Today I’m happy to announce that I’ve replaced the open-source VNC-protocol-based software I was using with something better:  TeamViewer.  TeamViewer is one of the most popular remote desktop connection programs/services out there (with over 200,000,000 users world wide) and they offer a very cool service.  The way remote assistance sessions will work now is simply a matter of visiting the Virtual Dave page, clicking on the logo for your OS (Windows, Ubuntu or Mac OS; other Linux versions are available from TeamViewers’ website) and then running the file that you’ve downloaded.  You’re then presented with a TeamViewer window which will generate a fresh/random User ID number and Password, like this:

To give remote access to someone, you just tell them what those two randomly generated numbers are.  That’s it!  A super simple, super secure solution for remote tech support.  One thing to note is that TeamViewer QuickSupport does not install anything when you run it, so if you intend to use it again you’ll want to Save the file you’ve downloaded for future use.

I love open source software and maybe someday I’ll go back to using Gitso if it ever hits version 0.8 but at the moment it would seem TeamViewer is by far the best choice for my needs and I look forward to making use of it.

For those who aren’t tech savvy, the word “source code” refers to the so-to-speak “recipe” for the development/creation of a program.  It is literally the instructions that are more or less written by computer programmers.  This kind of information is proprietary and is often a trade secret, much like the coveted ingredients list for Coca Cola or my moms apple pie.  If one were able to obtain such information, say a competator or the creators of compuer viruses, one might use this information to one-up the software or, more importantly, exploit design flaws to circumvent the software.  In short this means it is quite likely there will be a new breed of viruses on the horizon that will be capable of outsmarting Norton, rendering it useless and crippled.

Symantec has been trying to downplay the severity of this breach by stressing the age of the code, stating that the origin is a version of their software that dates back to 2006, or so we’ve been told thus far.  This is an attempt to defuse the concern by implying that their latest software is far different at its core and that there won’t be very much that is useful to virus writers because they still don’t have their hands on the latest blueprints.  But the reality of the situation is far less peachy than they would like to paint it.  In the world of computer programming software and even entire operating systems will retain a fair chunk of old code from previous versions simply because, well, it’s already been written and if it “works” then there’s little need to rewrite it from scratch.  I’m not saying source code is never rewritten, revised or updated from time to time, but when it comes to large programs such as Norton Antivirus that’s made up of tens of thousands of lines of code it could easily be argued that there is likely a good percentage of old code that has been retained for years without ever being modified.  It would be like having a castle or fortress that is under continuous construction and maintenance.  You can’t afford to tear the whole thing down every year and rebuild it from scratch, so instead what you do is build around and upon the existing structure and make repairs to the parts that need repairing the most.  This means that likely most of the fundamental structure is retained and knowledge of the construction of such a structure could be used by an enemy to find a previously unnoticed vulnerability.

In the interest of full disclosure I will have to admit that Norton hasn’t been on my list of recommended software since the late 90s when it was practically the only anti-virus software available.  It’s early bird status was followed by years of successful marketing and advertising, which lead to its continuous wide spread recognition of the software/brand name, giving the impression to novice computer users that Norton really is the best thing out there.  ”How could it not be good when its so popular?” they might ask themselves.

I am here to tell you that the number one problem I fix for people in this line of work is virus removal and far too often I see systems that are running Norton that have become utterly trashed by multiple viruses while Norton gives inaccurate scan results, claiming the system is clean and virus free.  This is particularly irksome to me because when you consider the wide spread saturation of their software along with the monetary cost to the users for the renewal every year you would have to expect the company to use their position and resources to everyones benefit.  Despite its wide spread usage and price tag it fails to survey new viruses and develop new definitions for capturing and stopping them in an effective manner and so many users never seem to get their moneys worth.  I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt and accept the fact that there is no such thing as a “perfect” antivirus software, but you should expect to be given better treatment and results if you’re paying upwards of $70 a year for protection, especially when there are free alternatives out there that have been statistically shown to do a comparatively better job.  And to think these kinds of problems existed before some of their source code leaked.  Now that some source code has leaked and the potential for new viruses to be developed to exploit Norton itself are likely right around the corner I feel obligated to suggest that people avoid using it all together.  No amount of marketing or PR can change the consensus of most IT professionals who can see past all the BS and to me this incident is more than just one more nail in the coffin.

So what do I recommend instead of Norton?  I mentioned that there is “no such thing as a perfect antivirus” but there are alternatives that hold a higher reputation than Norton that cost a fraction of what Norton costs or even nothing at all.  In past blog entries I’ve mentioned Microsoft Security Essentials, Malwarebytes and Combofix and still recommend them, so here’s a little information about them.

Microsoft Security Essentials is a free antivirus solution that Microsoft itself actually produces and it’s quite popular in the IT community right now for a couple of reasons.  I already mentioned that its free but it is also effective and not as resource intensive as other software.  There’s also a new stand-alone bootable version of it that’s going through public beta testing right now which is handy to have for particularly difficult viruses.  You can read more about it here.  Be aware that there has, in the past, been a rogue malware impostor simply called “Security Essentials 2010/2011/2012″ which people have confused with the real deal, falling victim to a trap.  You can download the real deal from here.

Along side MSE I also recommend users purchase the full copy of Malwarebytes for the one time payment of $25.  Some of the handy features it has is an active connection monitor which will automatically block your computer from attempting to connect to known malicious web servers.  It also features an active process monitor like a traditional antivirus and will help prevent a good number of rogue malware type software from infecting your system.  There is a free version of this available but its active monitoring features are disabled. I’ve been using it in the field for over 2 years now and it has worked incredibly well for helping clean systems that had already become infected.  You can read more about it here and download/purchase it from here.

Finally a tool I use quite often to help clean systems that have already become infected is a program called Combofix, which is free.  This isn’t so much a traditional antivirus that runs in the background as it is a stand-alone utility for scanning a system after it has become infected.  It is regularly updated so it’s best to not bother downloading and using it until you actually have to.  You can read more about it here and download it from here.

In conclusion I strongly advise my clients to not use Norton Antivirus because it’s one of the most over-hyped, over-priced products out there right now and with the news of parts of its source code being leaked it only stands to become an even less effective product that will do less to protect you than other cheaper alternatives out there.

Speaking of alternatives, there is always the option of picking an alternative operating system such as Linux.

Linux is a free open-source OS that comes in many flavors.  We are already seeing Android being adopted by smartphone and tablet users like crazy and it is just one example of a Linux based OS that is taking the world by storm.  But for desktop and laptop users there remains a need for a full fledged desktop OS and there are many out there to choose from.  My personal favorite is Ubuntu Linux which you can check out at ubuntu.com.  It’s not for everyone but I can easily say that it is a very ideal choice for the average user.  Keep an eye out for future posts; I intend to record a new introductory video for Ubuntu 12.04 when it is released this coming April.

A few notes about the most recent additions:

• Sleepy Daemons:  Added just before the new year, this track started as a non-percussive ambient, creepy thing.  Out of the blue I decided to add a lot of fast drums to it and things just popped to life.  Not sure where it will go next but I’m waiting for auditions for vocals to come in.
• Untitled Doodle/Ringtone:  I did everything in it but wouldn’t consider it finished just yet.  It features my first guitar performance recording and some cool effects processing.
• The Hare:  Again, 100% self-produced.  This one primarily features a new filter effects found in Reason 6 called The Alligator, an effect that’s more formally referred to as a “trance gate”.
• Delirium:  This started as a simple piano melody, which I put through the Alligator.  I then added a somewhat hiphop drum loop which I played with using a roll-echo effect to ramp the echo on and off.  This was eventually replaced with live drums, performed by r00m237.  Vocals came in by complete surprise thanks to a lady in California who goes by the name Deanna (thank you!).
• Document 22:  This features flute by Matt Unger and some guitars by Matt Christensen.

All my music is available for free under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license.  You are free to download, share, remix and use this music for non-commercial purposes.

Phase 1:  Safe Mode (with networking?)

Almost every version of Windows out there (from Windows 95 all the way up to the most recent Windows 7) have a hidden menu you can access at boot that gives you access to a diagnostic profile called Safe Mode.  Safe Mode is a sort of back door mode into Windows that loads the absolute (or nearly) bare minimum of device drivers and background services.  It’s sort of a bare bones environment that is suitable to start your repair from primarily because most viruses aren’t auto-started by the system in this mode, but it’s not perfect.  More on that in a moment.

To access Safe Mode you need to press the F8 key on your keyboard at a VERY specific time.  Typically when you turn your computer on you’ll see a screen that either has the logo of the manufacture of the PC or perhaps some generic startup relating to your BIOS.  At some point that all goes away, your screen will be black for about 3 seconds, and then Windows will proceed to boot with the little scroll bar loading away.  It’s during (or just before) that 3 second window of blackness that you need to start tapping the F8 key.  If done correctly, you’ll be presented with a menu that looks like this:

You’ll use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move the highlighting selector bar.  Typically I will select Safe Mode With Networking, as this allows me to access the Internet and download utilities as well as give these utilities access to definition updates for itself later.

After you select Safe Mode With Networking and press Enter your screen will be bombarded with a slathering of strange and mysterious words…

Don’t worry, this is normal.  (Note: If instead of this screen above you get another menu asking what version of Windows you want to boot, just press Enter again).

Eventually you will get to the familiar blue colored user login screen and you might see an account called Administrator shown there that you’ve never seen before.  If you do, go ahead and select it to log in as “Administrator”.  Otherwise, select your own user name.

Once you’re logged in you have a few options you can take.  The safest way to get started is to actually bring a copy of your utility software with you on a thumb drive or CD to install it from, instead of downloading via a web browser.  The reason it’s not a good idea to try and download via a web browser is because a lot of viruses tend to wrap themselves around a browser’s EXE file so that when the browser starts, so does the virus.  This could potentially happen with a lot of other software so it’s best to try and resist the temptation to run any programs except for the cleaning utilities we’re about to install.

Phase 2:  Cleaning

There are only three pieces of software I typically use with great success in the field for removing viruses and malware.  They are:

• Malwarebytes
• Combofix
• Microsoft Security Essentials

All of the above are free with the exception of Malwarebytes, which functions with all its features on a 30 day trial when you first install it (note that you will see an error message appear when you tell it to start the trial while in Safe Mode; this is normal and you can ignore the error by clicking the OK button when it appears).  To keep the full version running you have to buy it for the low one-time payment of $25 and I strongly recommend it.  Apart from these three the only other tool I use is Google, which I’ll use to lookup exact phrases found within suspicious malware to see if I can find other people talking about that particular virus somewhere online and hopeful discover what unique thing they did to remove it.  Fair warning:  Your mileage may vary.

I typically start by installing Malwarebytes first (however I have had one experience where I wasn’t able to do this until after I ran Combofix so you might need to flip the order of these two tasks), applying the most recent update for it and then running a full scan, removing all infected objects it finds.  A typical scan can take around a half hour to do.  When it’s finished, you just need to click the “Show Results” button and then make sure the results listed all have check marks next to them and then click “Remove Selected” in the bottom left.  If an object doesn’t have a check mark when you first view the results it means Malwarebytes thinks it could be a false-positive result.  Use your best judgment and google to determine if either the file is malicious and/or if the file is a necessary part that can be removed without grief.  A reboot will likely be required when it is finished.  Be ready to hit F8 again when you do this so you can come back into Safe Mode and continue your work.

One thing I’ll often do while I’m waiting for a Malwarebytes scan to complete is take a look at the MS Config utility and see what items are enabled to auto-start when you boot into the system.  To access this, click Start, then click Run (or just click into the search box if you’re using Windows 7) and type in “msconfig” without the quotes into the box and click OK.  Then click the Startup tab at the top.

In this startup list are programs that are told to run right away when you first log into your system.  Almost all of these items are non-essential and to be on the safest side you could probably get away with unchecking all of these items, but that’s usually overkill and might rob you of some convenient feature you’d like to have.  Look carefully down the list for items that have empty path names, or very bizarre characters in their name… I have to admit that at this point experience with this stuff comes in to play.  If you don’t know what something is you could look it up by name with google on a separate computer before deciding to uncheck it  Alternatively, you could use the uncheck-all-the-things strategy and then go back later to add check marks back into the few items you know you need enabled.  You can also check out the Services tab which is to the left of the Startup tab, check the box that says “Hide all Microsoft items” and then use the same judgment to decide if there are third-party services running in the background that don’t need to be.  Google is your friend here for helping to determine if a service is useful or not.

Another thing I’ll do while waiting for a scan to complete is open the Add/Remove Program (Programs & Features) applet from the Control Panel to view all the software that’s been installed on the system.  I target toolbars of any kind first, next by software that is unfamiliar to the user.  Again, google is a useful reference here because you don’t want to remove something that’s known to not be malicious.

The next step is to run Combofix which you can find a tutorial about by clicking here.  It is pretty strait forward:  double-click on the combofix.exe file that you downloaded and follow the on screen instructions.  It’s own scan will also take about 30 minutes or so but it is very sensitive so once you kick it off, don’t touch the computer until its finished.   There is almost no interaction required with the software and it will automatically remove anything malicious it finds, producing a log with a lot of interesting jargon at the end that you can forward on to an expert for further analysis if you’d like.

After all this I’ll typically reboot the system and let it boot normally and then install Microsoft Security Essentials, running a full scan with it right after and checking to make sure the trial mode has been enabled on Malwarebytes.

If all of the above didn’t work, something I’ll try next is to reboot back into safe mode and use the control panel to create a new user account, then log off and log back in under that new account and repeat all the same steps above.  The reason this might help is because viruses tend to damage registry entries for accounts that existed when it found and infected the system.  Because we’re creating a new account in an environment that hopefully didn’t auto-launch the virus, we can then create a fresh account with it’s own default settings and preferences that hopefully won’t be manipulated by the virus.  This kind of problem could also be reversed using the System Restore utility but I’ve found that a lot of times (not always) I try to use this utility none of the restore points are any good.  I wouldn’t be surprised if previous restore points are destroyed by certain viruses making it even more difficult to undo the damage done.  In situations like that I’ve occasionally just created a new user account and migrated all the important user data (documents, etc.) from the old account to the new account, deleting the old one in the end because it’s irreversibly broken.

One last tip I’ve run across in a training video for a competitor of mine who will remain unnamed is to shut the system off by force instead of doing a soft reboot during this cleaning process.  In other words, hold the power button down for 5 seconds and then turn the computer back on after 20 seconds.  The reasoning behind this is that there are a few viruses out there that alter the shutdown script of events that take place during an ordinary shutdown and one of the events it injects into the script is to reinstall the virus during shutdown from a rogue location, as a Plan B so even if the live version of the virus is caught and removed it might be able to recreate the file from an encrypted copy of itself elsewhere.  If you decide to do this my only advice would be to backup the entire hard drive before doing so.  It’s technically dangerous… but probably not THAT dangerous… it’s best to remain on the safe side and not use shortcuts.

Finally a word about a couple of common viruses in particular I’ve run into in the last year:

A few of these viruses going around exhibit the symptom of making all your files and shortcut icons on the desktop vanish.  This is often done with a combination of changing the file attributes to enable the hidden flag, or by moving the files to a hidden location.  It is sometimes also conjoined with malware that tries to frighten you into thinking your hard drive is on the verge of failure, or at the least, claims to be antivirus software itself.  The goal of all such attempts is to get you to give up your credit card number.  Please don’t.

I’ve had great success removing the virus that causes these files to go missing but after it’s been removed it’s not always so easy to reverse the damage and restore the missing icons.  Fortunately there is one program out there that, for the most part, has been able to do this for me very simply and it’s simply called “Unhide”.  Use this program after going through all the above steps to be sure you’ve removed traces of the virus and hopefully it will get all of your stuff back for you.  You can download Unhide from here.

One other common symptom I’ve seen certain viruses exhibit is hijacking certain registry entries to alter file associations, specifically one which makes your computer forget what to run EXE files with, asking instead what program you’d like to open another program with.  I have found that in Windows 7 one trick of working around this is to right-click on a program shortcut and then click Run as Administrator.  This uses a separate registry association which hopefully has not been affected by the virus.  Using this Right-Click>Run as Administrator trick you should be able to run your scanning utilities like Malwarebytes and Combofix from within Safe Mode.

Phase 3: Prevention

Now that we know how much of a pain these kinds of viruses can cause we should talk a little about where they come from and the different ways they can end up on your computer.  I wrote a much longer blog about this topic which you can read here.  Basically it boils down to this:

• Make sure you install all available software updates for Windows itself as well as 3rd party software and plugins like Adobe Flash, Acrobat and Java (among others).  Updates are your friend and help to patch recently discovered security vulnerabilities.
• Pay attention to links people send you in emails.  It’s quite possible their email account has had its password stolen and is being used by a robot to send spam email with links to malicious websites out to everyone in their address book.  Warn your friends if you suspect their account has been compromised and suggest they change their email accounts password before following the steps above to attempt to remove a potential infection.
• Use good anti-virus software.  As recommended above, I prefer MSE and Malwarebytes.  Combofix is only to be used as an emergency utility; it doesn’t have a real-time monitoring feature.
• Consider using a software firewall to block unwanted inbound traffic and unexpected outbound traffic.  Zone Alarm Free is an excellent choice for this.
• Use an ad-blocking plugin to further reduce the chances of a virus sneaking in through a flash-based advertisement.  Ad-Block for Firefox is a great option.  You can also get it for Google Chrome from here.
• Along with these plugins, consider using a better browser.  Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome have both become superior to Internet Explorer, especially in terms of security.
• Avoid installing “toolbars” for your browser.  If you install one by accident, disable it in your browser or better yet uninstall it via your control panel.
• Avoid using P2P file-sharing software like Frostwire or MP3Rocket.  These methods of file sharing do not have any form of user moderation and anybody can wrap a virus inside a file then name it something innocent/sensational looking to trick people into downloading it and installing a virus.
• Consider adding a parental filter to your computer; you don’t need kids for this.  Having a web filter like K9 Web Protection can be helpful to block your computer from accidentally trying to connect with a known malicious server.
• Lastly, though this is too extreme for most people:  Consider switching to Linux on your desktop.  Linux is free, open-source and is even more secure than MacOS.  Seriously.

I hope this advice has been helpful.  Please leave comments or suggestions about other tips and tricks you use to help remove malicious software in the comments section below!

Apple includes a copy of their OS on discs you can boot from to run the included  Disk Utility. This checks the file system for integrity issues, file permission errors and corrects them for you. Unfortunately doing this did not solve this particular problem and the laptop remained stuck. Even booting into MacOS’s “Safe Mode” (by holding down SHIFT right after the startup chime is heard) didn’t work.

Most guides I’ve found on the Internet will tell you to send the system to an Apple Expert at this point. While there is a slim chance they might be able to revert the changes or correct the problem that’s causing a system to lockup while booting, an alternative approach is to do what is termed a “destructive recovery”, where the hard drive is erased and the OS reinstalled on a clean slate so to speak. Before you do that of course you’ll want to pull your own personal files/data off the drive. You can’t do this with the Disk Utility provided by the MacOS install discs, but there is another “utility” that’s totally free to download that you can do this with: Ubuntu Linux.

What You Need

1.  A blank CD
2.  Another computer to burn that CD with
3.  Ubuntu Linux ISO image file
4.  An external hard drive (preferably one that’s formatted to Windows NTFS; I will explain why in a moment)

Burning Ubuntu to a CD

First, visit the link to Ubuntu’s website.  Click the Get Ubuntu button and follow the steps to download the 32-bit version of Ubuntu.  You’ll be asked to download a large (about 700MB) ISO image file.  Once downloaded, you need to burn this file to a CD.  If you are burning this CD with another Mac you can follow this guide that will show you how to use the built in Disk Utility app to burn the Ubuntu ISO file you have to download from www.ubuntu.com.  And if you are burning with Windows, there is a “Show Me How” button you can click on at Ubuntu’s download page that will show you how to use a program called InfraRecorder to burn the ISO file.

Booting Ubuntu On Your Mac

Once the CD is burnt you will need to boot from it.  I have found the best way to do this on a Mac is to turn the system on and immediately after you hear the classic “chime” sound, hold down the Option key on your keyboard.   (Tip:  If you are using a Mac with a Windows keyboard hold down ALT instead.  Also, if you need to eject a disc from the system, hold down F12).  Eventually you will see this:

Double-click on the CD that says “Windows”.  We know it’s not actually Windows, but Mac doesn’t know any better… or Ubuntu isn’t presenting itself correctly.  Anyhooo…

If all goes well (and I can’t promise that it will but it did for me) you will see the Ubuntu boot screen appear (pictured above) with the purple background.  Please be patient as this is a slow process; loading an entire OS from a CD is not a quick and snappy ordeal.  Eventually Ubuntu will load up the Ubuntu installer screen.  At this point click “Try Ubuntu”.

It will proceed to load the rest of Ubuntu Linux right off the disc.  Eventually you will see something like this:

Accessing Your Data

First, we need to browse the hard drive inside the Mac.  You’ll do this using the Places menu.  When you click Places, you will see a list of several common folders like Home Folder, Pictures, etc.  Look past those in about the middle of the list and you should see an item called Macintosh HD.  We will mount it by clicking on it in the places menu.  (Note: It would also be a good idea to repeat this step to mount the external hard drive or media you intend to copy your data on to at this time, just to get mounting it out of the way).  The next thing you’ll see is the contents of the Macintosh HD volume.  Unfortunately there is a lot of data in this drive that you won’t be able to access/read right away due to file ownership and permissions.  But there’s a way around that.

You need to gain full administrative access to the hard drive so you don’t have to worry about file permissions getting in the way.  It is also recommended that you use an NTFS formated external hard drive for this because it will help avoid further file permission issues later down the road when you move your data back.  (If you use a Linux/Unix/Mac formatted external drive the files you copy are going to change owners from you to the Linux superuser account which means you’d have to change ownership of every file after copying them, so it’s just easier to scrape all those attributes off the files by sending them to an NTFS filesystem which does not store those descriptors).

Gaining Full Administrative Access To Your Files

To gain administrative access to the hard drive and browse the contents, click Applications>Accessories>Terminal in the upper left.  A new window will appear with a black background and white text.  From here type:

gksu nautilus

…and press the Enter key.  This will open the Nautilus file browser as the SuperUser (aka, “root” user).  It is exactly the same window you saw open when you mounted the drives from the Places menu, but keep in mind that this new file browsing window that has appeared is the ONLY window with root access.  Any others that were already open are still running at the standard user level, so you can’t drag files from the super users browser to any others unless you open a second terminal window and start a second instance of Nautilus in the same manner.  But it’s pretty easy to do all the browsing you need with the one window using the Edit>Copy and Edit>Paste menu options.

Note: The rooted instance of Nautilus will only let you browse volumes that have already been mounted.  If you’ve not already accessed your external hard drive or the Macintosh HD hard drive using the Places menu as mentioned earlier, do so now and then close or minimize those windows to get them out of the way, leaving the super-user instance of Nautilus running up front.

Copying Your Data

Once you’ve started the Nautilus file browser as the super-user, you can click on “Macintosh HD” in the left hand side of the Natilus window to begin browsing your hard drive.  For most users the most important data is going to be stored in the Users folder.  Simply scroll through the Macintosh HD hard drive to find a folder called Users.  If you browse through it a little you will quickly be familiar with the files you are looking at inside the Users folder.  You just need to copy everything out to the external hard drive.  To makes things simple and quick it’s easy to just copy and paste the entire Users folder to an external hard drive (as mentioned, NTFS drives are recommended purely to make the copying of data back to the computer easier after the OS has been reinstalled).

Also note: Stopping after the Users folder alone may not be adequate enough for some advanced users who may have data stored in other folders, such as the /var folder if the system was an Apache server.  Details about where your production/business critical data is auto-saved should be researched from the developers/publishers of said software or their respective README.txt/help documentation before proceeding to format your hard drive as all data will be lost after formatting.  In almost all cases everything will be in the Users folder, but fair warning to you if you are not certain.  For more information, refer to this official help article about application data storage locations.  By the way, the ” ~/ ” folder they refer to is shorthand for “your home folder”, which is inside the Users folder; you will find that everything they list is stored somewhere in there so you should be good with not copying anything else.

Reinstalling Mac OS

Now with all the user data backed up on an external hard drive you can restart the system with your original Mac OS install discs and proceed to use the Disk Utility to erase and re-format the hard drive and then proceed with installing the OS on a fresh partition.  Just press that Option key again to bring up the boot menu and boot from the MacOS install disc 1.  I would strongly recommend searching for and installing any and all available updates available for the OS and software before moving data back to the computer.

Moving Your Data Back

I have found that moving data back isn’t going to be as simple as moving the entire Users folder at once because Mac doesn’t like to let you merge folders.  You will be able to copy and paste the files and folders in groups to get everything back to where it was originally.  Alternatively you can use this tool called Folder Merge for Mac to help you copy all your files and folders back into place while skipping the ones that can’t be overwritten in their place.

If all goes well, you should be able to backup the data from your Mac and reinstall the OS in a matter of about 3 hours, most of which is a just a matter of sitting and waiting for things to finish.

Troubleshooting:  What if the drive isn’t shown?

In newer versions of Ubuntu (verions 11.04 and newer) the new Unity desktop interface is used, so there is no Places menu to open up.  However, you can still open your Nautilus file browser by clicking on the Home Folder icon.  Once open, look along the left side of the screen to see if your drive is shown among the other popular locations.

If it is not shown it may be necessary to mount the drive manually via a terminal window.  To open a terminal in Ubuntu 11.04 or later, click the Ubuntu button at the top of your dock bar to open the search panel and type in “Terminal”.  You’ll see the shortcut for Terminal appear which you can just click on to open up a terminal/command prompt.

Once the terminal is open you’ll want to get a list of the drives Linux is able to see.  To do this, type in the command:

sudo fdisk -l

The output will look something like this:

Starting at the top Linux is telling me that it sees an 80 gigabyte sized hard drive and has called the drive /dev/sda.  Within that hard drive are three partitions, called /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2 and /dev/sda5.  Below that we see there is a second 2000 gigabyte sized external hard drive and it has been called /dev/sdb, with only one partition called /dev/sdb1.  If we were looking at a Mac we’d likely only care about /dev/sda partitions and would only be interested in mounting whichever of these partitions is the largest.  You can quickly determine which is the largest of them all by checking under the Blocks column.

Once you’ve determined which partition is the largest we need to mount it.  For the sake of example, lets pretend that /dev/sda1 needs to be mounted.  Before we can do that we need to create a temporary placeholder folder for this partition to be aliased with after mounting.  To create an empty folder on your desktop called “temp” you would type:

mkdir ~/Desktop/temp

(Note: all linux terminal commands are case-sensitive).  Now we can mount /dev/sda1 into this temp folder with the following command:

sudo mount /dev/sda1 ~/Desktop/temp

You can close or minimize the terminal window at this point and find the folder we created called temp on your desktop and open it.  Within should be the contents of your Mac hard drive, and you can now begin copying data from there into an external hard drive or other external media.  When you are finished it’s easiest to use the shut down menu in the top-right corner to shut the computer down (which will eject the disk for you).  If you were successful at extracting your data the next step would be to boot from your MacOS disc and proceed with using the Disk Utility to remove/format the existing partition(s) on your Mac’s hard drive, create a new partition and install MacOS on top.  I would recommend disconnecting your external hard drive before doing this so you don’t risk deleting your external hard drives partition by accident.

Good luck!

And just so everybody else out there reading this knows, I now charge a flat rate of $30 labor per device to replace LCD panels on all netbooks and laptops!

Unfortunately there is no good way to send a fax from your computer using Skype. The audio compression that takes place when sound is transmitted from one side to the other undergoes a great deal of detail loss, and this results in error correction protocols taking over and throttling the speed of the fax modem down to a crawl. So in theory, you could use Skype somehow to send a fax but it would literally take forever.

Enter in online faxing services. These are companies that allow you to send and receive faxes over the Internet. In doing some research to find one that performed well and at a modest price I stumbled across someone recommending a company called PamFax.  It was not long after first trying their service that I was pretty sure I could close the book on this egg hunt.

PamFax is delivered to you as a small program you install on your system and use to create your account.  They offer a free membership program which allows you to send three pages for free to see if you like their product or not.  I decided to sign up for the free account and then used a nearby fax machine where I work to send a fax to my new PamFax number.  The instant the fax was sent my PamFax account page auto-updated itself to tell me I had received a new fax.  Faxes are put into an inbox, just like emails, and each fax is downloadable in PDF format.

Sending a fax is also very easy.  You can either use the PamFax program to upload files you want to send or use the virtual PamFax printer device to send your documents to PamFax when you press Print in any application.  Here’s a video that demonstrates how easy it is to send a Fax:

Of course there will be times when you need to fax a physical document that’s already on paper.  The best way to do that is use a flatbed scanner to scan the documents into a PDF file.  You can do this very quickly with any number of Scanner-to-PDF style programs and any scanner.  A free one I’ve found to work well is aptly called Scan to PDF by Ironfist Software.  It is a free utility that you can use to scan multiple pages and then save all of them as one PDF file, which you’d then upload to PamFax for faxing to one or multiple recipients.

The cost for sending a fax varies based on whether or not you want to pay a monthly fee.  If you don’t pay a monthly fee it will cost you 13 cents per page sent and you will not be able to receive faxes.  If you step it up to the “Basic” package you will be able to receive unlimited faxes at a monthly rate of $5.84 plus 13 cents per page sent.  The professional package costs $8.80 a month, includes 20 free page out per month (9 cents per page after that), allows you to keep your received faxes online forever, and gives you the ability to administrate employee access to the account and regulate their limitations.  So there’s something for everybody.

In the end I was pretty impressed with how easy it was to install and use PamFax.  What’s even more impressive to me is their support for Linux. It’s rare that I have to send a fax but the next time I need to I know exactly what I’m going to use.  Good bye Kinko’s!

In the last month I’ve fixed three different computers just by blowing dust out of them.  These systems would turn on, reach the POST screen (which typically is the logo of the manufacturer or the BIOS) but would just hang there indefinitely.  Blowing the system out with a can of air (or in one case an air compressor) was all it took to bring the systems back to life.  Dust is just as much of a problem for laptops, but not so much for getting the motherboard dirty (because they’re fairly well sealed off from the outside air) but for clogging the heatsink fins so that the cooling fan can’t push air past the fins to keep your CPU cool.  The side effects of this are a noisy laptop that runs hot, or even powers itself off abruptly as a failsafe.

All CPUs these days have internal temperature sensors with a threshold for a certain amount of heat.  If that threshold is exceeded the processor will either throttle itself down in speed to the point where the system runs far slower than usual or the BIOS takes over and just shuts the system off completely.  So if you have a hot, noisy laptop that shuts off every now and then, you probably need to go buy a can of air.

You’ll find cans of air in the electronics section of just about any major retail store.  You need to be careful with these things because they contain a liquid that itself can conduct electricity and short your electronics out.  To prevent the can from shooting this stuff out it’s important to always hold it level and upright, not sideways or upside down.  This liquid also has an extremely low boiling point, which causes it to feel very cold when it’s not under pressure.  You can feel this by touching the can after using it for a little bit, and even hear the liquid boiling away inside to replenish the can with more compressed gas.  Something fun kids like to do with this stuff is spray it at glass while holding it upside down to produce a cold frost on any surface.  So you need to be careful not to do this to your own skin by accident or you might get a little frost bite.

These things can go pretty quick so I like to shoot the air in short bursts to try and save air while maintaining higher pressure.  Be sure to use that little straw that comes with these things to get a more focused shot of air into the areas that need it most.  I would also recommend you do this outdoors as the dust particles could make you sick if you inhale them.  Be sure to shoot everything, especially the inside of the power supply (that grey box your power cord plugs into) from all sides.

On laptops the only thing you can really dust out is the heatsink and your keyboard.  Some laptops have exhaust vents that only come out the back of the laptop, while others come out the side.  What I like to do is position the laptop in such a way so that I can shoot air directly into this exhaust vent against the normal flow of air produced by the fan while the laptop is running.  Having the laptop on while you do this is a good thing because the fan will help blow dust you’ve loosened back out and also help break it apart into smaller particulates that can fit through the fins.  Also shoot air into the intake of the fan.  Go back and forth between the exhaust and intake a few times until you can’t produce any more dust with your air.  Just beware that if you have never done this before you might have so much dust built up on the backside of the heatsink that loosening it up might cause a large chunk to get wedged in the fan, preventing it from spinning.  This isn’t much of a problem if you can remove the bottom panel from the laptop to access the intake of the fan but not all laptops let you do this and you might have to dismantle the entire machine to reach the fan and pull the fat dust bunny out with some tweezers.

I like to keep a can of air in the glove compartment of my car so I’ll always have something on hand to clean a system out when I make house calls.  But you should keep a can nearby and clean your system every 3 to 6 months to help improve air flow in your system so it can stay cool as well as reduce the possibility of something important being shorted out.

From here you’ll have access to my SoundCloud uploads which are finished projects, learn about my other works in progress and read a little about the making of some of my songs.  It’s not much to look at right now but I’m going to try and make things look a little more fancy in the coming months.

You can read more about the show by clicking here.

After hours of drinking stimulants and skipping sleep, this is the result, weighing in at roughly 13 minutes in length.  It is actually a combination of a new song with an old one that I originally wrote while living in Iraq during the later half of 2009.  It is a long song so you might wanna go to the restroom before you hit play.  Feel free to download the WAV of this song for top notch quality.

Magic Show by David Steinlage

Side Scroller by David Steinlage

These problems don’t strike me as novel or very interesting, mostly because you expect to see them occur at SOME point in time and at random.  Electronics wear out, lightning can strike at any moment, dust buildup shorts something out or jams a cooling fan; these things just happen from time to time.  But there was one issue I saw this year that really stood out as occurring more frequently than any other problem by far.  A problem  that seemed to happen so suddenly, so widely that you could almost call it “trend setting”.  So I wanted to take a look back and talk a bit about a problem I’ve seen more often than anything else this year:

“Warning:  You’re infected!  Click here now!”

The most prominent problem I saw this year, more than any other problem I got calls about, were from people saying they had gotten alerts popping up on their system similar to the one pictured above.  Typically you would be intimidated by a popup that said your system had a LOT of viruses on it and to click on various buttons/links to remove them.  Unfortunately it was all a ruse as these alerts were themselves part of a virus masquerading around as anti-virus software, taking computers hostage.   Their names and appearance had some variation but most of their tactics were the same:

• Prevent user from opening any other applications (including Task Manager)
• If you were able to open a web browser, any page you tried to visit would be replaced with a page that would fear-monger the user even further
• Change the browser proxy settings to point to a non-existent server and in doing so prevent the user from accessing the Internet for downloading removal tools
• Annoy the user with never-ending, obnoxious pop-ups that would invite the user to pay the developers of the fake anti-virus software ransom money
• Replicate itself across multiple, random locations on the hard drive, making it more difficult to remove manually

I began to get a lot of phone calls for this exact type of issue during the middle of the summer this year, and of course everyone wanted to know how their computer came to get this sort of junk software on their machine in the first place.  Along those lines:  Where do viruses come from, how could one have gotten on my computer and WHY on earth would someone create such an evil thing in the first place?

I don’t have the monetary resources to conduct an “official” study (and as such you should classify everything here to be anecdotal), so the next best thing I can do is look for things that were in common between PCs that fell victim to the same infection at about the same time.  The one thing that stood out the most to me was that Adobe Flash, Adobe Acrobat and/or Java were out of date and needed updates to be installed.

In the year 2010, Adobe has had to make multiple announcements about zero-day exploits found in their Flash plugin that could allow Flash to do things like crash a computer or to take control of it (e.g., facilitate the installation of a malicious payload or virus).

Just what is Flash, anyway?  Flash is a plugin for web browsers that has been a mainstay in webpages for over a decade.  Youtube videos, for example, are played within Flash.  Most advertisements you see on the web use Flash to animate video, elements, buttons, letters, etc.  Some websites are made entirely in Flash.  In the early days Flash was designed as an alternative to animated gif images and cartoon-like animations because for some uses it could actually conserve bandwidth because instead of pixels and color pallets taking up file space, you would instead be working with vectors (think connect-the-dots to create a shape of something, like a stick-figure man, and move the dots/vertices to animate it).  An awesome example of cartoon flash animation using very little bandwidth is www.homestarrunner.com (a favorite cartoon series I used to follow in the old days).  Over time Flash has evolved into quite a feature rich plugin that many have attempted to clone and dethrone, but all attempts have failed (so far).

In any case, as a result of being more efficient than animated bitmaps and saving web hosts money on bandwidth and faster loading times while increasing the “eye-candy factor” during the days of dial-up, Flash became a preferred/common means of deploying advertisements on the web, and eventually advertising itself became so big that there are now companies that do nothing but produce and host Flash-based advertisements for other websites. What this means is that many websites do not actually host/serve the advertisements that you see on their website, as they have offset the bandwidth requirements for this function to third party companies.  Unfortunately, because advertising is a big deal online, it raises the bounty and incentive a malicious hacker might have to penetrate the advertising servers and replace clean advertisements with infected versions that would download and install Malware all by itself, taking advantage of security exploits in the plugin that have not been patched by the user.  This has been going on for at least the last 4 years or more and it’s a phenomenon knows as “Malvertising”.

So what are some ways to prevent this type of thing from affecting you?

1. Make sure you apply updates for all software on your computer when presented with the opportunity

If you see an alert like the one pictured above, address it immediately.  Far too often I see users just minimize the window or click “Later” and forget about it for the rest of the session.  The same thing goes for Windows updates, Adobe updates and generally speaking any updates for software that you use on a regular basis.  Updates happen because security vulnerabilities are found and patched, or slight tweaks resulted in an increase of the programs performance, or because they are adding a new cool feature.  Whatever the case may be, software updates are your friend and you should welcome them without hesitation.  If you are asked to update a piece of software you have never heard of before,  just type the name of that software into Google.  With just 30 seconds of reading you should be able to determine if the program that has an update pending is legit or malicious.

2.  Use Anti-Virus software that is backed by a good reputation, not just hype and marketing

The two most common anti-virus programs I’ve encountered  on computers THAT WERE ALREADY INFECTED has either been Norton or McAfee; both have never seemed to live up to their hype or justify the sponsorship of PC manufactures and Internet Service Providers.  Norton in particular spends gobs of money on absurd advertisements about how you should protect your oscillating fan from David Hasselhoff or saving your unicorn from Dolf Lundgren.  The use of silly metaphors in them are meant to parody the fact that most people don’t understand viruses anymore than they understand Dolf scorching My Little Pony with a flame thrower, purely for illustrative purposes of course.  Lets dumb it down so much that people will say, “This is so dumb, it’s smart (advertising).”  Now we know why a copy of their software costs around $60 or $70 per year…

The sad truth about anti-virus software is that NONE OF THEM are perfect or necessarily worth their weight in dollars, simply because virus programmers have the upper hand.  If a hacker discovers a vulnerability that no one else has discovered yet, he may just keep it in his “stash” for use later.  OR, he might sell that knowledge to the Russian mafia or any number of other interested parties who have their own stash and secret agendas.  It is suspected the Stuxnet worm that ran rampant through Iran earlier this year was the product of a government agency, due to the sheer amount of zero-day exploits it contained for propagating itself, along with its overall sophistication and extremely specific targeting.

Was it a coincidence that days after Adobe announced the discovery of a zero-day exploit in their Flash and Acrobat Reader software in early June that a lot of people started to call me for the exact same Malware problem?  It’s quite likely the vandalism on advertising servers was timed to correspond with these vulnerabilities to maximize exposure.  It takes Adobe around 2 weeks to release patches for vulnerabilities like this so there is a window of time users are exposed and at risk, and this window of time extends out further if you avoid applying updates.

Despite this sad and depressing fact, you’ll be happy to know that many anti-virus programs do provide generous protections that you cannot otherwise get without them.  There are two programs I recommend everyone check out:

• Microsoft Security Essentials
• Malwarebytes

Microsoft Security Essentials is produced by Microsoft itself and is a free program you can install on your system.  It will actively monitor your computers activity and help prevent virus infection.  I encounter network security professionals in web forums here and there and most of them have really begun to sing praise for this program, because of it’s small footprint and high level of virus detection and removal.  Malwarebytes is another program that comes in a free form (though there is a paid version that automates all of it’s functions so you don’t have to do manual scans and updates with it).  Malwarebytes has been an absolute life saver for me this year as it was able to effectively cure about 8 out of 10 PCs of all their woes with one scan.

There are many other commercial (pay) anti-virus programs out there that are good, such as AVG, Avira Anti-Virus, Avast, etc., but I don’t have the time or resources to review all that are available.  While you might be able to find other websites out there that post “comprehensive reviews” of this type of software, it should not surprise you that sometimes these articles are just advertisements for commercial anti-virus software dressed up to look legit and non-partisan.  In my opinion, the best reviews for these things come from individual users and a great place to find reviews for antivirus software is Amazon.com.  They sell some anti-virus software and each of them have their own collection of user reviews that are worth reading over if you decide you want spend money on extra protection not offered by free solutions.

3.  Install A Software Firewall Solution

If your computer is directly connected to the Internet (and does not pass through a router of any kind) then you are putting your computer on the front line and you should protect it with some armor if you want to stand a chance in the wild jungle that is the Internet.  Firewalls prevent unwanted network traffic from passing between your computer and the Internet.  In the same way Flash has it’s own flaws and vulnerabilities from time to time, so too does Windows itself and many vulnerabilities can be exploited with nothing more than a network connection.  Having a firewall in place helps eliminate this possibility.  A firewall can also prevent rogue software that is already on your system from “phoning home, contacting the mother ship” to update itself or otherwise expose your personal data to would be data thieves..  It’s not anti-virus software, but it does add a critical layer of protection.  Windows itself comes with a firewall built in but it’s not as feature rich as some third-party applications out there.  The most popular free firewall that I know of Zone Alarm Free.

4.  Use a proper Ad Blocking browser extension

One of the great features of Zone Alarm Free is the ability to let it block advertisements for you, although its not very smart about it as it basically blocks all gifs or flash content embedded in a website.  This can break a lot of websites that have legit uses for Flash, like Youtube.  So you may want to look into a more proper ad-blocking plugin/add-on/extension for your browser.  A great one for Firefox is called Adblock Plus.

5.  Use a safe web browser

Recently I stumbled across a funny description of Internet Explorer:  “It’s a great tool for downloading Firefox or Google Chrome.”  And it’s the truth.  Internet Explorer has struggled to achieve a respectable reputation among security experts as being a secure browser, when compared to others that compete against it.  Among them are:

• Mozilla Firefox
• Google Chrome
• Opera

These are all very capable browsers that have a great reputation for handling security and also have shown impressive turnaround when vulnerabilities are discovered.  I would highly recommend you download and install one of the above browsers and start to use it instead of Internet Explorer.

6.  Avoid And Uninstall Web Browser “Toolbars”

The above image is an exaggeration of a point I would like to drill home:  Toolbars are 99% junk and often facilitate no additional functionality than a web browser already has built into itself.  Pop-up blocking and search bars are standard in all modern web browsers, for example.  Many times I have seen toolbars for “MyWebSearch” on computers that happened to be infected with a virus.  I can’t necessarily say there is a causal connection between that particular toolbar and an increase in exposure to malicious software, but its fair to suspect it because if you search for “mywebsearch” on google, every single link (except the first one) goes to instructions for how to remove it.  It’s clear that NOBODY wants this toolbar, and the same could easily be said for most toolbars.  Get rid of them, please!

The easiest way to remove most of these is to use the Add/Remove Software applet in your control panel (In Windows Vista/7, it’s called “Programs and Features”).  If this fails to work then you can often find instructions for manual removal by searching for them with Google.

7.  Avoid P2P Filesharing Programs

Limewire is dead, but the way it worked will live on in other programs like it.  The way Limewire worked mostly relied on you connecting to other peers like yourself and the mesh collective would commence to pass files back and forth in a decentralized fashion.  The problem for Limewire is that it wasn’t entirely decentralized, which is why they were able to shut it down like they did Napster several years ago.  But still, the primary way it worked was by letting anybody share pretty much ANYTHING they wanted, without any real fear if they did something like disguise a virus as a popular new song by some teen-pop musician and share it out to the world as a “joke.”  Using software like this is your call and any legal considerations involved weighs entirely on you.  If you do decide to use file sharing software of this nature, make sure you police all your downloads to be sure you haven’t downloaded a Trojan horse.

8.  Consider Adding Parental Controls To Your PC

Not everybody reading this (in fact, few people reading this) would be willing to walk forward and admit to visiting porn websites online, but such websites make up a large chunk of the web and due to the rogue nature of some of them you are more likely to find ads, script code laced with viruses or strait up automatic downloads for executable binaries with names like “Video.exe” that can lead to your computer being infected.  It’s quite plausible that you might even visit one of these sites “TOTALLY BY ACCIDENT!!!”  So one thing you might consider using is a parental control blocking application that filters out web addresses and reduces the chance of you visiting one by accident or otherwise.  A robust, free parental control program worth trying is K9 Web Protection.

9. Consider Using Linux For Internet Stuff

It would be hard for me to write all of the above out without making a passing mention of using a different operating system, at least part of the time.  I realize not many users are interested in making a big switch from one OS to another, but it is very easy to at least get your feet wet with a Live CD.  In the case of Ubuntu Linux you can boot the entire OS from a CD without making any changes to your computer.  It’s like playing a demo for a video game before deciding to install the full copy, for free.  Instructions for downloading, burning and booting are right on Ubuntu’s website so if you’re even SLIGHTLY tech savvy you may find you enjoy working in Ubuntu more than you do Windows and feel relief from not having to worry about viruses or malware infecting your system.

Conclusion

As I mentioned before, this Malvertising problem is not new but the spike in its frequency of occurrence this year was interesting to me.  It wouldn’t be far out to predict another wave of infections like this striking again, but with the above advice and your increased awareness of the possibility of being infected in such a way should help to drastically reduce the chances of you falling victim to something like this.

Kinect is a new accessory for Microsoft’s Xbox gaming console, which involves a special infrared light emitter and a pair of cameras that can see you in 3D and use the movements of your body (arms, hands, feet, everything) to control the game, instead of actual game controllers with buttons.  There’s been a lot of mixed feelings about how good of a product it actually is and considering it’s a first-generation product of Microsoft there’s probably good reason to be very cautious and skeptical.  I own a PlayStation, a Wii and have avoided getting an Xbox over the years for multiple reasons, the largest concern being the quality of the hardware (red ring of death, anybody?).  I’ve yet to see a video demonstrating Kinect that actually causes to want to buy one; call me old fashioned?

Today I came across a video that someone made with a separate video camera to record themselves while they played a game called GEL Ride; a kids racing game like Mario Kart.  He did this so you could see how the Kinect reacts to body movement.  All I can say is… this is NOT the game that will convince me to get a Kinect and Xbox.  See for yourself… and yes, this video is real and it is hilarious.

On the non-gaming side of things you might be interested to learn that the protocol used by the Kinect to communicate with the Xbox has been hacked, and people have been using their Kinects to do things no one anticipated.  It’s suspected Microsoft intentionally left the protocol open to being so easily reverse engineered and the suspected motive of leaving the protocol wide open might be that it’s just one more way to sell Kinects to non-Xbox users like me.  Hell of a Plan B if you ask me; Kudos to them.  Here’s one of the COOLEST things I’ve seen anybody do with it so far (it gets really cool about 30 seconds in):

1.  I already own this album (in fact I own every Nine Inch Nails album; I’m what you would call a “loyal fan“).
2.  The album was published under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license.  This means I could give you a copy of the song because I purchased it.  Look out for musicians who publish their works under licenses like this.

So let’s get to using this Youtube Downloader thingy!

First, download the software from Download.com by clicking here.

Run/Open the file once you have downloaded it to install the software.  Once installed, you’ll have a new shortcut in your Start Menu.  This is what the program looks like when it’s running:

Leave this window up and go visit Youtube.  Find a video you like and then copy the URL from the address bar at the top…..

…into the first box in Youtube Downloader, like this:

Now click Download.

Once the video is downloaded you can convert it to an MP3 by changing the selector at the top from “Download a video…” to “Convert or play a video…”, like this:

Now all you have to do is click the Browse button to search for the file you just downloaded, and change the “Convert Video to:” box to read MP3, like this:

Now click Convert.  It will ask you about quality settings (and of course it’s best to just leave it on “Best Quality” and click okay).  That’s pretty much it.  A conversion process will happen, taking perhaps 30 seconds,  and you’ll be given an MP3 file that you can play on pretty much any portable audio player out there.  It’s up to you if you want to delete the original video file.

A word about piracy/file-sharing

Piracy/file-sharing can be a very polarizing topic to talk about, especially when the conversation occurs between professional musicians who make their living off writing music.  On one side of the fence you’ve got your Lars Ulrich and Gene Simmons who see piracy of their music as a direct threat to music sales and thus their paycheck.  On the other side of the fence you have bands like Radiohead and musicians like Trent Reznor who see the sharing of their music as a marketing platform that can increase band exposure, increase their fan base, and subsequently increase their physical merchandise and ticket sales.  Both sides are entitled to their opinions but I lean towards the latter group when thinking about this stuff.

Along the lines of music piracy is software piracy.  There is a software developer who goes by the name Notch who created a computer game called Minecraft by himself that has earned him nearly one million dollars in under a year, and it was still in the Alpha stage when it hit that impressive number.  He has a very keen insight into piracy and I would like to suggest you check out his blog post about the topic if you have the time.  It mostly boils down to distinguishing (or debating) the difference between the loss of potential revenue versus actual revenue lost, determining a fair way to measure the differences.

In marketing there is a strategy known as “loss-leader” and pirated music could be thought of as a loss-leader for a musician who has additional products to offer, like vinyl, or limited “deluxe edition” packages, not to mention concert tickets and who knows what else (one of my favorite musicians offers up everything from autographed cover art by Strom Thorgenson to 5 hour long studio workshops with the band and their very own equipment).  Then there’s new, up-and-coming musicians who don’t yet have anything better to hope for than a chance to be listened to and are willing to let people preview their entire collection in the hopes of turning them into a loyal fan who will go buy all their albums and other merchandise someday down the road.

Shameless plug: Check out my Kompoz profile to listen/download/pirate my music.

So let’s imagine that instead of a computer we were talking about the human body.  The parts between the human body and computers that would roughly equal each other would be:

CPU = The math-crunching part of your brain.

RAM = Your short term memory.  Stuff in here is being thought about right now and is instantly available to the CPU if needed.

Hard Drive = Not so much a part of your brain as it is a thick book being held in your hand.  Like a book, it requires you to actually LOOK at it to get information out of it, which requires you to also use your other hand to thumb through its thousands of pages and use a pencil and eraser to add or remove information from it; lots of physical hand movement going on here.  It is similar to your own long-term memory.  Information stays here after you shut the computer off or go to sleep, but takes longer to recall and longer to write into than RAM.

For reference, here is a short video showing off the inside of a hard drive while it is working.  Think about the book and your hands thumbing through and writing/erasing pages while watching this video:

In computers, RAM consists of little chips that do not contain any moving parts but can store information temporarily while the computer is powered on.  Data can be read from and written into RAM in a matter of nanoseconds at rates as fast as or faster than a gigabyte per second, primarily because there are no moving parts, just like the CPU (or the human brain).  In a very real way, RAM and the CPU are like different parts of a brain that work in concert to produce results quickly.

When a computer is told to load a program, it has to copy that program it into RAM for later use.  In the human body, “loading a program” would be kind of like opening that thick book I mentioned earlier to a chapter like, oh I don’t know, “Chess:  Instructions and Rules.”  If you can remember all the instructions and rules right after reading them for the first time, then you can play the game without any need to stop and read the manual every time it’s your turn.   Likewise, if a computer is able to load a program into RAM completely, then it won’t have much need to access the hard drive after it’s been loaded.

In the old days, if you didn’t have enough RAM to load your software into, it simply wouldn’t run at all.  This isn’t true these days because modern operating systems use a feature called “Virtual Memory” (or “swap space”) where free space on the hard drive is used as a sort of simulated fake RAM.  This would be kind of like taking that book, turning it to the back where the pages are blank, and taking notes… a LOT of notes.  This leads to the dreaded hard drive “grind” (that sound you hear when the hard drives is constantly doing something; that KRRRRRRRR sound) where the hard drive is so overwhelmed with reading and writing information that the entire system slows to a crawl while it waits for the hard drive to finish whatever it’s doing.  In humans, this would be kind of like trying to do taxes for 20 corporations at the same time; you’d practically wish you were dead.

Fortunately, RAM can be easily upgraded and these days it’s one of the most economic ways to improve your computers performance and postpone its obsolescence.   With more RAM, your computer can load larger, more complex programs and relieve your hard drive from the daunting task of pretending to be RAM.

I had a major streak of creative energy after lifting weights earlier today and made this in about 5 hours time.  It’s a work in progress.  It’s easily in there with the Psytrance genre.  Enjoy!

Some of you might know me to be a bit of a Linux geek who is a sucker for the open-source philosophy and culture.  It sure is a beautiful thing in the world of computers; using software that’s free of charge and free to modify because a bunch of people decided to give it away to the public and do whatever they want with it.   This has worked out VERY well for Linux since it began, with bored programmers using the Internet as a global workbench to approach and tinker with any software they wanted and the best results would come to the surface as a new standard, often with no money changing hands.

It’s difficult for most people to imagine doing something like this because we don’t know a thing about computer source code.  We sort of have a foggy idea about it and could boil it down to “a list of instructions for a computer to follow” and add that those instructions can be edited and improved upon by anyone.  Any description more complex than that and it starts to sound like Greek… but for this post, it’s good enough.

Now  imagine you took this model of open-participation and applied it to music production, doing it all on the Internet.  You’re a musician, you play an instrument or have a singing talent and want to find other musicians who share your musical taste.  This is difficult to do in the real world, especially if you’re stuck in Kansas like me.  Sure, it’s easy to find a Kareoke machine on any given night if you look hard enough but finding good, original, local musicians is hard.  So the next best thing is to go online and (in a way that’s reminiscent of posting personal ads looking for a significant other) post your own creations/recordings to be judged by others… perhaps even loved by others, modified by others, built upon by others until eventually the little tune or melody you started with turns into a fleshed out composition that sounds very professional.

This is exactly the kind of situation I’ve found myself in during the last 3 weeks after I did some searching on google for “online music collaboration” and discovered Kompoz.com and indabamusic.com.

I signed up for both at the same time and uploaded the same music (three songs of my own) to both sites.  All I had to do after that was sit back and wait for others to possibly like my music and wish to add something to it, or not.  Over on Kompoz, in a matter of just 2 or 3 hours, a fellow from Latvia named Nikitt had uploaded a new guitar track to one of my songs on Kompoz.  Within a few days after that I was getting emails from people wanting to perform lyrics to the track.    A few days later, another astonishing guitar track was added by a dude from Florida who calls himself Grumpy.  And in all this time, none of the tracks I uploaded to Indaba got even a hint of attention or interest from anybody.  So either they think my music sucks over at that website or (more likely) the user interface for indaba is a mess that makes it difficult for bored musicians to find new projects.  So  maybe Indaba would work for you but it certainly didn’t work for me.

But enough about Indaba failing me.  Kompoz on the other hand has really bolstered my dream of writing a lot of good music.  It’s just so much easier to be able to upload something and for someone else to come along and add an idea to it.  It really is a lot of fun; I would tell my fiance Kristin that it’s like Christmas every day because you never know what you’re going to get.  This happens in part because some of the people who use the site live on the other side of the planet and leave stuff online while you’re asleep and when you wake up you might be surprised to find new recordings uploaded or at least some productive comments.

So this is what I’ve been doing with some of my spare time lately and just wanted to share.  You can check out my Kompoz profile and projects by clicking here.  If you happen to be a musician I encourage you to join Kompoz.com with a free membership, but if you’re serious about music production it pays to get a premium membership for $50 a year so you can exchange high quality WAV files and even publish music for commercial release and get royalties out of it.

So about 90 seconds ago I learned about this website and knew I had to write a quick blog about it.  The site is called Ninite Easy PC Setup.  This is a website that allows you to download multiple popular Windows applications, from web browsers to anti-virus software, and install them all at once!!  This is a HUGE, HUGE time saver.

You look through their selection of software, check off the programs you want and it will create a custom bundle from your selection and wrap it all into one easy install package for you to download.  When you run the installer, it installs all the apps, one by one, automatically without user intervention and without any spam “extras” that might come along with some of them (like browser toolbars that do more harm than good).

Check it out at www.ninite.com

Back to regular font land now, I just wanted to add instructions for Windows and Ubuntu users on how to install this font.

If you are a Windows user, all you have to do is copy the TTF file into your c:\windows\fonts folder and that should be it.

If you use Ubuntu, save the file to your desktop.  Then right-click on it and click “Open With Font Viewer”.  This will pop up:

Unlike my window, yours will have a “Install” button in the lower right corner for you to click on.  Just click Install and you’re all done.

gksu nautilus /usr/share/fonts/truetype

I got a call today from someone who was in need of help with their Power Mac G5 computer.  The problem they were having was the system would power up, the famous startup chime sound effect would play but there would be no video displayed on the monitor.  As far as the monitor was concerned the computer was still off as the power light on it would remain amber instead of turn green.  Unfortunately you don’t get Mac-oriented training in most technical institutes so I didn’t know exactly how to approach the problem.  Is it hardware?  Is it software?  It was time to call for reinforcements!

With the help of a friend of mine who happens to use a G5 for graphics design work on a daily basis we began troubleshooting this machine.  Going off of Apple’s official troubleshooting pages we tried holding Command-Apple-P-R at boot in an attempt to reset the PRAM (which is similar to a PC’s CMOS) but for some reason it would never reset, or at least we never heard the second chime sound indicating a reset.

Ultimately the thing that did the trick was unplugging the systems power cord, opening the case up, removing the dual-fan assembly that’s in front of the RAM slots and pressing the PMU Reset button located on the “logic board” ONCE!  The ONCE part of this was stressed as pressing it more than once could potentially turn the system a trendy looking boat anchor.

When the system was powered back up there was no video for a moment and then the OS finally started to boot.  I shut the system down,  turned it back on and it still worked.  So I had considered this a finished job and decided to shutdown and take the computer back to it’s owner.  Well, then things got strange all over again.

With the system back under the desk in its original location, reconnecting the USB cables for the printer, keyboard and mouse to the computer and pressing the power button I was greeted to a chime, the grey-on-grey Apple boot-splash screen but that was it.  No whirly-circle busy animation, no hard drive activity, nothing.  So I forced the power off and waited before retrying again.  Suddenly we were back to square one with no video on screen.

I decided to see if hitting the PMU reset would help here so I unplugged the system, opened the case, pressed the button and shut it back up.  That didn’t work.  Finally I unplugged everything from the system except the keyboard and the power and turned it on again.  The system finally booted up to the desktop.  I shut it down and reattached the printer and the networking cable while the system was powered off.  For some reason this had an effect on the computers ability to boot up because it didn’t want to show video once again.  I pulled everything but the keyboard one more time, powered it up and it booted all the way up once more.  While the computer was on I reattached all the USB cables as they were, which produced no problems, shut the computer down, and finally upon powering it back up it successfully booted all the way.

So, we have a very interesting glitch here with Apple’s Power Mac G5 machines.  It would seem that if you have the system powered off and you attach certain devices via USB while the system is off, it gets confused when you first turn it on.  Perhaps the PRAM keeps an inventory of USB devices and where they are plugged in that throws a fit if anything on those ports change while it’s off.  Well, that’s what I think.  It’s only a theory.  Alternatively there might have been something going on with the printer; perhaps some funky USB-to-LPT converter wasn’t declaring itself properly.All that I know is the best thing to try if you have this kind of problem is to unplug the machine and all cables attached, hit the PMU reset ONCE, plug the power and keyboard only back in and then press the power button with your fingers crossed.

This reminds me of a PC that my fiances father owned that had a PCI USB port expansion card in it to add 3 more ports to the back of the PC.  You had to plug USB devices in before turning the computer on or they wouldn’t be detected by Windows.  Kind of the opposite of what’s going with this Mac.  I’m sure fixing something like that would be a matter of a firmware update for the card itself but there wasn’t one available when I checked, nor were any updates available for Mac OS today.  Anyway, it was a learning experience for me; its not too often you get a chance to attempt fixing a Mac hardware problem.

After sifting through the comments for another video by the same robot-building guru I found out that the song in this video is called “Parks On Fire” by Trifonic.

I’ve just purchased their deluxe digital copy of two of their CDs for 8 dollars.  You can stream/preview the whole thing with this little jukebox I’ve embedded here.  If you enjoy it, show your support for an independent musical group and buy their album!

Commands and links mentioned:

• sudo apt-get install mencoder ffmpeg mplayer vlc ubuntu-restricted-extras
• http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/downloads/list

You don’t need anti-virus for Linux. Others in here will do a better job at explaining why this is, but in short, the OS has a big advantage here due to it being open source. The operating system is a product of crowd-sourcing, much in the same way as Wikipedia has been since it first showed up several years ago. And much like the highly-moderated articles of Wikipedia that require membership and an approval process for changes made to locked articles, so to is a strict moderation that goes on with the source code for Linux before it’s allowed to become part of the official distribution. Everybody is out to identify possible flaws or weaknesses or bugs in the source code and it’s much easier for any single person to make a contribution because the OS and much of the software that runs on it is open-source.

In Windows, the users don’t have the luxury of being able to dig through the source code to look for flaws. All they can do is report symptoms of problems to Microsoft, and the limited number of paid programmers that do have access to the source code then have to decide what flaws are the most important and which ones don’t merit their attention. So with Windows, a bug that affects only 500 people won’t be as important as a bug that affects 500,000 and probably won’t be fixed at all. But if it were Linux and if just one or two of those 500 people were a programmer who had access to the source code and figured out how to fix the problem on their own, the other 498 would actually stand to benefit from a patch that ends up being released thanks to the work of that one developer who had some spare time on his hands and decided to do something about a bug simply because he could.

So throughout the long life of Linux there has been this much more diversified, seasoned, multi-cultured source for development feedback that has helped to make it a much stronger, more “mature” operating system, especially in terms of the way security was designed. If there was ever a person out there who found a way to circumvent that security, there is at least one other who knows exactly how to repair the flaw. The reason viruses are able to best Windows is because their developers can only patch so many holes, and the ones they don’t have time to get around to end up being exploited the most. Third-party software developers that make Anti-Virus software make a killing because Microsoft is unable to handle this responsibility all by themselves, and even still, the best anti-virus software isn’t perfect.

The reason anti-virus software isn’t necessary in Linux is simply because the OS and its updates that patch vulnerabilities do the exact job anti-virus software in Windows is meant for: Prevent unwanted, malicious software or network activity from compromising the system. If there were a flaw in Linux found that allowed something like that, it wouldn’t be the job of some third-party software to safeguard the user against but the job of the OS itself. The reason anti-virus software even exists is simply because Microsoft is unable to handle the immense work load of patching their own source code as well as a crowd of Linux geeks can.

Am I saying Linux is perfect and invincible to viruses? Might it become more susceptible to viruses in the future if it were to ever become as popular as Windows is today? I would think that with an increase in the number of users would also come a complimentary increase in the number of clever developers that would only help to increase the number of eyes available to find flaws and fix them. Saying that Linux would get a lot of viruses down the road because more people are going to use it is like saying Wikipedia will become rife with widespread, uncontrollable vandalism because more people visit it. It hasn’t happened yet, and very likely never will happen because of the way it is designed, moderated and improved upon by the hive mind.

EDIT to add: As mentioned in the first comments below, I failed to acknowledge that while Linux is more robust in the area of security, nothing can compensate for the weakest link in this arrangement:  The User.  A novice user could easily be enticed by a sinister website  that tells them to download a deb file which might contain malicious code and absentmindedly install it or execute a destructive command from the terminal window because they didn’t know any better (like rm -rf ~/*).  Fortunately for novice users there is little if any need to actually venture out into uncharted territory like a terminal window or strange websites to get software, thanks to the official repositories that contain a HUGE collection of software which continues to grow.  I’ve even heard you will soon be able to purchase proprietary Linux-based software through it.  Unfortunately, little can really be done to compensate for user negligence, and trying to compensate for all possibilities would likely result in too many annoying alerts and prompts for the average user (like when Windows Vista sprang the UAC on its users).

There are only a couple of circumstances that I believe anti-virus software on a Linux platform would might be worth having which involve helping to protect other Windows systems.  Say you got an email from someone that contained a virus but you never knew it was there and forwarded it onto someone else who uses Windows, resulting in their day being ruined and you being blamed.  So that’s one scenario.  You might also have a Linux server administrating a network of Windows based workstations which you have read/write access to and use the server to conduct scans of these machines over the network, but at the expense of finite network bandwidth and CPU cycles on the server.

• Lightweight:  It’s written in Python and loads very fast.
• Simple:  Sometimes losing a couple “bells and whistles” is a good thing.
• Multiple platforms:  Gitso works on Windows, Ubuntu Linux and Mac OS X.
• Active Development Pipeline:  A feature request I submitted was approved for the next version less than a half hour after I submitted it.
• Open-Source:  Free as in freedom.

There are a lot of features in the coming versions of this software I have been looking for in a VNC tool for a long time.  And who knows, I might learn a thing or two about programming in Python with this little tool.

Step one:

First you need to click System -> Administration -> Software Sources. On the updates tab make sure “Check for updates: ‘Daily’” is set and “Install security updates without confirmation” is set. Then close this window.

Step two:

Open a terminal window and paste in the following command:

gksudo gedit /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades

This will open a file in your text editor. In that file is a section that looks like this (which will vary slightly, depending on the version of Ubuntu you are using):

Step three:

Remove the slashes “//” from the next to last line, like this:

That’s it!

Save and close the file and then restart your system. From now on all updates for Ubuntu will attempt to install in the background automatically without any intervention required by the user. You won’t even know they are being applied unless a system restart is required as it is after kernel updates.

However, if you feel it’s necessary, you can have the system automatically restart itself if one is required.  This is achieved by removing the slashes at the bottom of the same text file, in the portion which pertain to auto-restarting, and changing the value at the end of the line from “false” to “true” to enable it.  But I wouldn’t recommend it unless you know what you’re doing.

The drawback I knew I’d probably run into with this is the good chance that my wireless network connection would nearly be crippled.  I don’t have a big house, but I was going to be adding a couple more walls in between my computer and the router.

Now, I don’t go around talking too much about playing video games, but lately I’ve been on a streak of Left 4 Dead 2 because my best friend Jordan asked me to get it so we could play together online.  Games like that demand the best of connections that you can muster, and adding another gap of lag between myself and those game servers got me worried.  I haven’t yet tried to do multiplay since the move, but did notice that my wifi said that my signal was now “Very Low”.

So I pulled out my new Nexus One cell phone with Android Linux on it and fired on an app I got from the market for free called Wifi Analyser.  It kind of looks like this:

Above is just an example image I found with Google. What this program will show you is a line graph that displays the radio frequency usage of nearby wireless networks.  You see, wireless networks are kind of like walkie-talkies.  If some kid in your neighborhood is using the same radio frequency as you, your signals will obviously overlap and interfere with each other.  This app is made to quickly show you what frequency ranges are the most used in your immediate vicinity.  In my case I had quite a lot of overlap.  So I logged into my router, changed the wireless channel from 6 to 11 and that made a world of difference.  Windows says my signal is “Very good” now.

If you don’t know how to log into your router a good website to consult about this is portforward.com.  This site is intended to be used as an interactive guide that shows you how to login to your router and change your port forwarding configuration.  So the only part you need to pay attention to is the first half that shows you how to access your routers configuration settings.  The last half can be tossed aside.  Router configuration is a lot like browsing a website that has different check boxes, fly-outs and text fields for you to manage.  Just click around until you find something that says “wireless” and look for a setting that pertains to the radio channel it’s using.  The default for most routers these days is 6, or sometimes “auto”.  If it’s auto, you can at least experiment with it to see if based on your observations there is a frequency range that is more open and less cluttered than one it’s currently using.  And if it doesn’t seem to help your performance any, the change can be reversed.

Having the same phone for more than two years tends to wear on you.  I’ve never had a true “smartphone” before, short of playing around with the iPhone I bought my girlfriend for her birthday last year so getting this little gizmo was a big deal for me.  There’s a lot I love about the phone, namely the Android Linux OS that runs on it, but also that beautiful AMOLED screen which absolutely trumps the current selection of phone out there.  No phone has a screen this crisp and vivid right now.

Blah blah blah, this phone is pretty damn nice.  Enough said, really.

Click to download “Flow” by David Steinlage (Extended sample)

“Flow” by David Steinlage is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available via the author. www.davestechsupport.com/contact.html.

Unfortunately, I have come to learn that when you get a refurb, it’s possible the manufacturer has replaced the case on the outside with one that has a slightly different model number.  Long story short, I had found that this was actually an e200v1 (or perhaps an e250v1) and its firmware doesn’t support flash memory cards that are SDHC (e.g., anything over 2GB in size).  Even if I had upgraded to the latest version of the firmware available for this player, it still wouldn’t have fixed the problem.

Now for the good news:  While I was digging around for a fix, I came across an open-source software project called Rockbox.  Rockbox is a replacement firmware that will run on several types of MP3 players, and one of the features I was hoping to gain by installing it was support for SDHC cards.  What I got was a hell of a lot more than I expected.

For starts, this OS loads FAST.  Not only that but it came with a bunch of extra applications, visual themes, and GAMES!  Yeah baby!  I couldn’t believe it when I loaded up a variant of id Software’s DOOM on my cheap $30 MP3 player.  There’s no other way to say it but Rockbox is one really awesome piece of software and I’m really happy I found it!  THANK YOU ROCKBOX!

Anyway, the latest track is called Ridin’ The Ditch Witch (click on the link to download the MP3; 256 kbps CBR).  I would call it classic rock music with just a dash of psy-trance.  Check it out, enjoy and please leave compliments if you like it.

“Ridin’ The Ditch Witch” by David Steinlage is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.davestechsupport.com/contact.html.

Regular readers of my blog may remember a website that I and my associate John put together for the band Prymal Rhythm.  Well there’s a little back-story about how the responsibility of building that website came to fall in my lap.  You see I happen to be related to three of the five members of the band.  One of them is my cousin and two others are his uncles.  That being the case I volunteered a great deal of time building that site up from scratch into the polished looking site it is today and I did so with joy because, hey, we’re family.

In a gesture of sorts to thank me for all the hard work I did for free, the three members asked the organizers (my aunt and uncle) if it would be cool for me to attend this years family reunion/vacation, which has traditionally been limited to immediate members of their family.  So about a month or two ago I was contacted by my uncle and was invited to join the family on their family vacation.  Being invited to join this group was sort of like being inducted into a secret society of epic coolness I can only begin to describe.

These yearly vacations take place at a small cabin that my aunt’s father originally purchased in the 1970s in Shell Knob, Missouri on Table Rock Lake.  Since that time the entire family (or as many as are able to make the time) have dedicated one trip out of every year to reunite at this cabin and proceed to have a rejuvenating amount of fun together.

Now before I get into the fun part of the trip, I should mention something that I have a high amount of respect for; a certain rule of sorts the family has had at all times.  And that is: Keep the technology to a bare minimum. There is no air conditioning at this small cabin, only a lot of fans for every window.  There is no TV and no hand-held video gaming.  Text messaging or using your phone while in the presence of others is frowned upon and more or less anything else that could suck you out of the familial bonding going on around you.  Being an addict of the Internet with websites like Digg and Reddit, you might have thought I’d lose my mind being isolated from these things, but it was quite the opposite.  There were far more interesting stuff to do that the thought of wasting time in front of a computer by myself never crossed my mind.

Swimming in the lake on an inflatable bed with a cold beer in your hand was just a way to break the ice on the first day and try to stay cool when it’s over 90 degrees outside.  I got a some compliments out of using my sandals as ores to row my air raft of sorts.  At one point I was so relaxed by the beauty of the forested area surrounding me that I actually backstroked an eighth of a mile away from the shore before I ran into the shore on the opposite side of the cove from our mini-beach.  I felt like I was literally inside a giant bowl filled with water, rimmed with trees and the horizon had a slightly curved fish-eye camera lens effect to it.  I was AWAY and at peace.  So peaceful that I was unaware of the horrible sunburn I was about to receive (but it was worth it).

Above:  Me and my cousin Johnny

So what kind of activities did we have?  Most of these are actually traditions that everyone did every year and in some cases plan ahead for.  There was a whole shelf filled with board games; RISK being one that was hyped quite a bit on the first day but so much other stuff occurred that the RISK geeks of the tribe never got around to it.  Other games included Catch Phrase, Charades, a card game called Mafia, and the list of games could go on and on (I’m still kicking myself for forgetting to bring Apples to Apples with me).  On one night there is a talent show, where everyone is encouraged to go up “on stage” and perform some sort of act.  Now that I know about this I’ve got to get started on thinking up some sort of performance.  There were three Djembe drums there at the time… perhaps I’ll go buy one of my own and next time I go do some sort of ten minute jam with other volunteers.

One of the other benefits of the location we were at was the fact that there was far less light pollution in the sky at night, making the stars a lot easier to see.  It was mesmerizing to look up at them and notice how seldom you get to take in that kind of scenery back at home in the city.  I took the opportunity to change the topic of conversation to outer space, mentioning a lecture I saw on TED.com where the speaker called the exploration and study of space “the archaeology of the future” because, like traditional archaeology that digs stuff out of the ground and the deeper that stuff is the older it usually is, so too in space the older something is the further away from us it is (because of how long it takes light to travel across the universe).  Though my uncle being retired from the Navy told me about what it’s like to see the sky at night from the middle of the ocean where there is zero light at all.  The view is 10 times that much more clear.

One of the most involved activities I participated in was a 2 mile hike through some woods to a secluded cave that few know about.

The story goes that my aunts brothers were wondering around about 35 years ago (probably while high on peyote or something, though I never bothered to ask just what the hell they were doing wandering around a forest in the early 1970s) and just found it by accident (or perhaps you might say “serendipitously discovered“).

This cave is about 100 yards long, 30 yards deep/tall and 2 to 10 yards wide depending on where you were standing.  Getting to this cave was a very refreshing thing because you go from a hot and humid day hiking uphill sweating your ass off to a cool 60 degrees in a pitch black darkness.  It added another dollop of awesomeness and unique flare to the entire collective event.

Above:  A very happy family

On the last day we had a speed boat and everybody took turns heading out in groups of 10 to go test their luck at water skiing, wake boarding and slalom skiing.  I’d been skiing on snow in the mountains many times but never on water.  I wiped out on the first three tries but on the fourth try I managed to stay up for about 15 seconds before wiping out again.  Had I not sustained a horrible sunburn on day one, I would have gone back out with the last group for a few more chances, but I didn’t want to press my luck with the risk for skin cancer.

The food was spectacular!  Each night different people were involved/responsible for putting dinner together.  On two nights out of the three we actually got to eat some elk that someone had hunted themselves with a .30-06, served in cuts as well as Kielbasa sausage, not to mention the pork ribs, BBQ chicken and a plethora of veggies.  Nothing quite as satisfying as eating delicious food after a long day of fun.

It was one of the most memorable vacation experiences I think I’ve ever had.  There is so much to respect and admire about the entire thing.  I commented to my uncle about his father-in-law purchasing the cabin, “What an investment it has become!”  So I think I’ve found a somewhat new goal in my life.  Before I die, I’m going to buy a small cabin of sorts to start hosting my own family reunion from on a regular basis as a long term investment in our future.  But before that, I’ll probably buy a boat and lend it to the cabin I’m now a proud member of.

——

VNC is the default remote-desktop protocol for Ubuntu Linux and it can be used by anyone to access their home PC while they are away from home.  Anyone who has used VNC and also has a router are likely familiar with setting up a port-forward rule in their router so that all inbound traffic destined for port number 5900 is sent to the correct/desired PC.  But what if you wanted to be able to do this with multiple PCs on a home network and not have to relay through one PC in order to access another one?

You can do this by setting Ubuntu’s default VNC server (vino) to listen on an alternative port number.  Up until recently, changing this port number was as easy as clicking on an Advanced tab in your Remote Desktop preferences window.  For some reason, this new panel was removed after a more recent update so changing this port number became a bit of a mystery.

I’ve not done any hard digging to find out why this panel was removed, but my guess is they actually rolled the version of vino back to something older to temporarily avoid a known bug encountered with vino on servers that had Compiz enabled.  I’m sure they’ll get it fixed eventually.

In the mean time, this setting is still easy to change if you know where to go.   Here’s what you need to do:

1. Open your Gnome Configuration Editor.  You can do this quickly by pressing Alt-F2, then typing gconf-editor into the box and pressing Enter.
2. In the editor, click Desktop>Gnome>Remote Access.

Once you get to this point, you’ll notice several VNC related settings on the right half of the Gnome Configuration Editor window.  Edit the mentioned values as follows:

alternative_port: In the line that says “Alternative Port” near the top double-click the 5900 to edit and change it to the desired port number you’d like to use.  After you’ve changed this,  right-click on this value again to make a pop-out menu appear and then click “Set As Default”.

authentication_methods:  This value should say (or mention) “[vnc]“.  It might say [none] and that’s okay, but you still need to add “vnc”, so double-click on the value to bring up an edit window and click the Add button.  It will ask you to supply a name/value, so just type in “vnc” (no quotes) and press enter.   You’ll end up with a value of [none,vnc].  I don’t know if it matters or not, but at this point I edited the values further so that vnc was listed above none, so it ended up looking like [vnc,none] in the end.  My thinking behind this has to do with the way some blacklists (TCP/IP for example) delimit their endings.  That’s a whole other blog post…

enabled: There is a solitary check box by this parameter.  Make sure its box has a check-mark inside of it.

use_alternative_port:  Also make sure this parameter has a check mark in it’s box as well.  Also, right-click on this value and then click “Set as Default” for it as well.

Now close Gnome Configuration Editor.

That’s it!  Restart the computer to get the settings to take effect.

You should also do one or more of the following:

• Use Firestarter to add a rule allowing inbound traffic on the new port number you specified above so that your host firewall doesn’t block it.  (Click Applications>Add/Remove and search for Firestarter to install it if you don’t have it already).
• Set a new port-forwarding filter up in your router to direct inbound traffic on that new port towards the PC you just modified (duh!)

To connect to a VNC server on an alternative port, you just add a colon and the new port number to the end of the host address.  Lets pretend the new number if 5901 instead of 5900.  You would type the host address like this:

• 192.168.1.10:5901
• dyndnshostname.homeip.net:5901
• ubuntu.local:5901
• I’ve also used a 1 instead of 5901 and it works.  For 5902 you could probably use just the number 2 by itself, and so on.

And that’s all there is to it!

Recently, I posted the following in their Networking forum:

I have a new Linksys/Cisco router WRT54G2 v.1 with the latest firmware installed. I currently use port forwarding for things like VNC and SSH into my home PC. However, every time I try to set a new rule (for both TCP and UDP) up for bittorrent, the bittorrent clients I try say the port is closed. I’m using an Ubuntu Linux system, and both Transmission and Deluge will say the ports I select are closed, even if I change the port numbers and do another test. So I’m just wondering if anyone has encountered anything like this before and might have an idea of what could be causing this problem.

The thread was alive for a matter of seconds before a moderator locked the thread and replied with the following:

Please read the rules. We will not help with P2P apps.

I was surprised to see this happen, and that’s probably because I use www.ubuntuforums.org more often than any other forum for technical assistance.  Linux people like me approach the controversial topic of bittorrent a little differently…  I decided to send the moderator a private message to let him know what I thought about his decision:

Sorry for violating the rules. However, I would argue that I did not ask a question pertaining to P2P applications at all but a question strictly about networking problems with a Linksys router. I should also remind you that bittorrent is a common protocol used for the transfer of free, non-copyrighted information spanning from GPL licensed open-source software to free music or movies released under the creative-commons license, which is becoming more popular. There is nothing inherently illegal about using bittorrent (the protocol), but it would seem the moderators of techguy.org hold a contrary consensus that I feel they should consider revising in recognition of the legitimate and legal uses of bittorrent.

The above comment and any replies received in any form will be posted publicly on my blog. Thank you for your time.

I got a reply fairly fast.  Here’s what it said:

We cannot and will not assist in the illegal downloading of software through P2P applications, and that includes any impediments offered by networking components to such downloading. Any legal uses of such software are few and will unfortunately need to be included in this prohibition.

The policy has been in place for quite some time now and will not be changed.

Thank you for your concern,
Elvandil

I like his use of the word “prohibition”; like bittorrent is some sort of drug paraphernalia.  I also noticed Mr. Elvandil happens to be Microsoft MVP and a die-hard Windows user who is probably adverse to anything of value that isn’t proprietary.  This is just my own opinion as he is ignoring the fact that millions of people use Linux and a large portion of us download and share our Linux ISO files (for burning to CD) via bittorrent, among many other things 100% legal to share.  It is a world he is unfamiliar with or in denial about.

Fortunately in the world of Linux it’s recognized that bittorrent itself is not illegal at all and I was glad to see a helpful reply in ubuntuforums.org within minutes; a reply that made me realize that sometimes I can be a completely narrow-minded person, too.  ”Did you check your host-firewall?”  Why… NO!    So I opened my firewall manager Firestarter and sure enough saw blocked events taking place on the port I told my bittorrent client and router to use.  All I had to do with allow inbound traffic to take place on that port.  Talk about overlooking the obvious!

The dead router this little journey into hell all started off with was a Netgear WGT624 v3 with the latest firmware installed.  I’d owned this router for several years with nary a hiccup or serious problem the occasional power cycle couldn’t fix.  But as mentioned above, things started to get flaky and I had tried everything I and other forum crawling network experts could think of.  So I decided to head to my nearby Wal-Mart just a couple blocks away and pick up a new one; a Netgear WGR614 v9 router (and I installed the latest firmware after it arrived).  To my shock and disgust it had the exact same problem as the WGT624: data corruption.

So I exchanged it for a third router (a Netgear WPN824 v3) spending about 25 dollars extra after exchanging in the WGR614.  This new router solved the problem I was having with corrupted packets and I was relieved.  But then a new fucking problem cropped up!  For some reason the router would require a power cycle at least two or three times a day.  This was often because for some odd reason it would just randomly stop passing HTTP traffic between me and the Internet.  I could ping the modem (gateway) IP, as well as the ISP’s DNS server addresses, but I couldn’t ping Google nor visit any website except the routers internal configuration utility page (e.g., 192.168.1.1).  Even more bizarre was that one time this occurred after I had already accessed my computer by remote while I was away from home, using VNC on port 5900.  Let me say that again:  I had accessed my home PC over the Internet, and the router told me there was no active Internet connection when it went to check for firmware updates automatically after I logged into it to see if I could find the problem.

I put up with this router for a few days, hoping that after a while things would smooth out and I wouldn’t have to do power cycles so often.  They didn’t get better.  In fact, they got even worse.  I was already having to power cycle the router on a regular basis until one day PORT FORWARDING STOPPED WORKING!!  I couldn’t access my remote desktop over the Internet anymore and more importantly, I couldn’t accept incoming connection requests from Virtual Dave users.

Unfortunately I made the mistake early on (because the packet corruption problem had been resolved by the WPN824) that I was going to be happy with this router, and I threw the receipt away, so I couldn’t exchange it for a different router.  The only option I had left was to take this router back to Wal-Mart and exchange it for another one exactly like it.

Not only did this replacement WPN824 mimic all the problems the previous WPN824 had, but the packaging had evidence of actually being a refurbished product, sold off the shelf by Wal-Mart as a new item at full price!

I’m sure it’s one of the ways Netgear cuts corners for the sake of competing with other “rolled-back prices” in Wal-Mart; I hope they don’t pull this shit with other vendors.  I can’t assert that Wal-Mart is knowingly selling refurbished products at the same cost as a new item, but from the look of the professional shrink wrap job, they may not actually be aware of what’s going on.

Now you might say to me, “just because you have two seals doesn’t mean that you have refurbished rather than new. It may simply mean that at one point someone had to open the package for a customer, and the customer ended up not wanting it, or it was returned.”

Okay, I see your point, but it doesn’t change the fact that the router still didn’t work, nor did another one exactly like it I had purchased just a couple days earlier. Something odd I noticed between the two is the first of those two needed a firmware upgrade, but the second one didn’t. Just an observation.

There was one other suspicious piece of “evidence” I didn’t photograph and that was the “install the netgear software on your PC before you setup your router” sticker that covers the downlink ports on the back. It had obviously been re-applied before.

Also, the shrink wrap on the box wasn’t something you’d see from the standard cheap heat gun seal you’d find in most stores that will re-stock items with explicit “open-item” sticker with a reduced price on it; this LOOKED brand new from the outside, like it was sealed at the factory. So I guess the theory is, someone bought it from another Wal-Mart, found it didn’t work, returned it, Wal-Mart sent it to Netgear because they were told it was defective, Netgear put a new sticker on the bag around the router, and re-wrapped the packaging in house with little or no testing done on the hardware. I highly doubt Wal-Mart has spare Netgear stickers laying around to help disguise an open router bag.  And good lord, what does this say about the state of our economy!  I mean, if I were Netgear and I were serious about deception, I would still at least use a NEW replacement bag with a NEW tamper-sticker, instead of reusing an old one with a broken label stuck to it to save a few cents.

So to recap the sequence of routers I’ve been through:

Original Netgear WGT624 v3 (loved for years, dying of old age I thought), followed by a WGR614 v9 (which had the same problems as the previous router), followed by TWO WPN824 v3 routers. 4 Netgear routers, one old, two “new” and one that was obviously opened/returned/refurbished being sold as a new item.  They all failed me in the end.

I’ve said to hell with Netgear and Wal-Mart, caving in and going to pick up a Linksys/Cisco from Best Buy, but I’m not going to give it a thumbs up or down until I’ve had some time to test it out.  From what I hear, Linksys/Cisco’s are back up to snuff and have a better reputation than they did when I stopped using their products years ago.  We’ll see.

It all kicked off with a short drive from my friend John’s house in Lawrence to the Starlite Amphitheater in Kansas City, Missouri.  We arrived around 3:45 p.m. and joined a group of roughly 100-125 people who all participated in the donation drive for Eric De La Cruz and were anxiously awaiting for their opportunity to meet and greet with the band.  One girl I was standing next was so excited, she said, “I’m looking at the same sky Trent Reznor is looking at.”  I couldn’t help but laugh.

After passing through the gates and being handed my guest pass stickers (which only went to the top-tier donors) we were given a briefing on what to expect next.  We were then led down the hill and around to the back of the venue where we waited in line to walk into a pavilion area of sorts, shake hands with the band, have one item of ours signed by all the members of the band, have our picture taken and even give everybody a hug if we wanted.  From here, the group was split into two and the lower-tier donors were lead back out into the seating area of the venue while us top-tier donors were then lead to a dining hall for dinner.

I was personally expecting to see something like a series of tables pushed together with the band sitting down somewhere and everyone else surrounding them and having some lively table talk.  To our disappointment, we were sat in groups of 8 per table and more or less had to wait there for 50 minutes before Trent arrived to say thanks for the donations and open up for a few questions before going back to whatever it is he does before a show.  This was really the only minor annoyance about the entire experience.  Time constraints and what not are understandable, though the words “dinner with the band” was in the description, and I didn’t realize the word “with” was being used in the Mitch Hedberg-ish sense.  (Mitch Hedberg joked that whenever he goes to the bathroom to shave, he assumes someone else on the planet is also shaving, so he’ll say, “I’m gonna go shave, too.”)

We were then asked to go back out to the main seating area while Street Sweeper Social Club played the first act, and then return to the pavilion next so we could be escorted to the side of the stage and enjoy NIN.  It was surprisingly quiet compared to the loudness you’re pounded with in the seating area.  The staff throughout the entire experience were very kind and polite.  I really didn’t get any good pictures of the side stage area as most of my time was being spent video taping the show.  I’m not going to bother with re-encoding the video and posting it here because, well, I’m feeling kinda lazy, but also because I’m sure someone out there’s got better video than I do.  The view was somewhat obstructed, the camera is shaking from time to time, and the audio sounds a little muffled.

After the show was over we were escorted back out through the seating area because Janes Addiction didn’t really want anybody backstage (certainly not side stage) while performing.  But my sister and I snuck back around and actually caught a glimpse of the lead singer and guitarist head through the double doors we had exited from to go out to the stage and perform.  And that was pretty much the extent of anything exciting that could possibly happen.  I watched Trent walk through a hustling team of roadies loading crates of gear and equipment on his way to his tour bus never to be seen again.  Not being a big fan of Janes Addiction, the four of us decided to leave the show early and beat the traffic to have a small after party of our own back at home.

That was more or less it.  Like I said, I had my expectations high and it’s something I’m sure everybody does who has never participated in something like this.  You have these fantasies of a “best case scenario” of actually getting to sit down and chat with the band for 5 minutes and stuff like that, but it’s simply not the reality of these kinds of things.  I mean, you have to think about these things from the perspective of the band members.  What would you rather do after a show:  Hang out in a decked out bus while surrounded by beautiful women, or doing your best to gum it up with speechless fans who are skilled at the art of making social encounters totally awkward?

In the end, I had fun… I don’t think I’d call it jaw-dropping-awesome kind of fun, but that’s just me personally.  The novelty of the event hasn’t sank in just yet, I guess.  I also got this vinyl record I bought years ago autographed by the band (including their art director, Rob Sheriden, who is a perpetually depressed looking fella):

Overall review:  GOOD TIMES!

Now most of you out there (or at least anyone who isn’t really into NIN) are probably saying, “Why would anyone spend that much money just to get backstage and gum it up with people they may never see or speak to again?”  Well… let me put it this way.  Imagine you could meet any single person in the whole world who you’ve wanted to meet for over a decade but couldn’t. Just think of your favorite actor/actress, or author, celebrity, musician, mad scientist perhaps… I don’t care who, just think of someone who you’ve always wanted to say, “Thank you.” to in person because that’s just how much of an influence they’ve had on you and you want them to know.  Then one day, you’re offered that one chance.  That’s kinda what this is like.  An opportunity to do something you’ll never forget for the rest of your life.

Besides, all the money is going towards a worthy cause.  I’ll get to honestly say that I met my favorite musician of all time (one of just a small handful of life long goals/dreams I have) and contribute towards saving a human life in the process.  And I’ll be proud about it for the rest of my life.  I imagine myself decades from now thinking back on the life I lived and appreciate such an experience more so than, say, the experience I’d probably get from spending that kind of money towards something completely material, like an expensive HDTV.  I couldn’t imagine myself retired years from now telling my grandkids about the day I bought a new HDTV and expect them to marvel at my totally boring story.

For me, the things that matter in life aren’t things (stuff) at all.  The things that matter in life are experiences, events, people, emotions, passion, romance,  ideas, adventures, thrills, challenges and also remembering that one of these days you’re gonna die.  Because if you do like most young people and tell yourself it’s too far away to bother thinking about it right now, you might start to procrastinate and regret not doing the things that would otherwise hold their value to you forever.

So, here’s to being ALIVE and happy to finally get to do something I’ve always wanted to do but never believed would ever occur.

Oh, one last thing.  THANKS DAD!  You’ve always been there if I needed a favor or help with about anything and that means the world to me.

This is for something important. Eric De La Cruz is dying and needs a heart transplant. He keeps getting turned down for a transplant list because he’s on Nevada Medicaid, and there are no transplant centers in Nevada. We want to get involved and hopefully so do you, so we’re extending a hand. His sister Veronica (former Anchor and Internet Correspondent for CNN) has started a campaign to save his life.

Eric’s situation shines a bright light on a broken health care system, and his particular set of problems are being addressed on the political front, aiming for reform in addition to the need for immediate financial help to keep him alive TODAY. I think we can help with the latter.

Here’s what we’re offering – three options:

If you have a ticket to a NIN/JA show: if you donate $1,000 to this cause, we’ll invite you to come hang out with us before the NIN/JA show of your choice. You and a guest can watch soundcheck, eat dinner backstage with us, take pics / get autographs and watch the show from the side of the stage if you’d like.

If you donate $300, you and a friend can join us for soundcheck and a handshaking / hug session before doors open at the NIN/JA show of your choice.

If you do NOT have a ticket to a NIN/JA show: if you donate $1,200 to this cause, we’ll invite you to come hang out with us before the NIN/JA show of your choice and provide 2 tickets (best available). You and a guest can watch soundcheck, eat dinner backstage with us, take pics / get autographs and watch the show from the side of the stage if you’d like.

100% of the money collected from this will go directly to Eric’s fund.

I hope you’ll consider helping out with this.

Sincerely, Trent Reznor

Go here for more info. If I’m lucky and can find the money, I’ll get to meet my all time favorite musician AND help save a life.

About 2 months ago or so I read the tutorial in the above link to help get my fingerprint sensor setup in Ubuntu.  The problem was that it left one simple instruction out:  Paste a line of  text AT THE TOP of a config file (and not at the bottom like I did).  The mistake has been corrected and I’m happy to say my finger print sensor is working in Ubuntu 9.04.  Based on the directions from the the link above, here’s how to set it up (these instructions are meant for version 9.04; see the above link for instructions for 8.04 and 8.10):

Step 1: Click Applications>Accessories>Terminal and paste in the following command:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install aes2501-wy fprint-demo libfprint0 libpam-fprint

Step 2: Still in Terminal, paste in the following text:

sudo gedit /etc/pam.d/common-auth

This will open a text file called common-auth in Gnome Text Editor.  (Here’s where I screwed up last time).

Step 3: If you want to use both the password and the fingerprint to authenticate (more secure) add at the bottom:

auth required pam_fprint.so

If you want to use either the fingerprint or the password to authenticate (i.e. completely bypass the password through the fingerprint) the following string must be placed at the top of the file:

auth sufficient pam_fprint.so

Once pasted, save and close the file.

Step 4: Press Alt-F2, type “fprint_demo” without the quotes and press enter.

This will launch the fingerprint utility that you can use to enroll the finger you wish to use for future authentications.

That’s basically it.  Special notes:

• If you happen to screw something up in the config file by mistake and lock yourself out of your PC by accident, you can boot into Recovery Mode from the GRUB boot menu to access a root command prompt and edit the above config file using nano (nano /etc/pam.d/common-auth).
• Not all login screens are compatible with this feature.
• To test your finger print in fprint_demo, click on the verify tab at the top and use the verify button to compare an enrolled fingerprint to another finger (or the same finger) and you’ll see the difference.

As of Ubuntu 9.04, I’ve noticed the following quirks:

• Often you will not see an on-screen prompt asking you to swipe your finger across the sensor if the system is waiting for it.  Examples include the login screen, running Update Manager or Synaptic Package Manager, and otherwise most other programs that required your password to run them.
• The only actual on-screen requests I’ve seen so far is when you are unlocking a screen-saver, or are running a program with sudo privileges in a terminal window.

No, I don’t have a lot of money.  I would have bought tickets for this show via pre-sale a while back if had I’d know for certain I’d still be here in the states.  The catch about buying pre-sale is that you have to show ID, and the ID must match the name on the pre-sold ticket.  Now the concert is 8 days away and I’m certain I’ll still be around when it happens.  The difference being about $40 perhaps… so what.  For the occasion… well, who knows what I would have spent otherwise.  Like I said, it means a lot to me.

I remember being in 8th grade and not knowing about NIN at all until my best friend Bart showed up with an NIN T-shirt on and subtly keyed me in on the existence of such a band.  Before then I was trying my best to be cool by listening to Van Halen and Aerosmith (thanks for the misdirection, KQRC).  In fact, for a few months, I hadn’t heard a single NIN track until someone let me borrow Pretty Hate Machine for a few hours in between drivers education classes during the summer.  (Those were the days).

From their it spiraled out.  The Downward Spiral was the most intersting and inspired collection of music I had heard from anywhere (with the exception of Tool’s Ænima album).   At the time it seemed like Best Buy had the best supply of regular albums, and Circut City (no longer in business here) had the best supply of import singles.  I had purchased almost every CD put out there, with exception the rarest of imports from Japan which were redundant and overpriced.  There was already plenty of people out there who were ahead of me when it came to being collectors of memorabilia.  In all, I’ve probably purchased about 20 or 25 CDs from NIN, a few of which were duplicate (or triplicate) purchased, do to various lose of older copies I had once owned.  I am quite proud to say that none of the vinyl copies of albums I’ve purchased have needed to be replaced (last I checked, the vinyl copy of The Fragile I have was worth about $300… but I don’t regret opening my own copy).

So what did the tickets cost me?  $180 for a pair.  That’s not bad, considering it’s the second time I’ve paid that much for tickets to an NIN show (the first time was in Denver, and I actually got to meet Rob Sheriden after the show (though the friend I took with me who never paid me a cent got to meet Trent himself which really pissed me off); there’s even a video of me floating around the net of me screaming into the camera, “I love you, Trent!” after the show that NIN posted on their site, and I’m not ashamed to admit it).

Why did I like this music so much when I was younger and up till the present day?  Well… all I can say is that it’s just what I was naturally attracted to.  People who discount it as offensive or weird or strange probably haven’t actually taken the time to give it a glance and that’s their own problem or whatever.  Everybody should be able to enjoy what they want and like on their own terms, in their own space.  NIN, for me, kind of struck a chord because I was the kind of kid who was kind of lonely, but it wasn’t that bad.  I had friends, I wasn’t THAT  lonely, but I still felt like I didn’t fit in.  So, for some odd reason, I seemed to identify with the music Trent Reznor made.  It was abstract, abrasive, aggressive, intriguing, inspiring and sometimes an echo of what I felt back then.  I wouldn’t say that the music of NIN that was out back then is what I would identify with now, and neither would Trent.  He hates being asked questions like, “Why don’t you play “Down In It” on stage any more?”  because it’s something he’s moved away from, and I feel the same way when it comes to identifying with those songs.  My older brother on the other hand, who’s enjoyed NIN since the very beginning has said otherwise, and I would to if I were him.

I’m not sure what else to say about the music.  I don’t really think much should be said.  If you’re still reading this, you can preview his music via many ways (best of which is through www.nin.com itself), but otherwise, that’s about all I have to say.

Hopefully, since my girlfriend is stuck working that night, I’ll be able to steal her phone for the night and try out that new NIN iPhone app.

Her birthday was last Friday and I decided at the last minute to get her a new phone she’d be sure to appreciate.  I had to make my mind up between having her stick with T-Mobile and get her a Google Phone, or go for the gusto and get her an iPhone with her family’s minute plan they have with AT&T.   Her brother and sister both have iPhones and love them and I’ve envied them myself only holding off on getting one for myself because of the long term cost of owning one.  Being a penny pincher, I’d personally opt for a Google Phone with Android Linux running on it so I could save a few dollars every month while feeding my inner nerd; owning a phone that gives you access to a Command Line Interface of all things.  But I felt that in my girlfriends’ case, the best choice would be the iPhone.  It’s just easier to use and looks nicer that any other phone out there.  An added bonus is that her brother and sister already have one, and this relieves me of having to show her how to use the phone to its fullest extent.  I’m proud to say she loves it.

Now I’m keeping myself in the loop with the latest updates regarding the iPhone and I was happy to learn that in about a month or so iPhone’s OS version 3 will be officially released.  And with that release comes several major new features, the most important (in my opinion) being the integration of MMS messaging.  For years we’ve been able to send pictures and video to each other with plain old text messaging.  I was surprised to find out in the introduction of the iPhone, this feature was not built in.  Excuse me for saying this, but it seems pretty lame of Apple to leave something so common out of the feature list.  What’s more sad is owners of the first iPhone still will not get this MMS feature among many others, and will be subsequently be inclined to purchase a new phone just to take advantage of features they rightly deserve.  Considering the amount of money they paid when the iPhone first flew out the door before dropping in price by over 100 dollars in just a few months time, forever being called a “nerd tax”… anyway, I’m glad I didn’t buy into the first generation of the phone.

Bob Church was a father, grandfather, husband, friend, mentor and an avid writer with a strong following of fans. His blog, located at http://not-quite-right-bubba.blogspot.com/ serves as an archive of some of his best writings, numbered in the hundreds. Bob Church died of pancreatic cancer on Wednesday the 29th of April 2009. This video is a slide show of photos of Bob in chronological order taken from various sources. It was directed by the entire Church family and assembled by David Steinlage. If you would like a copy of this video on DVD, along with other videos that were shot at his 61st birthday party, simply email David at dave@davestechsupport.com

Bob Church, the father of my girlfriend Kristin, passed away this afternoon at the age of 61.  For the last 10 months Bob has been in a long and trying fight with cancer.  I’ve written a decent bit here and there about the history of this here and you can find it by following my tag link for him to the left.  He went peacefully while surrounded by family and close friends.

Among his dying wishes was the request that he be cremated and instead of having a formal memorial service, those who knew him should join together for a sort of commemorative party/get-together.  That event will be this Saturday.  So if you knew Bob and have a way of getting to Topeka, you are invited to come and celebrate Bobs life and the memories he has left with us all.

That’s the original auction photo, and not only did it arrive looking as good as it did above, but a second sticker with the Linux penguin mascot also came along with it, which I didn’t expect.  So I was quite happy with what I purchased.

That laptop bit the dust about 3 weeks ago and I’ve since replaced it with a new laptop.  Again, I wanted to get a cool case badge like the one above.  But had some trouble finding it.

A lot of people would tell me, “Go to System76.com!  They’ll send you a few badges for free.”  I did that.  Here’s what I got:

It’s thin, cheap looking and with a solid white backing instead of a thicker, shinny alluminum backing.  I’m not really complaining though; it’s nice that System76 will send these to you for free by just asking for some.  But you get what you pay for, and they don’t offer nicer quality stickers either.  So the search continued.

Then I recently discovered another place online.  I think I was using google’s formerly named “Froogle” online shopping search engine, and discovered a site called ZeReason.com.  And to my delight, I found they sell good quality stickers at one hell of a discount (10 badges for $5.00 shipped)!

Well those stickers were ordered about a week ago and they just arrived today.  Here’s what they looked like:

And here’s one on my laptop after I ripped off the XP sticker and replaced it with the new Ubuntu sticker:

So if you’re looking to totally nerd out your Ubuntu laptop or PC, then stop on by www.zareason.com.  I’m quite pleased with the quality of these stickers and you will be too.

All of these hot babes are great looking but it is up to you to select your six favorite as they compete for a chance to be in an official Prymal Rhythm calendar.  Putting together the actual contest involved a good amount of PHP work by my programmer/site developer.  We had to come up with a way to help prevent ballot stuffing and figured the best way to do that is to require registration with a username/password and an confirmed email account.  This is where the next upgrade came in:  a new Members Area and a Forum for fans to chat with each other through.

This is a surprise bonus feature the fans have not been made aware of yet.

The last thing we did was basicly give the entire website a face lift by wrapping every page in the theme that was selected for the forum so the entire site matches and looks really cool.  There’s still a little work left to do but I would have to say we’re about 80% done now.  It’s been quite an exercise.

Since the founding of Microsoft by Bill Gates, who stepped down as CEO  effectively handing the reigns to Mr. Ballmer, the software company has refused to  release its source-code; the programing used to create their popular operating system.  Keeping it closed-source has been a strategy used by Microsoft to ensure they could maximize profits on sales of their product, but Steve Ballmer said he felt the time was right to go open source for a multitude of reasons.  “Not only did we feel like rubbing it in Apple’s face by removing the price tag from our product entirely, but we feel it’s time to get some help from the public on refining Windows.  Because let’s face it; they use Windows more than we do, so we might as well let them fix it themselves for a change.”

Ballmer went on to explain that with Microsofts’ closed-source model, the repair of bugs and security holes in their software is much more challenging.  “Our studies have shown that software developers and programmers actually become less productive in direct correlation to the amount of money you pay them for their work.  It’s gotten so bad that the shutdown menu in Vista took several months to create and design, and that’s pretty damned embarrassing if you ask me.”

Reactions to the unexpected change have been mostly positive to sarcastic.  Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical which develops and promotes their free Ubuntu Linux operating system, considered the change to be a little amusing.  “You know what they say:  Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”  Apple CEO Steve Jobs responded to the move by boldly stating  “So what?!”  When asked if Apple would consider making a similar change in their software development model, he replied in a typical sales pitch: “It takes a lot of money to build computers as cool as ours.  Buy one,” he added with a crazed, hypnotic look in his eyes.  “You’ll LOVE it.”

The open-source version of Windows 7 was originally slated to be released late in 2009, but with the sudden change in development structure, Microsoft actually anticipates this date to be unusually ahead of schedule.  “Now that we’ve shaken our software development department down and replaced our laziest, most expensive programmers with dedicated Microsoft Windows fans who work for us out of sheer love for the brand, we anticipate faster development in the areas of security, stability and most importantly, system performance.”  Microsoft was also originally planning to release seven various editions of Windows 7 (Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise, Ultimate and Star Trek Collectors edition), but it has been deduced that by making the software 100% open-source, the user will be able to get any edition they want for free simply by selecting which edition they want during installation at no difference in cost.  “It’s a win win for everyone,” added Ballmer.

Also:  APRIL FOOLS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conficker
http://mtc.sri.com/Conficker/addendumC/

As stated in the links above, the virus takes advantage of a buffer-overflow vulnerability of certain server services on Windows based machines.  Microsoft issued an update (MS08-067) for Windows 2000 SP4, XP SP2 & SP3, and Vista to patch this hole back in October of last year. So if you have installed all available Windows updates you should be fine and not need to worry.  It is highly recommended you install all available updates if you have not done so lately.  To force your PC to check for available updates, click Start>All Programs>Windows Update and follow the on-screen instructions.

If your computer is directly connected to the Internet it is advised that you have a quality software firewall installed and blocking unexpected inbound traffic.  A comparison of free firewall software can be found here:  http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-firewall.htm

In addition you should also have a quality anti-virus software solution in place.  Any of the following will suffice:

• CA Anti-Virus
• Symantec Anti-Virus
• F-Secure Anti-Virus
• Panda Anti-Virus
• Kaspersky Anti-Virus
• McAfee Anti-Virus
• BitDefender Anti-Virus

I personally recommend  AVG Free Edition

In summery:

• Be sure to apply all available updates for Microsoft Windows
• Ensure you have some form of firewall blocking unwanted network traffic
• Install a quality anti-virus solution

Now lets all have a happy April Fools day!

It goes without saying that downloading a movie illegally via bittorrent is probably going to piss the MPAA off.  But if they’re smart about this, they could actually take the concept of scan-to-download idea and turn it into a big money maker.  There’s probably plenty of people who would purchase a digital download of a movie if it were offered to them at a reasonable price.  Just take a look at iTunes or Amazon offering DRM-free MP3 merchandise.  You might even take a look at what Valve Software did with Steam recently:  They cut the price of Left 4 Dead by 50% and noticed a 3000% increase in sales.  Ultimately it just goes to show that there is an ever increasing number of people who want to purchase digital merchandise and they’re willing to pay for it as long as it’s not overpriced.  I could even see movies being offered up for free with commercials inserted in a hulu.com style.

Anyway, cool app for a cell phone to say the least.  Thought for pirates, it would be kind of like saying, “Hey.  As if my IP address weren’t enough information, here’s my phone number too.”

As cool as this technology is, I have to say that I think it’s already up against some stiff competition from smart phones like the Google Phone and the iPhone.  For instance, the video shows a demo of evaluating different kinds of paper towels for the user so they can pick out the one that is the most environmentally friendly.  A somewhat similar application that already exists on the Google Phone (and others before it in Japan) is a program that allows you to use the built-in camera to scan the products UPC barcode, which would then give you an instant price check for that product at local stores and even through online merchants.

It would take little effort to expand the capabilities of the above smart phone application to allow for sorting of the search results to be prioritized for other criteria besides price.

The key feature that the projector/camera technology does have that you can’t easily do with a cell phone is the ability to project visual data onto any surface and interact with it in 3D space via hand gestures.  While there are a lot of unique uses for this, a drawback of this is that you are required to have a usable surface in front of you in the first place, and I think (for now) the LCD screen of a smart phone has the upper hand in that department.  For instance, you could be walking down a street at high noon and look at a building (like some sort of historical landmark) but not have a usable surface to project meta-data on to (although I suppose something could be read to you through an ear piece).  On a cell phone, the screen is much more visible in nearly any lighting and given further software development, all kinds of information could be overlayed onto a camera captured video stream as seen below:

The end goal in both of these technologies is pretty strait forward:  Overlay relevant information on top of the real world.  And between these two technologies, I have to say that I think smart phones still have the upper hand… for now. Even though smart phones don’t have the freedom of using hand gestures to operate your phone, it could be argued that multi-touch screens are comparable (for things like zooming on maps, photos, etc.).

What I think the real knockout advantage of a cell phone (besides the fact that an LCD screen works as a better display surface than most real life objects) is the fact that information is presented to you in a more private, personal fashion.  If you were to have personal information projected out, anybody nearby could eavesdrop on whatever is being shown to you.  For example, you wouldn’t want your online bank statement to be projected on to a wall when you’re surrounded by strangers at an airport.  It’s more personal to have such things confined to a smalls screen that you have more control over.  Then again, the idea is to use a cell phone as the core processor of the system, so in the event you have to look something personal up that you don’t want projected, you would just take your phone out of your pocket and do whatever it is that you need to do.

A bold prediction is made at the very end of the first video:  That we will one day have the ability to augment digital information on reality through some kind of brain implant.  While such a wild technology is still a long ways away, it will likely occur within a couple decades time and the development of this is only the first of several steps towards a technology we once thought to be impossible.

If you want to try this out for yourself you’ll need a webcam and you have to visit this website.   And yes, I realize how ironic it is to have a campaign that hails the greatness of renewable energy asking you to waste a piece of paper to play with a little 3D model of some windmills.  At least you can recycle that paper.

The only annoying thing about this is if you want to look at your little augmented reality up close, which requires putting the paper closer to the webcam… which can be tricky:

As demonstrated above, you can clearly see that there is a little scarecrow standing among the windmills.  Or maybe you can’t see because the paper is directly between you and your monitor!!!  Damn it!

I was browsing reddit.com and came across a link to a blog someone else wrote recently listing 50 very nice downloadable themes that you can install on Ubuntu.  You’ll find that blog by clicking here.  It has a nice clean listing with screenshots of all the themes that give you a very good glance at several themes in a short amount of time.

Unfortunately for new users, that’s all this blog contains.  What it doesn’t really tell you is how to change your theme or install any of the ones available for download. (Correction: The post actually does have a screenshot showing you how to access your theme settings).  So I wanted to help out new users with doing this.  Here’s how it’s done:

1. Download the theme;  you’re looking for a “GTK” theme.
2. You’ll typically end up downloading either a zip file or a tar.gz file.  If it’s a zip file, you need to look for a tar.gz file within the zip.  The tar.gz files are usually the actual theme itself, which are often bundled with other non-critical files, like a readme.txt file that you can open seperately.
3. Right-click on the desktop and click “Change Desktop Background”.  Once open, click the Theme tab at the top-left.
4. Click the Install… button in the lower right, browse for and select the downloaded tar.gz file, and click Open.

That should do it.  If it doesn’t look back at the package file you downloaded for a bundled readme.txt or similar file that might detail special installation instructions.  If there wasn’t a text file like this included or your can’t find one, there might be one the web page you got the theme from.

Another think it doesn’t tell you is how to run Conky.  What’s Conky?  Conky is a customizable system monitor.  You know — something that tells you your CPU/memory usage, temperatures, HD activity stats and other geeky things most humans don’t care about.  Here’s a one screenshot with Conky running on the right side:

You can install Conky by clicking System>Administration>Synaptic Package Manager.  Then search for conky, mark it for installation and click apply.  You can then run conky from terminal by typing “conky” in.  You can also have it run automatically at login by clicking System>Preferences>Sessions, clicking Add, and just type “conky” (no quotes) into the Command box.  There are also config files for conky people have made in their spare time that you can download to save you the trouble of reading the manual and making conky into something uber nerdy looking.  A HUGE thread on Ubuntu Forums can be found here that has a TON of files with screenshots you can browse over for different looks and themes.

Finally, the last thing that’s not talked about in the above mentioned blog is how to install a dockbar, like the one at the bottom of screenshots like this:

Check out this guide to read more about installing one of these things.

Lastly, it’s highly recommended you have compiz enabled, if possible.  Otherwise you will probably have problems with themes that look best with customized transparency of certain things, and the same goes for dockbars.

You’ll notice the watch I’m wearing in the picture.  That was a gift from my girlfriend for Valentines Day.  It’s made by Fossil and is called a “Skeleton Watch” because you can see all the gears ticking away on the inside from both sides.  She picked this specific one out because a long time ago I told her about being five years old and dismantling a wind-up alarm clock so I could see how it worked, and taking it to Kindergarten class for show-and-tell.  I don’t know what it is about stuff like that, but ever since I was a kid I’ve always been the kind of person who wanted to understand how all things worked.  It’s one of the coolest and most thoughtful gifts I’ve ever gotten from anyone.

SECOND EDIT:  I have found deb files available for download of this software.  See the section about installing Easycam below for further details about downloading and installing.

So I’m getting ready for a very big trip and will be spending a lot of time away from home.  I’ll be a LONG ways away for a pretty long time.  My girlfriend will be staying at home to keep an eye on the place and I wanted be able to communicate with her via webcam while I’m gone.  So I decided to purchase two Logitech Communicate MP webcams from Tigerdirect, each costing about $45 (and they’re damn nice too).

Very few webcams are natively compatible with Linux and require you to install special drivers (sometimes you even have to compile the drivers from source-code… yuck).  Compiling the drivers is something very few users are up to doing to get a simple webcam working.  But I found a pretty useful application that makes this process a snap.  It’s very aptly named Easycam.

Easycam is a little app that will detect the type of webcam you have attached to your PC and automatically install the driver needed to make it work with your applications with just a couple clicks.  However, installing the application takes a few steps.  Don’t worry, I’ll walk you through.

NOTE:  Some of the following instructions are outdated and have been crossed out.  It is recommended that you try to download the deb files and install them individually and not attempt to add the third-party repository to your Software Sources as originally instructed.  Visit this link to download the deb files.  If you are running Ubuntu, you will need the all the deb files except for the qt package.  If you are running Kubuntu, you will need all of the deb files except for the gtk package.  Download them all an double-click on them in this order:  

1. easygspca.deb
2. The easycam2-gtk.deb  or easycam2-qt.deb  package (depending on your OS)
3. Finally the easycam2-core.deb  package.

Once the three packages are installed, proceed past the crossed out section below and follow the rest of the instructions as usual.

I’m basically going to be repeating the instructions found at the Ubuntu Community Documentation for Easycam, with small notes of my own here and there.

Step One:  Adding Easycam Software Sources

Click System>Administration>Software Sources.  You’ll get this window when it’s loaded up:

Click on the tab that says Third-Party Software at the top.

Click on the +Add… button at the bottom.  You’ll get a pop up box asking you enter an “APT Line”.  Paste in the following text:

deb http://blognux.free.fr/ubuntu hardy main

Then click the Add Source button.  This will add the above source to the Third Party Software listing and take you back to the above screen.  Now click the +Add… button one more time and paste in this APT line:

deb-src http://blognux.free.fr/ubuntu hardy main

And then click Add Source.  You’ll see both sources added now.  Click the Close button in the bottom-right now, and then click the “Reload” button:

Step Two:  Installing Easycam

Click System>Administration>Synaptic Package Manager.  Once it’s up, do a search for “easycam”:

Click on the checkbox next to easycam-gtk and click “Mark for Installation”.  (If you’re running Kubuntu, check off the easycam-qt for installation instead).  Then click the apply button at the top (not shown in screenshot above).  Now Easycam is installed and ready to be run.

Step Three:  Running Easycam

To run Easycam, you have to open a terminal window by clicking Applications>Accessories>Terminal.  This will open a window with a command prompt.  You just need to paste in the following text if you’re running Ubuntu:

gksudo 'python /usr/share/EasyCam2/core.py --gtk'

If you’re running Kubuntu, paste this text in instead:

kdesudo 'python /usr/share/EasyCam2/core.py --qt'

After you enter your password, this window will appear:

Click Forward.

The model of your webcam should appear in the little box.  If it doesn’t… this might not work, but for most of you out there it should appear.  Click Foward.

Now click Start The Installation.  This will install the drivers you need. You see a bunch of funky stuff going on in the terminal window.  You can ignore that.  Eventually, the screen will look like this when it’s finished:

The guy who wrote this software is French.  I know the progress bar looks kind of screwed up, but if it looks like the above, it’s finished.  Click Foward.

If you click the Execute menu at the top and then click Webcam, it will launch the little “photo booth” program called Cheese.  This program can be used to take little pictures from your camera or videos.  It’s similar to Mac OS’s Photobooth software.  Here’s a candid shot of me trying it out:

Now you probably want to do something more with your webcam that just take pictures of yourself, right?  I would hope so!  Well if I were you, I’d check out  Skype if you haven’t already.  Skype is a Voice Over IP/Instant Messenger program that you can use to make phone calls from your computer, as well as start audio/video conversations with others who are also using Skype.  I recommend it simply because a lot of people use it and it’s free to signup, and Skype-to-Skype calls are also free.  There is also a Windows and Mac OS X version available so your non-Ubuntu friends can join the party. You do have to buy minutes if you plan on making land-line/cell phone calls (I pay about $30 a year for unlimited United States phone calls), so it’s not a bad deal.  You can download an Ubuntu version of this software by clicking here.

There is one other similar program called Ekiga that you might want to check out.  It is similar to Skype and is open-source.  Though I’ve never used it before so I can’t say much more about it.

The last type of webcam program I was hoping to find for Ubuntu would be something that can record video based on motion detection (set your cam up to be a security camera).  I have seen and tried Windows software that can do this with extra features like alert you via email (and perhaps SMS text messaging) and allow you to view your camera by remote.  The closest thing to this that I’ve heard of is a program called geekast, which you can use with a seperate program called peercast to broadcast your webcam on an IP address if you want.  But the program is severely underdeveloped (the home page for it was down at the time of this writing).  So it looks like the best webcam oriented program you can use right now is Skype, and it’s mighty fine if you ask me (but there is still room for improvement).

But today (which is turning out to be a pretty great day for a lot of different reasons) I logged in to check on my comments and notice the following:

Oooo!!  An update button!  In the past, something like this would direct you to WordPress.com and have you download a zip, extract the few hundred files out, delete certain folders from your server, then upload the necessary files to replace the old ones, THEN go to a special web link on your server to complete/verify the upgrade.  In a word, it SUCKED.  To my delight, this is what I got after clicking the button:

Automatically?  Huzzah!!

Now I know that to advanced web developers, this doesn’t come across as a big deal because if you had shell access to your server, you could just SSH into your server and run a couple of commands that would extract the download and fore-go the need to upload hundreds of tiny files.  But that costs extra and when it comes to web hosting fees, I try to keep things on the cheap side.

So Cheers to the WordPress devs!  You’ve made my life just a little easier.

While we’re on the topic of Music Videos, take a look at these others (non-Nine Inch Nails) that I ran across today.  Both of them utilize stop-animation.  The first one is just cool, and the second one is not only cool but pretty damn hilarious as well.

Bubblicious from Rex The Dog on Vimeo.

Every now and then I drop by the Ubuntu Brainstorm website to post an idea that I think would help improve the user experience of Ubuntu Linux. Sometimes these ideas are geared more towards a specific application rather than the operating system and in this case the suggestion I made recently has to do with Firefox.

One of the things that’s bothered me about using Firefox in Linux is the fact that when you click on a link for a file, an Open With dialog box appears, but if you want to open the file with something other than the default application shown, you are forced to browse the Linux root file system. This strikes me as an unfriendly way to have the user select an alternate application. If anything it wreaks of Linux elitism, the kind that acts like nothing is wrong with the way things are currently being done. If this were Windows or Mac OS and you wanted to find a different application to open a file, you wouldn’t expect to have to wade through sub-directories of a file structure most sane users wouldn’t want to be familiar with.

Let me show you what I’m talking about.  This is what appears when you hit Browse (for applications) button in Firefox on a Windows PC:

You’re presented with a simple list of applications to scroll through and pick the one you want.  It works the same way with Internet Explorer, and I would suspect all browsers do this in Mac OS X as well.

Now, here’s what you get in Linux when you click on the “Other…” button (which is equivalent to Browse in this context):

Do I even have to ask you which of the two above examples looks more user-friendly?

Anyway, if you’re a member of Ubuntu Brainstorm, I encourage you to vote for my idea by clicking here. And if you’re not a member, sign up! It’s free and only takes a minute and you could post an idea that will forever change Ubuntu Linux for the better.

Now, I’m not the first person to submit a suggestion about this quirk. In fact someone submitted a bug report about 4 years ago suggesting the exact same thing.  You might ask yourself, “If they submitted a bug report that long ago, why hasn’t it been fixed by now?”  Because in the eyes of developers (who are obviously a strange, bizarre species of emotionally sensitive anti-social hermits), this isn’t a bug.  It’s a “feature request”, and is considered something of a lower priority as a result.

It’s damn frustrating, I know.  Just look at the responses I got when I tried to point out that Amarok was installing missing a certain mp3 decoder package in GNOME systems, and was told that in order to get it to work correctly out of the box, a “feature request” would have to be submitted and approved before the app would install with all the necessary packages.  So for things like this it seems the only thing that gets developers off their pias/lazy asses are statistics (votes, in this case) showing them that people (normal earth-dwelling humans) actually want a feature to be added to an app.  I would suspect they need this kind of persuading because they have a very difficult time understanding what non-technical people expect from their computers.  But seriously, what idiot out there thought it was smarter to force users to browse the root file system instead of present a simple list of installed applications to pick from?  So please go vote this idea up, because it seems that sometimes a “feature” is actually something that should have been there in the first place, but wasn’t implimented for very stupid reasons.

Ripping is a term used to describe the act of taking a video DVD and copying it to your hard drive, while additionally encoding the video into a smaller format like Divx/xvid/mpeg-4 and saving it as an AVI file. Not so long ago I wrote a blog that shows you how to take such an AVI file and convert it into a viewable, playable DVD. So I thought it would be best to show you how to move the video in the opposite direction. I consider this to be a legitimate format for people to back their DVD’s into for two reasons:

1. Many DVD players are now capable of playing Divx/Xvid formated videos all on their own.
2. It’s more compact (700 ~ 1400 MB per film, a blank DVD is capable of storing about 4300 MB). You could have multiple films stored on one disposable disc.

NOTE: Scroll down past this DVD to AVI ripping guide if you want to see how you can backup your entire DVD (menus and all) to a blank DVD.

Remember that you are supposed to be using this little guide for the purposes of backing up DVD’s that you actually paid for and own. So when your dog eats it or your hyperactive 4 year old exerts his primitive He-Man and snaps the disc in half with his own bare hands, you don’t have to worry about buying a replacement copy. What you don’t want to do with this information is… oh, I don’t know… rent movies by the truck load so you can copy them all off to your PC before you return them. You wouldn’t want to do that. Not only because doing such a thing is illegal, but also because you might make Jesus sad.

Jesus has feelings too! Not just lawyers.

Now that your conscience is stricken with guilt and fear, we can all be sure you’re not going to try anything illegal with this “forbidden knowledge.” So lets move along to the fun stuff!

First, we need to install libdvdcss2 for decoding DVDs!

Before we can even rip a commercial DVD we need a specific decoder (known as libdvdcss2) to be installed. The easiest way to get it is to add the Medibuntu repository to your software sources. To do this in Ubuntu:

1. Click Applications>Accessories>Terminal
2. Paste in the following text in the Terminal window:

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/`lsb_release -cs`.list --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list && sudo apt-get -q update && sudo apt-get --yes -q --allow-unauthenticated install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get -q update

3. Then paste in this text:

sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2

The line of text in the first box adds the Medibuntu repositories to your system and updates your package listings.  The second box installs the libdvdcss2 decoder.  Both commands will work with any version of Ubuntu.

Now that we have our decoder installed, lets rip!

Ripping/Backing Up a DVD with k9copy in Ubuntu Linux

There are several applications available that you can install and use with Ubuntu to rip DVDs. One of the most popular is called k9copy. This program can be used not only for backing DVDs up as AVI files on your hard drive, but it can also shrink DVD-9 discs down to DVD-5 so you can burn complete backups onto a blank DVD-R. I decided to try this app out to see if it would live up to all the hype. Here’s how you install it:

1. Click on the Applications Menu
2. Click “Add/Remove…” (or Ubuntu Software Center if you’re running 10.04)
3. Search for “k9copy”
4. Check k9copy
5. Click the apply button.

Now that we have k9copy installed we can fire it up by clicking Applications>Sound & Video>k9copy.

In my experience, this is what k9copy will look like when you first run it, even if there is a DVD in your DVD drive. So if you have a disc in the drive, eject it, then push it back in and k9copy will open it up.

Now being shown is the DVD content structure, made up of titles that contain content objects, such as video streams, audio streams, subtitle streams and menus. (By the way, Death At A Funeral is a f-ing hilarious film and I highly recommend you go buy it). For the purposes of backing up just the movie we’ll want to select one video stream and at least one audio stream (6-channel surround sound, 2 channel stereo, english, french, director commentary, etc). You’ll notice that each title here shows a total size in megabytes each takes up. The largest one in the picture above is Titleset 1, weighing in at a hefty size of 3733.10 MB. So we know THAT’s the movie because the size of it is so large, and everything else is just menus, perhaps a trailer for some other movie, etc., and they can all be ignored and excluded from our rip. Just remember that it’s not always “Titleset 1″ that contains the movie, so check the size of the title set before ripping to find the one with the largest size first. In this example it’s clearly Titleset 1. So we expand it open (with the little [+] boxes next to the name) to reveal its contents:

After expanding the Titleset 1 treebranch, I placed a check next to the “audio 1 English ac3 6ch 48kHz drc” option, which basicly means “Six Channel (surround sound) English audio.” Doing this automatically checks off the video stream associated with it. I could check off other audio streams if I wanted to, but that would take up extra space and possibly reduce the video quality of our output, depending upon how large we want the outputed AVI file to be.

If you look down a little, you’ll see the video and audio ripping settings (shown above). By default k9copy wants to resize the width of the video you’re ripping to 640, which is actually a little smaller than the default video stream size of 720. If I were you, I’d change the above to say 720. You’ll also see a target file size of 700 MB selected. Depending on the length of the movie and the amount of action in it, you might want to increase this size. 700 is good for films that are about an hour and a half long. Any longer than this and you might want to change the size to something larger. Best test this to feel out your own preferences before backing up several discs, but 700 has usually been good for me.

TIP: For the best video quality in your output AVI, check off the box that says 2-pass. What this does is a practice encode (to feel out the parts of the video that contain the most action) and then a true encode which will use the information gathered from the practice encoding to more dynamically adjust the bitrate.

By default, the codec selected says “Copy”. We want to change this to some other video codec. I have the best luck using Xvid.

Once you’ve set your video codec to Xvid, click on the Audio tab. This will show the above settings. Just like the video codec, you will probably want to change the audio codec as well, although this is not required. For instance, if you want to preserve the 6-channel surround sound audio from a movie you’re about to backup, it’s best to leave the above setting on Copy. However, if you’re ripping the 2-channel stereo audio, it’s better to change this to the MP3 LAME codec. And if you do put it to MP3, you should probably change your bitrate from 128 to 192 or better (no greater than 320). This will increase the sound quality. For this example, I’m going to leave it on copy.

Once you have your video and audio streams checked, your video and audio preferences configured, you can go up to the top of k9copy and click on the Create MPEG-4.

This will ask you where you would like to save the AVI file it’s about to create and that’s entirely up to you. I like to place these AVI files on the desktop and then decide whether or not I want to burn them to a blank Data DVD once I have a few other movies backed up and ready to be burnt. Once you click Save, k9copy will begin to combine your selected video and audio streams together into a single AVI file.

What if I want to backup the whole DVD? Menus and all?

This can also be done with k9copy and it’s very easy. In fact I wish I had just written a guide for how to do this because it wouldn’t have taken as long for me to make. The first thing you’ll want to do is check everything off:

If you click the top-most checkbox, all the other sub-boxes will check themselves off. Now all you have to do is click the Copy button at the top (shown above). This will ask you where you want to save an ISO file. After the ISO has been created, you just have to right-click on it (while a blank DVD is in the drive) and click “Open with CD/DVD Creator” or “Open with Brasero” or “Open with Gnomebaker”, depending on the burning software you have installed. This will burn the ISO image to the DVD, and once you insert it into a DVD player, it’ll play just like a regular DVD with menus and all. Just keep in mind that when you do it this way, you might see a little worse video quality because the menus, all the extra audio streams that you may not need or want, deleted scenes, etc., have been included. And because the average single layer blank DVD can only hold about half that of a regular DVD, everything has been re-encoded and shrunk.

More information can be found at:

• https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Medibuntu

On Wednesday January the 21st of 2009, Bob and Louise Church celebrated their 26th wedding anniversary!  Surrounded by close family and friends they held a formal ceremony in their living room to renew their vows.  It was a very beautiful and touching event and I did my best to record the ceremony for the family and friends who were unable to attend.  You can click here to download the video.  The video is encoded in Xvid MPEG4 format.  If you’re running Windows, and it does not want to play, download and install the K-Lite Codec Pack which will add the necessary video decoder needed to play this video.

Following the ceremony, Bob was asked to open up a surprise package that had just arrived in the mail a couple days earlier.  Inside were dozens of copies of his new book (click here to preview and purchase your own copy) which was assembled by close friends of his who are part of an Internet based writers group (Word Catalyst Magazine) which Bob is a member of.

I of course recorded video of the opening of the package the books were delivered in as well as his initial reactions to the book.  You can download and view that video by clicking here.

Unfortunately there was little opportunity to capture the author himself reading from his new publication as there were some hyperactive grandchildren making a lot of distracting noise.  But don’t you worry!  I will be keeping on Bob to record a few readings from his book for his biggest fans to view.

I’ve been looking around on the web trying to find a high quality copy of this song and it’s very difficult.  What I did find was a copy of the song on Youtube.  You’d be surprised how often the most rare of songs end up on Youtube; it’s perfect for looking up those difficult to find trance and techno songs nobody listens to (according to eminem, and from the looks of the “view count”, he’s right).  So I just wanted to share the song I heard and liked so much.  Bare in mind that the audio quality is a little sub-par, and it’s recommended that you wear headphones or have some decent bass in your audio setup.  Enjoy!

1) Go click Applications > Accessories > Passwords and Encryption keys
2) The should be entries there listing an array of keyring password.
3) Right click on them and select change password
4) Enter the old password if you have one then leave the new password blank. (A warning message should appear)

I’ve not done this personally (I haven’t had to) but if I’m guessing correctly, the “warning message” mentioned above in step 4 is likely the same warning message pictured below, asking if you are sure you want to use “Unsafe Storage”.  You can read more about what this means below.

—————-[Begin old post]—————-

I would have made the title of this post “How to remove the Keyring password manager in Ubuntu Linux” but that’s kinda long…  Anyway, you might be wondering what the keyring password manager is.  It is a built in feature of Ubuntu (specifically, a package called “Seahorse“) that remembers passwords for things like FTP account logins, Evolution Email accounts, your wireless network authentication passwords, etc., and locks them all behind a kind of Master Password of sorts.  So for example, lets pretend that the password for your wireless network was 64 characters long and was just a bunch of random numbers and letters that you’d only be able to remember if you were some kind of freak savant mathematician.  The keyring password manager would remember this for you, but will only allow the system to access and use that long password after you grant it access to the keyring.

As nice and handy as this might sound to security buffs, it’s struck me as a minor inconvenience.  For starts, if I were to configure Ubuntu to automatically login to my account after I turn the computer on, I would then also be asked to type in my keyring password so it would connect to my wireless network.  This becomes a bigger problem if, for instance, I were to connect to my computer remotely and had to reset it for some reason, like applying a recent kernel update.  The snag there would be that after restarting, my computer would boot up, but since I’m not physically sitting in front of it, it would sit there waiting for me to enter a keyring password before it would reconnect to my wireless network, and I’d have to go home or ask someone else to type in the password for me.

So what I’ve always wanted to have happen is this:

• I start or restart the computer by remote (such as through SSH or VNC).
• After booting it automatically logs into my account and connects to my wireless network without asking for any passwords along the way so I can VNC right back into the system with no further trouble.

I’ve finally learned how to do this, and it’s stupid easy to do.

There is of course a few security drawbacks about doing this.  For starts, if any person were to gain physical access to my machine they’d be able to connect to my wireless network without needing to enter a password. Then again, if someone I don’t trust has somehow gained physical access to my machine I might as well go ahead and consider it to be compromised.

Now, if the PC were in an office with a bunch of random co-workers always around, I’d be a lot more concerned.  If that were the case, I’d have that puppy locked down with a power on password, disable booting from the CD-ROM/Ethernet/USB in the BIOS, perhaps have a GRUB password and be working from an encrypted HD with the required /boot partition on a USB key, and of course auto-login would be disabled so I would be required to enter anywhere from 2 to 3 different passwords just to login to the system.  But this thing is in my house behind two large dogs and a dead-bolt locked door, functioning as a server that requires a password for me to access it by via SSH or VNC anyway.  So for this particular PC, I see little harm in opting out of using this security feature.

So here’s how you get rid of the keyring manager.  Please note: This will erase saved passwords you have so be sure you know or remember them before you make your computer forget them!

1. Open up your Home Folder by clicking Places>Home Folder
2. Press CTRL-H (or click View>Show Hidden Files)
3. Find a folder called .gnome2 (it has a period at the beginning of the name) and open it by double clicking on it
4. Inside of the .gnome2 folder, there is another folder called keyrings.  Open it up.
5. Delete any files you find within the keyrings folder
6. Restart the computer

After you restart and login (if you’re automatically logging in) you’ll probably be asked to enter your wireless networks WPA/WEP encryption key (because we made it forget).  After you type that password in, the keyring manager will appear to let you know that it would like to handle the storage of that password and lock it away with a new keyring.  The box looks like this:

Instead of typing in a new password, leave both boxes completely empty and click Create.

You’ll then be asked if you know what the hell you’re doing:

Go ahead and click Use Unsafe Storage.

WARNING: Doing this creates a new file in your ~/.gnome2/keyrings/ folder called default.keyring and it will now house passwords IN CLEAR TEXT and not in an encrypted form.  So it is imperative that you are certain no untrustworthy persons can access your user account (either physically or by remote) or they will be able to easily open and read this file and obtain many passwords (for things such as FTP accounts, SSH, e-mail accounts, etc).  Proceed with caution.

From here on all keyring-stored passwords you enter will not safeguarded behind a master password or encryption.  Whether or not you want to do this is entirely up to you.  I personally have had enough of the keyring manager and consider it kind of annoying.  But as I said before, you may have certain environmental factors that make having a master password over the rest of your passwords a good idea.  Keep in mind that the keyring password manager has absolutely nothing to do with your administrative/root privilages password that has to be entered any time you want to apply updates, or add/remove software.  You will still have to type your account password in for these actions, and that is something I am quite comfortable with. I’m just happy I don’t have to have to ask my girlfriend to type in a keyring password every time I want to restart the computer while I’m away from home.

The song below is called In This Twilight.  It was the last song played at every concert of the tour (so long as there was time for an encore, and there often was).  It is one of several very well made fan-mix videos, and you can find more listed here.

Here is one more of my favorites entitled 28 Ghost IV.  The name itself means nothing (it was simply track #28 out of 36 instrumentals released last year on an four-part album called Ghosts I-IV).  No lyrics.  Just beautiful music.  Enjoy!

I can’t wait to see the HD fan-mixes in a few months!

Bob Church, father of my girlfriend Kristin, has published a new book!  Actually… his friends did it for him as a surprise.  You see, Bob has been a member of a little writers group on the Internet for a few years.  His writings have inspired and captivated many fellow authors.  But soon after the picture on the cover of the book was taken in the summer of last year, Bob was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Near the end of 2008, Bob and his wife Louise decided to move back from Moberly, Missouri to Topeka where their two daughters, their son and two grand-daughters live so that they could more easily spend his last days together as a family, despite their inability to sell the house they left behind in order to make the big move.  Chemotherapy sessions were already underway for two months when this happened and the move took a dreadful toll on Bob’s health.  Visits to the emergency room became frequent.  Seeing Bob awake and in a good mood was  rare.  And everyone was very worried.  Then, roughly a month or two after moving to Topeka, he decided to end his chemo after his doctors concluded it was doing him more harm than good.

Since that time his health and energy have seemed to very gradually increase.  We’ve spent several evenings together as a family watching the entire HBO series The Soporanos, one episode after another.  We’ve also continued this little tradition with another HBO series called Deadwood, which (all profanity and vulgarity aside) echos a lot of the kind of writing and dialoge styles Bob most appreciates. And just yesterday, Bob decided to whip out a laptop and get his ass on the Internet for the first time in nearly 3 months!  So for those of you out there who know Bob but live far away, you’ll be quite pleased to learn that his spirits have been the best I’ve ever seen in a very long time and it is a breath of fresh air.

Bob’s very own copy of this book will be in the mail and shipping to him very soon.  It is slated to make an appearence in about a week and I’ve been asked to video his opening the package when it arrives so his friends who cannot travel up can see his reaction.  Perhaps if I twist his arm a little, he’ll read us some of his writing, too.

The book is available for purchase from blurb.com by visiting this address.  Prices start at $13.95 for the softcover, $30.95 hardcover and weighs in at a whopping 400 pages.  You can even preview the first 15 pages of the book online before purchasing.  So go check it out!  Buy a copy!

Nine Inch Nails released a surprise (belated) Christmas gift for their fans yesterday: 405 GB of unedited concert footage, filmed with 4 to 7 HD video cameras between three seperate shows.

Victoria
Portland
Sacramento

This is not your typical download to say the least.  It will probably take me weeks to download just one of those.

There is currently an open-source project being headed up at http://thisoneisonus.org/ which originally formed together to create a full length DVD using video that was filmed by fans at the concerts.  Now we have all of this HD video to toss into that mix.  So if you can’t wait to download all of the video above, you can be rest assured that there will eventually be a professionally edited mix of all the video into one much smaller download.

So one of the cool things I was asked to do for someone a couple of months ago was show them how to convert an AVI video into a playable DVD that they could give to a friend.  I had originally suggested VSO ConvertXtoDVD program, which I had a lot of good luck with in the past.  But I wanted to do the same thing in Linux and I found a program that I think does a better job.  It’s called DeVeDe, and you Windows users out there will be happy to know that there is a Windows version of this software available for download.  But for us Ubuntu Linux users there’s an easier method used to install it on your computer.

To install DeVeDe in Ubuntu Linux, click on the Applications menu at the top, then the Add/Remove Programs at the bottom of the menu.  Once the application search tool is loaded, do a simple search for “Devede” and you’ll find it in no time.  Simply check it off,  click the apply button and you’re in business!

How To Use DeVeDe To Convert Video Into DVD

The first thing that will appear when you load DeVeDe is a little window asking you what kind of conversion you are wanting to do.

For this tutorial we’re going to use the default option of “Video DVD” and click OK.

Next we’re presented with this interface.

The box that says “Titles” already contains one object called “Title 1″ and to the right we see the Files that are currently contained within that Title (none for the moment).  The word “Title 1″ is what will currently appear on the DVD menu, so you’ll probably want to change that later by clicking on the properties button below the Titles box.  For now, you want to click the Add button below the Files box so you can add an avi (or other video format) to your new DVD Title.  When you click add, you’re presented with this:

You’ll want to click on the bar I have highlighted in green above to open a file browser and select the video of your choice.  Also, if you live in America you will want to make sure the video format in the above box is set to NTSC.   Once you have a video selected, the OK button at the bottom will become clickable and you’ll be taken back to the previous interface with the Titles and Files boxes…

Above you can see that I have one video in the files box, which is essentially a container for “Title 1″ to the right.  I could add more videos to the files box for that title if I wanted to create a collection of videos that would play back to back after selecting “Title 1″ from the menu of the DVD after it’s burnt.  I could also create new titles to act as containers for other videos, which would present multiple items in the DVD menu.  But in this case, we’re just wanting to burn a movie and be done with it.

Notice that the current Disc Usage in the above picture shows that the video I selected is currently estimated to consume about 50% of the DVD, at a video stream bitrate of 2001 Kbits/sec.  We’d like this data rate to be increased so better video quality will be retained after the conversion, as well as to make use of the rest of the otherwise unused DVD space.  This can be done by clicking on the Adjust Disc Usage button I have highlighted above.  This will automatically adjust the data bitrate of all the videos that are about to be converted.  It’s also a handy for reducing the bitrate for videos in case you’re trying to force 2 or more videos to fit together onto one disc, so long as you’re willing to compromise video quality in the process.

Also notice the destination media size selected just to the left of the disc usage percentage.  Single-layered DVD’s (4.7 GB) are selected as the default destination media size by DeVeDe.  If you intend to burn the output iso file to double-layered 8.5 GB disc, click on that box that says 4.7 GB DVD and out will pop a drop menu that will offer “8.5 GB” as a size option.

Take the time to click the “Preview Menu” button so you can see what it will look like.  If you click the Menu Option button, you’ll get this window:

This will allow you to customize the menu’s appearance.  There aren’t any fancy effects or animated menu options available with DeVeDe, but for most people DeVeDe does more than enough.  Remember to rename the “Title 1″ in the Titles/Files window so it will reflect the content you are about to convert.

Once you are satisfied with your video selection and the main menu of your disc, you can click the Forward button.  Up will pop this box that simply asks you what you want the output iso file to be named:

Your Home Folder (zeke in the above example) is selected as the default destination for your output.  You can change this to whatever you want.  In the end, you’ll end up with an movie.iso (or whatever you named it) file that will need to be burnt to a DVD.  To do this, all you have to do is right-click on the file and select “Open with CD/DVD Creator” or “Open with Brasero” or even “Open with Gnomebaker”.  I’m sure there are others, but all three of these burning utilities will get the job done.

It is recommended that you use DVD-R over any other blank media (such as DVD+R) for maximum compatibility with stand-alone DVD players.  Not all DVD players are capable of playing home made DVD’s, but most are.  And if yours is one of those that won’t play it… perhaps it’s time to spend some money on yourself and get a new one.  There are some nice cheap Philips DVD players that are additionally capable of playing Divx/Xvid avi files, as well as mp3′s and jpeg slide shows for about $40 at wal-mart.

Otherwise, happy burning!

Guess what.  I still have that exact teddy bear.  It was a gift from my dad… I believe for my first birthday (I’ll have to double-check that factoid).  Here it is sitting on top of my PC:

Now… there were of course a lot of other neat pictures of me as a child in that collection.  Like this striking photo that I didn’t know anything about until a few weeks ago:

It was taken by a local newspaper photographer… I can’t remember exactly why at the moment but it was just after I was born in the good old days of 1982.  My mother still has the original news paper clipping with caption that used this photo… I’ll have to get a copy of that sometime.

Then there are the cute action shots:

Reading Garfield

Fixing The TV

Jammin’

Breaking Child Labor Laws (And Makin’ Bank!)

There are too many pictures to show.  No, I don’t feel like posting the one of me sitting on Santa’s lap while wearing a boy scout uniform (I’m not making this up either).  As funny looking as it is, I can’t help but look at it and think to myself, “Wow, look at all that brainwashing in action!”  Bottom line is, this was an AWESOME Christmas gift!  Thanks mom!

I’m not going to go into the technical differences.  All I want to say is that I liked this interface because it felt like a good blend of the interface between what you find in a default Windows install (a task bar on the bottom used for switching between open applications/show the desktop/house the trashcan).  It also had an upper task bar that reminds me of the classic Mac OS (upper panel with application/places/system menus/clock/sound controls, both panels are completely customizable).  But there’s another interface called KDE, which is more like Windows than GNOME or Mac OS.  Here’s a screenshot I just took from my laptop after installing the kubuntu-desktop package (Click to see full size):

It’s something very nice to play with and try out if you have some free time.  (EDIT:  Don’t try this on a production machine.  Do it on a machine that you can tinker with in case something goes wrong). If you’re runing GNOME right now and you’d like to try this out, do this following:

1.  Click Applications>Accessories>Terminal

2.  Type:

• sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

After it’s finished, log off.

When the login screen appears, click on the “Options” button in the lower left and then click “Change Session”.  Here you’ll be shown a list of the different “Front End” (Interfaces, such as KDE, GNOME and others) that you can use with Ubuntu.  KDE should be in the list.  Select it, and then click OK.

Proceed to login with your username and password.  It will then ask you if you want to make KDE the default, or if you want to just use it once for now, and revert back to GNOME at the next login.

If you’ve never used KDE on your PC before, it will take some time to load all the way to the desktop on the very first run.  I believe it sets up all the menus and shortcuts for all the installed software.  If you log off and log back into KDE, all the logins (and the  splash screen) will load a lot faster

I’m experimenting with this interface just for fun and to become acquainted with it.  I’m not going to criticize it, although there are tiny things about it that I don’t like.  That happens to everybody who tries a new GUI.  But other than the minor things, I’m liking it a LOT.

Being as I work 12 hour shifts there and have a lot of free time on my hands… I thought I’d make a little modification:

So I shot a quick reply back from my phone: “What’s the pay range?”

Most everybody I’ve ever gotten a job offer from or who have posted job listings state in clear print what the job is going to pay, usually like this: “Pay rate is $11 ~ $14 an hour, based upon experience,” or, “Pay is exactly $17 an hour, 8 hours a day for 3 days only.”  So you can at least get a ball park idea of what you will get if you pursue the offer.

His reply back to me: “Can you give me a call or do you have a number I can reach you at.”

This set a red flag off. For one,  his original email to me said he found my website… apparently he overlooked the phone number that’s plastered all over it (if not the entire site). Two: He didn’t answer my question.  What’s wrong with putting a pay rate down in written reply? From where I’m siting there is a lot wrong with not making this clear from the beginning. An email (printed text in general) can be honored of as part of the contract agreement.  It could even be used against them in court of they didn’t hold to a promise made or high-balled their offer to entice me.  But an unrecorded phone call? Who knows what kind of BS they’d throw at me. I could just imagine it: “Yes the pay will probably be X dollars. But it’s not even up to me so we’ll have to wait and see.  We need you to submit your background check/W-9 paperwork first.”

After giving it some thought I decided to not call, but reply: “I appreciate your interest, but must respectfully decline. I am quite busy with other contracts as well as my own freelance work and feel that there would be a potential conflict of interest down the road. I am also suspicious about ********’s policy of not quoting pay ranges in writing.”

I’m pretty sure it was the right thing to do.  There is a good chance that the job they wanted to offer me came,  not with hourly based compensation, but salary based compensation.  Salary (in my observations) seems to end up being unfair to most people.  You often end up working more than you had expected to work and get little if any extra thanks for your efforts.  And if you complain about it management will likely tell you its your problem to deal with, not theirs (which wouldn’t be their reply if you were paid by the hour).

It would be different if this job involved fixing PCs in an office environment, where usage policies were enforced and virus frequency reduced.  But salary pay to fix an unlimited number of home PCs that are who knows how many miles away and infected with who knows what?  I doubt I’d end up getting a fair break.  I’m glad I turned this offer down.

You can read a little more about Cisco’s incompetent and/or deliberately obstructive behavior here.

I’ll just keep this very short.  Internet Explorer has once again dropped the ball in the realm of Internet security and it’s something that’s been present for over 48 hours already.  You can read about the problem via BBC’s website by clicking here.

The article states in bold letters at the top, “Security experts recommend switching to a rival browser until the problem is fixed.”  Need a rival web browser?  Download Firefox at www.firefox.com.  It’s free, faster and much more secure than Internet Explorer ever will be.  Seriously.  Why is it more secure, you ask?  Because it’s open-source, just like Linux.  But again… don’t wanna turn this into a “Microsoft sucks” bashing post.

Also, on the side, I should mention that I’ve see a LOT of Windows systems get hit with viruses in the last 3 weeks, a good chunk of which have come in from emails on Facebook.  Which isn’t to say that Facebook is bad.  It just doesn’t have much of an effective spam filter or virus scanner built into it.  You would think that after a few people have recieved the same spam from their friend whose computer was compromised, they’d start filtering messages with the same links, the same stupid subject line, and all the rest that comes along with basic social engineering-based viruses.  It’s what Yahoo and Google do.  So to you Facebook/Myspace users out there (and everyone else who doesn’t uses these services), be VERY cautious about clicking on links to websites you’ve never visited to before in email sent to you by a friend.  They may not have actually sent you something.  In fact, it’s possible their account password was phished, changed, and their account used as a lauch pad for spreading the same infection to other people (like you).  So be careful.

I recently rebuilt my PC with all new hardware (new motherboard, CPU, RAM, eventually a big terabyte hard drive, and most importantly a NICE video card).  As a result I’ve been spending more time gaming on my PC.  I more or less quit gaming about 3 years ago after I started using Ubuntu more instead of Windows.  No, I didn’t really hold back on gaming because of Ubuntu (I still had Windows installed and could easily fire it up if I felt like playing), but I stopped because my hardware really sucked.  Not only that but there weren’t really many games on the market that seemed to be worth a damn, so I didn’t have much incentive to spend money on hardware.  Holding off for a few extra years helped me concentrate more on learning a new operating system in the meantime and saved me a lot of money on new hardware.

In short, I think I’ve put about $300 into all the hardware and it’s more than capable of playing Crysis as well as future games based upon the id Tech 5 engine.  The card I purchased is a nVidia 9600GSO with 756MB of video RAM (yes, the card came with that silly door hanger pictured above).  The amount of RAM alone is 3 times more than any card I’ve ever had in the past so I knew I would likely be very satisfied with its capabilities, and I have been VERY satisfied.  The CPU is an AMD X2 (Dual Core) 5600 (2.9 Ghz per core).  After doing some tests (video conversion in particular) the system appears to be just a hair over 4 times faster than my old setup.  I’d write more… but I got some gaming to do.

Not so long ago I wrote a post called Make your dumb cell phone smart with J2ME which showed most of you (depending on the type of phone you have) how to download Java Mobile applications and install them on your phone.  One of the applications I gave a thumbs-up to was called Movamail, which allowed you to check and compose your IMAP/SMTP/POP3 email from your cell phone.  About 3 days ago I noticed that no matter how many times I tried, Movamail would fail to connect to my email address.  I later discovered that their entire website is now dead.  So it would appear that Movamail forgot to pay their electricity bill.

I did some looking around for a replacement app and I’ve found one that I feel very comfortable with and have confidence it will not go under in the same manner that Movamail did.  It’s called Flurrymail.

I found the Flurrymail applications on www.getjar.com, where you’ll find a ton of J2ME mobile applications (most of them are junk but there are a few gems out there).  Flurrymail had received a lot of positive comments, most of which said it was easy to use.  So if you’d like to download it click here.

Now when I first set this thing up it asked me to signup with Flurrymail’s website.  No big deal.  But I will tell you that it’s much easier to do all of this at their website, www.flurrymail.com, instead of through your cell phone.  After I filled out their little signup form, I had trouble logging in.  I was getting a “Either your username or password is incorrect” error messages, and even after I confirmed my username and password with their “I forgot my password” link, it still wouldn’t let me it.  I was about to post a complaint on their support forums, but while waiting for activation from a moderator, I tried to sign in to my new account again a few hours later and it worked.  All I had to do at that point was add my email account to my new Flurry account.  The cool thing about this is that you can add multiple email accounts to your flurry mail so that it’s possible to check multiple in-boxes from your cell phone at the same time.  Not just IMAP/SMTP/POP3 accounts, but also many mainstream web-based email providers like Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, .mac and AOL.

Setting up my email from their website proved to be easier than I had anticipated.  All I had to do to configure my IMAP email was enter my server name, username and password and it automatically setup the SMTP settings for sending mail.  It literally took about 30 seconds.  This app rocks the socks off Movamail in speed and reliability.  Movamail would often take a few connection reattempts in order for it to work, but Flurry is very quick and works every time I check my Inbox.  Win!

Glancing back at this person basking in the glow of their costly purchase you reply, “Mine does something like that.”  While reaching for your own Ubuntu equipped laptop, they proceed to tap the Tab key while holding the Windows button, thumbing through their 3D Rolodex of running apps in an attempt to grab your attention again.  “You can switch between them like this,” they add, while verging upon self-induced nerdgasm.  In your most professional tone you reply, “Neat.”

Revealing your own laptop, a device that could easily be 4 years old by now, you set it down and turn it on with a semi-placid smile.  They appear to be conflicted with child-like curiosity and clinical anxiety as the boot-splash screen appears.  To sooth the mild nervousness while waiting, they go back to fiddling with their side-bar and grin again while changing the themed appearance of the analog clock.  But once your cost free, open-source Linux OS is up and running, you start to watch their eyes, waiting for that split second their glued stare falters back to your laptop, and that’s when they see this on your screen:

You didn’t even give them any advanced warning.  For a second they’re in a state of denial, but as you start to drag your mouse around to freely rotate that cube, they can’t help but let their hands fall away from their respective peripherals.  Drool almost precipitates as you maximize and minimize windows.  Some vanish with a Star Trek teleporter effect; others in a ball of flames and smoke.  They feel that perhaps they’ve been fooled by a dreadful hoax, like those poor saps who partook in the Mojave experiments.  And then…

So, what’s this about watching Youtube?

Right.  Sorry, got carried away there.  Bloggers call that “filler”.  Without it the post would be about as exciting as milk without the the stawberry syrup…. Moving along:

If you’ve got Compiz running right now try this:

• Hold down the Windows Key (called the SuperButton in Ubuntu)
• Roll the scroll wheel up on your mouse

This will cause you to zoom into wherever your mouse is located. To zoom out, just hold that Super Button down again, and scroll down instead of up.

Now you’re might be thinking, “I see what you’re getting at.  You’re going to show us how to zoom in on our Youtube videos so we can watch them full screen.  Big fat deal!”

Well, no it’s not a big deal.  But something you’ll probably discover and be annoyed by when you try this with Youtube is the fact that the mouse cursor stays on the screen, often right over the middle of the video you’re trying to watch.  So, here’s the other half of this trick:

• After zooming in, press SuperButton + L

This will unlock the cursor from the zoom, allowing you to move it off screen and away from the video you want to watch.  When you’re finished, you just hit Super Button + L again to lock it again, and then Super + Downscroll to zoom back out to normal.

I prefer to do this with Youtube (and other flash-based videos) because often times using their built in “Full-screen” buttons causes the frame rate to get jerky (Windows suffers from the same problem).  But when you zoom into the videos with Compiz, they often playback more smoothly.  Anyway, enjoy your Youtube.

P.S.

If you haven’t heard, Steam is officially coming to Linux!  Hence the epicness of the Black Mesa teaser.

While googling for a solution to recovery the comment I accidentally tossed into my WordPress database purgatory, I found a cool spam management plugin called Akismet.  You can download it from www.akismet.com.  This little thing has a lot of really cool features, including pie-charts and line-graphs showing statistics about the daily spam and “ham” (real comments) submitted to your blog.  And for once, I almost never ever see 40+ spam messages a day waiting to be trashed.  Not to mention the fact that you can very easily recover comments you didn’t mean to mark as spam in the first place.  If you’re a user of WordPress, I highly recommend this little plugin.  The only slight drawback is that you have to sign up for a free account with WordPress.com, but that only takes a few minutes and I’d bet that most of you out there have already done this.  Blog on!

Virtualbox:

Open a terminal window and paste in the following text:

• sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

After about 30 seconds or so it should be finished and your Virtualbox should be back to normal. Whew!

VMware Server:

Open a terminal window and paste in the following text:

• sudo vmware-config.pl -default

Yesterday while I was browsing Ubuntu Forums I came across a thread posted by someone named EssexJames.  He recounts a recent experience with showing his 10 year old son Ubuntu:

I enjoyed setting up Ubuntu 8.10 with my 10 year old son. We learned about Ubuntu together and I was pleased that he was really engaged and interested in the whole process of installation and the philosophy of Ubuntu.

We looked at the various packages that can be installed – to see if there was anything that looked really interesting. We got some graphics and video applications. All excellent.

Then we hit a snag. “Daddy, what’s Brainf**k?” he said. (This is the name of one of the packages).

Can I ask the community that develops Ubuntu and those that compile distributions, to please bear in mind that computers are family devices.

This forum’s terms and conditions state “…you warrant that you will not post any messages that are obscene, vulgar…”. It’s a great shame that the development community don’t apply similar rules.

He continues in a follow up post:

If the objective of Ubuntu and other Linux distributions is to provide an operating system which people can use to replace Microsoft software, then it will need to tidy up the use of profanities in the code and application names. Families with children will see these things, decide it’s not for them, pay the devil and go to Microsoft instead.

I’ll happily f and blind with the best of them, but don’t expect profanities to appear on-screen when installing operating system software.

I wanted my son to become enthused by Linux and to learn about it himself. I install filters for web browsing for him – but I didn’t think I’d need one for an operating system and its components.

There have been several good replies to these two posts that I wanted share with you.  Indeed, it would be rather awkward for any parent who is showing their child a free OS and then discover within the package manager (which organizes over 26,000 different individual programs/dependencies and actually requires you to type in an administrator password before it can even be looked at) an uttering of profanity.  Here’s what some members of the Ubuntu community had to say in response to this:

From “steveneddy”:

I suggest that you explain it to him politely and professionally and if it bothers you, don’t mention it to him again.

All children are going to learn these words eventually.

This is a good time to wear the Daddy hat and sit down with the little tyke and have a man to man talk.

I also raised my two daughters, now 20 and 23, and have my two grandchildren here living with me.

We just have to decide that when that day arrives, and it will, that we are man enough to explain things like this to them in an adult manner so that they understand why it is that way and why some of us choose not to use those types of words around our children.

Don’t think worse of the whole community just because of the lapse in judgment of one developer.

From “starcannon”:

It is best to preview any material that you wish to expose your children to. It would be wrong to drop software simply because someone does not like the name. I would say that if freedom of speech and all of its implications are not something your prepared to deal with, perhaps some other OS is appropriate for your situation; I think Ubuntu is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I have 2 daughters, one is 11 and the other is 12, I do not see that they have been damaged at all by the occasional exposure to a slang word in the package manager, they hear much worse on the school bus; and then there is popular media such as television, movies, and music, all 3 of which have much more offensive words and ideas than a satirically named and obscure [programming] language.

There is plenty of xxx software for MS Windows, arguably much more than for any other OS, the difference is that when one searches for software for windows they may use the google search engine, when one searches for software for Ubuntu they use the Synaptic search engine; ironic isn’t it that if one runs across the “F” word on google while looking for windows software, that is acceptable; if however, one runs across it on the Synaptic search engine it is not acceptable. Ultimately I don’t care what a package is named, I care what the package does, indeed I never even knew about BF until you posted about it, /shrug, and again, it is your responsibility as a parent to do the parenting, not Microsoft’s, not Canonical’s, not Linux’s, not GNU’s, not Apple’s. Accept responsibility or don’t either way I certainly hope that package availability is never based on psuedo puritan ideals that have not even come close to actually existing in over 125 years.

“Grant A”, complimenting starcannon adds:

You are 100% correct. People say they are getting their kids ready for the real world, and THIS is the result. V-Chips, and their kin have made parents very lazy and thus devaluing the social standards the U.S. once held. Life has cuss words, believe it or not your children WILL hear these words. It is up to YOU to teach your child what it means. And no matter what you do, you can train him, you can stick a shock collar on him (please don’t) he WILL still say cuss words, or think them. I know a preacher who is a profane cusser. I am very offended that you want to step upon my rights to FREE speech as declared in over 200 countries, I do not tolerate fascism.

I am aware that this post may have sounded derogatory, but it wasn’t. Sometimes the blunt truth is the best truth. I’m not going to sugar coat everything I say on the Internet. I tried to keep this as civil as possible and avoided all the flaming I wanted to do. Please teach your children yourself, who else will? The Internet is not your baby sitter. If you don’t want your kid to see cuss words, you might as well have left him illiterate.

I agree with all of what was said in the above responses.  It ultimately falls on the parent to do the parenting of their child.  Grant A’s mentioning of the V-Chip, I think, is a good example of how some parents try to use technology to avoid awkward conversations with their child about things like sex, violence, drugs and “adult” language.  That being said, it should be emphasized that the Internet itself is a far more profane place than a simple package manager ever could be. Slightly off topic, I think to call any computer which is attached to the Internet a “family device” is a contradiction, no matter what operating system you choose to use.

EssexJames has marked his thread as “Solved” since posting it yesterday, but he’s not posted any kind of followup to indicate exactly what the replies have solved for him.  So I sent him a private message asking him what he’s decided and he says, although little can be quickly done to enable a profanity filter in Synaptic (and possibly won’t be implemented quickly because of resistance/misunderstandings), he and his son will continue to use Ubuntu.  He added that he will also start keeping a closer eye on him and his computer activities.  Good job, dad!

What a concert.  I think the last time I saw Nine Inch Nails live was in Denver, Colorado back in 2001.  No no, that’s too far back; I saw them again in KC a few years later.  As always they put on a spectacular show, this time around featuring the uber-cool “stealth screens” (which you can see in the above photo suspended over the band).  WIRED magazine did an article not so long ago about the ingenious use of these screens, which the band would interact with while on stage.  There’s a video included with the article (here’s a YouTube hosted copy of that same video, in case the one on Wired’s website doesn’t work) that explains all the cool tricks they could do with this new setup so check it out. You might be interested to learn that the computer responsible for generating the visuals on stage (aka, “the brain”) runs Linux.

The opening act was an little known “experimental rock” band called Boris (although I thought the big orange sign behind them on stage said “Bong”).

Their music was… pretty damn annoying.  If your favorite NIN CD of all time was Fixed (which itself was an experimental remix album based on Broken, an album Trent Reznor originally wrote because he was intentionally trying to destroy his career because he quickly grew to hate the legal/business sides of the music industry, and somehow ended up winning a Grammy for it) you might have been able to get into Boris.  For the most part Kristin and I were just praying for them to finish up and get the hell off the stage.  I know others in the arena got into them, and that’s perfectly fine.  I actually could have given one of their songs a thumb up if it hadn’t lasted for 15+ minutes, ending with their goofy drummer standing on top of his trap set with his arms in the air like a D-bag before walking off stage without the rest of the band.   And they kept playing the same drone for another 5 minutes after that.  Rather than ridicule them as being horrible… I decided that their performance was simply funny.  The drummer reminded me of Animal the Muppet.

Every time one of the band members yelled, “Whoooooooo!” into the microphone, I told Kristin to take a drink of her beer.  That helped keep her smiling because otherwise it was like watching someone wince at the sound of children scratching a chalkboard with lawn rakes.  I give them an A for effort.

After they were finished, and the rest of the fans arrived after the opening act, the show got off without a hitch and went on pretty flawlessly (so far as I could tell).  You can read other reviews by fans who also attended this show by visiting the tour journal at the ETS forums, found here.  There’s also a TON of videos from various shows on Youtube that you can look up and watch if you’ve got the time to spare.  I’ve even uploaded a few to my Facebook profile.

There is one song (The Greater Good) that is rather dark and creepy… a lot of whispered lyrics.  My girlfriend, being mostly unfamiliar with NIN, had trouble making out what he was saying.  The lyrics were, “Breath us in…. slowly…. slowly.”  She thought he was saying, “I breath my skin…. smelly…. smelly.”  HILARIOUS!  Every time she repeated what she thought the words were I about fell over from laughter.

One my favorite parts of the show was during the song Survivalism, which is off of the Year Zero album.  Year Zero was a concept album which Trent wrote shortly after the re-election of George Bush in 2004.  The premise behind the album was essentially what an album from about 15 years or so in the future might sound like if things in the government continued its streak of corruption.  It had a heavy George Orwell/1984-ish theme about it (warrentless wiretapping, facism/totalitarianism, excessive censorship of information,  etc.)  It was quite fun to see the backdrop for this song being “security cameras” aimed at the fans while the song played.  I especially liked the little touch in the lower right screen:

Overall I was very pleased with the show and would have felt it still worth the money if the opening act had not played.  One last little note mentioned by Trent during the show:  “For those of you who don’t know, you can download our latest album for free from our website.  And you can download every other album that’s not free from everybody else’s website.”

Download “The Slip” from www.nin.com for free

Bob is a skilled writer of tall tales, short stories and beautiful poems.  I was honored and saddened to have helped him post his very last update to his blog yesterday, announcing that he has no further intentions of adding anything further to his collection of over 320+ writings that have accumulated there since 2006.  Even with the absence of fresh material he continues to gain new fans and inspire fellow poets who hope to one day write with the same kind of colorful essence and flow he’s demonstrated.

The decision to end chemotherapy came yesterday, partially from the doctors who have been working with Bob, and partially from Bob himself.  The cold truth of the matter is that these treatments are wretched in their induction of unbearable sickness, and the doctors feel at this point that continuing treatment of this kind would only do more harm than good.  They both feel that these final days should be spent with him in as best condition he can possibly be instead of sickened to the core and unable to visit with family and friends.  Regular secondary medications have kept the physical pain and anxiety he’s endured suppressed to a more tolerable level.  Unfortunately the medication he takes does little to suppress the same symptoms endured by all of us around him, and things are quite depressing right now.

So the plan is to make the best of things and try hard to not let our emotions rob what little time is left.  We’re planing on watching Wall-E today, a film I love so much that I watched it 4 times in the theaters when it was first released.  Being bed bound in the living room, one of the best things we can do with him is watch movies as a family, and a few other unique titles are down the line.  I’ll write more some other time about a movie Bob and I first had a very excited discussion about when we met for the very first time in person at an Olive Garden in Columbia, Missouri.  And I’m going to host it on my server for others to download without hassle as a dedication to him.  Speaking of Columbia, Kristin and I will be going there tomorrow night to see Nine Inch Nails in concert in an arena that is across the street from the VA hospital Bob’s chemotherapy treatments started at earlier this year…

Enjoy!

1. Customize the appearance of Ubuntu (wallpaper, theme, fonts, dockbars, etc.)
2. Run Update Manager.
3. Install Flash, Java, Windows Media Codecs and MS fonts with just 4 clicks!
4. Install Compiz Fusion Advanced Settings Manager with one more click.
5. Install WINE with one more click and use it to run Windows based software.
6. Reveal Archive Manager in the Accessories menu and use it to create zip archives.
7. Install the libdvdcss2 decoder so you can watch DVD’s.
8. Install Skype from a *.deb file.
9. Install Google Earth using Terminal.
10. Install Virtualbox.

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y upgrade && sudo apt-get install -y ubuntu-restricted-extras compizconfig-settings-manager wine libqt4-core libqt4-gui && sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/intrepid.list --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y --force-yes install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y libdvdcss2 && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade && wget http://download.skype.com/linux/skype-debian_2.0.0.72-1_i386.deb && sudo dpkg -i skype-debian_2.0.0.72-1_i386.deb && wget http://dl.google.com/earth/client/GE4/release_4_2/GoogleEarthLinux.bin && sh GoogleEarthLinux.bin && wget http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/2.0.4/virtualbox-2.0_2.0.4-38406_Ubuntu_intrepid_i386.deb && sudo dpkg -i virtualbox-2.0_2.0.4-38406_Ubuntu_intrepid_i386.deb* && sudo adduser $USER vboxusers && echo “none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=46,devmode=666 0 0? | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab

NOTE: A couple of the files that are downloaded using the above commands are intended for 32-bit/i386 processors.  If you are running the 64-bit version of Ubuntu, read the very last section of this post to see what you need to do differently.

You’re probably looking at that huge command thinking, “What the hell is THAT?!”  At first glance, it’s very difficult to see each individual command, much less know what every command does.  So I’m going to break it down one step at a time.

Now, as cool as it might seem to copy and paste one long command like this into a terminal window to accomplish all of these tasks in less time, it has its pitfalls.  For one, it’s easy to accidentally not copy everything you intend to paste.   In addition to this, the entire series of commands usually take longer than the sudo authorization timeout.  What that means is, after about 5 minutes or so, another sudo command will be invoked and because it’s been a few minutes since you entered your password for the first sudo, it will ask you for it again.  This defeats the purpose of trying to find a way to automate all of these things.

Fortunately, there’s a more reliable way to do this.  And it’s called Scripting.  More on that later.  Right now, I want to break these commands down piece by piece so you can see each one and understand what they do.  The commands we’re going to learn about are:

• sudo (Used to gain root privileges in the Terminal)
• apt-get (Used to check for updates, install and remove software)
• && (Used to chain-link commands together into strings)
• wget (Used to download files from the Internet from the Terminal)
• dpkg (Used to open and install *.deb packages)
• echo (Used to reflect input out to a to-be-specified destination)
• The | pipe symbol (routes output from a command into another command)
• tee (accepts text input and can be used to append text files)

The Mega Command — In Baby Steps

Of course one of the first things we need to do is open a Terminal window by clicking Applications>Accessories>Terminal.

Step 2 in our list of 10 things to do says “Run Update Manager.”  This is done in the terminal window with the following command:

sudo apt-get update

The very first part of the command you see is the word sudo.  As discussed in my Linux Terminal For Beginners blog, this command is what gives the user root-level privileges in a terminal window and it requires the administrator password to be entered in order for it to work.  Root access is required for installing software, applying system updates and modifying system configuration files that you normally don’t have permission to edit (among other things).  An easy way to remember sudo is to think “Super User DO.”

Following sudo is the command apt-get with the update option added.  The apt-get program is used to install, remove, upgrade and even reinstall software packages in Ubuntu.  In this case we’re telling apt-get to check the distribution repositories to see what updates are available for your system, and that’s it.  Technically this is called resynchronizing your software source indexes.

After this we have:

&&

The two ampersands characters (&&) act sort of like a chain link which tells the terminal, “Once the  command preceding && is finished with whatever it’s doing, proceed to execute whatever follows && as long as there were no errors.”  By using multiple &&’s, you can daisy-chain multiple commands back to back in a long string.  So now you know what all those &&’s up there are all about.

Following && is:

sudo apt-get -y upgrade

This tells Ubuntu to review the list of available updates that were just acquired by the index re-sync, download and install them.  The -y option automatically answers “Yes” to the “Do you want to continue” prompt that apt-get presents when you are about to install or remove software.  This command is followed by another &&.

Next up we have Steps 3, 4 and 5 in our list:

sudo apt-get install -y ubuntu-restricted-extras compizconfig-settings-manager wine libqt4-core libqt4-gui

This command installs the Ubuntu Restricted Extra’s package (which contains Flash, Java, Win32 Video Codecs, MS Fonts and a couple of other little bells and whistles), Compiz Configuration Settings Manager and WINE.   I also added in the libqt4-core and libqt4-gui packages because the Skype installation later down the line depends on them… so I figured we should take care of them now.

While the Ubuntu Restricted Extras are installing, you will have to answer “OK” and “Yes” to the following two screens by using the Tab-Key and Enter Key on your keyboard:

If you happen to know of a way to automate these answers from the command line please let me know!

Step 7: We then come to adding the Medibuntu repositories so we can install the 3rd party libdvdcss2 DVD codec package.  The commands needed for installing libdvdcss2 (and what each one does) are outlined in my original 10 Things To Do After You Install Ubuntu Linux.  You basically did three copy & paste steps entirely within the terminal window.  All I had to do for this little challenge was simply insert &&’s in between these three steps to make one long chain:

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/intrepid.list --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y --force-yes medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2 && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

And that’s pretty much it.  For some reason I had to add a –force-yes after the -y in order to make it answer Yes for you.

Step 8: Next up is Skype.  Installing Skype via the terminal consists of using the following two commands chained together with an &&:

wget http://download.skype.com/linux/skype-debian_2.0.0.72-1_i386.deb && sudo dpkg -i skype-debian_2.0.0.72-1_i386.deb

At the beginning is the wget command, followed by a http address.  wget (if I’m not mistaken) simply stands for Web Get, and it is used for downloading files off of the Internet from the command line.  In this case, it’s downloading the skype-debian_2.0.0.72-1_i386.deb installer file.  Normally you would save a file like this to your PC and then double-click on it to start the GUI based installer.  But we want to install this package from the command line.  We do this using the dpkg -i command, followed by the file name of the deb file we just downloaded.  And that’s that.

Step 9: Next up is Google Earth.

wget http://dl.google.com/earth/client/GE4/release_4_2/GoogleEarthLinux.bin && sh GoogleEarthLinux.bin

We use wget again to download a binary installer file, which is then executed by the sh command interpreter (sh GoogleEarthLinux.bin).  This will launch the GUI based installer, which unfortunately requires you to click the Install button and then Close the program out for the rest of the string to continue.

Step 10: Finally, we come down to installing Virtualbox.  This takes three commands:  Downloading the deb file with wget, using dpkg -i to install it, and then using the echo, | pipe and tee commands to append a line of text to the bottom of your fstab file (which grants Virtualbox access to your USB ports).  This is done with the following:

wget http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/2.0.4/virtualbox-2.0_2.0.4-38406_Ubuntu_intrepid_i386.deb && sudo dpkg -i virtualbox-2.0_2.0.4-38406_Ubuntu_intrepid_i386.deb* && sudo adduser $USER vboxusers && echo “none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=46,devmode=666 0 0″ | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab

Here we can see wget being used to download a deb file, followed by the dpkg -i command being used to install it.  (You will be asked to press the Enter key to select “OK” when a dialog box appears notifying you about Virtualbox creating the vboxusers group).

What we see after that is the echo command.  And I’d like to go into a little detail about this very last bit because it’s very cool.

echo does just what it sounds like.  It echoes (bounces back/reflects) the input we give it.  If you were to type echo “the cat in the hat” in a terminal window, you would see the terminal print back the cat in the hat because you didn’t send it anywhere but to the terminal itself.  What we want to do is echo some text to another command that can append our /etc/fstab text file, and in this case, that command is tee.  The syntax we’re using is:

• echo “some text” | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab

So how do we get our echoed text to go to tee instead of back to our terminal window?  Right after the “some text” part, we see a | pipe symbol.  Here’s a picture of what it looks like on your keyboard:

Pipe takes the output that echo spits out and pushes it out to the tee command.  The -a after tee stands for append, and it will insert whatever echo sends it into the end of our /etc/fstab file.

Now, let’s take all of this and make a script.

Doing The Above With A Script

A script is nothing more than a text file that contains a list of commands to be executed one after another.  So lets start by creating a text file.  You can either:

• Click Applications>Accessories>Text Editor
• In Terminal, type gedit and then press Enter.

Once our text editor is open, you’ll want to paste in this line of text at the very top:

• #!/bin/bash

Bash stands for GNU Bourne-Again SHell, and is the default command interpreter used by your Terminal in Ubuntu.  While it’s not necessary to include this at the begining (because Bash is the default), it is good practice, as there are other command interpreters out there that may not interpret your script the same way Bash does.  This will force whatever version of Linux you are using to use Bash to run the script.

Following this, we can start by pasting in our commands, separating them line by line.  I’ve already taken the above commands and put them into a script that you can use.  You can download it by clicking here, or from the Terminal type:

• wget http://www.davestechsupport.com/blog/downloads/megascript.sh

To view or edit this script in your text editor, type:

• gedit megascript.sh

You’ll notice that in the script there are no instances of sudo present.  That’s because we will be running the script itself with sudo, which in turn gives everything within the script root privileges.  So now you won’t have to type your admin password more than once.  Now that we have our script, we need to run it.  We need to give our script permission to be executed.  To do this, type:

• chmod +x megascript.sh

And to run the script, we type:

• sudo ./megascript.sh

As it was in the above steps with Java and Google Earth, you will have to be present at the computer to click “OK”, “Yes” and “Install” to keep things moving.  I’ll update this blog if anyone out there knows of a way to automatically send these answers to these programs so that the script is 100% automatic and not depend on user participation for it to finish.

Other Neat Things You Can Try

You could optionally add these three lines of text to the end of the above script:

• echo “The Megascript is finished and your system will restart in 10 seconds!  Press CTRL-C to cancel the reboot.”
• sleep 10;
• init 6

The first line echos the quoted text to the terminal window notifying you that the script has completed (well, all of the important stuff has finished, the script is still running).  The next command sleep 10 causes the script to pause for 10 seconds.  You could hit CTRL-C here if you wanted to interrupt the process.  Finally, the command init 6 logs you out of your session and reboots the entire machine, which is a good idea because you likely just finished installing a Kernel update, and the changes you made to your fstab file require a reboot in order for it to take effect.

I got creative with the sleep and echo commands, using them in one-second intervals to have a count-down be displayed in the terminal.  I also added a beep to each second with the echo -e ‘\a’ command.

Additionally, you could insert comments after each command in your script using double-pound symbols.  For example, the commands in your script could look like this:

• apt-get update ## This checks for the latest updates
• apt-get -y upgrade ## This installed all available updates

Doing this allows you to leave notes that describe the purpose of individual commands in case you forget.

Special Instructions for 64-bit Processors

There are two deb files downloaded in the steps above that are intended for 32-processors.  The Skype deb file and the Virtualbox deb file. Skype does not have a 64-bit specific version of their software available for download but there is a chance it will run.  However, there are ways to install the 32-bit version on a 64-bit version of Ubuntu.  Based upon this guide, I’ve modified the code (and the script).  However, I don’t have a 64-bit processor and have not tested this to make sure it works.

Virtualbox does have a 64-bit version of their software available, and it can be downloaded from this address.  You don’t need to do this though because I’ve already modified the code for this alternate download and installation.

Here’s the new code:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y upgrade && sudo apt-get install -y ubuntu-restricted-extras compizconfig-settings-manager wine libqt4-core libqt4-gui && wget -N boundlesssupremacy.com/Cappy/getlibs/getlibs-all.deb; sudo dpkg -i getlibs-all.deb; sudo getlibs -p bluez-alsa && sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/intrepid.list --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y --force-yes install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y libdvdcss2 skype && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade && wget http://dl.google.com/earth/client/GE4/release_4_2/GoogleEarthLinux.bin && sh GoogleEarthLinux.bin && wget http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/2.0.4/virtualbox-2.0_2.0.4-38406_Ubuntu_intrepid_amd64.deb && sudo dpkg -i virtualbox-2.0_2.0.4-38406_Ubuntu_intrepid_amd64.deb* && sudo adduser $USER vboxusers && echo "none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=46,devmode=666 0 0" | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab

And here is an 64-bit version of my script: megascript64bit.sh

• wget http://www.davestechsupport.com/blog/downloads/megascript64bit.sh

Use the same method to give it execute rights and then run it by typing sudo ./megascript64bit.sh

I give you the product of about 45 minutes worth of work.  Very little time was needed to lay down the tracks, and a lot more time was spent playing around with knobs and browsing through the large bank of instruments I have at my disposal to find just the right sound.  I’m excited to write more.

So, please enjoy this free download of a very short piece of music I wrote.

Just wait for the very end. 

Hey, Ubuntu freaks!  I’m going to have another Terminal tutorial coming out on Wednesday with an introduction to creating bash scripts.  Sit tight!

This puppy is slim, loud and does 6.1 surround sound.  I’m sure there are others out there which can handle more channels than that, but it was more than what I was looking for and has held up for the last few years with no problems, even with the confined space it sits in.

And I wasn’t about to plug it into a handful of tiny 2 inch wide satellite speakers.  If you’re serious about music and the quality of the audio coming out of your PC, you don’t just spend 99 dollars on a set of tiny speakers plus one crappy sub-woofer.  I have a pair of headphones that are worth more than that.  I even spent more than that just for the center channel speaker.  Really, do yourself a favor and invest in quality audio.  It’s money well spent and your ears will thank you later (so long as you don’t deafen yourself).  Listening to surround sound music is a very satisfying; you almost have to smoke a cigarette afterwards.

In an unrelated note… During the last 5 years or so, I’ve made upgrades to my computer for only one of two reasons:  Either Nine Inch Nails released a new album that contained audio tracks my hardware couldn’t handle, or id Software released Doom III.  And it’s been a while since Doom III came out so you can imagine how old my PCs hardware is.  The case isn’t that old, but the guts inside are.  Still, it doesn’t feel old.  It doesn’t feel like a slow computer… probably because I stopped using Windows and did away with all of that hard drive fragmentation, spyware, antivirus nonsense.  It sounds like a joke but you really do have to put more money into a computer in order to stave off the stress that comes with having to deal with all that crap, and all you end up with is delaying the inevitable system meltdown.  But I digress.

My computer is my primary entertainment device, and even though it’s attached to a 35″ TV with an S-Video cable, I don’t think that counts as “watching TV”.  I hate watching TV.

Okay, this post is going no where, which means I probably woke up too early.  But before I end this, I can think of one other thing that rocks besides surround sound:

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) was officially released yesterday.  Boosh!! Often with each new release comes a spike in the number of people who are trying it out for the very first time.  So to help the new users out, I’ve written this guide to introduce you to this popular Linux-based operating system and some of the cool software you can install on it.

Here’s what we’re going to go over:

1. Customize the appearance of Ubuntu (wallpaper, theme, fonts, dockbars, etc.)
2. Run Update Manager.
3. Install Flash, Java, Windows Media Codecs and MS fonts with just 4 clicks!
4. Install Compiz Fusion Advanced Settings Manager with one more click.
5. Install WINE with one more click and use it to run Windows based software.
6. Reveal Archive Manager in the Accessories menu and use it to create zip archives.
7. Install the libdvdcss2 decoder so you can watch DVD’s.
8. Install Skype from a *.deb file.
9. Install Google Earth using Terminal.
10. Install Virtualbox.

1.) Customize Your Ubuntu Desktop
Difficultly: Very Easy

The first thing anybody should want to do with their own computer is make it look the way they want it to look.  Who wants an OS that forces its users to conform to one particular layout over another?  With Ubuntu, you have a lot of flexibility.  You even have the option to use a different desktop environment.  GNOME is the default environment for Ubuntu and it’s what we will see used in the example screenshots in this guide. KDE (which looks very similar to Windows XP/Vista/7) is the default environment for Kubuntu;  xfce is the default for the lightweight Xubuntu.  There are others, such as Fluxbox and IceWM, that are geared towards being minimalistic in resource usage and makes them perfect for older, slower machines.

Below is a screenshot I took of my own desktop shortly after upgrading my computer from 8.04 to 8.10.

You may or may not like the looks of the default desktop.  I’ve always though this default background just looked like a bunch of coffee stains… You can modify the interface in so many different ways the possibilities are endless.  Check out this small gallery of Ubuntu screenshots I put together to see some examples of what you can do to your own Ubuntu desktop.

The best way to explain how to customize your desktop is to show you a video (albeit, from an older version of Ubuntu) that demonstrates how you can modify the following things:

• Changing Wallpapers
• Changing Screensavers
• Panel Properties (Location/Auto-hide/Background)
• Changing/Adding Desktop Themes
• Adding/Moving Launcher Shortcuts to your Panel/Desktop
• Modifying Menu Layouts
• Adding Applets to your Panels
• Modifying your About Me user info
• Customizing your Login screen layouts/themes
• Using Multiple Workspaces

EDIT: Since the original posting of this blog, Alan Pope has removed the video below from Google and I have not yet found a comparable replacement. A very good guide about how to do all of the above can be found here.

There are several little applets that widgets that can be added to your panel, but you can also make changes to the panel itself such as its orientation (Bottom/Top/Left/Right edge of the screen), its background (solid color or transparent), its width and a couple other minor things like auto-hide.  Be careful, it’s easy to accidentally delete a panel.  If that happens, right-click on a remaining panel and click “New Panel” to create a new one. Newly created panels will be completely empty and you will have to right-click on them and select “Add to panel” in order to add things back like a task switcher.

The video makes use of http://art.gnome.org/ during it’s demonstration of changing wallpapers and themes, but another noteworthy site you should check for such things is http://www.gnome-look.org/. My personal favorite website for wallpapers is InterfaceLift Wallpapers.  You should also check this site out for wallpapers, too.

You might have noticed in some screenshots of Ubuntu that some people have added a dockbar (similar to the one used in Mac OS X) to their Ubuntu installation.  Below is a picture of one in action.

Check out this guide I’ve written about adding Cairo-Dock to your Ubuntu install as it is one of the best available for Ubuntu (in my opinion).

2.) Run Update Manager
Difficultly: Very Easy

Typically, a fresh Ubuntu install is actually a tad bit older than the current status of the distribution (this happens with all operating systems, including Windows). So often times after a fresh install, your system might be needed a few updates to be applied. Running Update manager manually after installing can bring your system up to date with the latest security and software patches.  While Update Manager does check for updates automatically, it often doesn’t do it immediately after you login for the first time.  So after a fresh install it is a good idea to force it to check for updates.  To do this:

• Click System>Administration>Update Manager
• Click on the “Check” button to check for updates

If there are updates available, you simply click “Install” to install them.  It will ask you to enter your administrative password when you do this.  This is the password you created for the “first” user during installation. Piece of cake.

*Note: If you’re having hardware issues (e.g., 3D video acceleration not working, wireless adapter not in use, etc.) after installing all available updates, you should check in System>Administration>Hardware Drivers to see if there are any proprietary drivers that need to be enabled.  You simply check the appropriate boxes off for the driver needed, and they will be installed for you.

3.) Install Flash, Java and Extra Video Codecs in just four clicks!
Difficultly: Very Easy

In order to get the best multimedia experience out of our computer, we need to install a few programs and plugins.  Most of you out there are familiar with Flash, Java and multimedia file formats like Divx, Xvid, MP3, ASF, Apple Quicktime, etc. Installing decoders to open these types of files has been made simple by bundling them all together into one package.  And installing it is very easy.  To get started, do the following:

• Click Applications>Add/Remove (now called Ubuntu Software Center).   A new window will appear (see below.)
• Change the “Show:” drop menu in the upper right corner to “All Available Applications” (In Ubuntu Software Center, click View>All Applications)
  
• Search for the word “restricted”

• Once the search returns its results, check off the box next to “Ubuntu Restricted Extras”
• Sit tight. Don’t click the Apply Changes button just yet.  We’re going to check off a few more things

Frequently Asked Question: “What does it mean by restricted extras?”

Answer: The word “restricted” in this context is used to describe these types of multimedia plugins and decoders because most of them are closed-source and proprietary.  Hence, you are restricted from modifying their source code.

4.) Install Compiz Fusion Advanced Settings Manager
Difficultly: Very Easy

Compiz Fusion (the program responsible for the dazzling eye-candy special effects on Ubuntu) is included by default, but its advanced control panel is not. Need of this advanced control panel comes up if you are a power user who wants to use the 3D window management features to the MAX, which means turning your desktop into a rotating cube of multiple workspaces, among other nerdy things. You can also greatly customize your special effect animations and window behaviors using this control panel. So let install it!

• After you’ve checked off Ubuntu Restricted Extras in the above step, do another search for the word “compiz”

• Check off “Advanced Desktop Effects Settings” (shown above)
• Sit tight, and don’t click apply just yet.  There’s more we’re going to search for and check off.

Once the control panel applet is installed, it can be found in System>Preferences>Advanced Desktop Effects Settings.

*Notice: You will want to make sure you have Compiz enabled in System>Preferences>Appearence>Visual Effects before using the above control panel you’ve installed.  Otherwise changes you make with it will not be seen.

5.) Install WINE for running Windows-based software in Ubuntu
Difficultly: Very Easy

WINE is a program that acts as a sort of emulator for Windows programs to run on top of.  Instead of needing to use Windows for running that favorite application or game, you can run the program right in Ubuntu with the help of WINE.  The only catch is that not all Windows program run on WINE yet.  So you should search the WINE applications database to see if a program you’re wanting to use works with WINE.  Below is a screenshot of Half-Life 2 running in Ubuntu, thanks to WINE!

To install WINE:

• In the Add/Remove Applications applet (should still be open from the previous step), search for “wine” and then check off the box next to WINE in the results window.
• Finally, click Apply in the lower right corner to install WINE, as well as the other programs you’ve already checked off in Add/Remove.

Now if you want to run a piece of Windows based software, you simply double-click on the executable (like setup.exe) and it should run just as it would in Windows (provided the WINE Application Database lists that the program you are trying to use and says it works with WINE).  Shortcuts created by software installers are typically added to the Applications>Wine>Programs menu.  You can read more about using WINE here.

NOTE: If double-clicking on an EXE causes the Archive Manager to open instead of WINE, it’s because your default file-association needs to be changed.  To fix this, right-click on an EXE file then click Properties.  A new window will pop up with a few tabs along the top, one of which says “Open With”.  Click this tab, then select WINE from the list and click Close.  From now on, EXE’s will always open with WINE. Also, if you get a message that complains to you about an “execute bit”, it means the EXE file needs to be given permission to run as a program.  To change permissions, right-click on the file, click Properties, then the Permissions tab and check the box off near the bottom that says “Allow to be executed as a program”.

6.) Enable (reveal) your Archive Manager and create zip files
Difficultly: Very Easy

Some of you might be wondering: How can I create a zip file? The answer is with the included Archive Manager. This tool (for some weird reason) isn’t shown in the Applications>Accessories menu by default. But we can reveal it very easily by doing the following:

• Click System>Preferences>Main Menu
• Click on the Accessories menu in the left panel, then check off the Archive Manager (see below). Then click Close.

That it! Now when you open your accessories menu, you’ll be presented with a new shortcut to your Archive Manager. You can use this utility to create zip files. Keep in mind that it can also create other types of archives, such as tar.gz, and a few others (not RAR, at least not without an additional package installed to provide this option to you).  To explore the possibilities, click Applications>Accessories>Archive Manager.  Once open, click New in the upper left corner and take a look at the bottom of the window where you can specify archive file type, password locking and spliting.  After you create a new archive, you simply drag and drop files into the archive manager and it will add them to the new archive.

One other simple way to create an archive is to select all the files you want to put into a zip file (by CTRL-Clicking or SHIFT-Clicking them) or even by clicking on a folder containing the files you want.  Then once they’re selected, right-click on any one of these files or folders and a drop menu will appear.  Just click “Create Archive” and a wizard will appear asking you where you want to save the new file and what format you’d like it to be in.

7.) Install the libdvdcss2 decoder for DVD playback
Difficultly: Medium

Click Applications>Accessories>Terminal.  This will open a new terminal window.  (If you would like to know more about Terminal, check out my Terminal for Beginners guide). Copy the following command and paste it into the Terminal window and press Enter:

sudo wget --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/$(lsb_release -cs).list && sudo apt-get --quiet update && sudo apt-get --yes --quiet --allow-unauthenticated install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get --quiet update

This will add the Medibuntu repositories to your 3rd party software sources (in other words, this tells Update manager to check one additional server when it looks for system updates).  Next we’ll install the libdvdcss2 decoder for playing commercial DVD’s as well as an additional set of video/audio decoders that weren’t included with the “restricted” extras from the steps above.  To do this, paste this command into Terminal:

• sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2 w32codecs
  

..And press the Enter key.  It will ask you to type your password (which will not produce any characters on screen while you’re typing, so don’t expect to see *****’s show up) and say “y” for yes to confirm your command.  Once installed, you should be able to watch a DVD simply by inserting a disc into the computer.

NOTE: You may have heard a rumor that installing the libdvdcss2 decoder is illegal. If you live in the US and someone tells you this, refer them to 17 U.S.C. Sec. 1201(f). The binaries to crack the DVD video stream encryption are not illegal if you have a license to the content.  In other words, if you have purchased your own legal/legit DVD, then that means you have license to watch it.  After all, the content must be decrypted in order to make the content usable.  However, the law is not the same in all countries so you should check your local country laws.

8.) Install Skype
Difficultly: Very Easy

Skype is a very popular Voice Over IP application that allows you to make cheap phone calls from your computer.  They ask you for 10 bucks for your first set of calls and send special offers your way from time to time.  I’ve been paying 30 bucks a year for the last 3 years to make unlimited calls to anywhere in the United States, so that’s a pretty good deal if you ask me.  It also features webcam capabilities and conference calling.

Installing Skype is easy.  All you have to do is download the deb file from Skype.com.  Here is a direct link:

http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-linux-ubuntu

Once the deb file is finished downloading, double-click on it.  An installer window will appear with a “Install Package” button in the upper right corner of the window.  Click that button, and when it’s finished, you’ll find Skype in Applications>Internet.

9.) Install Google Earth
Difficultly: Medium

First thing you have to do is download Google Earth. To do that, visit this link: http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html

After you agree to the license, you’ll be taken to a new page where an automatic download will begin and ask you what you want to do with a file called GoogleEarthLinux.bin. Simply save this file to your Desktop for now.

Next we’ll need to open up a terminal window. To open Terminal:

• Click Applications>Accessories>Terminal

When you first open terminal you’ll be given a prompt where you can enter commands. You also will be sitting in your Home Folder. If you type in the letters “ls” (That’s ls, short for the word “list”, in lowercase), you’ll be shown the files and folders in your home folder. Notice that one of them is called “Desktop”. We need to change our directory so we can run our GoogleEarthLinux.bin file. To do this:

• Type “cd Desktop” (no quotes) and hit enter.

In the world of Linux, everything is case-sensitive, so be sure to Capitalize the word “Desktop” in the above command. This command will bring you to your Desktop folder. If you type “ls” again and hit enter, you’ll see the files which reside on your desktop right now. Listed somewhere should be the bin file you just downloaded.

Now for the magic!

• In terminal, type: “sh GoogleEarthLinux.bin” (no quotes) and hit enter.

After you press enter, the following window will appear, and begin to install Google Earth for you:

Shortly after the above screen appears, you’ll get another one that says the program successfully installed. You’ll then be given the option to run Google Earth right away. If you don’t want to, you can just click Quit, and start it later by going to Applications>Internet>Google Earth.

NOTE: Google Earth runs best on PCs that are equipped with 3D graphics acceleration cards/chipsets.  Some video cards require you to have their proprietary drivers enabled in order for them to be utilized by the system.  You can check to see if you need to enable any such drivers by clicking System>Administration>Hardware Drivers.

10.) Install Virtualbox
Difficultly: Medium

Virtualbox is a popular application used on many different operating systems that allows you to create Virtual Machines, upon which you can install any number of operating system.  So, for instance, you could be running Windows XP inside of a window on top of Ubuntu.  This is good for users who are trying to migrate from Windows to Ubuntu but are not quite ready to take the big leap or are being held back by one or two applications that won’t run in Ubuntu.

So here’s what you need to do:

1. Download the Virtualbox deb file for your particular processor architecture (i386 or AMD64) from here.
2. Double-click on the the deb file you downloaded to start the installer.  Click “Install Package” to install Virtualbox.
3. Once that is finished, you will need to add yourself to the vboxusers group.  To do this quickly, open up a Terminal window (Applications>Accessories>Terminal).  Once Terminal is open, paste in the exact text and press the enter key:  sudo adduser $USER vboxusers
4. Reboot the PC.

Another cool thing you can do is add scripts to your Nautilus file browser that will give you new abilities when you right-click on something.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy your new Ubuntu Linux operating system!

The VirtualBox kernel driver is not accessible to the current user. Make sure that the user has write permissions for /dev/vboxdrv by adding them to the vboxusers groups. You willneed to logout for the change to take effect..
VBox status code: -1909 (VERR_VM_DRIVER_NOT_ACCESSIBLE).

This threw me off because, for one, I am already a member of the vboxusers group. And attempting to recompile the kernel headers using the sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup terminal command also did not work.  So I had to do a little digging around and finally found the solution, and it is EASY!

The Magic Trick

Let’s keep this short and sweet, okay?  We have four things to do:

• Copy and Paste an entry to our Software Sources list
  
• Copy and Paste a command into a terminal window
• Copy and Paste a line into our fstab file
  
• Run Update Manager

Click on System>Administration>Software Sources.  You will be asked to enter you administrator password.  Once open, click on the “Third-Party Software” tab.  You will likely see something that looks like this:

You can just ignore all of those entries that are unchecked.  What we want to do is add one to this list.  Click the Add+ button at the bottom left and then paste in the following text in the box that appears:

• deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian hardy non-free

I know some of you out there are thinking, “Hardy?  I thought we’re running Intrepid Ibex now…”  Don’t worry, it will work.  Now that you’ve added the above text, click the Add Source button. It will add a new entry to the window.  You can click the close button now.  The following message will then appear:

Click Reload.

Now, open a Terminal window by clicking Applications>Accessories>Terminal.

In here, copy and paste in the following text by using the Edit>Paste menu option in the Terminal window.

• wget -q http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/sun_vbox.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -

Be sure to include all the text above (from the wget to the minus-sign at the end) when copying.  Paste the text into Terminal and press enter (if necessary).  It may also ask you for your administrator password again.

We’re already half way finished.  Now we need to add a line of text to our fstab file.  We are doing this to reestablish Virtualbox’s access to your USB ports.  To edit the file, paste this into the terminal window you should still have open (open another one if you closed the first one).

• sudo gedit /etc/fstab

This will open a text editor.  Paste in the following text at the very bottom of the file:

• none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=46,devmode=666 0 0

You don’t need to make any other changes to the file, though if you see another line at the bottom of the fstab that looks very similar to the one you just pasted it, comment it out by inserting a couple of pound-symbols ## in front of that line, like this:

• ##none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=125,devmode=664 0 0

I suggest commenting out, as opposed to deleting it completely, so that if there is a problem after, you can just reverse the edit you made by removing the pound signs later.  You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to though.  I did it just to be tidy.  For this edit to take effect, you will need to restart the computer after saving the file.

Finally, once you are booted up and running again, run System>Administration>Update Manager.  Check for updates, apply all that are available, and you should be good to go!

If this fails, try downloading the latest copy of Virtualbox from http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads and reinstall it (although I did not have to do this as Update Manager took care of all downloading and upgrading automatically after following the above steps).

A new feature has been implimented in 8.10 that will automatically update the kernel headers whenever there are future Linux Kernel updates, so you should’t have to worry about recompiling them in the future.  However, it is possible that come Ubuntu 9.04, you may have to repeat the above steps (or something close to them) in order to fix Virtualbox again.  The alternative to this is to not upgrade Ubuntu to the latest distrobution, which is perfectly fine because 8.04 has Long Term Support (LTS) and will continue to recieve normal updates until April, 2011.

Of course, the simplest way to avoid this traffic jam is to do just that:  avoid it.  Put the upgrade off for a week until the servers aren’t under so much pressure and then use the built-in Upgrade Manager.  This is the perfect solution for the laziest of users who stopped reading this before the end of the previous sentence.  But for antsy users out there (especially us Americans who are addicted to having immediate satisfaction with everything) there is another way to go and it’s the BEST way to upgrade from here on out if you want to do it right now and avoid the traffic.  This is an esspecially useful tactic for people who have multiple computers running Ubuntu who don’t want to wait for each one to download updates, because you can now just go to each one with an upgrade CD and save yourself a lot of time.

What you’ll need:

• A blank CD
• To make sure all current updates for 8.04 have been applied (use the Update Manager to install them)
• An opportunity to walk away from your computer for a couple of hours

Once the upgrade is underway, you will want to leave it running alone and treat the PC like a Crock Pot of stew that will take a couple hours to cook, checking it on occasion but waiting till finished before sipping the flavor.

Here’s What We’re Going To Do

Very, very briefly, here’s the plan:

1. Download (from here) the Ubuntu 8.10 Alternate ISO torrent file and open it up with Transmission Bittorrent Client (included with Ubuntu 8.04 by default).
2. Use Brasero Disc Burning to burn the downloaded ISO to a blank CD.
3. Insert the CD and click “Run Upgrade” when prompted.

Piece of cake.

Downloading Ubuntu 8.10 ALT via BitTorrent

First, visit this web address:

http://releases.ubuntu.com/8.10/

From this page, scroll down until you start to see a listing of file names like this:

Note: The above screenshot shows Release Candidate copies of Ubuntu.  The official release will not contain the letters “rc” in the file name.

There are many files listed here, but the ones you need to look for are those ending in .iso.torrent.  Choose between the i386 and the amd64 versions of Ubuntu and download the appropriate torrent, selecting “Run with Transmission” when you are asked what you’d like to do with the file once it’s finished downloading. You can see the i386 Release Candidate version of 8.10 that I clicked on above in purple; odds are you will likely want the same file.  Don’t download the “desktop” iso files (not shown, but further down the list); otherwise known as the Live CD version of Ubuntu.  These ISOs do not provide the ability to upgrade, so be sure you select one of the two alternate iso.torrent’s.

When transmission loads the torrent file, it will ask you where you want to save the iso file it is about to download for you.  I would select the desktop just to keep things simple and hit OK, then Transmission will begin downloading the iso file from the swarm of other bittorrent users.

A Word About BitTorrent…

For those of you who are not familiar with BitTorrent, here a little summery of how it works:  Instead of having everybody try to download the same thing from a central server, individual users share the overhead by uploading to each other what they’ve already downloaded from others before them and vice versa (everyone is a server AND a client).  As you can see from the screenshot above, this can result in very fast download speeds because you are downloading from multiple locations simultaneously.  This animation helps illustrate how data is shared between multiple users while keeping the work decentralized.

For the purposes of this guide, it’s not very necessary go further into the technical details, but it should be said that BitTorrent performs best either with a direct Internet connection (i.e., no router between your PC and your modem) or with port-forwarding configured on your router if you have one.

Burning Your Alternate ISO File To CD

Once Transmission is finished downloading the ISO go ahead and close transmission.  You’ll now want to burn the ISO file you downloaded onto a blank CD.  Right-click on the downloaded ISO file and select Open With>Brasero Disc Burning.  A small dialog box will come up asking you for other options, but you can just click on the Burn button to get the ball rolling.  Once the CD is burnt, you’re ready to do the upgrade.

Performing The Upgrade With Your Burnt CD

Insert your freshly burnt Ubuntu Alternate CD into your PC while logged into your current Ubuntu installation.  Within a few seconds, you should see a popup that looks like this:

Click “Run Upgrade”.  You’ll then be presented another popup that asks you if you want to use the Internet to check for updates along-side the CD you just inserted.  It’s up to you, but I would select “Yes” to this question.  This way you can be sure your system will be as up-to-date as possible without the need to download everything.  Selecting “No” will still work, and work even faster, but you will still have additional (non-essential) updates that will need to be downloaded in the future.

At some point it will ask you if you want to remove obsolete packages, which you can answer “yes” to.  The computer will generate a summery of everything that is about to take place (what packages will be upgraded, how much data needs to be downloaded, etc.) then you can Start the Upgrade.

And that’s pretty much it.  So enjoy your new upgrade!

Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) Beta was just released and it is a rou