tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10856360720365466302024-03-12T19:14:56.562-07:00Awesome LinuxUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger130125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1085636072036546630.post-14838231609456890752018-10-12T16:29:00.003-07:002018-10-12T16:29:56.804-07:00Vivaldi Extensions Shortcuts<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I switched to the Vivaldi Browser about a year since Firefox 57 came out. I'm really liking it and it's got lots of great built-in features. For those who don't know, Vivaldi is an <a href="https://help.vivaldi.com/article/is-vivaldi-open-source/" target="_blank">open-source-like</a> web browser, giving you tons of features without worrying about Google watching your browser usage nor Firefox's dubious non-software related political efforts. (There is no mobile version yet, but it's coming.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here is something new I just discovered: The ability to configure Extension Keyboard Hotkey / Shortcuts within Vivaldi natively.</span><br />
<br />
<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Within the Vivaldi browser, go to: <a href="vivaldi://extensions">vivaldi://extensions</a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHsOYBW9wknGRFkvMTG_C6BGcYGkWmSL1gaUukm99urXlgqVcwF8fPobKCmG8o9rwkq_jk1AJwuG8pbGqSOdRu5p3xG3PXRIdfWtZSbQ16Jw1aTbZp8x2PWJF8rXHXAhLCBmAPr8n2xDE/s1600/Spectacle.Lh5592.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="60" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHsOYBW9wknGRFkvMTG_C6BGcYGkWmSL1gaUukm99urXlgqVcwF8fPobKCmG8o9rwkq_jk1AJwuG8pbGqSOdRu5p3xG3PXRIdfWtZSbQ16Jw1aTbZp8x2PWJF8rXHXAhLCBmAPr8n2xDE/s320/Spectacle.Lh5592.png" width="320" /></a></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You will see your list of extensions. (Vivaldi themselves do not have any extensions and instead use extensions from the Chrome Web Store, which you can choose wisely yourself.)<br /><br />Click on the three-menu bars with the Extensions text on the upper left.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFPk_50jUexSCN-QC4_kg3DpFjV_31ukRedKAEcZ3nZ1wCFyGfSy1q6ZXJ-kI4LLAXrQvEAEjRHryzPX24saK9uzby7zKyOlEM8Wjk_TnkgSQIjDq09KCpU5wWiMdFy5qg3ZMlzplej8E/s1600/Spectacle.Ti5592.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFPk_50jUexSCN-QC4_kg3DpFjV_31ukRedKAEcZ3nZ1wCFyGfSy1q6ZXJ-kI4LLAXrQvEAEjRHryzPX24saK9uzby7zKyOlEM8Wjk_TnkgSQIjDq09KCpU5wWiMdFy5qg3ZMlzplej8E/s400/Spectacle.Ti5592.png" width="385" /></a></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now you see the section for Keyboard shortcuts!</span></li>
<li><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMGwy3Jpd5EQh1Qp26ZiybgpxY_Bw9jG9nkzypQjUFAnJsMyDKS20Ok87N24DaaKBt42iW6R10ACzKNpUPs-w7RUQnYmdooo0lDibQmDFDywJi2Vi2rbf6K_juw9jQEgdrS32W8Yxk3qI/s1600/Spectacle.wZ5592.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMGwy3Jpd5EQh1Qp26ZiybgpxY_Bw9jG9nkzypQjUFAnJsMyDKS20Ok87N24DaaKBt42iW6R10ACzKNpUPs-w7RUQnYmdooo0lDibQmDFDywJi2Vi2rbf6K_juw9jQEgdrS32W8Yxk3qI/s640/Spectacle.wZ5592.png" width="198" /></span></a></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now you can configure individual shortcuts. I found this incredibly useful and love that it is built right in.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj08Hje0XsiQQyHQeHnufPUU4XREqlRzRv4wdwcfHadFTDHmMIrkMBTKzRq2VZKgAJfyZvBy944p_4PF0JluJoW-0T2GqUTq01nd2eAnrsetuRQG32jyhpQHoJAmHtqSPuAkAz5fBTG4CU/s1600/Spectacle.TT5592.png" imageanchor="1" style="outline-width: 0px !important; user-select: auto !important;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj08Hje0XsiQQyHQeHnufPUU4XREqlRzRv4wdwcfHadFTDHmMIrkMBTKzRq2VZKgAJfyZvBy944p_4PF0JluJoW-0T2GqUTq01nd2eAnrsetuRQG32jyhpQHoJAmHtqSPuAkAz5fBTG4CU/s400/Spectacle.TT5592.png" width="400" /></a></span></li>
</ol>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hope that helps anyone, because I didn't know it until now!</span></div>
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1085636072036546630.post-7548345508853762142016-08-19T14:40:00.001-07:002016-08-19T15:22:58.626-07:00Fix Misaligned ePub Cover<h2>
</h2>
Recently I had some ePub files that had misaligned tiny cover images. I wanted to correct this. Here's a really simple fix for many cases.<br />
<br />
I use Calibre as my eBook reader, and it has an option to "Edit book", which will take you to the digital book file editor.<br />
<br />
<img alt="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhaa_X5ByG53I-sFNmtx8NP3pfPgj9_ZmIbe9XgOPw1UatfcqveSoWGie4uOIlHkzSHPr3vDua_aJ5TOwi8cksYbTGio1LXp0tIRpGIh34fcYHIBIPeS2W4A9FIlRj1HKLbiHHmo0LC9Vi/s1600/edit_book_opening_window.png" class="transparent overflowingHorizontalOnly" height="412" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhaa_X5ByG53I-sFNmtx8NP3pfPgj9_ZmIbe9XgOPw1UatfcqveSoWGie4uOIlHkzSHPr3vDua_aJ5TOwi8cksYbTGio1LXp0tIRpGIh34fcYHIBIPeS2W4A9FIlRj1HKLbiHHmo0LC9Vi/s640/edit_book_opening_window.png" width="640" /><br />
<br />
Notice the panel on the left upper area, labeled File Browser. Usually the first file in this list is the Cover html page file. Also in the middle of the left column, an area labeled Images.<br />
<br />
<b>Automatically Recreating the Cover</b><br />
If you have a copy of the book cover (which is trivially easy thanks to Google), I suggest you just delete the first titlepage.html cover file (or whatever it is called), and the related image file under the image section.<br />
<br />
Then go to Menu: Tools --> Add cover.<br />
<br />
Then import the cover image, and check the option to preserve the aspect ratio.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Manually Editing the Image Alignment</b><br />
Double click to open it. You may see something similar to this:<br />
<br />
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><br />
<head><br />
<meta content="ABBYY FineReader 11" name="generator" /><br />
<link href="Court_of_all_Shamens_files/Court_of_all_Shamens.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /><br />
<br />
<title></title><br />
</head><br />
<br />
<body><br />
<p><img alt="9785567648623" src="../Images/9785567648623.jpg" /><br /><br />
</body><br />
</html> <br />
<br />
The problem here is the image is just dropped into the document without any helpful formatting to make it full-sized. With a few tweaks in the code, you can make it much more aesthetically pleasing.<br />
<br />
In the <head> section, add the <style> section:<br />
<br />
<head><br />
...<br />
<style type="text/css"><br />
@page {padding: 0pt; margin:0pt}<br />
body { text-align: center; padding:0pt; margin: 0pt; }<br />
</style><br />
...<br />
</head><br />
<br />
<br />
In the <body> section, just drop in this code snippet, but replace the src="" contents with the image file in <i>your</i> file. Example:<br />
<br />
<body><br />
<div><br />
<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" height="100%" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 316 532" width="100%" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><br />
<image height="532" width="316" xlink:href="../Images/9785567648623.jpg"></image><br />
</svg><br />
</div><br />
</body> <br />
<br />
This should center and enlarge your cover image properly.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1085636072036546630.post-59214824161813403102016-05-11T22:52:00.003-07:002016-05-11T22:52:32.919-07:00Firefox not recognizing googletalk pluginsI'm not sure if I can make this a full tutorial but this information is still useful for people.<br />
<br />
Basically I'm running an instance of Firefox from a downloaded tar.gz file from the Mozilla website.<br />
<br />
For some reason it wouldn't recognize the install system libraries for the Googletalk plugin. So simply put, I did install the downloaded RPM from Google (or the DEB file if you are using Debian). And then I copies all the library *.so files to a folder in my home folder. Specifically this folder:<br />
<br />
~/.mozilla/plugins<br />
<br />
Just sharing in it helps anyone.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1085636072036546630.post-62578176876432781312016-05-05T21:52:00.001-07:002016-05-05T22:39:52.192-07:00Calibre Author and Title SortingSo I quite like the eBook management program called Calibre. But it has a few bad defaults. It outputs titles in a weird name format saving to disk (and sometimes author names). And it sorts authors by default with last name first (even storing them as such). This is wrong.<br />
<br />
To fix the author sorting (and author name output when saving to disk):<br />
<br />
1) Start calibre<br />
1) Go to Preferences -> Advanced -> Tweaks.<br />
2) Use the search option to find: "Author sort name algorithm"<br />
3) There will be a few panels, including an area with text you can input or edit. In this area, find the line which starts with: <i>author_sort_copy_method</i>. If it doesn't exist, then skip to step 5 and just add it.<br />
<div style="-qt-block-indent: 0; -qt-user-state: 0; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
4) Here you can change the author sorting algorithm. Above this text input area is a brief description of the accepted options. But changes are you want to use the word <i><b>copy</b></i>.<br />
5) Set the line: author_sort_copy_method = 'copy'</div>
6) Click the button to "Apply changes to this tweak"<br />
7) Restart calibre. It will probably ask you to anyway.<br />
<br />
Now the work begins. I hope you don't have a lot of authors.<br />
<br />
8) Back in the main view of the program, there is a column with your authors listed by name. Right-click on an author. Choose 'Manage Authors'.<br />
9) There will be a column simply named "Authors".<br />
10) Go through the entire list and change every author to be in order you want. (You can do it bit by bit or all at once. It doesn't matter to press OK occasionally and repeat these steps.) To make an entry editable, double click it. You press enter when you are finished editing.<br />
11) As you change the values in the "Authors" column, the value names in the column labeled "Author sort" will change.<br />
<br />
Correct any of the author_sort values that are wrong in your mind.
Calibre will sort by the value in that box, so it must make sense to
you.<br />
<br />
12) When you are done press OK. Calibre will resort all of your changes. This might take a while.<br />
<br />
The authors
displayed in the tag view and in the library pane should all change.<br />
<br />
13) Repeat 8-12 until all authors are changed and all author_sort values are correct.<br />
13) Lastly, select all your books in your library.<br />
14) Press 'e' to open the bulk metadata edit dialog.<br />
15) Check the box 'automatically set author sort'. DO NOT check/change any other box.<br />
16) Press OK. Wait until done.<br />
<br />
<br />
I'm just passing these instructions along for my own notes and reference. Credit for these originally goes to Chaley: <a href="http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1104427&postcount=3">http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1104427&postcount=3</a><br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1085636072036546630.post-70512039068914089002015-08-22T01:20:00.003-07:002015-08-22T01:23:10.734-07:00SSHD and Selinux<span style="color: red;"><u><i><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">In Summary: Turn off SELinux. ALWAYS.</span></b></i></u></span><br />
<br />
Sorry for the huge text, I just spent an hour in Fedora trying to get my firewall to allow SSHD to operate. No matter what I did, it would not work. Finally I disabled the firewall completely for debugging purposes, but it still wouldn't work! The error messages were no help!<br />
<br />
Then, after raging at the machine for an hour, it dawned on me. This was a fresh install of Fedora. I hadn't disabled SELinux.<br />
<br />
I can't believe how many times SELinux has bitten me in the ass. It never seems to work for anything good, but always hinder people. I consider myself a very advanced Linux User and I find it overly cumbersome. There needs to be a less.... ogre-like system put in place by default, like Ubuntu's Apper. That never got in my way BUT EVERY FLIPPING TIME SELinux has got in my way.<br />
<br />
<div class="para">
On systems with SELinux disabled, the <code class="computeroutput">SELINUX=disabled</code> option is configured in <code class="filename">/etc/selinux/config</code>:
</div>
<pre class="screen"># This file controls the state of SELinux on the system.
# SELINUX= can take one of these three values:
# enforcing - SELinux security policy is enforced.
# permissive - SELinux prints warnings instead of enforcing.
# disabled - No SELinux policy is loaded.
SELINUX=disabled</pre>
<br />
Go do this now. You will thank yourself. I've never heard of SELinux benefitting the average user. Ever. Ever ever ever. I'm sure someone in a corporate environment has had luck though, but they have someone on retainer there to babysit this monstrousity. And I pity that person.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1085636072036546630.post-63276646002993476762015-07-04T00:30:00.000-07:002015-07-04T00:30:53.816-07:00Gnome developers once again demonstrate the bad community approachThis may be old news to some but I was just bitten by it when upgrading to Fedora 22. Some of my favorite applications (Firefox among them) upgraded to GTK3.<br />
<br />
Now GTK3 isn't supposed to be terrible. In fact I have come to seriously appreciate some of the keyboard accelerators in GTK2 File-saving and File-opening dialog windows.<br />
<br />
But apparently effeciency, ease of use, understandability of design, and generally being good are something that the Gnome developers hate. Simply put:<br />
<br />
<h2>
GTK 3.10 Drops Menu Icons and Mnemonics</h2>
This is <b>the new GTK3 default</b>, <u>unannounced</u> as far as I can tell, and <span style="color: red;"><i>not publicly discussed</i></span>. Thank you Gnome Developers. I wasn't aware Gnome is how you spell Microsoft.<br />
<br />
Okay, I'm being a bit harsh but the Gnome project has a nasty habit of taking very very little public input and being a difficult community to penetrate. I've tried to join Gnome three projects in the past, bringing some patches and code features I'd made, but it was like talking to a black-hole.<br />
<br />
This is one of the reasons I love KDE. They have a thriving vibrant community (and sure they make their mistakes but they keep fixing things, not breaking them and sipping their soy-bean lattes and pretend they are flawless).<br />
<br />
I digress.<br />
<br />
<h2>
<span style="color: red;">The Bad News Gets Worse</span></h2>
For now you can restore the missing menu icons. (But knowing Gnome I wouldn't hold out on that one lasting forever.) However...<br />
<br />
<b>No Mnemonics Either – At All</b><br />
In addition, as you can see in the above shot, mnemonics have been removed entirely. These are where eg “<u>C</u>opy”
in the menu has an underlined ‘C’, allowing you to press Alt+C to
activate it. SpaceFM allows you to customize these too. <b>Mnemonics have also been removed from dialog labels</b>,
meaning, for example, you can no longer press Alt+N in SpaceFM’s rename
dialog to put the cursor in the Name box, and you can’t click an OK
button by pressing Alt+O.<br />
Unlike the missing menu icons, it appears that mnemonics have been permanently disabled. Per the <a href="https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/3.10/GtkSettings.html#GtkSettings--gtk-enable-mnemonics">GTK 3.10 docs</a>: “gtk-enable-mnemonics has been deprecated since version 3.10 and should not be used in newly-written code. <b>This setting is ignored</b>.”<br />
<br />
<h2>
<span style="color: orange;">The Irony is Terrible</span></h2>
I guess it’s telling that the GIMP project, the original developer of
GTK (GIMP Toolkit), is sticking to GTK2, and they’ve been told <a href="https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2014/01/25/gtk-fesses-up-this-aint-for-you-qt-takes-over-the-world/">not to expect to be able to use GTK3</a> for such a robust app. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1085636072036546630.post-51333669225484319642015-06-29T20:01:00.001-07:002015-06-29T20:01:53.220-07:00Firefox add on could not be installed because it appears to be corruptJust a quick reference for those out there that encounter this problem. Today I was having problems with Firefox failing to save any pictures to my harddrive. The moment I clicked "Save as..." the screen would blink and there would be a "Failed' item under my downloads list.<br />
<br />
I tried Refreshing Firefox and also creating a couple of new Firefox profiles. But when I tried to Refresh or create a new profile, I encountered this error message:<br />
<br />
"This add on could not be installed because it appears to be corrupt."<br />
<br />
I have never seen this error before. Soon all the add-ons from Mozilla I tried to install were seemingly corrupt. More and more digging finally lead me to an unlikely problem:<br />
<br />
On my Linux machine, the /tmpfs drive (located in /run/user/1000) had completely filled up. This has also likely been the source of problems with Ktorrent not functioning properly.<br />
<br />
So to those who encounter this problem: Clear your tmpfs! I rebooted and it solved the problem temporarily.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1085636072036546630.post-72726383438789499242015-05-29T00:25:00.000-07:002015-08-21T13:08:38.788-07:00Fedora Upgrade from 21 to 22 Experience<span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Fedora 22 is without a doubt the most broken KDE has been in literal years.</b></span></span><br />
<br />
<b>Foreward</b><br />
So this is a long somewhat ranting list about problems I had with Fedora 22. I don't want readers to mistake my opinion on Fedora, Linux, and KDE in general. I <u><i><b>love</b></i></u> Linux. It makes me happy to use it, and I have trouble imagining my Linux experience without KDE. Lastly Fedora 21 has treated me very very nicely, and I'm sticking with Fedora and KDE even through this.<br />
<br />
<b>Overview</b> <br />
The breakage is to be expected somewhat, with all their huge move to KDE5 apps. But the amount of breakage across so many apps is horrible. I wouldn't let this thing out of ALPHA testing at this point, some of these bugs are very bad for users.<br />
<br />
I feel I should restate though that I really love KDE as a whole and I'm sure they will iron out most of their problems. (Though they SERIOUSLY need to give Gwenview some love. It's been neglected for years....) <br />
<br />
<b>The Good</b><br />
The <u>default color scene</u> is better, the default window decorations are better as well. They are still a little avant-garde for my tastes, but not bad.<br />
<br />
Only... it's horrible broken. So while it looks nice it <u><i>functionally fails thoroughly</i></u>. Read on.<br />
<br />
<b>The Not So Bad</b> <br />
It's been weeks, possibly months and several major bugs haven't been fixed. Also I keep finding new ones.<br />
<br />
I think my favorite non-rage inducing bug is when I had two VLC windows open. One was open, paused mid-video and minimized. I was watching another video, and somehow, when my instant messenger beeped me (Skype, which is itself its own massive shit pile when it comes to Linux sound integration), my OTHER minimized VLC window suddenly started playing again! ... What?<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>The Bad</b><br />
<u>The new version of <b>Klipper</b></u> for KDE unfortunately VERY unstable. Using it for much of anything locks up the Plasma Shell and causes a runaway memory leak. Thank God I memorized the unattended reboot command for KDE. It is also missing some
important features. One of them being Pasting as Plain Text. Two, being able to TURN IT OFF if you want. Three, USING AN ALTERNATIVE CLIPBOARD MANAGER. I'm sure some of these will be eventually
address. Another problem with the user interface is that the preview
area of the text snippets is notably smaller than the previous version.<br />
<br />
<br />
<u>KDE-Telepathy</u> popped up and would not go away. I could only hide it but not quit the program. Eventually I had to find the package name and uninstall it to stop the app from autostarting.<br />
<br />
Which is another thing, how to disable auto-loading of some services like Telepathy is not obvious.<br />
<br />
<u>Shutting down</u> occasionally my laptop takes a LOOOOONG time. Almost a full minute before it actually kicks off. Update: This appears to be have been mitigated after a recent update.<br />
<br />
<u>Wine Systemtray</u> icons aren't working properly, but I remember the KDE system tray got a big overhaul lately. Wonderful, and by that I mean totally not. (Not KDE's fault, but still annoying.)<br />
<br />
<u>Gwenview Zooming</u>: Even after all these years, those ugly artifacts with Gwenview zoom-in / zoom-out still remain. This program needs some serious love.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>The Worse</b><br />
All my KDE session data was completely lost. The dozens of Gwenview
windows I had open were gone. All my Konquorer windows and tabs were
gone. All my Kate sessions were gone. This is really something special because I had backed up my session data to file folders as well.<br />
<br />
<u>Konsole </u>lost EVERYTHING! All my konsole settings, which have worked for half a decade, failed to be imported. There was a serious bug with never removing the window frame as well. <i>Update 1</i>: <i><span style="color: lime;">Good news</span></i> is the location for the konsole settings was moved, and all that was required was moving my config files to there. Annoying but fixable. <i>Update 2</i>: The window frame bug has to do with the management themes... which isn't user error because these were the default chosen themes and default packaged themes. But if you find the right combination the problem won't appear.<br />
<br />
<u>Window Management Bugs</u>: There are several small bugs that keep popping up. The desktop slideshow wallpapers layer over each other as they change. Shading a window still leaves the window-border. <i>Update 1</i>: The window frame bug has to do with the management
themes... which isn't user error because these were the default chosen
themes and default packaged themes. But if you find the right
combination the problem won't appear.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: lime;"><i>Good news</i></span>: Turns out the problem was a bug in one of the default Application appearance themes. Under Application Style -> Window Decorations, pick something other than Plastik.<br />
<br />
<u>KDE Keyboard configurations</u> were completely fucked, no matter if I exported from a working prior version and reinstalled. <u><i><b>Nothing worked</b></i></u>. I had to manually redo every single damn thing. Also many previously working global hotkeys were missing, but I attribute that to applications themselves (probably). Days later, the Global Keyboard shortcuts area is still fairly buggy. If you try to export all your keyboard settings (and why isn't there a Select-All options? SERIOUSLY!!?), but don't save, and try to export again, the System-Settings locks up.<br />
<br />
<u>The desktop wallpapers</u> fail to clean themselves up as they slideshow through. Small annoyance but very ugly. At least it will probably be an easy fix for some developer.<br />
<br />
<u>Color schemes</u> are somehow broken for Firefox and for Konqueror, pretty badly. I cannot see many icons and I wouldn't know they were present if I hadn't already known. They are basically invisible.<br />
<br />
<u>Firefox HTML5 Video / WebM Support</u>: For whatever reason about half the videos on Firefox 38 on Fedora 22 will not work at all.<br />
<br />
<u>Shutting Down</u>: Impossible sometimes. This seems to be a KDE5 bug, but basically there are rare cases where trying to trigger a shutdown/restart sequence through the KDE menus fails completely. (Sometimes it causes Plasma to crash and sometimes not.) The only option is to invoke the system command to shutdown. There used to be a KDE specific command you could throw from commandline to do it, back in KDE3. I've never found KDE4's version (and I've looked several times), nor heard of one.<br />
<br />
<b>The Terrible</b><br />
<u>Removing features, that really weren't an improvement:</u> KDE removed some hotkeys to switch to the next desktop wallpaper. I wouldn't even call them hotkeys, but more like assisted underlined letters in mouse-menu commands. <u><i>I cannot for the love of God fathom why these were removed</i></u>. I should put in a feature request to get them restored.<br />
<br />
<u>Widgets</u>: The Motif of new KDE in Fedora (or maybe it's new KDE and not Fedora's doing?) is TOO artsy, because many times I am not aware "hey, that widget is actually a button!" or "hey, there's an expand-folder arrow there!" because the style blends too much together. Sometimes it is completely invisible. This has happened about five times now, and it's not going to get any better without some change. This is a major major design flaw. I'm not sure if it is due to my color scheme not meshing well, but that's something that should have been accounted for, since I chose one of the built-in color schemes that are standard packaged with KDE.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: lime;"><i>Good news</i></span>: You can fix this by going to system-settings -> Application Styles -> Widget styles -> Select something different than Breeze, as that is the source of the problem.<br />
<br />
<br />
<u>File-Saving / File-Picker Dialogues:</u> The name field for saving filenames in QT applications seems to be trying to help, but is in fact really hindering.<br />
<style type="text/css">
p, li { white-space: pre</style>For example, say you had a prior file like this name:
<br />
<div style="-qt-block-indent: 0; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
"kde4 shortcut keys layout all 2015-05-28 (Fedora 22 KDE 4.14.8)" and you wanted to edit the date for a new save file. You select it and start editing the numbers. QT/KDE auto-highlight everything else after your cursor, and any further keypresses will erase it. Worse, CTRL+Z does not bring it back. So it effectively destroys an <b>important</b> time saving feature of reusing text input. This is just awful and I swear to god if it is not a bug, someone needs to go back to school on interface design.</div>
<div style="-qt-block-indent: 0; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<br />
<u>Randomly missing Keystrokes</u>: The application Kate/Kwrite suddenly forgo 95% of all my keystrokes, even CTRL+V. KDE's Run command doesn't respond to the up-arrow for recalling previous entries.<br />
<br />
<h2>
<span style="color: red;">The Absolute Worst of All --> GTK3 or the Gnome Developers</span></h2>
I hate to sound like a ranting lunatic but<u> GTK3's default settings are</u>, without a doubt, the biggest <b><i>FUCK-YOU</i></b> to its users I have ever seen. They would make Microsoft proud. And no, I'm not exaggerating here.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://awesomelinux.blogspot.com/2015/07/gnome-developers-once-again-demonstrate.html" target="_blank">Long story short,</a> Mnemonics are gone and many of the shortcut keys have been removed, so not only are they hidden some won't work. Lastly key-stroke accelatores are gone permanently. I would personally slap the developer(s) who thought removing keystroke accelators was a good idea. That is fucking horrible. Horrible. Gnome developers, are you listening to us?!!!<br />
<br />
Actually I know they won't hear me. I've tried talking to the Gnome developers about four times in the past, and it is like talking to a rude concrete wall. They don't want help and they don't care about community input or external developer code. They are, and I hate to say this, the Microsoft of the Linux community<br />
<br />
Gnome and the GTK3 team are clearly invested in spreading <i><b>decelerators.</b></i> Yes, that is the correct word, and no, any Gnome devs who read this you can't deny it. You know this is true. You have slowed down the speed of use, the elegance of design, and the order of presentation. I think I'll have to use the word <i><b>decelerators</b></i> from now on when describing this problem. Perhaps <i><b>vile decelerators.</b></i> <br />
<br />
<h2>
The End</h2>
After letting that Fedora 22 installation operate on my Laptop, with various problems building and building (and never any fixes coming down the pipe), it has finally rotted until I can no longer stand it. I don't know what caused it, but this afternoon I woke it up from suspend, and the Wireless network stopped working. I rebooted it. It never came back and the widget was blank. I connected via wired input, but still nothing. I tried several commands to bring up the network, and it all died.<br />
<br />
It may be premature to judge, since there is the remote possibility this problem is hardware related. But I'm more willing to bet somehow it is this botched upgrade. I'll be reinstalling Fedora tonight, and it won't be version 22, I can tell you. Thus ends the absolute worst instance of Linux I've ever run in my 12 plus years in the genuinely wonderful world of Open-Source. To anyone reading, this isn't normal. In fact it is very very rare, and I can only think of one or two other times tops, where this has happened.<br />
<br />
Ironically, my experience was made all the more aggravating because of the coincidence of Gnome GTK3's fuckery with punching their users in the face with <i><b>decelerators</b></i>. You can endure a lot when your web-browser is okay, but when that's screwed, you really feel it.</div>
<div style="-qt-block-indent: 0; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-qt-block-indent: 0; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-qt-block-indent: 0; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1085636072036546630.post-83788696305004232042015-04-30T14:26:00.003-07:002015-04-30T14:26:33.949-07:00Firefox with Feedly rss/atom subscribingI use Feedly for consuming my RSS/ATOM feeds, and I use Firefox as my primary browser.<br />
<br />
Here is a useful article on setting up Feedly to be natively available within Firefox for subscribing to a website within the Firefox menus.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://hackerspace.lifehacker.com/add-feedly-to-firefoxs-feed-handlers-list-829563457">http://hackerspace.lifehacker.com/add-feedly-to-firefoxs-feed-handlers-list-829563457</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1085636072036546630.post-6860949277319217522015-04-29T15:33:00.003-07:002015-06-29T16:33:27.202-07:00Firefox Memory Leak Problems -- Refresh FirefoxSo I've been experiencing major memory leaks with Firefox since version 36. Using around 1.7GB of memory and very slow sometimes for certain pages. Google searches revealed that yes, there was a major leak. It was supposed to be fixed.<br />
<br />
Now in late version 37, the problem still persisted for me.<br />
<br />
(WARNING: Always backup your firefox profile before testing other version!)<br />
<br />
I tested using their version 38-beta8 candidate. Problem still was around. I tested their alpha version of 40, but still it persisted.<br />
<br />
More googling revealed a new solution I hadn't tried: <i><u><b>Refresh Firefox</b></u></i><br />
<br />
<br />
Refreshing cleans out all prior add-on settings and caches.<br />
<br />
<b>Here is how to do it.</b><br />
<div class="_xXc">
<div class="_yXc">
<ol class="_jYe">
<li class="_AXc">Click the menu button and then click help .</li>
<li class="_AXc">From the Help menu choose Troubleshooting Information. </li>
<li class="_AXc">Click the Refresh Firefox… button in the upper-right corner of the Troubleshooting Information page.</li>
<li class="_AXc">To continue, click Refresh Firefox in the confirmation window that opens.</li>
</ol>
Source taken from here:<a href="https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/refresh-firefox-reset-add-ons-and-settings">Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings | Firefox Help</a></div>
</div>
<br />
<br />
The good news is this worked. My memory usage is down a lot, and pages are loading much much faster. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1085636072036546630.post-65049563737732353932015-04-14T17:12:00.003-07:002015-04-14T17:12:44.304-07:00Getting Tox to work with Pidgin in Fedora 21Quick guide to getting the encrypted instant messenger service Tox to work with Pidgin.<br />
<br />
General information for those who need to look elsewhere when this guide isn't enough:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><b>Website</b> <a href="http://tox.dhs.org/">http://tox.dhs.org/</a><br /><b>GitHub</b> <a href="https://github.com/jin-eld/tox-prpl.git">https://github.com/jin-eld/tox-prpl.git</a><br /><b>Maintainers</b> Jin^eLD</span> </blockquote>
Most of these commands should be run through a console.<br />
<br />
1) You need to be using Pidgin 2.10.10 or later.<br />
<br />
2) Make sure your firewall has trusted ports for the Tox account settings you prefer. The default port is 33445.<br />
<br />
3) In case you haven't already, install the build tools you'll need:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">yum groupinstall "Development Tools"<br />yum install libtool autoconf automake check check-devel</span></blockquote>
4) Install the plugin build dependencies:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"># For ToxCore</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">yum install libvpx-devel opus-devel </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"># For Tox-prpl </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">yum install libpurple-devel</span></blockquote>
5) Build and install <a href="http://doc.libsodium.org/" target="_blank">libsodium</a> (a dependency for the ToxCore). Grab your release from here: <a href="http://download.libsodium.org/libsodium/releases/">http://download.libsodium.org/libsodium/releases/</a>. For this guide I used <a href="http://download.libsodium.org/libsodium/releases/libsodium-1.0.2.tar.gz" target="_blank">version 1.0.2</a>. The compile instructions are the standard ones.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">./configure</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">make<br />sudo make install</span></blockquote>
6) Grab the version 0.4.2 release of ToxCore from here: <a href="https://github.com/irungentoo/toxcore/releases">https://github.com/irungentoo/toxcore/releases</a> . This is the old API of Tox which is compatible with the current Tox plugin for Pidgin. The new API is not supported yet.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">autoreconf -i<br />./configure<br />make<br />make check <span style="font-size: xx-small;"># My network test didn't pass but that's okay. Move along.</span><br />sudo make install</span> </blockquote>
7) Grab the tox-prpl plugin from here: <a href="https://github.com/jin-eld/tox-prpl">https://github.com/jin-eld/tox-prpl</a> . <span style="color: black;">The latest version (as of posting now), includes a minor but important fix from on Feb-26.</span><br />
<br />
At this point you should quit / exit Pidgin. Make sure it's not running for this stage.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">git clone https://github.com/jin-eld/tox-prpl.git<br />cd tox-prpl<br />autoconf -i<br /><i><span style="font-size: xx-small;"># Note that here I had a library path problem,and had to manually specify where the libtoxcore.pc file was located on my system. Some users may be able to get away with just doing plain old ./configure or may need to set a different PKG_CONFIG_PATH= value.</span></i><br />./configure PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig<br />make<br />make check</span></blockquote>
<br />
Almost done! <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">mkdir ~/.purple/plugin</span></blockquote>
If you get an error saying this folder already exists, that's fine. Move along.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">cp build/.libs/libtox.so ~/.purple/plugins/</span></blockquote>
8) Start Pidgin back up.<br />
<br />
9) Next create a Tox account in Pidgin, using these options. This fix is from here: <a href="https://github.com/jin-eld/tox-prpl/issues/36#issuecomment-75612106">https://github.com/jin-eld/tox-prpl/issues/36#issuecomment-75612106</a>. See that bug-report for details on why you need this workaround.<br />
<br />
In the Pidgin Tox account creation window, enter this settings under Advanced tab:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
Server: 194.249.212.109<br />
Port: 33445<br />
Server key: 3CEE1F054081E7A011234883BC4FC39F661A55B73637A5AC293DDF1251D9432B</span></blockquote>
Done!<br />
<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1085636072036546630.post-25336639010871529962015-03-23T15:14:00.001-07:002015-03-23T15:14:38.847-07:00New Google Drive WarningNot really related to Linux but a warning to all of you who use ODT for your offline document formats (good choice). Recently Google updated their GoogleDrive, removing an incredibly important and key feature.<br />
<br />
GoogleDrive no longer honors any default document download preferences (for multiple file downloads). It will 100% default to Microsoft's DOCX format. (Which for those of us in the Open-Source world, is truly appalling and unacceptable.)<br />
<br />
If you select multiple files and try to download them, you will get DOCX, every time. The only way around this is to download each document individually, setting a preference for download format each time. That's a lot more clicking and annoyance. Ffor some of us (with hundreds of documents), this is unacceptable.<br />
<br />
Google should have defaulted to ODT or something equally open, in order to make the world start to convert to a usable, worthwhile format, instead of pandering to yet another of Microsoft's continuing bad formats.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1085636072036546630.post-514420113281141362015-03-16T22:26:00.003-07:002015-03-16T22:26:54.077-07:00Google.com no Longer useful for Image SearchesQuick note to inform any readers: It appears that Google.com is no longer useful as a proper reverse-image search tool. I found out recently that Google.com (for the USA/United States) heavily HEAVILY censors the results it shows users, even if you have SafeSearch EXPLICITY turned off. There is absolutely nothing you can do to actually get the real results using simple searches. If you specify your search, you may get better results but general ones are censored.<br />
<br />
Simple test: Search for "boobs" on google.com and google.co.uk and you will get different results. The results from the .co.uk will be more explicit.<br />
<br />
It's even more apparent if you search for anything vaguely pornographic using Bing.com. While Bing <i><b>is very well known</b></i> for censoring their search results in order to kowtow to the RIAA/MPAA and Big Media (along with buckling at the first sign from political entities like China), they apparently don't feel the need to molly coddle adults from sexuality. Search for boobs there and you really get good matches.<br />
<br />
The list of failures by Google are growing, and this is certainly one that's going to be high on the list. And it pains me to say that, because generally I like Google. (And I positively loathe Microsoft.)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1085636072036546630.post-9184486221014346772015-03-09T17:40:00.000-07:002015-03-09T17:45:28.414-07:00Google HangoutsSo it's universally acknowledged and there can be no argument that Google Hangouts, though having some nice features, is pretty bad when it comes to actual chats. I mean really bad.<br />
<br />
Want to look at a chat you had 6 months ago? Good luck finding it. (I'm not even sure that functionality is possibly any longer, which says something. Even if it is still around, the fact that it's so obscure that the incredibly tech savvy can't find it readily is an abject failure.) Try finding that old chat with the gmail app? Nah, not happening. Even when you could, it was HORRIBLY broken.<br />
<br />
As for missing chats from people, Hangouts is actually worse. You see, if you have Hangouts logged in on one of your devices (Phone or Tablet), the message will be received. But it won't TELL you that you've got the message if you log into your desktop. If you are <i><b>lucky</b></i> the message will appear as non-new (already read) message in your inbox. However there are times when it won't even show up there.<br />
<br />
So how do you know if someone sent you a message? Well, if you notice that you've received something, then you can go dig through your "Chats" section on your desktop browser with gmail.com. <br />
<br />
So yeah, Hangouts is arguably the most broken mainstream app from Google to date, which is really sad. Not to mention the bitch is a pain to log out of. You have to do five clicks and a couple of scrolls. Bad. Bad <i>bad</i> <b><i>bad</i></b>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1085636072036546630.post-58997406868803788152015-03-06T17:07:00.000-08:002015-03-06T17:07:01.648-08:00KDE longer able to handle rars / rar filesQuick one: If you are using KDE (probably on Fedora) in the last several months, and suddenly Ark has stopped being able to open/extract Rar files and gives you the message:<br />
<br />
<b>Failed to locate program lsar on disk</b><br />
<br />
This solution may work for you. You need to install the package 'unar', and <b>no that is <i>not</i> a typo</b>. It stands for Unified Archive extractor or something. It's basically a back-end or go-between for Ark to handle multiple file types, such as rar.<br />
<br />
Open up the konsole terminal, and type this:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">sudo yum install unar</span></blockquote>
I did not have to even restart KDE, but you may need to restart KDE or reboot before it takes effect.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1085636072036546630.post-74192866726608032192015-03-06T16:04:00.004-08:002015-03-06T16:04:49.116-08:00Tiny Trick to make Autopager work again for Firefox<h2>
<span style="color: yellow;"><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Overview</span></b></span></h2>
<b><i>tl;dr</i></b> When a page that should Autopagerize doesn't work, open the "Manage Setting" in Autopager. Find the specific rules for site (via searching usually, and make sure you haven't created any personal ones that overrides it). On the "General" tab on the right, uncheck the option "Enable Javascript while loading page." Then try loading your page again. This fixed my problems.<span style="color: yellow;"><b><br /></b></span><br />
<h2>
<span style="color: red;"><b>The Problem</b></span></h2>
I've been using Autopager for the better part of a decade, and it's changed the way I browse the internet.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately I have noticed on occasion that sometimes with certain pages Autopager doesn't work in Firefox like it should, especially when the pages used to Autopagerize properly. (I think that's the right word for it.) For example, Autopager doesn't work on Deviantart in Firefox. I usually attributed the failure to a Rules download problem and left it to be fixed automatically overtime. However lately I've noticed some problems have persisted for months and sometimes years.<br />
<br />
Recently I decided it was time to fix this problem.<br />
<h2>
<span style="color: orange;"><b>Diagnosis</b></span></h2>
First I tried loading the pages in Chrome, and sure enough, they Autopagerized correctly. I created a fresh copy of Firefox with no add-ons, loaded Autopager and tried again. Didn't work, so I could rule out conflicting add-ons.<br />
<br />
Googling for help produced no usable information. It's apparently not a well documented problem.<br />
<br />
From the autopager home website, I tried importing various different rules for DeviantArt, made by different people. But none of them worked<br />
<br />
I began manually inspecting the rules for one problem page (that example happened to be DeviantArt) and I could find nothing unusual or wrong. Then I noticed something I hadn't seen before, a checkbox option to "Enable Javascript while loading page." This was checked. Having nothing to lose, I disabled that option, and tried reloading the DeviantArt gallery I was currently browsing.<br />
<br />
Amazingly, it worked! Fantastically!<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #b45f06;">Cause of Problem</span></h3>
My guess is that while the front end of a page doesn't change a lot, the underlying structure, which includes Javascript, might. It's something the average user and even developer isn't going to notice right away. It can also be done overtime by third-parties so even main websites might not be aware.<br />
<br />
I also use NoScript to disable a lot of javascript execution, so this too could cause problems, but it did not in this case. My tests with the fresh profile of Firefox with no add-ons aside from Autopager specifically didn't have NoScript installed. Still, this is worth considering.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: lime;"><b>Solution</b></span><br />
So the solution when a page that should Autopagerize doesn't work, open the "Manage
Setting" in Autopager. Find the specific rules for site (via searching
usually, and make sure you haven't created any personal ones that
overrides it). On the "General" tab on the right, uncheck the option
"Enable Javascript while loading page." Then try loading the page
again.<span style="color: yellow;"><b></b></span><br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1085636072036546630.post-63698991137239692622015-01-31T00:01:00.000-08:002015-01-31T00:04:49.722-08:00Clean Up Twitter's cluttered website<br />
I don't like Twitter. But the service has its uses. So if you ever have to use the Twitter website and you don't want to view all the garbage they forcefully throw at you, such as Trending and Suggestions for things to follow, here is a really easy way to remove that worthless junk.<br />
<br />
If you are running Adblock Plus (and you probably should be), you can simply add these custom filter rules to that add-on's preference configuration:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">twitter.com##*.ProfileWTFAndTrends </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">twitter.com##*.wtf-module </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">twitter.com##div.trends-inner</span></blockquote>
And now suddenly Twitter is significantly less annoying.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1085636072036546630.post-44731881757423173532015-01-24T23:03:00.000-08:002015-01-24T23:03:07.092-08:00Baloo File Indexer / File Extraction<h2>
How to fix Baloo File Index --> Disable it!</h2>
<h3>
<span style="color: red;">Problem</span></h3>
Many desktop indexers as they are implemented in KDE unfortunately are problematic. They are slow and resource hogs, taking up gigabytes of drive just to store indexes of files you won't use. Worse yet, they habitually lag my machine. The problem really arises when I'm copying multiple gigabytes of files over USB (but usually less than 30 files total). The Baloo file extraction process starts up and lags frequently.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately there is not neat graphical way to disable the Baloo indexer. <br />
<br />
<div class="post-text" itemprop="text">
<a href="http://vhanda.in/blog/2014/04/desktop-search-configuration/">Quoting one of the Baloo authors</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
There is no explicit “Enable/Disable” button any more. We would like
to promote the use of searching and feel that Baloo should never get
in the users way. However, we are smart about it and IF you add your
HOME directory to the list of “excluded folders”, Baloo will switch
itself off since it no longer has anything to index.<br />
</blockquote>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<h3>
<a href="http://i.stack.imgur.com/0pJfl.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="enter image description here" border="0" src="http://i.stack.imgur.com/0pJfl.png" /></a><span style="color: lime;">Solution</span></h3>
Here is how to disable Baloo from operating. Edit the file <code>$HOME/.kde/share/config/baloofilerc</code>. It is enough to edit it and change the option:<br />
<br />
<pre><code>Indexing-Enabled=true
</code></pre>
<br />
to (or add if there is not such option)<br />
<pre><code> </code></pre>
<pre><code>Indexing-Enabled=false
</code></pre>
<br />
to disable baloo.<br />
<br />
I know it is way too easy but it did work for me and also for the guy who posted this simple solution <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2217434" rel="nofollow">on this page</a>.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1085636072036546630.post-62070599767531174882014-09-24T14:18:00.001-07:002015-04-06T23:12:00.704-07:00LibreOffice Color SchemeQuick blurb about changing color schemes in LibreOffice. I typically use Google Docs for most things but for everything else, it's either Vim or LibreOffice. I prefer dark color schemes, as pure white ones can make my eyes hurt. But I've never been successful with changing or adjusting LibreOffice colors for long or very thoroughly.<br />
<br />
While googling for some help, I found this solution:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Tools > Options > LibreOffice > Accessibility > Automatically detect high-contrast mode of the operating system </blockquote>
In LibreOffice help it says: “High contrast is an operating system
setting that changes the system color scheme to improve readability.” I just had to share this since it solved my problem.<br />
<br />
Be sure to also check "Use automatic font color for screen display."Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1085636072036546630.post-91551340233476059642014-07-12T13:21:00.000-07:002015-04-07T17:04:32.939-07:00Amarok FLAC Problems -- Gstreamers vs. VLC Backend<h2>
</h2>
<h2>
<span style="color: red;">Problem</span></h2>
So I really like the music player Amarok. It's overall excellent, even if I don't use most of its exotic features.<br />
<br />
The majority of my music library is in FLAC format now (and growing, since I'm converting). For at least 2 years the Gstreamers backend has performed abysmally with stop-and-go-glitches in FLAC playback. I always figured they would fix it, since this is a major format and it's a serious <i>obvious</i> glitch. But I'm done waiting. In Amarok, this meant if two FLAC files were in my playlist, there was a 50-75% chance it would have glitched playback.<br />
<br />
As far as I can tell, this is NOT an Amarok bug at all. The fault lays 100% in Gstreamers. In (many?) desktop environments, the gstreamers audio backend provides support. We need to replaces this, immediately. So here's the fix.<br />
<h2>
<span style="color: lime;">Solution</span></h2>
<br />
VLC comes to rescue with an actually functioning sound backend.<br />
<br />
1. Install the VLC backend.<br />
<br />
In Ubuntu or Debian:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<pre><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">apt-get install phonon-backend-vlc</span></pre>
</blockquote>
In Fedora:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">yum install phonon-backend-vlc</span></span></blockquote>
2. Change backend selection in Phonon: Go to <i>System Settings</i> → <i>Multimedia → Backend</i><br />
Choose VLC and click Prefer. Your screen should look like:<br />
<img alt="https://wirejungle.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/phonon-backend.png" class="decoded" src="https://wirejungle.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/phonon-backend.png" /><br />
<br />
Note: KDE used to support the Xine backend but this has since been deprecated.<br />
3. Restart KDE, or possibly restart the entire system. I'm not sure if the PulseAudio system requires a full restart.<br />
<br />
This will also solve problems with Volume Override that can occur under GStreamers, even if you have disabled it.<br />
<h2>
<span style="color: orange;">Caveat</span></h2>
Replay Gain doesn't work under VLC backend sadly.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1085636072036546630.post-48629242719467556222014-06-09T18:48:00.002-07:002016-08-19T15:03:06.628-07:00How to move files for Moon+ Reader while preserving metadata (bookmarks, highlights) or recover lost metadata<div dir="ltr">
<span style="color: orange;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Overview of Problem</span></b></span></div>
<div dir="ltr">
This is about using the Android electronic book reader app "Moon+ Reader" to move your files around <i>successfully</i> without losing the metadata (bookmarks, notes, highlights, progress, etc.). This technique can also be used to recover those if you lost them.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: red;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>Problem</b></span></span></span><br />
<div dir="ltr">
My books were stored in "/sdcard/Books/Changeling: The Dreaming" (for this example). I needed to move these PDFs and CBZs to a different
location. Using a File Manager I moved the files to "/storage/extSdCard/Changeling The Dreaming". (I had to remove the ':' in the name because of the Fat32 filesystem format on the SDCard. Curse you, Microsoft.)<br />
<br />
Then I re-imported the books into Moon+ Reader. The app removed the previous item entries and imported the new ones, but it <b>failed</b>
to recognize they were the <i>same</i> PDF and CBZ files. It did not transfer
the metadata. When I say metadata I refer to the bookmarks, the highlights, the notes, the reading progress, or even
the names I manually assigned to the books, etc. (Some of the PDFs
needed better names.)</div>
<div>
This
bug breaks lot of features every time there is moving or renaming
files/folders. I love being able to highlight my books, but Moon Reader
needs to be able to handle if I move my files around.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: lime;"><b>Solution 1 -- If you have not yet lost your metadata </b></span></span></span>
</div>
<div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br />
0) In case it needs to be said, always make a backup of your book files and your information. Moon+ Reader lets you store backups of your metadata easily through its menus. Do this before proceeding.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
1) In Moon+ Reader, go to My Files. (Not "My Shelf". You need to go to My Files specifically.)</div>
<div dir="ltr">
2) Using Moon+ Reader, Select and then Move any existing items.<br />
<br />
Note that Moon+ Reader may not be able to actually move the files. The reason for this is in Android version 4.4.2, Google revoked the privilege for any apps to modify files on external SD cards. (Some limited Google specific apps can use your SD card though.) <br />
<br />
My files were on my external SD, so Moon+ Reader could not actually move them. If your files are only on the internal SD card, it seems to be able to move them just fine. <br />
<br />
(<span style="color: red;">WARNING</span>: Because of the warped hybrid of external SD and internal SD storage, Moon+ Reader actually deleted any duplicate files at the
target move location, so watch out! Your experience may be different, but always have a backup.)</div>
<div dir="ltr">
3) Remove the selected item entries from within Moon+ Reader itself.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
4) Now in your file manager, move the <i>actual file object</i> itself to new target location.<br />
5) Back in Moon+ Reader, now do a normal Import Books.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
Your metadata should have been transferred when you re-import the new files.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: lime;"><b>Solution 2 -- If you have lost your metadata </b></span></span></span></div>
<div>
<div dir="ltr">
This is when you have moved your files, and re-imported them, and your metadata didn't show up. Here is how to fix the problem.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br />
0) In case it needs to be said, always make a backup of your book files
and your information. Moon+ Reader lets you store backups of your
metadata easily through its menus. Do this before proceeding. </div>
<div dir="ltr">
1) In Moon+ Reader, remove any of the new items you just imported.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
In my case, I had moved files /sdcard/Books/Changeling: The Dreaming (for this example) to a different
location at "/storage/extSdCard/Changeling The Dreaming". I went back through Moon+ Reader and removed the files now at "/storage/extSdCard/Changeling The Dreaming".</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
2) Now Moon+ Reader should have none of the botched entries stored in it.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
3) In your file manager, move the files back to where they were before Moon+ Reader lost the metadata. (If your files are stored on an external SD card, remember that Android 4.4.2 doesn't allow most apps to modify external SD contents, so may need to remove the SD card and do the file management on your desktop.)</div>
<div dir="ltr">
4) In Moon+ Reader, re-import the old files from their old location.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
5) Now Moon+ Reader should restore all your old metadata (bookmarks, notes, highlights, etc.)</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
Now you are ready to migrate your files in the special way to preserve your metadata.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
6) In Moon+ Reader, go to My Files. (Not "My Shelf". You need to go to My Files specifically.)</div>
<div dir="ltr">
7) Using Moon+ Reader, Select and then Move any existing items. Note Moon+ Reader will
not actually move the files. (<span style="color: red;">WARNING</span>: My setup with Moon+ Reader actually deleted any duplicate files at the
target move location, so watch out! Your experience may be different, but always have a backup. )</div>
<div dir="ltr">
8) Remove the selected item entries from within Moon+ Reader itself.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
9) Now in your file manager, move the <i>actual file object</i> itself to new target location.<br />
10) Back in Moon+ Reader, now do a normal Import Books.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span style="color: red;"><b>Troubleshooting</b></span></div>
<div>
If you get "import: 0", then you did not remove the entries
before trying to import. Be sure to check if you double imported them,
because they might have nasty duplicates at the new import location
where you were trying that do not have the transferred meta data.</div>
<div>
<br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><b>Hack Editing the Backup Files Directly</b></span></div>
<div>
Be careful when editing the Backup files yourself. You'll probably need some really basic knowledge of how SQL commands work, but not much.<br />
<br />
<i><b>About Moon+ Reader's Backup Files</b></i><br />
Moon+ Reader's backup files have the file extension .mrpro (on the Pro version anyway). This is actually a Zip file. If you extract it, inside is a folder called "com.flyersoft.moonreaderp". Inside that is a bunch of files. In my case, there is typically about 60 files, most of them numbered files from 1.tag to 57.tag files. The important one you want is one of the high numbers. Look at the file size also to help you. One of them is actually the SQLite3 database. Mine was about 1.1 MB, while the rest were tiny, which tipped me off it was the real contents.<br />
<br />
<b>SQL Editing</b><br />
I used an SQL editing program to view the SQLite3 database file. If I remember, I used "Sqliteman" which was simple enough for my needs. <span id="bc_0_5b+seedBjcPD" kind="d">Using some simple find and replace string commands in SQL, I
edited the existing entries with my meta data (highlights, notes,
bookmarks, etc) changing them from the old filepaths to point to the
working ones.</span><br />
<br />
<b><span id="bc_0_5b+seedBjcPD" kind="d">Finishing -- Zipping and Re-Importing and Restoring</span></b><br />
<span id="bc_0_5b+seedBjcPD" kind="d">After editing the appropriate .tag file (which is the SQLite3 database file actually), I zipped the entire folder back up, and gave it a name with a newer date, then imported that through Moon+ Reader, restoring from there. This fixed my paths.</span><br />
<span id="bc_0_5b+seedBjcPD" kind="d"><br /></span>
<span id="bc_0_5b+seedBjcPD" kind="d">Though now I just prefer to root my devices which allow me to give admin privileges to certain apps to move files around.</span><br />
<span id="bc_0_5b+seedBjcPD" kind="d"> </span><br />
<br /></div>
<div>
<span style="color: magenta;"><b>Addendum: Proposed Solution</b></span></div>
<div>
I sent an email to the developer of Moon+ Reader about a proposed solution to fix this. I suggested he use file checksums (such as sha128 or md5sum) on each item
that is imported. This way he could match files that move or are duplicates.</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
Moon+ Reader uses SQLite version 3 underneath and all the highlighting, bookmarks, notes, etc. are stored in these. You can even gain direct access to these by having the program use the "Backup" and "Restore" features. So if you want you can edit the SQLite database manually. I have actually hacked my Moon+ Reader SQLite files quite a bit at this point to clean up some bad stored book-entries.</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
While the developer did kindly respond, he never said that he would do this or not. I hope he does. But he did give me a hint on how to what had happened.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1085636072036546630.post-24987746853321282382014-04-04T12:00:00.000-07:002014-07-28T19:41:28.430-07:00Harddrive Problems Solved<span style="color: orange;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Overview of Problem</span></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Had a bit of a saga trying to trying to get a harddrive to work properly on my computer. Here are the steps I took to fix the issues. Hopefully they may help someone else someday.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> Hardware</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><u>New Harddrive</u>: Seagate 4TB, 5900 RPM, </span><span id="docs-internal-guid-c146f369-2b7c-7726-6a81-5b0f713b32de" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">SATA3 6.0Gps</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><u> Motherboard</u>: <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Brand: ASRock, Model: Z77 Extreme4.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: red;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>Problem</b></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I tried copying several terabytes of data to the new drive. It doesn't seem to have a problem with lots of small files, but it eventually has an error when copying files that are several gigabyes in size. However the size threshold which triggered errors were inconsistent. Sometimes it would copy 4.5GB files, and other times it would error if I tried copying 1.8GB files. (I later figured out why.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Upon error, it would remount the drive into read-only mode and no attempts to remount it writeable seemed to work. I always had to reboot. Sometimes konqueror would report "Errno: 30" upon a failed copy.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Occasionally I think it even managed to hard-lock my system. I was impatient so i didn't give it long to wait, (maybe a minute or something), before hard-resetting the power on my computer. (What can I say? I trust EXT3/4's journaling system to recover my work and all my other programs recover as well.)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>Diagnosis</b></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I ran some tests using the SMART diagnosis, but it said the drive was healthy. I haven't run a full test yet, but I will just in case. The quick tests reported no problems.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I checked the cabling and I found the drive was on the same power-cable as 3TB Seagate. I don't think they would have been drawing too much electricity over the same line to cause power fluctuations (since they are the only two Serial ATA/SATA drives in the whole system and nothing else was running.) Still I gave the new 4TB Seagate it's own dedicated power line.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><i>Next I did an important step, which I didn't realize until later</i></b>. I deleted the partition table of the problem drive (it only had one massive 4TB partition), and created a new one. I also reformated the drive. (For most of this article I used EXT4, but I did experiments with XFS. XFS never triggered the error but I didn't wait hours to force a trigger so my results can't be judged either way with that format.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I have read several accounts stating that <i>once you have triggered the errors, you must correct them <u>or they will continue to happen</u></i>. These symptoms are consistent with what I encountered, particularly trigger errors with the different large file sizes, none of which were consistent.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I simply wiped/formated the drive, but others claim they have been able to recover using fsck.ext4 to correct the problems. I cannot comment on this.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>More Diagnosis</b></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I finally clued into checking the dmesg utility, and found some very useful information.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">[ 891.079292] EXT4-fs (sdb1): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null)<br />[11668.781082] ata4.00: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x7fffffff SErr 0x400100 action 0x6 frozen<br />[11668.781086] ata4.00: irq_stat 0x08000000, interface fatal error<br />[11668.781087] ata4: SError: { UnrecovData Handshk }<br />[11668.781089] ata4.00: failed command: WRITE FPDMA QUEUED<br />[11668.781091] ata4.00: cmd 61/00:00:00:18:b9/04:00:9b:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 524288 out<br /> res 40/00:d0:00:80:b9/00:00:9b:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error)<br />[11668.781093] ata4.00: status: { DRDY } </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">......</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">(Snip)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">..... </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">[11846.581765] ata4: hard resetting link<br />[11846.886462] ata4: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)<br />[11846.887197] ata4.00: ACPI cmd ef/10:06:00:00:00:00 (SET FEATURES) succeeded<br />[11846.887199] ata4.00: ACPI cmd f5/00:00:00:00:00:00 (SECURITY FREEZE LOCK) filtered out<br />[11846.887200] ata4.00: ACPI cmd b1/c1:00:00:00:00:00 (DEVICE CONFIGURATION OVERLAY) filtered out<br />[11846.888785] ata4.00: ACPI cmd ef/10:06:00:00:00:00 (SET FEATURES) succeeded<br />[11846.888788] ata4.00: ACPI cmd f5/00:00:00:00:00:00 (SECURITY FREEZE LOCK) filtered out<br />[11846.888789] ata4.00: ACPI cmd b1/c1:00:00:00:00:00 (DEVICE CONFIGURATION OVERLAY) filtered out<br />[11846.889558] ata4.00: configured for UDMA/133<br />[11846.889594] ata4: EH complete<br />[11892.733319] ata4.00: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x7fffffff SErr 0x400100 action 0x6 frozen<br />[11892.733322] ata4.00: irq_stat 0x08000000, interface fatal error<br />[11892.733324] ata4: SError: { UnrecovData Handshk }<br />[11892.733325] ata4.00: failed command: WRITE FPDMA QUEUED<br />[11892.733328] ata4.00: cmd 61/00:00:00:3c:76/04:00:9e:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 524288 out</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Some users online claimed the SATA cable itself could be going bad. This is a genuine possibility, so I switched to a different one.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Also, there are long threads reporting problems like this for SATA microcontrollers, particularly the Marvell 9123 controller. This is a software issue I believe, and not a hardware failure. But I'm no kernel dev. Others have reported issues for JMicron controllers also. I checked my motherboard and found a post by a different user using a very similar model to my own with the same problem. My motherboard has the following (checked by running the 'lspci' command.)</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The chipset for the controller is "Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family 6-port SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 04)".</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Finally I checked the cabling again in my computer. Mistakenly I had hooked up the harddrive to the SATA-3.0 ports. (There are 8-ports on my system, and it was a simple mistake, but ugh...) In fact, looking at the dmesg output you can even see the drive is reporting running at SATA2-3.0Gps speeds, when it is capable of running at SATA3 speed.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I switched its connection to a SATA3 port.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /><span style="color: lime;"><b>Solution</b></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I applied several solutions to this problem so far. I'm not sure which one solved it.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">1) Gave the device a dedicated power line. It's a big harddrive and sharing power with another big harddrive could have caused minor fluctuations.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">2) Recreated the </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">partition table of the
problem drive and formated the drive to
EXT4. I made sure to do this after every error / failure.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">3) Connected the drive to a different SATA micro-controller on my motherboard.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1085636072036546630.post-49901599548500233412013-11-04T14:51:00.003-08:002013-11-04T14:51:57.630-08:00Pulse Audio Dynamic Volumes (Take-2)So today I tried using PulseAudio Dynamic volumes again, and the quick conclusion is this: They are bad, so very very bad.<br /><br />Previously I had been cruelly subjected to Dynamic Volumes on with my Desktop through it's several speakers and sub-woofers. Now I tried it on my laptop using headphones / earbuds. The experience was actually worse.<br /><br />On the surface Dynamic volumes seems nice, because in theory it should raise the total volume of the system as necessary. There is however one drawback. It raises the MASTER VOLUME for the entire system, which means all other applications and any subsequent applications will inherit that volume level.<br /><br />So say you raise the volume on a piece of music you are playing (in Amarok for example), which is nice. They you load a video in your VLC. The video's audio is louder to begin with AND the VLC volume is set to the previous amount, which was 140%. Suddenly your ears are blasted with maximum audio volume. Painful and wrong.<br /><br />Seriously. I'd fucking sue a company for earing damage if this wasn't free software with absolutely no warranty. (Okay, I wouldn't sue an open-source free company, even then, because I love open-source, but you get the point.)<br /><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1085636072036546630.post-29315948034643309532013-09-17T21:52:00.002-07:002016-05-03T16:55:50.178-07:00HP Photosmart c4280 scanner in Fedora 19 Linux<br />
I own an HP Photosmart c4280 scanner printer combo. I cannot vouch for the printing capabilities, but I can declare that I have got it working with scanning. Here is how to quickly get it setup in Fedora 19 Linux:<br />
<br />
For the printing capabilities, run:<br />
<br />
sudo yum install hplip hplip-gui libsane-hpaio hpijs hplip-libs<br />
<br />
Then run:<br />
<br />
sudo hp-setup<br />
<br />
If you just want to use the scanner, you still have to do the Printing Setup steps, but after that, it is ready to go. This setup uses the "Sane" scanning/printing system backend, so any graphic interface that uses that backend will now work.<br />
<br />
NOTE: You may need to shutdown/startup the device again, and also restart Sane (xsane).<br />
<br />
For a simple straightforward graphic app to help you scan, I suggest installing 'xsane', though there are also Gimp Sane plugins and one for KDE as well I believe.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1085636072036546630.post-62888212751416841752013-09-15T14:29:00.002-07:002013-09-15T14:30:04.143-07:00How to Convert APE (cd images) in LinuxSometimes when I download music, the format is in APE which isn't convenient in Linux.<br />
<br />
To convert a single APE file to a single FLAC file:<br />
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<pre class="bbcode_code" style="height: 36px;">ffmpeg -i inputaudio.ape outputaudio.flac</pre>
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To rip the multiple tracks from an entire CD image (with a .cue file) from a single APE file:</div>
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<br /></div>
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1st, convert the entire large ape to flac.</div>
<pre class="bbcode_code" style="height: 36px;">ffmpeg -i inputaudio.ape outputaudio.flac</pre>
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2nd, edit the .cue file: Look for the line which lists the file name of the .ape file.</div>
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FILE "The Shrimp Shack Shooters - The Album.ape" WAVE</div>
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Change this to the converted output flac file:</div>
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FILE "The Shrimp Shack Shooters - The Album.flac" WAVE</div>
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3rd, then open the .cue file in K3b</div>
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4th, switch K3b to Conversion mode, by going to the menu: Project -> Convert Tracks.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Now you can output the tracks from the flac file individually. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3