Can't play DVD's in Ubuntu? Try this...

So I ran into a problem the other day on a clean install of Ubuntu while trying to play a DVD - it didn't work. I did some looking, and found the answer pretty quickly.

Make sure you have either ubuntu-restricted-extras or libdvdread4 installed (sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras)

Open a terminal and run: sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

Ta-Da! A reboot might be necessary, but that should get you playing.


Source

Cowboy Cauldron

Ah, the Cowboy Cauldron. So, ever since I saw these on Huckberry, I've been completely sold. Love at first sight. Like I need one in my yard. Right. NOW.

Unfortunately, I currently don't have the cash to shell out for one of these little (er - not so little?) beauties, so this will have to do in the meantime.


Because everything's better in steel, right?



What's more refined that a flat cap, sheepskin gloves, 
and a giant steel cauldron of fire? Irish countryside not included.



"Did you say you just cooked a cow? A cow cow??" Yes. Yes I did.





Which one do you prefer? Personally I find it difficult to resist the alluring call of the Ranch Boss, but what can I say? I like fire.

Source, Video

$$$ Get Access to Your Flash Cache! - Windows 7 Edition!$$$

In a follow-up to my previous post, here is some info for accessing the Flash cache in Windows 7. When using Chrome, simply open a Windows file folder and navigate to

%LocalAppData%\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Pepper Data\Shockwave Flash\

and you should see your Flash media buffering here. Simply rename the *.tmp files to *.flv (or the container of your choice), and voilà! Enjoy with the media player of your choice (e.g. VLC and a nice Chianti.)


Did this work for you? Did I miss anything? Let me know!

Can-Am Spyder Roadster - The Family Man's Motorcycle

Yes, you read it right. For those who love the feel of the open road, wind whipping in your hair (or past your law-abiding helmet), without the quiet nagging guilt of leaving a family parent-less, comes the Can-Am Spyder Roadster - The Family Man's Motorcycle. Often dubbed a 'tricycle', you should immediately dispose of the images of red-painted childhood wonder. This is no kids toy. Instead it is a shiny, gleaming machine of awesomeness. And it's coming to a road near you... take a look:

One of the safety selling points is the (supposed) fact that with the third wheel up front, it makes this ride nearly impossible to roll. Personally, I would like to see some hard data on this, but that's just me. That said, when I was doing research online to try to find how many accidents involving these platforms rolling had been recorded, I found nary a one. Well - I found one. A news purveyor in CA recorded a deadly accident involving a few first time riders taking two of these platforms into the mountains. The article made it a point to say that the Roadster was obviously not as safe as it purported to be. What the reporter failed to mention was just how the riders were able to flip the Roadster. Banking too hard, too fast? No. No, they were able to accomplish this feat by driving them off the side of a mountain. I don't know many vehicles that could survive that kind of rigorous activity unscathed. At any rate, with a few exceptions, this seems to be one safe (and sweet) ride.

Ode to the Hustler - Joey Roth

Yeah, not that Hustler. Designer Joey Roth designed a series of graphics for the first issue of 48 Hours Magazine, Hustle. What he came up with is pure genius.







Hustling is creating something from inspiration, mediated by an uncompromising picture of reality, then launching it with precision into the world.




Grind: Disciplined, incremental movement through reality towards a goal
Dream: A good idea that loses potency as it encounters reality



I have Huckberry to thank for this find. You can buy prints from Huckberry (while the offer lasts) or from Joey Roth's website.

Rip Cassette into MP3 with Ubuntu

http://askubuntu.com/questions/50447/app-that-will-rip-mp3s-from-an-analog-cassette-tape

So I've got a bunch of old cassette tapes that I've been wanting to listen to for a long time. I finally broke down and figured out how to rip the audio into an MP3 on my computer.

1. First, install Audacity and Sound Converter
2. Plug in you jack into the appropriate sound-in / headphone socket in your laptop or PC sound card.
3. On your tape, approximately forward to where you have the "loudest sound"
4. Play your tape
5. Using Audacity, press the record button
6. Adjust the input levels so that the sound doesnt "clip"
7. Stop recording and rewind the tape
8. Choose from the Audacity Menu - Transport - Sound Activated Recording
9. Play your tape and record until the end of the tape

Now a bit of clean-up of the sound recorded.
To remove the tape-hiss choose from the Audacity Menu:

1. Effect - Normalize. This will adjust the approximate sound level through the entire track
2. Effect - Noise Removal. This will remove some of the lower frequency sounds that is the tape hiss - just follow the two suggested steps on the window. Play with the results to get the best sound on your track.
3. Finally, save the file as a .wav file.

At this point, the source link tells you to use Gramofile to automatically split the big .wav file into individual tracks. I found this to be a huge waste of time, because it didn't do it all that well for my audio. Instead, I used Audacity.

1. Select the section of the audio for each track.
2. Export the selection as a .wav file.
3. Convert to MP3 using Sound Converter.

And there you have it! Did it work for you as well as it did for me? Do you have any other tricks I'm missing? Let me know!

Midnight Reverie - It's so good it's... shockolate? chocking?

So, my wife got a surprise for me at the store: Ghirardelli's Intense Dark 86% Cacao Midnight Reverie Bar. I decided to try it, and - wow. Blown away. Now, I'm much more a dark chocolate kinda person than milk chocolate, and this one was pretty dark. From the Tasting Notes: "The deep, full bodied flavor is noticeable upfront and evenly throughout with hints of dark cherries, dried plums, and a roasted flavor from the high cacao content."  I think that description does it justice. If you're into dark, I definitely recommend it.



I found a great review of this chocolate, and in it some others that I would like to try in the future, among them the Lindt 90% and the Green & Black 85% bars. Any good ones I missed?

How to Do Simple Stuff From Command Line

Ubuntu Linux

to view images from the command line, try eog <filename>

to view pdf's from the command line, try evince <filename>

to scroll in a terminal window from the keyboard: [Shift] + PgUp/PgDn

Windows 

to open an new terminal from the command line, try 'start' (with no quotes)

to open a file explorer window (at the current location) from the command line, try 'start .' (that's start-space-period, no quotes)



Know any other simple command line tricks? Let me know!

Fixing Flashing No-Boot for Ubuntu 12.04

So, I installed a clean Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit OS onto a new Dell XPS i7 that previously had Windows 8 UEFI, and had disastrous results. After hours of work, I was finally able to get it working (yay!) Here's what I had to do...


First, make sure you get into the BIOS and turn of the Secure Boot.


Once this was done, I was able to boot the Ubuntu LiveCD (USB?) from by handy USB flash drive, and easily install the OS. This was where the fun really started. Upon reboot, the system would occasionally boot to the login screen, flickering violently, with the screen split in half. Logging in only left me with the blank background (no icons, nothing except a mouse) that kept flashing. This seizure-fest was only for special occasions, however, as most of the time it would boot and sit at a blank screen.

Once I was able to get the GRUB boot menu to come up (thanks to boot-repair), I was able to log into the rescue mode. Starting in low-graphics mode led to more issues, and it hung with

ath: phy0: TX while HW is in FULL_SLEEP mode

Well, it looked like this could be caused by the wireless, which had been giving me a headache during install. (Seriously, the 2nd desktop with WIFI I've had trouble with lately - what's the deal?) So, I got into command line mode and:

ifconfig
nmcli nm wifi off
ifconfig

did the trick (the ifconfig's are just to check that it worked.) Reboot, try again, back to (most likely) the real problem - the graphics driver. This time the errors included:

swapon failed: Device or resource busy

and

initctl: Event failed

I checked my graphics card

lspci -v  | less

and jockey-text did the rest. (Source)


Use

jockey-text --list

to get a list of available drivers and their status, then use

# the init lines are required only for graphics drivers
sudo init 1
jockey-text --enable=DRIVER
sudo init 2

where DRIVER is the one you got from the list. For example, to install the Broadcom B43 wireless driver:

jockey-text --enable=firmware:b43



Once I switched over to the best video driver for my graphics card, I was a reboot away from a happy system (finally!) 

Windows 7 Motorola Drivers - Charge your Motorola Phone in Windows!

Ever needed to charge your Motorola phone in Windows, but poor Windows just can't find the drivers? Well, look no further! Try these drivers, see if they work!

How to use ffmpeg to split a video

Have you ever needed to take a clip from a larger video file to use in a presentation, post to youtube, or to show awesome classic Christmas cartoons to your kids? Well, whatever the reason, here is a simple command to make it happen in Ubuntu, thanks to your friend, ffmpeg.


ffmpeg -acodec copy -vcodec copy -ss START -t LENGTH -i ORIGINALFILE.mp4 OUTFILE.mp4

"where START is starting positing in seconds or in format hh:mm:ss LENGTH is the chunk length in seconds or in format hh:mm:ss

So you will need to run this command few times depending on how long your video. If let's say your video is 31 minutes long and you want so split into 15 min chunks here is how you run it:"

ffmpeg -acodec copy -vcodec copy -ss 0 -t 00:15:00 -i ORIGINALFILE.mp4 OUTFILE-1.mp4

ffmpeg -acodec copy -vcodec copy -ss 00:15:00 -t 00:15:00 -i ORIGINALFILE.mp4 OUTFILE-2.mp4

ffmpeg -acodec copy -vcodec copy -ss 00:30:00 -t 00:15:00 -i ORIGINALFILE.mp4 OUTFILE-3.mp4


Source

A Day in the Life - Einstein's Office

So apparently this is a picture of Einstein's office, as he left it, on the day he died. The source link has a nice article. RIP Mr. Einstein.


Source

TV Science vs. Real Science

How can you not love this one?




http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1156

$$$ Get Access to Your Flash Cache! $$$

Have you ever needed (wanted) to access the flash content downloaded to your computer when it buffers (Youtube, other less reputable sites, etc.)? Well, if you are using Chrome  under Linux, here are some handy tips (this should work with whatever browser you're using, but let's be honest, I'm too lazy to test it out - yet)

sudo lsof -n | grep Flash

Then, cd to the process id directory listed under all entries displayed that have (deleted) at the end. Then

cd /proc/[process_id]/fd/

and

sudo ls -l

to find the file that is (deleted). Next do

sudo cp [file] ~/Videos

or, for example if the file is '30'

sudo cp 30 ~/Videos/video.flv

Now, at this point you'll probably have to change owners to be able to watch it, or

sudo chown [your_username] video.flv

or

sudo chown benji video.flv


And there you have it! If you're looking for more flexibility, more options, or (a lot) more discussion about the topic, try the Sources listed below. Good luck!



Source 1

Source 2

Rotate a PDF in Linux (and Other Fun Activities) - pdftk

For those of you who have ever needed to manipulate a PDF in Linux, I highly recommend pdftk, I've had great luck with it. Here's the best way to rotate a PDF:



sudo apt-get install pdftk

To rotate page 1 by 90 degrees clockwise:

pdftk in.pdf cat 1E output out.pdf

To rotate all pages clockwise:

pdftk in.pdf cat 1-endE output out.pdf

The page rotation setting can cause pdftk to rotate pages and documents. Each option sets the page rotation as follows (in degrees): N: 0, E: 90, S: 180, W: 270, L: -90, R: +90, D: +180. L, R, and D make relative adjustments to a page's rotation.

Unabashedly stolen from here.

Stunning Book Art - Literally!

Thanks again to Huckberry for this find!

These amazing masterpieces of literature (get it?) are the handiwork of Guy Laramee. Pretty sweet, right?!

   

          

   

  

   

Source: http://huckberry.com/blog/posts/128-novel-landscapes

Source: http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2012/06/new-carved-book-landscapes-by-guy-laramee/?src=footer

IEEE LaTex Class Issue - Tune Fonts

So, I ran into an issue trying to get the IEEE LaTex class to work with a conference paper. Apparently some issue with tune fonts:

! Emergency stop.
<*> ...ljfour; mag:=1; nonstopmode; input nullfont

Transcript written on mfput.log.
grep: nullfont.log: No such file or directory
mktextfm: `mf-nowin -progname=mf \mode:=ljfour; mag:=1; nonstopmode; input nullfont' failed to make nullfont.tfm.
! Font \OT1/ptm/b/it/7=nullfont not loadable: Metric (TFM) file not found. \@IEEEtunefonts


Well, it turns out I'm not the only person to see this problem. If you also see this issue, all you need to do is:

sudo apt-get install texlive-fonts-recommended

which will install the necessary font package. Awesome!


Source


UPDATE

So, apparently not having texlive-fonts-recommended can also cause this error:

! I can't find file `ptmr7t'.
<*> ...:=ljfour; mag:=1; nonstopmode; input ptmr7t

Please type another input file name
! Emergency stop.
<*> ...:=ljfour; mag:=1; nonstopmode; input ptmr7t

Transcript written on mfput.log.
grep: ptmr7t.log: No such file or directory


I discovered this after upgrading to Precise, and having to reinstall a bunch of packages (this one included.) Hope it helps!

Danish Watches - Now in Titanium!

                

Today I was introduced to the Skagen Denmark watch. It was quite by chance, as my wife and I were out on a date window shopping at the mall, we glanced at some watches on our way through a department store, and our eyes caught one of these. Low and behold, it was a Danish watch! Then, not only that, it was a Titanium Danish watch! And, it was called a Skagen!! (For those who don't know, I visited there some years ago and absolutely loved the place.) So, of course I was in heaven. I have added it to my wish list (at the top), and once I am lucky enough to own one, I will give a full review on how nice the watch really is.

(Pictured: left - Skagen Men's 233XLTTN Titanium Watch, right - Skagen Men's 809XLTBN Titanium Blue Dial Watch)

Supercool Posters

          


         

(Super awesome) Steve Thomas poster art: http://www.stevethomasart.com

Originally discovered on Huckberry

More Huckberry

            

                                   

Random cool stuff from Huckberry

Bluetooth tags, Render K Pen, AAA Pocket Flashlight, EDC Kit, V:King kubb set