It’s time for a rad revival and leading the charge is Rhythmbox, which today earns the venerable title of Rad. In a recent post I mentioned some of the troubles I’ve had with media playback in Ubuntu but after a recent comment by Peter Lamb I decided it was time to talk about a success. Rhythmbox was originally designed to be an iTunes look alike music player for Linux, as we all know Apple aren’t going to port iTunes any time soon. But it has progressed with every release to take on a distinct flavour of its own.
Just in case you’re wondering, I don’t love it because it looks like iTunes, in fact the reason for my affection is on the contrary. I find iTunes to be a good application at what it was designed for: to support and sell iPods (which I have), music and to create a whole media ecosystem; to this end it has been a success. But I have other requirements than just the well being of Apple share holders. I want to choose from a wider variety of music formats (MP3, AAC, OGG, FLAC etc.) for ripping and listening, I want to listen to a broader range of music & try new technologies (Last.fm etc.), and I want it on Ubuntu.
I have been really starting to enjoy Internet radio of recent times listen to everything from Iranian traditional sonati to my own customised feeds from Last.fm. On that last note, Last.fm is far more practical to use in Rhythmbox as you don’t need to open your web browser to enjoy your favourite music; it’s also a great way to find new artists, albums or tracks that you might like.
Now of course I live in the real world where iPods rule the day, I even own and regularly use one and this is where I think Rhythmbox slots in nicely. I can actually use my iPod on both Mac OS X with iTunes and Ubuntu with Rhythmbox. All I do is plug my iPod into my laptop, Ubuntu recognises it (Mac format and all) and offers to open it in Rhythmbox. Rhythmbox then allows me to neatly access all my music and podcasts then and there, much the same as iTunes, I copy or just listen directly. I don’t use Rhythmbox for managing my iPod, and there are some limitations, but this arrangement works perfectly for my needs.
The last thing I’d say about Rhythmbox is that it’s not an iTunes killer, but it gives me a whole lot that iTunes can’t. The other thing is that it keeps getting better. If something is missing or a bit buggy in this release I can wait for the next, or even file a bug report online to get things started, and over time it just keeps improving; that’s open source for you.
And so does Paul. So I set about sexifying my desktop yesterday and I’m quite pleased with the results. I used a really nice Ubuntu GNOME theme called Dust, a GDM Login Window the called Woobuntu 2.0, changed the default font to FreeSans and turned on Subpixel Smoothing. And it was good.
Continue reading ‘Everybody Loves Eyecandy’
Some time ago I purchased an M-Audio Transit USB sound card, and it’s actually pretty cool but it has caused me some angst. At first I was using it solely under Mac OS X 10.4, and without incident, but then I was forced to buy a regular laptop and the love ended there, somewhat.
I run both Windows Vista Business and Ubuntu 8.10 on my laptop, Ubuntu for day-to-day and Vista for games and audio production (Ableton Live). I thought as though Vista has been around for a while, like my Tranist, it should be a good fit, unfortunately I was wrong. Firstly, a little magic is required when installing the Transit Vista driver and making it function. Secondly, the Vista driver for Transit itself is still just the first release beta and has not been updated since it’s release in July 2007. As a result there are some problems with it and led me to question whether or not Transit Vista driver is abandonware. Mercifully an M-Audio support technician was at least able to confirm that Vista users have not yet been completely ignored by M-Audio, but there are no guarantees that we’ll see something more substantial before Windows 7 arrives.
I also bit the bullet and had a go at getting my Transit USB to work under Ubuntu 8.10. The initial instructions I read just about put the fear of God in me, but thankfully it’s not that miserable for Ubuntu users. One can easily install the Linux Transit drivers by using Synaptic is selecting the “madfu” package. This beats the pants off compiling it yourself and is almost easier than the Vista approach - except for one small hitch: there’s a bug. Oh why, why? Once again, as with the Vista driver, it’s to do with the driver being out of touch with a newer release of the Operating System. I was able to fix it with some Googling and just a few small tweaks. Now my Transit driver loads immediately on connection under Ubuntu, unless I plug it into a USB port different to the previous (yes, this steams from the bug) but I have not the inclination to go further with it at this time. Nor is there any control panel available under Linux and this the fault of M-Audio as they refuse to even simply devulge device specifications, let alone write a driver themselves. Come guys, use the power of the Open Source community to your advantage!
My next adventure will probably be to see how well the Transit and Ableton Live run on a virtualized instance of Windows XP in VirtualBox under Ubuntu. This could hopefully be a nice compromise. On the bright side, at least I can use it, somewhat, under any OS I like and it is a wonderful little sound card.
Have you ever wanted to watch your computer battle itself in a energetic game of Snap? I can’t say that I have, but as part of my Master of Computing studies I’m doing Advanced Programming in Java and this has resulted in me undertaking such an experience. Before you ask what RoboSnap has got to do with the meatier issues of Information Technology, the goal of this assignment was to implement a number of programming features including multithreading. So my simple idea of creating a Snap game to meet the requirements turned into a 764 line Tour de Force. Some food poisoning in Istanbul, one gracious extension and a week of sleep deprivation brings me to this; please welcome RoboSnap.
Continue reading ‘RoboSnap’
More or less everyone who uses the web regularly uses chat in some way, but it recently struck me how it was becoming a problem for me. I’ve got Gmail chat, or GTalk, which is conveniently next to my Gmail e-mail, it even offers some VOIP. Then there’s Skype, which runs on all operating systems really well, but it really is a VOIP program with a decent chat included; sometimes I just don’t want a phone call. Then there’s “good old” MSN, I hate it mostly for ideological reasons. My last, and most perplexing, is Facebook chat. Facebook chat is rubbish, not that I like Facebook much either, but one has to admit the chat is really quite rubbish but everybody I know is on Facebook. Finally the ragged ends of my grieves came together in one cohesion moment, there must be a better way than this.
Carrier pigeon? Perhaps. Back in the day I used a piece of software called Gaim for my MSN chat, it’s since improved a lot and is now known as Pidgin. It’s also available on Mac as Adium. I knew it could do a good job of Gmail & MSN but in reality there aren’t that many people on my lists. A little googling uncovered a hidden gem, Facebook plugin for Pidgin. I’m no fan of Facebook, but this plugin means that almost instantly I have a chat client that covers practically everyone I know online. So now I’ve settled on Skype and Pidgin.
