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April 6, 2007

Ditch iTunes - iPod Shuffle Database Builder

"This little program enables iPod shuffle users to finally get rid of all that iTunes or other complicated playlist management stuff. Due to the simple structure of the shuffle (compared to the »big« iPods), it is possible to use the player almost like any other USB flash MP3 player: You simply copy MP3 files onto it. You only need to run the Database Builder program after you added or removed files from the iPod" -Link.

I like iTunes for a lot of things. It's great for managing my music and video library, and it's a nice interface for desktop playback.

What I don't like is that it wants to reformat my Shuffle every time I am on a different computer. I don't want to be shackled to iTunes and its opinion of where and how I should listen to my music. The database builder will let you move files to and from the Shuffle on your own terms, with whatever machine you are at, using any OS you wish.

April 4, 2007

Ripping Vinyl with GNU/Linux

It's time consuming, but with the right process you can transform your vinyl collection into digital audio for archiving, sharing and playing on portable devices.

To make the most of your ripped analogs, you'll need to go a little further than just recording the audio with your sound card. There's the whole process of normalizing and splitting tracks into seperate files, of course, but it's also not a bad idea to make multiple encodings so you can have both mp3 playback and a lossless archival copy. Then there's file naming and ID3 tags to think about...

Luckily, you can do all of the above with free software. There are even tools to make the tagging and naming step as simple as possible. Now, there's still work involved, but think how slick you'll look when you're lugging an iPod instead of that other portable audio device.

Ripping Vinyl with GNU/Linux -Link.

April 2, 2007

Linux Dual Monitor Support

If you're lucky enough to have a dual headed video card and an extra monitor lying around, there are a few options for getting a dual-monitor setup working in X Windows.

If you have a dual-headed nVidia or ATI card, the binary-only TwinView and BigDesktop drivers (respectively) will probably perform well, but if you don't fall into either of these camps, there are still options available.

Xinerama is a standard X extension which will work with just about anything, but you give up that ability to do OpenGL direct rendering on the second screen. For many uses, this may not even be an issue. If you need the 3d support on both monitors, however, a subset of open source drivers are supported by the MergedFB driver, which does support 3D direct rendering on both screens.

Check out the dual monitor howto on the Ubuntu Forums. It covers all four options and should be relevant for any current Linux distro -Link.

March 24, 2007

Control Your Applications With a Wiimote

Chris Brentano sent us a tip for the Wii Loop Machine, a wickedly awesome music loop playing application that uses the Wii Remote as it's interface. As Chris puts it, "This looks like it could take laptop music battles to another level, or just make people look funny doing it. Either way, it looks super fun."

There are a couple of libraries available that will allow you to incorporate the Wiimote into your application. The Wii Loop Machine uses the Max/MSP plugin aka.wiiremote. If you're building some sort of music composing or performance system, it's worth a look.

Or you can read in the Wii Remote's raw sensor data and do whatever you like with it in your own applications. For general Wii input in OS X, Windows and Linux, check out the Wii Remote drivers list on the WiiLi Wiki. DarwiinRemote seems to be the predominant driver for OS X and GlovePIE offers similar functionality for Windows . There are a number of drivers for Linux, including a Perl driver!

It's really impressive, the cool things hackers are putting together with this device. If you've got a cool homebrew Wii project you'd like to share, just send us a tip or tell us about it in the comments!

March 20, 2007

Import Your Old Mail to GMail With GML

GMail Loader is a cross-platform Python utility that can import mail messages from several mail storage formats (including mBox and MailDir) straight into your GMail account. It doesn't currently support Outlook's PST format, but there are utilities for converting PST to mBox format (see below). Eventually, support for direct access to IMAP will be added, which should allow you to transfer mail from just about any system into GMail.

I've got years of old mail archived away from different ISPs over the years. I think it'd be interesting to push all that stuff out to GMail and re-read the discussions I was having in 1996.

Links:

GMail Loader (GML) -[via] Link.
GML Instructions for OS X -Link.
Convert Outlook PST Files to mBox Format -Link.

March 8, 2007

hdparm for Windows

Back in the day, Linux users ran a utility called hdparm to make sure that their disk drives were operating at the ideal speeds. These days, Linux distributions usually can figure out the best settings for a modern drive, so it's not needed as much. Still, it's a nice tool for probing your hard drive's settings and capabilities, and Aaron Tiensivu has used the Cygwin version to check up on his drive's power management:

If you install Cygwin, or just grab the hdparm.exe executable with the cygwin1.dll, you can figure out if your hard drive/chipset supports DIPM and/or HIPM. DIPM is device initiated power management, and HIPM is host initiated power management. Both can cut down hard drive power usage which in turn can improve battery life on laptops.

You'll need to choose hdparm from the Utils section when you run (or re-run) the Cygwin setup program. Also, if you run it under Vista, be sure to start the Cygwin shell as an admin (right-click on the icon and choose Run as Administrator) - Link

Related:

Cygwin - Link
hdparm - Link

February 25, 2007

Linux Commands You've Never Used


# lsof | grep TCP
portmap    2587   rpc  4u   IPv4     5544  TCP *:sunrpc (LISTEN)
rpc.statd  2606  root  6u   IPv4     5585  TCP *:668 (LISTEN)
sshd       2788  root  3u   IPv6     5991  TCP *:ssh (LISTEN)
sendmail   2843  root  4u   IPv4     6160  TCP badhd:smtp (LISTEN)
vsftpd     9337  root  3u   IPv4    34949  TCP *:ftp (LISTEN)
cupsd     16459  root  0u   IPv4    41061  TCP badhd:ipp (LISTEN)

Here's a short list of useful Linux shell programs, many of which you may have never known about. I've got a new favorite shell command, lsof (shown above), which displays information on every open file handle. - Link.

If I could add one to the list, it'd have to be the short and sweet command line search and replace using perl:

perl -pi -e 's/searchpattern/replacewith/g' *.html

Do you have a favorite command line secret? Please share it in the comments.

February 5, 2007

Automate Your Backups

There's a classic horror story that keeps me from sleeping at night sometimes. I've heard it told a few different ways. I've even told the story myself more than once, but Phil's version that he posted yesterday morning was one of the most frightening:

A couple weeks ago a flood hit my apartment/office area and soaked the desktop system, monitors, equipment *and* back up drive (along with a ton of other stuff) - luckily I have a daily back up on a Powerbook. But, of course the Powerbook decided to completely stop working while at our ETSY event before that could be backed up too. Zapping the PRAM revealed the hard drive failed, so the usual steps of Disk Util, TechTool and then finally drive removal and DiskWarrior were attempted - for the most part the drive seems completely dead - there might be a chance to recover some data under linux, or from a data recovery shop, but it's not looking good.

According his latest update, the backup drives dried out okay and appear to be working fine, so I guess that means he's managed to survive the perfect storm, but it got me thinking - how many of us ever keep a regular, daily backup in the first place? I've suffered several near-misses in the past, and I'm still guilty of not keeping good backups.

Never Again
So, February isn't too late for a new year's resolution. Don't go another day without your important files backed up. Let's sit down for 15 minutes, right now, and set up an automated backup system for ourselves. All you need is an external hard disk or a remote server with sufficient storage for a couple copies of your data. Based on Phil's story, you might want to situate your backup system on an elevated surface and not beneath any water pipes.

We're not focusing on a perfect backup solution here, with off-site, fire proof, vault storage. Don't let the nay-sayers stop you with the long list of things that can go wrong with a simple back-up solution, or explanations of how to do it the "right way". In 15 minutes you are going to be significantly more protected from data loss, and this will give you the time you need to relax and find a good price on your fire proof vault.

Read full story

February 1, 2007

Reader Request: Make Sure Your Antivirus is Working

Virus Warning.png
CWF wrote: "My students are all very innocent and naive users of Windows XP. What I have in mind is to leave them each with a Linux LiveCD or two that they'll be able to use as a rescue disc in case they get malware installing itself. So, the best way to teach this, I think, would be to purposely infect their machines and then go in a disinfect them.

But I'm not at all sure where I could get a virus or a trojan or other malware. Is it possible you could direct me to a source."

You can do this safely and easily with the EICAR test virus. If you download it to your computer, it should trigger a virus alert in most, if not all, virus software. I gave it a try with one of my Windows XP virtual machines, and it caught the file name eicar.com, but not eicar.com.txt. However, when I renamed the .txt file to eicar.com, avast! sprang into action.

January 30, 2007

Do it yourself grassroots media web sites

Img M631
I'm really impressed with the open source collaborative news site platform - NewCloud, worth a quick gander if you're thinking of starting up a site for a particular cause/effort or project. Jeff writes -

"If you're looking to start up your own online media publication but want something more sophisticated than a blog, check out the latest release of the NewsCloud Open Source Media Platform. NewsCloud.com is a social network for news, like Digg but open source with a greater emphasis on building grassroots networks for collaborative journalism.

If you don't feel comfortable running your own Linux distribution, you might get your feet wet with a NewsCloud Journal or Group which you can customize with Smarty templates. NewsCloud promises more sophisticated hosting and customization options in the near future.

NewsCloud also offers a guide to bloggers for those that want to integrate more news content on their existing blog or promote their
writing on NewsCloud." - Blog post & Wiki.

Related:

NewsCloud platform overview - Link.
NewsCloud mission statement - Link.
Sign up at newscloud.com - Link.

January 8, 2007

Make Ubuntu Look Like Mac OS X

Love Ubuntu but wish it sported the Aqua UI of Mac OS X? Lauri Taimila's detailed tutorial shows you how to change themes and icons, wallpaper, desktop icons, fonts, and windows to make your favorite Linux distro look and feel like a Mac, as well as a few customizations for your applications to make them match.

(Thanks, Bill!)

Related: