a gif or as png. Because jpg doesn’t support transparency.

Ok, let’s assume you already have your band logo, and if you’re smart if you already uploaded it either to your own web space or to your myspace account.

Now log into your account and click to “edit your profile”, then go to “Band Details”, and then click to edit the “Bio Section”. Caution, it’s the 2nd edit link, not the first one.

<style>

span.nametext
{
display: block; width: 435px; height: 150px;
background: url(http://www.yourwebspace.com/thelinktoyourlogo.png) no-repeat;
text-indent: -9999px; margin-bottom:-15px;
}

</style>

Note: the width and height values are to set according to the size of your logo. It wouldn’t make any sense making these values bigger than your actual image is. If you make them smaller, then only a part of your logo is shown. So check the pixel size of your logo first, before you alter these values.

Next step is you enter the correct path of your uploaded logo, if you’ve uploaded it to Myspace, simply right click it and select Properties. Then highlight and copy-paste the address of your logo. In Firefox you can just enter “Copy Graphic Address”.

no-repeat; means that your logo will only be displayed once.

text-indent:-9999px; basically puts your old text logo out of the window (to the left side since it’s a negative value…) You can choose any value you want, just make sure it’s so large that it’s outside the window. Without this parameter you would have both logs, the text and your new graphic logo, on the same spot.

Hope this helps!

I’ve uploaded a screenshot of a friend’s band myspace profile, that I did for them.

If you have any questions, post a comment, but please don’t forget to insert a valid email address so I can get back to you and answer your question!

LaTex (pronounced La-Tech) is a document markup language and document preparation system for the TeX typesetting program.

I’ve been using it to write a paper for university so I’ll be sharing my knowledge that I gained so far here with you.

Let’s start with the basics, you will need a LaTex Editor to write your text in, because you cannot just write it in MS Word or OpenOffice Writer and compile it from there. Just to set the record straight, LaTex is a markup language, which uses commands to make your text look bold, coloured or any other text alignments you want to put it in.

The output of your LaTex document will be a .pdf file, as soon as you compile it. This usually does the editor for you. So make sure you have the Adobe Reader or any other tool that can open/read pdf documents installed, so you can actually read your finished document

For instance, if you want to put your text in italics you need a command like \textit{your text in italics}. But more of that later!

Back to the LaTex Editor question, which one to choose? Well, first of all it depends on the operating system that you’re using. I’m using Linux (a unix based operating system) therefore I chose to use Kile (http://kile.sourceforge.net/).

If you’re using Windows, you might want to use these editors – as they’re all free software:

• TeXnicCenter http://www.texniccenter.org/

• LaTeXEditor http://www.latexeditor.org/

• WinShell http://www.winshell.org/

However, there are also multiplatform editors which should work on all operating systems. There’s a plugin for example for the Eclipse Editor, and even LaTex-Suite-Plugin for the popular Vim text editor.

Which editor you may choose, make sure you’re comfortable using it – this means it meets your needs and is not too complex to use. You’re better off to start lowkey, with a basic functionality.

So let’s get started:

Before you can look at the basic functions of the LaTex syntax you need to install a few packages, that enable you to choose from various style sets and templates. As well, if you want to write your text in german you’ll need a package for Umlaute ä,ö,ü, ß, etc..

Using Ubuntu there’s a fortunately a combination of basic packages, called «texlive-latex-base» or another package called „LaTeX recommended packages“ «texlive-latex-recommended» and last but not least „LaTeX supplementary packages“ can be found as «texlive-latex-extra». Other than that I didn’t install any additional packages.

It may depend on your editor or the operating system you’re using, most of the packages might have already been installed when installing the LaTex editor of your choice.

The basics:

To start a LaTex document you need the following syntax:

\begin{document} and \end{document} …..as you can see it’s pretty much like HTML or any other markup language. This indicates that the following document will be a LaTex document.

If you want to use chapters in your text, you can do so by using

\chapter{your chapter title} this has no „end“ tag….your text of the chapter goes below the chapter syntax.

Subchapters are called „section“ in LaTex, \section{subchapter}- which will make your document look like this:

1 Introduction
1.1 History of LaTex

To create a table of contents you simply put \tableofcontents into your document, usually at the beginning of the document.

You see, it’s very easy once you’ve figured out how to do it, and I promise the next time you’ll use LaTex it will save you a lot of time. Using LaTex puts your document/text actually in a more professional looking way.

\listoffigures acts the same way as the table of contents, it bascially collects all images/graphics that you have defined and included into your document and lists them with the caption and the page number.

\newpage says it all. It creates a new page – so if you want a certain text to begin on a new page, put \newpage where you want it to be. New Chapters automatically start on a new page, so there is no way to have the end of a chapter and a new chapter on the same page, just to save space. LaTex automatically begins a new page once you’ve defined it as a chapter.

\linebreak … breaks the line (doesn’t create a new paragraph)

Paragraphs can be realized by using \par{}

\begin{quote} Quote \end {quote} use this to quote someone

\cite{grundstockfsf} lets you cite someone verbatim that you can later use in your bibliography (bot more of that later on..)

\footnote[the current number of your footnote]{the text that should further explain your footnote}

Including graphics:

\begin{figure}[h] the parameter [h] let’s you place a graphic to a certain position
\centering you need this to align your graphic to the center.
\includegraphics[width=3.5cm,height=3.5cm,bb=0 0 26 26]{rect12155.png}
% rect12155.png: 300×300 pixel, 838dpi, 0.91×0.91 cm, bb=0 0 26 26
\caption{your caption text goes here}
\label{img:this image text will be shown when you hover the graphic with your mouse cursor}
\end{figure}

% this command acts a comment…..which let’s you comment a certain command that you might not use anymore, but it could be of use later if you just want to test something without using this commented command.

Text decoration:

\textit{} lets you put a text in italics

\textbf{} displays your text in bold

\underline{} underlines your text

\textcolor{red}{your text here} displays your text in colour. e.g. red

\url{http://readthisaloud.wordpress.com} makes a link clickable in your pdf….

This is just a quick summary, which sums up the basic functions of LaTex. I might post another entry for the more advanced users that will go more into detail. But this should get you started for now.

If you think there’s something important missing, shoot me an email or drop me a comment!

Yes, this is my first attempt of creating a list of useful, everyday bash commands – as I find myself constantly in the situation looking for a specific bash command. If you’re unlucky, googleing the right command (especially if you don’t know what it’s called) can cost you several minutes if not hours.

So this will save me and hopefully you as well, the next time plenty of time. If you think there’s an important command still missing, which is more than likely, feel free to leave a comment with the command and a short explanation what it does.

Very special thanks to Bernd for the idea and his input! Thank you!

Basics:

cp test.txt /home/user/Desktop copies a txt file called test to the user’s Desktop

mv /home/test.txt /home/user/Desktop/ moves a txt file called test from the user’s home directory to the Desktop

sudo chmod -R 755 * changes the user rights recursively for the owner to read, write and execute – for group and world to read and execute. (this command requires root rights «sudo»)

sudo chmod -R u+w /home/user/data changes the user rights for the owner recursively to write and read of the directory /home/user/data

echo $USER prints the currently being used user name

sudo chown -R $USER.users ~/.kde/share/apps/kmail/mail changes the user ownership of the directory ~/.kde/share/apps/kmail/mail to the currently being used user name

ls -la ~/.kde/share/apps/ lists the content of a directory e.g ~/kde/share/apps/

ls | wc -l counts the files in a directory

cp test.txt{.bkp} copies text.txt to text.txt.bkp (creates a backup)

uname -a or uname -a | awk '{print $3}' lists your current kernel version number (awk ‘{print $3} prints only the kernel version, without its description)

Going deep:

perl -pi.bak -e 's/search/replace/' *.php replaces in all .php files the word “search” with “replace” and creates a backup file .bak e.g. index.php to index.php.bak

grep --color ; displays the search result in colour

grep -r searches /home/ searches recursively in /home/

pgrep firefox displays the process ID number of firefox or any application. useful to «kill» a process

sudo kill -9 pid pid = processID number ….. kill -9 kills the process (requires root rights)

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart restarts the networking service

Mounting:

sudo mkdir hda1 creates a directory called “hda1″

sudo mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1 mounts the harddisk hda1 into the directory /mnt/hda1

sudo umount /dev/sdb5 unmounts a device «sdb5» (in this case usb device)

sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/hda5 /mnt/windows -o locale=de_DE.utf8 mounts a NTFS formatted harddisk read and writeable into /mnt/windows (this implies that the packages «ntfs-3g» & «ntfs-config» are installed)

sudo mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows_c mounts a FAT formatted harddisk read and writeable into /mnt/windows_c

sudo blkid shows UUID number of a device

mount lists mounted devices

lsusb lists usb devices

sudo fdisk -l lists all mounted and unmounted harddisks or partitions

fuser -v /mount/point displays why a device can’t be unmounted and which process/user uses the device

Misc:

update-alternatives --config editor let’s you change the standard terminal editor (e.g from vim to nano)

ls -la /etc/alternatives/javac lists all java compilers

java -version displays the currently installed java version

msgfmt test.po -o test.mo compiles a language translation file (po) into a binary .mo file …. -o stands for output

sudo aptitude install language-pack-gnome-de installs a package from a repository (e.g. german gnome language pack)

sudo aptitude install tree installs a package called «tree»

tree -d -i (-i removes the 'tree') lists directories and subdirectories…
tree -d -i > dir.txt lists directories and subdirectories and saves the content into dir.txt

aptitude show ktorrent shows information on ktorrent and lists where it’s available (which repository)

MPLAYER:
mplayer -dumpstream "mms://a1505.v16544e.c16544.g.vm.akamaistream.net/7/1505/16544/v001/roomediaco1.download.akamai.com/16544/wm.roomedia/streamingVX/17056/1386/laptop_300.wmv?clipId=1386_computing_0030&channel=Netevents+TV&category=netevents+tv&site=vnudotnet%2fcomputing" -dumpfile laptop.wmv downloads a stream and saves it as «laptop.wmv»

Were you shocked as well when you found out that your Ubuntu (in my case Kubuntu Gutsy 7.10) wouldn’t playback DVD’s that you’ve LEGALLY purchased in shops or through Amazon? That ain’t fair, I’ve paid a good amount of money for my DVD collection and I should not be able to play them on my computer? The reason Ubuntu or probably any other Linux distribution doesn’t ship with an out-of-the-box dvd playback feature is that manufacturers of proprietary Software (e.g WinDVD, PowerDVD, etc..) pay money to ship these CSS (Content Scrambling System codecs which is a Digital Rights Management scheme which is used on almost all commercially produced DVD-Video discs. However at the end of the day, the costumer (we) pay for these DVD-player software, when we buy a DVD/CD Burner or a new graphics card.

This doesn’t apply for Linux or Open Source User – OpenSource Tools as the VLC Player or Kaffeine doesn’t pay these fees to support CSS, because VLC and Kaffeine are non-profit open source programs. There’s no money to gain by “selling” VLC or Kaffeine, therefore its users (we) don’t pay any money to be legally allowed to view our legally purchased DVD’s.

However, last night I finally found a work-around to view my favourite DVD:

Open a Konsole/Terminal and enter the following:

sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/install-css.sh

Before doing that make sure you’ve installed the libdvdread3 library on your computer – if not you might get an error that this file doesn’t exist.

Feisty Fawn users should search for “install-css.sh” on their computer (because allegedly it has a different path) – apparently it can be found in

sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/examples/install-css.sh

This basically downloads and installs the libdvdcss2 library, that should enable you to watch your copyright protected DVDs.

You can now enjoy your favourite DVDs – enjoy!

Dolphin, the new KDE file manager (entirely replaced Konqueror, which now serves as a web browser only) still has some teething problems. The main problem I was facing was, whenever I closed Dolphin I got this annoying error message:

After some googleing, I’ve eventually found the solution to my Dolphin problem

sudo chown -R theresa:theresa /home/theresa/.kde (replace theresa with your username)

That did it for me, next time I opened Dolphin, I had no such error message again. God Bless!

Ever wanted to rotate your computer screen because a word document didn’t fit on a page? That’s now possible, if you’re the owner of a TFT screen with pivot function. It comes in quite handy if you’re reading an E-Book with a rather high resolution (e.g 120%). You won’t have to scroll to the end of the page, until the next page starts.

The best way to use the pivot function, provided that you have a Nvidia graphic card, is to install the restricted nvidia driver on ubuntu (this works smoothly on Ubuntu Feisty (6.04) and Ubuntu Gutsy (6.10)) – if you’re still using edgy you have to find the right driver for your kernel version.

After installing the restricted driver you have to open the xorg.conf file (located in /etc/X11/) – but heads up, ALWAYS backup your xorg.conf before you start editing….if you’re using an editor like Kate, then you’re on the safe side, because Kate automatically generates a backup file.

There’s a section called “screen” – you have to add the following line:

Option “RandRRotation” “yes”

Here’s an example, what my xorg.conf file looks like:

Section “Screen”
Identifier “Default Screen”
Device “nVidia Corporation C51PV [GeForce 6150]“
Monitor “Standardbildschirm”
Option “RandRRotation” “yes”
Defaultdepth 24
EndSection

After editing your xorg.conf file, save it and then restart the X-server by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Backspace

If you don’t have any major problems after restarting the X-server, then you can either open a terminal and use the following commands to rotate your screen

# to rotate the screen to the left:
xrandr -o left

# to rotate the screen to the default orientation:
xrandr -o normal

# to rotate the screen to the right:
xrandr -o right

The 2nd way, if you’re using the KDE window manager, is to go into the system settings, selecting the Monitor and Display module, and then there’s a box on the left hand side, saying “Monitor Orientation” – normal, left edge on top, right edge on top or upside down – check the following screenshot:

You can select either of this options, don’t be skeptical if there’s a huge black bar on your screen – you probably just need to restart the X-server again (ctrl+alt+backspace) and then you’re set.

Enjoy your new pivot screen now!