Winamp Equalizer in Banshee 1.2

Posted August 6, 2008 ago at 11:46 am. 3 comments

The Winamp equalizers presets are the best equalizer settings I have found. The following guide will get the default WinAmp presets working under Banshee 1.2.

1. Download the equalizer presets
wget http://www.mikesplanet.net/files/equalizers.xml.gz

2. Install equalizer presets in Banshee 1.2 (Please note, this will write over existing presets)
gunzip -c equalizers.xml.gz > ~/.config/banshee-1/equalizers.xml

3. Start Banshee, Goto View -> Equalizer and choose what preset you want to use.

Installing gwibber (webkitui) cheat sheet

Posted August 5, 2008 ago at 10:55 am. 1 comment

I have heard people on asking on identi.ca on how to install the webkit version of gwibber. This is a quick cheat sheet I hope will help people get started.

1. Install bazaar and subversion to download app and some needed libraries.
sudo apt-get install bzr subversion
2. Add the following ppa for webkit or apt sources.list
http://ppa.launchpad.net/stemp/ubuntu hardy main
3. Install webkit and development libraries
sudo apt-get install libwebkit-1.0-1 libwebkit-dev
4. Download pywebkitgtk
svn checkout http://pywebkitgtk.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ pywebkitgtk-read-only
5. Install needed libraries and programs to compile pywebkitgtk.
sudo apt-get install build-essential autoconf libtool libgtk2.0-dev python-dev python-gtk2 python-gtk2-dev libsexy2 libsexy-dev python-sexy libxslt1-dev
6. Goto pywebkitgtk-read-only directory - Configure, compile and install pywebkitgtk.
$ ./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr
$ make
$ sudo make install

7. Install need libraries and programs for gwibber
sudo apt-get install python-cairo-dev python-simplejson python-egenix-mxdatetime
8. Download gwibber webkitui
bzr branch lp:~segphault/gwibber/webkitui
9a. Goto gwibber directory - Run gwibber
./run
9b. or install
sudo python setup.py install

Contribute to this guide at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/gwibber

Open Source Stats Programs?

Posted July 3, 2008 ago at 1:22 pm. 5 comments

My wife is looking for an Open Source Statistics program for Linux that does multinomial logistic regression and can import from spss, stata, or other popular statistic programs. Please e-mail me (mike.basinger(at)gmail.com) if you know of any programs that could work.

Using Dark Themes in Ubuntu (Gnome 2.2x)

Posted June 24, 2008 ago at 2:26 pm. 6 comments

Using dark themes in Gnome has always has some issues. Due to issues in Gnome and GTK apps, some application have problems like dark fonts on dark background, text areas grayed out, and multiple issues with OpenOffice. Here is a quick guide to solve many of the problems I encountered using dark themes in Gnome.

1. Firefox Fixes

Firefox has issues display certain CSS field properly with dark themes. This is a big problem in Firefox 2, but can still happen in Firefox 3. Install this userContent.css to /home/username/.mozilla/firefox/RandomProfile_name/chrome and restart Firefox.

2a. Dark System Themes (Ubuntu Studio)
The easiest solution for a dark theme in Ubuntu is to install the UbuntuStudio-theme package.
sudo apt-get install ubuntustudio-theme
or if you want the full metapackage with icons, GDM theme, etc..
sudo apt-get install ubuntustudio-look
The Ubuntu Studio theme is a beautiful theme created by the Ubuntu Studio team, which fixes many of the problem with dark themes in Gnome.

2b. Other Dark Themes

Since Linux is all about choice, we want to use other dark themes for Gnome and workaround issues these themes have. First, we still want to install the ubuntustudio-theme package.
sudo apt-get install ubuntustudio-theme
Then we will use UbuntuStudio theme on certain applications that have problems with dark themes (OpenOffice, Banshee, Thunderbird,etc…).

To get an application to use another theme you want to add the following to the command the launches a program “env GTK2_RC_FILES=/usr/share/themes/UbuntuStudio/gtk-2.0/gtkrc“. Right click on the gnome menu applet and choose Edit Menus. Goto the application you want using a different theme (in this example OpenOffice Writer), right click the application and select Properties. Change the Command from
ooffice -writer %U
to
env GTK2_RC_FILES=/usr/share/themes/UbuntuStudio/gtk-2.0/gtkrc ooffice -writer %U
OpenOffice Writer should now use UbuntuStudio theme instead of the system theme you have set.

If you have any comment or suggestion for this guide, please comment on this thread on the Ubuntu Forums.

Dark Theme
Theme Details:
Theme: Moomex Ultimatum 0.4
Font: UnDotum Bold
Icons: Jungle Black
Wallpaper: Radiant from http://interfacelift.com

600,000 Register Users

Posted June 11, 2008 ago at 8:36 pm. 1 comment

The Ubuntu Forums has passed another milestone, 600,000 register users. Thanks to the Ubuntu forums staff and the rest of the Ubuntu community for making the forums kick ass.

Revisiting the past

Posted June 6, 2008 ago at 4:11 pm. 1 comment

When I first went to college, I had dreams of getting into broadcasting. While I have a face for radio :), it was something that did not work out. This week the guys at the Fresh Ubuntu podcast (http://www.freshubuntu.com) had me on for an interview. We chatted about the forums, membership and other topics. It was truly a guilty pleasure being on the show and I had a great time. You can listen to the show here.

Speaking of revisiting the past, the new version of Dungeons and Dragons was released today. While I have not played in years, it does bring back great memories of high school and college. I also like that D&D tries to embrace the spirit of Open Source with the Open Gaming License. While I would prefer a Creative Commons type license, I do appreciate the effort.

Forums Council Meeting: 31 May 2008 @ 12:30 UTC

Posted May 27, 2008 ago at 11:28 am. 0 comments

The Ubuntu Forums Council will meeting on 31 May 2008 @ 12:30 UTC in #ubuntu-meeting on Freenode. We have a fairly large agenda this month, including a discussion of social group functions in the forums. Please stop by the meeting and join in the discussion.

Dinner with the Cavemen.

Posted May 23, 2008 ago at 4:10 am. 0 comments

Last night at UDS we had dinner with the cavemen. I would suggest a visit to Restaurant Pravek if you ever visit Prague.

Community Council Meeting Delayed

Posted May 20, 2008 ago at 1:27 am. 0 comments

Due to happenings at UDS we are moving todays Community Council meeting back 1 hour to 12:00 UTC.

UDS-Intrepid: Quote of the day

Posted May 19, 2008 ago at 3:51 am. 8 comments

Jono had a slide during his presentation during the Ubuntu Developer Summit this morning which I want on a T-Shirt.

Make
(*)(Ku)(U)(Xu)(Go)(Myth)buntu(Studio)
Happen

or the proper regexp way (thanks Jeff:))

Make
([XK]u|U|Go|Myth)buntu( Studio|)
Happen!