Recently I had to help out a friend who, for various reasons had two Outlook Express identities on his XP machine.  He had recently changed the password to his ‘important’ identity and couldn’t for the life of him remember what it was.

No password, no access, no important emails.  That’s when I got called.

A quick search showed tons and tons of applications available for recovering OE Identity passwords – they ranged from $19.95 to $49.95.  I knew there had to be a way to get the email back for him without having to shell out money and guess what?  There is.  I had a bit of a search to find this stuff so I thought I’d write it up and share with the world.

Two notes before we start.  First, click the images to make them bigger and easier to read. Second, yes I know that OE is an older mail client and yes I’m sure there are better mail solutions out there.  However, there are lots of people who still use it so I hope this will come in handy to someone.

Here’s what we’re going to do.  We’re going to determine where OE stores all of the folders, emails and whatnot for each identity.  Then we’re going to create a new identity with the same email account settings as the ‘lost’ identity.  Finally, we’re going to copy all of the important stuff into this new identity.

Go ahead and right click on “My Computer” and choose explore.   In order to find the files we’re looking for, we’re going to have to make a few changes to how XP shows files in explorer. Mainly, we want to display file extensions and be able to see hidden and system files.

So in your Explorer window, choose Tools-> Folder Options.  Then select View.  From there, uncheck Hide file extensions, hide system files and change the option on Hidden files to Show hidden files and folders.

Now, let’s go look and see where OE keeps it’s brains.  In your Explorer window, browse to:

C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities

USERNAME should be substituted with your actual user name.

You should see something that looks like this:

Those long strings of numbers and letters are your GUIDs for your OE data.  Each Identity has a separate GUID.   There are a couple of ways to determine which GUID belongs to which Identity.

• The first is size – if you’re looking to find the files for an Identity that has much more mail than another one, you’ll be looking for larger files.
• The second is to look for date modified – if you haven’t been able to get into an Identity for the past two days, use that to determine which one is which.
• And lastly – the old fashioned go into OE and look method.  To do this though, you’ll have to have access to one of your Identities.   Open Outlook Express,  go to Tools-> Options.  From there click the Maintenance tab.  Then click the Store Folder button and look for a GUID.  That’s the GUID that belongs to the Identity you’re in.

So, you know where to find Outlook Express’ place to keep its mail – now what do you do?  Let’s minimize Explorer and continue on like so.

First thing we’re going to want to do is create a new Identity in Outlook Express.   Even if you don’t have access to any OE Identities, you can do this by Launching OE and then clicking the Manage Identities button.  From there, create a new Identity.  When OE launches, add all of your email account settings for the inaccessible Identity into this new Identity.  (For instructions on how to set up an OE mail account, hit Google).

Now that you’re in the new account, don’t allow it to check mail.  Just quit out of Outlook Express.

Back into your Explorer window and let’s dig a little deeper and find the files we’re going to copy to our new Identity.

You should be at: C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities

Now browse deeper – GUID\Microsoft\Outlook Express

So your full path would be

C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\GUID\Microsoft\Outlook Express\

Inside the Outlook Express folder you should see a number of .dbx files.  These are your mail files.  Folders.dbx will contain your folders, Inbox.dbx your Inbox, etc.  You’ll want to highlight all of these files and then right click and choose “Copy”.

Now, still in Explorer, back up a bit and go into your new Identities GUID – the easiest way for me to find this is by the date but you can use one of the methods I mentioned above.  Once in the new Identities GUID, browse to \Microsoft\Outlook Express, right click the white space in Explorer and choose “Paste”.  Allow these files to overwrite any existing ones.

Minimize Explorer, go ahead and start up OE and log in to your new Identity.  You should see all of your emails that were stuck in the inaccessible Identity.  Go ahead and check your mail so that new stuff comes in.  The hard part is over.

Tell  OE that your newly created ID is the one you want to log into by default (if that’s the case) through the Manage Identities tool which you’ll see when you launch OE again.

You should now have access to your previously locked Identity’s email in a new Identity.

Technorati Tags: howto, how to, oe, outlook express, identities, lost password, recover email

Two of us here at ArsGeek have the game and so far we’re split 50/50 between issues and enjoyment.

I’ve had the game since release and have so far experienced no issues with it. This is the kind of game I enjoy, with a lot for the casual gamer and a lot for the hardcore gamer (space phase).

Cavtroop got the game at the same time, and ran in to the nasty DasmX86Dll.dll issue.  What’s that?  Well it looks like DasmX86Dll.dll is a part of Dasm32 – a debugger/disassembler.  Basically this is a tool used to debug software.  You can get it for free here if you want to check it out.  What happens is, at some point the game crashes to the desktop with an error on that DLL.  Why?  It looks like EA/Maxis was a bit sloppy and left a reference to the debugger in their production code, which should not be in there.  Thus, when the game wants to go into debug mode it crashes to the desktop.

Don’t think that installing Dasm32 will help though, it won’t.  EA and Maxis need to release a patch for this.  Until then, the only real work around seems to be. . . well, the one that we shouldn’t have to use.  Others report that the pirated .exe works fine.  It’s a pretty big problem when the pirated exe works better than the one shipped from EA.  It’s not clear to me if this debug call is a SecuRom call, or one built into Spore itself.  At a guess, it’s a SecuRom thing – once you remove SecuRom from the picture, no crash.

While I don’t advocate pirating anything, I just don’t have a moral issue with finding a cracked .exe for a game that I’ve already purchased, just to get the game to work.  And not only do you have to do that for the game to work, but your running it at a reduced capacity – no online content for you!

There’s been talk of how hard it is to remove SecuRom in and of itself.  I’ve found official instructions for doing this online at several sources, and I’ll reproduce them here in a cleaned up version so you know what to do.  Obviously this will stop Spore from functioning properly for you.  But if you have had SecuRom infected games installed on your PC and you no longer want to play them, here’s how to remove this software.

To remove all SecuROM related files (except the license data stored beneath the registry keys) please follow the uninstall instructions below.

Before you start the uninstall process, close all programs which are running in the background, especially be sure that no instance of the Windows Explorer is running.

Open the Windows command prompt.
type in the path of the infected executable:

“C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\[Your game] (for example: The Sims 2 Bon Voyage)\TSBin\[Sims 2 .exe file] (for example: Sims2EP6.exe or Sims2SP5.exe)”

And append /uninstall to it.

So for Sims2EP6.exe, you would type C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\Sims 2\TSBin\Sims2EP6.exe /uninstall

A dialog box should then appear to start the SecuRom uninstall process.

The registry keys described above are not removed by the above uninstall process; otherwise, the copy protection function of SecuROM would be completely undermined. The registry keys, which contain license data, remain on your PC and do not affect any of your PC’s functions. This is no different than other commercially available software programs that employ a similar use of registry keys.

Note: These instructions will work only for applications protected with SecuROM version 7.24 or higher (The Sims 2 Bon Voyage uses version 7.33 of SecuROM, so the instructions do apply). If you have an earlier version of SecuROM, please contact support@securom.com for different instructions.

Speaking of SecuRom – I’m not quite sure why software companies continue to insist that DRM of this type (or any type) is worth it.  I wonder how much money EA stuck into this?  The game was available on the torrents before it’s official launch and yet here’s EA and far to many other companies shoveling money down the DRM hole.

And it’s doubly a problem because of their refusal to see this as an issue.  If the game sells well, EA says “See! DRM isn’t that big a deal, people don’t care and we’re still selling games.”  If the game’s sales are hurt by DRM they fall back on “Pirates are killing our bottom line!”  Seriously?  Games will get pirated, sure.  But you’re much more likely to sell copies if they’re not crippled in the first place by software that does nothing to stop the pirates and everything to annoy legitimate users.

Think EA!  How many more games would you sell to people if your Amazon ratings were 4 or 5 stars?  How manyon the fence gamers wondering if they should plonk down $50 of their hard earned money are going to turn away from this?  I like this game, I really do, but I had to give it a 1 star rating on Amazon as well because of the way legit users are treated like criminals and the folks who do steal the game get to play it whenever and wherever they want.

So what to do?  Well obviously you can decide to not spend your money on this game.  Even more important though, rather than pirate it which is still illegal, why not give your money to publishers who refuse to treat their customers as criminals in the first place?  If PC gaming is a dying past time, it’s because of publishers who use DRM.  If someone’s going to save it, it’s the folks below.

My favorite game company of all time, Stardock, has a number of good to great games out there right now, Sins of a Solar Empire being my current favorite video game period.  They make good games, and their currently in the spotlight for refusing to use DRM, a commitement to ship a finished product and their gamers bill of rights. Impulse is also a neat client and is shaping up to be a real Steam competitor.

I’m glad to give them my money for a product that works, is fun and is DRM free.

The folks at Software, Technology and More have also gone through the trouble of compiling a great list of DRM free, indie games.  Their top pick, Mount and Blade is a fantastic game and the rest, though I don’t have much experience with them, I’ll be checking out.

The bottom line – DRM sucks. It punishes the people doing the right thing by paying developers to develop, causing a lot of unecessary headaches among users and basically making us all feel like we’re just renting a game, not purchasing it. I hope that the mob of low ratings on Amazon sends EA and other publishers a message but I’m doubtful they’re even listening.

Technorati Tags: drm, spore, securom, video games, remove drm, ea, maxis, stardock, indie, games, geek, technology, computers

If you’re a Linux guru or or experienced enough to know what all of these things are then you probably don’t need this article and we can go our merry ways.  If not, then DO NOT, DON’T, NEVER EVER EVER EVER run these commands in a terminal session.  If you do you will render your system anything from useless without a forced reboot to devoid of any useful purpose ever.

Why write this article then?  Because you should be forewarned as a Linux user that there are people out there who consider it good fun to bait others into running destructive and harmful commands on their machines.  Particularly those new to Linux.  So use this list as a caution as to what not to do.  And note that it’s not an exhaustive list, simply a quick reference against stuff you really don’t want to do.  Bottom line is, research what you’re about to execute before you push the enter key and know what you’re doing to your system, yourself and your job prospects.

Let’s start with commands that delete things that probably shouldn’t be deleted, shall we?

The basic way to delete a file in Linux is with the rm command.  rm foo will take foo, wring its skinny neck and throw it down the drain.  Gone.  See you later.

Now there are lots of variants on these commands.  Let’s look at a few.  Again, look but do not execute!

rm -rf ./  – Delete the files in a current directory (all of them)

rm -rf / – Delete the partition.  (AHHH!)

rm -rf . – Delete the whole directory.

rm -rf * – Delete all visible files in a directory

Running all of these commands have certain real world utility.  They’re also a great way to fubar your system if run in the wrong place.  Remember ‘rm’ means remove.  -r means recursive and -f means don’t bother asking me if you want me to really delete your /usr/bin directory – or any other for that matter.

Mean folks have gotten slightly more creative and regular Linux users have made this mistake more than once.

rm -rf .* – Delete all hidden (files that start with a ‘.’) files.

Now, how about the good old fork bomb!  Sounds ominous eh?  What a fork bomb does is eat up all of your available system processes, essentially bringing your system to it’s knees.  A fork is when a program spawns another program – often a version of itself.  A fork bomb is when this happens endlessly and nearly exponentially until there are no resources left on your system.  Most often the only way to get out of this is to hard reboot (i.e. hold down the old power button) which can cause file system problems.  Here’s a few examples of fork bombs to watch out for:

){ :& };: – The cutest one.  Like a vorpal bunny.

#!/usr/bin/perl  – for Perl meanies.
fork while 1

or also in perl:

fork while fork

#include <unistd.h>
int main(int argc, char* args[])
{
while(1)
fork();
return 0;
}

That last one is in C.  As you can see there are a bunch of ways to do this – the above examples are only that, examples.  Just be careful of code you don’t know with the word ‘fork’ in it, or of typing lots of emoticons into your shell.

Even windows users can be subject to fork bombs in the form of malicious batch code.  Here are two examples:

:s
START %0
GOTO :s

%0|%0

The next kind of code bomb is a tar bomb.  Tar is a nifty program for compressing and uncompressing stuff so you don’t have to lug around hefty loads of data.  Tared files can be crafted however to ‘explode’ into an existing directory, rather than into a new directory.

An example: Say you’re in your home directory and you have file called foo.tar you want to untar.  So you do so and it should untar into a directory called /foo sitting in your home directory.  Through malice or bad practice though, it could just untar all of it’s files into your /home directory.  This is bad if there are say. . . 487,038 files in the tarbomb.  Now you’ve got all the junk to sort through in your home directory.  Ouch!

The same can be said for any uncompiled code.  If you don’t know where it’s coming from think twice before compiling it.  It’s very easy for someone to hide a chunk of malicious code in the thousands of lines of codeit takes to make a program.

Bottom line is – be cautious, don’t run things if you don’t know where they came from and always, always check what a command does if you’re not familiar with it.  Not only will this make you more productive and more powerful user but it will help you protect yourself as well.  Remember this isn’t an exhaustive list, there are plenty of other tricks out there as well.  Be safe.

Edit: Thanks to the commenters for pointing out some errors – I’ve since corrected them!

Technorati Tags: how not to, linux, unix, commands not to run, tarbom, fork bomb, malicous commands, shell scripts, ouchie

Note: This will work on any system using gnome, or just about any other system if you know your way around cron.  I happen to run Ubuntu though, and enjoy it over other distros, so that’s where I wrote this and that’s how I titled it.

I also like to see what’s going on with the world, particularly the weather but often find myself not in orbit so I’m unable to track worldwide weather patterns like I want to.

Then a though occurred to me – what if I set up one of my Ubuntu boxes to have a map of the world with clouds overlayed, updated every hour?  Neat!  I now have a map of the world with cloud overlays updated hourly for my background.

It took me a little time to figure this out but I’ve nailed it and now you can do it too by following my quick, easy plan to wealth and . . . er. . . to a weatherified desktop.

First, you’re going to want to get a program called gnome-schedule. You can either start Synaptic (System-> Administration-> Synaptic Package Manager) and search for ‘gnome-schedule’ or open up a terminal session (Applications-> Accessories-> Terminal Session) and type:

sudo apt-get install gnome-schedule

What is it?  Gnome Schedule is a GUI front end to Cron, which is a scheduling daemon.  It allows you to tell your computer to execute a command at a given time, which in our case is going to be every hour – and to repeat this command at given times, again, hourly.

Gnome-scheduler isn’t automagically added to your menus, so let’s add it to the Applications-> Accessories menu, shall we?  Right click on Applications and choose “Edit Menus”.  From there, left click on Accessories and click the New Item button.  Call this new menu item “Gnome Schedule” in the Name field and in the Command field, type ‘gnome-schedule‘.

Click okay, and it’s there.  You can also always launch it from a terminal session by typing gnome-schedule.

Thankfully, there’s an awesome site out there called die.net.  They host a nice good sized image of the world with cloud cover updated once every hour or so.  We’re going to automate the task of going to die.net and downloading the needed .jpg file.

Open Gnome Scheduler, and click the New button.  From there, choose “A task that launches recurrently”.

In the description field, call it “weather wallpaper” or whatever you’d like.  In the Command field, type

wget -r -N http://static.die.net/earth/mercator/1600.jpg

In the Time & Date section, click the Advanced radio button.  Now, in the Minute field, put something between ‘10‘ and ‘55‘  – you choose a number.  In the hour field, put 0-23. Now click the Add button to add this task to your scheduler.

What does this do?  It tells your computer to go out to die.net and grab the 1600.jpg file some number of minutes past every hour.  Why do it this way?  Well I figure if the image updates on the hour and my clock is a little off, a few minutes past the hour or a few minutes to the hour should be enough leeway for me to get the latest image.  If we vary our numbers, we won’t all flood the site at 10 minutes past.

Once you’ve added this to Gnome Schedule, click the Run task button.  This will execute the task so you can both test it, and grab the appropriate file.  Gnome Schedule will run this command as you, and dump the file into your home directory.

Now to get it on to your computer as your background.  Right click your desktop and choose “Change Desktop Background”.  Now click the Add button and browse to your home directory.  Choose the file 1600.jpg and it will be added to your backgrounds and set up as your wallpaper.

When this image updates every hour, your background will automatically update as well.  Neat, eh?

You can do this with any image that’s available on the web which updates.  All you need is the URL to download the image and you’ll have to modify your little script to reflect the correct file name.

Enjoy!

EDIT: Thanks to Sam R and some astute Reddit readers, I’ve edited this article to make it even easier to do.  Now – anyone got a list of pictures online that are updated every N minutes?

Technorati Tags: ubuntu, how to, wallpaper, desktop, rotating, weather map, linux, updated world cloud coverage, geek

A note: I say Ubuntu in the title because that’s what I’m running and that’s where I wrote this how to article.  It is most likely applicable to any Debian system and probably good for just about any other flavor out there.

Now, we begin!

First thing you’ll need is an intimate knowledge of how your Linux kernel is programed, along with a decent working knowledge of physics program for modern GPUs.  Nah, just kidding.  You’ll need a terminal session. Go to Applications-> Accessories-> Terminal and lets get this show on the road.

In your terminal session, we’re going to create a directory for your Steam dedicated servers to live.  Let’s call it ‘steam’.

sudo mkdir /steam

Hey, we’re on our way! No lets head into the directory we just created.

cd /steam

Once there, we’ll need to download a .bin file called hldsupdatetool.bin, like so:

sudo wget http://storefront.steampowered.com/download/hldsupdatetool.bin

That will take but a few seconds, unless you’re on dial up in which case you probably shouldn’t be running a dedicated server anyway.  Once that’s there, let’s run it.

chmod +x hldsupdatetool.bin

sudo ./hldsupdatetool.bin

Now that we’ve gotten the half life server update stuff out of the way, we’ll run Steam for Linux for the first time so it can update itself.

sudo ./steam

Let that do it’s thing, it could take a minute or two.  Once that finishes, you’ll have to decide on what game(s) you want to host and then tell Steam to go get the dedicated server.  The command looks like this:

sudo ./steam -command update -game “SOMEGAME” -dir .

You’ll want to substitute SOMEGAME with one of the following options (keeping the quotes) cstrike, dmc, dod, ricochet, tfc, valve, Counter-Strike Source or hl2mp.  The two that I’ve messed with are Half-Life 2 Multiplayer (hlf2mp) and Counter Strike Source.  So to set up Counter Strike Source, do this:

./steam -command update -game “Counter-Strike Source” -dir .

That tells Steam to update the game (in this case, install it too) in to the local (.) directory.

Once you’ve downloaded a particular game you want to host, you’re going to want to change some directory permissions, like so:

sudo chmod -R 755 steam

Now that you’ve gotten the game downloaded, you launch a dedicated server like so:

./srcds_run -game cstrike +maxplayers 16 -autoupdate

That will launch Counter Strike Source, set the max players to 16 and update as necessary.  You can also specifiy a map, located in the cstrike/maps directory by adding -map de_mapname.  Leave off the file extension when you do this.  To see all of the maps, do this from the steam directory.

cd cstrike/maps

ls | grep *.bsp

if you go up one directory (cd ..) you can look at maplist.txt to see all of the maps available.  There’s also a mapcycle.txt which I’m assuming is how the server knows to move through maps.

I do know you can set a specific port with the +port 12345 command where 12345 would be the desired port number.

Now you and I are both up to the same level of understanding on this.  I’d love to delve further into it, and love even more to know how to get statistics (number of players connected, which map is currently running, etc.) or some sort of GUI control panel.  And how do you ban J. Random Asshat players?

If you discover more, please let me know!

Technorati Tags: half life 2, counter strike, steam, valve, dedicated server, multiplayer, linux, ubuntu, how to, video games

The Way Toys Work is a book that explores the origins and inner workings of 50 popular toys.  A guide on how to recreate simple versions of each toy is also included, as well as various science experiments that can be performed with them.

The book is divided into 50 chapters – one for each toy.  Each chapter includes sections on history, function, dismantlement, and duplication.

My opinion of this book oscillated between excitement and disappointment.  But as I eventually recognized the goal of the authors and who their target audience was, I became very satisfied with the book.

The Pros

What the book does especially well is describe the origins of each toy.  I was a little shocked to discover how many popular toys were created by people with no toy-making experience.  I found the histories genuinely interesting.  I also enjoyed the in-depth explanations of how many of the toys worked, especially ones that involved scientific principles more complex than gravity and aerodynamics (the Dunking Bird is powered by methylene chloride vapor, for example).

The Cons

It is difficult to tell who would best benefit from reading this book.  The brief histories and simple related crafts would best benefit school children, but the in-depth scientific analyses would frequently be over their heads and better suited for older geeks.  Also, each chapter is disconnected and it is sometimes difficult to read the book for more than a few chapters.  I found it best to leave the book sitting out and read a chapter or two when I was bored.

I eventually decided that this book has a place both in the classroom and at home.  Children can benefit from the brief explanations of how their favorite toys work, and adults can benefit from the interesting backgrounds and inner workings of their childhood playthings.

I would certainly recommend this book to geeks of all ages.

The Stats

Title: The Way Toys Work: The Science Behind the Magic 8 Ball, Etch A Sketch, Boomerang, and More
Author(s): Ed and Woody Sobey
ISBN10: 1556527454
ISBN13: 978-1556527456
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Cost: $10.17 (from Amazon)
Format: Paperback, 178 pages
Published: May 1, 2008

Technorati Tags: books, book reviews, The Way Toys Work, The Way Toys Work: The Science Behind the Magic 8 Ball, Etch A Sketch, Boomerang, and More, Ed Sobey, Woody Sobey

Technorati Tags: lifehacker, windows, optimization, myths, debunked, debunking, tweaks, registry cleaners, prefetch

Error removing file: Permission denied

I like computers but I’m not a big fan of when they talk back.  So here’s a quick and easy way to go into your system and nuke those files.

First, open up a terminal session (Applications-> Accessoris ->Terminal)

Now, type this:

cd /home/YOUR-USER-NAME/.local/share/Trash/files

Typing ‘ls’ at this point should reveal to you the folders and files you’re trying to delete.  Now on to the nuking.  If it’s just a few files, this will do:

sudo rm -f *

If it’s files, folders and files within folders, try this:

sudo rm -Rf *

No more stuck stuff in your trash.

Technorati Tags: linux, ubuntu, trash, stuck, howto, geeks, computers

While Ubuntu (the distro that I use) and other distros don’t really use Superfetch, you can still get an advantage using the disk cache functionality – particularly if you’re running on a system that doesn’t have a ton of RAM available. This tutorial is written with Ubuntu in mind but can be easily modified to use with just about any distro.  And yes, there’s some command line stuff.  No, it’s not as guified as Vista.

First, stick the USB drive into an open USB slot. Make sure it’s a drive that you don’t mind overwriting.

Ubuntu should mount this automagically in /media/disk.  You’ll probably also get a nifty icon on your desktop.

To unmount this  – open up a terminal session (Applications-> Accessories-> Terminal) and type

mount

Now look to see where your USB drive is mounted.  In Ubuntuland it’s usually under /media/disk or /media/usbdisk.  On my system it’s mounted like this:

/dev/sdb1 on /media/disk type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=hal,shortname=mixed,uid=1000,utf8,umask=077,flush)

The easy way to tell if this is the correct disk is to run the mount command before you stick it in your USB slot and then after.  The newest mount – well that’s the one you want.

To unmount this, type:

sudo umount /dev/sdb1

Of course, change the /dev/sdb1 bit to reflect what’s on your system.

Now, we’re going to create a swap file on the unmounted USB drive.  In my case I’ll type:

sudo mkswap /dev/sdb1

Again, change the /dev/sdb1 bit to what you say when you ran the ‘mount’ command earlier.

Now that I’ve filled this drive with a swap partition, it’s time to turn it on and give it high priority.

sudo swapon -p 32767 /dev/sdb1

That turns the swap partition on, with a priority (-p) of 32767.  Why 32767?  Well that’s the highest priority available.  Here’s the documentation if you’re interested.

You can double check that you did everything correctly by checking the /proc/swaps file:

cat /proc/swaps

My output is as follows:

Filename                Type        Size    Used    Priority
/dev/sda5                               partition    3229024    0    -1
/dev/sdb1                               partition    1981928    0    32767

You can see I have about 2GB of swap space allocated on /dev/sdb1

This won’t give you a huge speed boost on higher memory machines but if you’re using a laptop with only 512 megs of RAM you should see a noticable difference.

Technorati Tags: how to, howto, ubuntu, linux, swap, readyboost, geek, technology, foss

Getting music from ‘out there’ to ‘in here’.  There are several ways to go about doing this.  The first, and easiest is to hang around your favorite DRM-free download store, like Amazon.com or Rhapsody for starters.  See something you like?  Buy it!  You may also have a lot of your music on an ancient format, like a CD or perhaps a clay tablet.  Let’s say you’re looking at a stack of CDs that are sitting outside of your computer and you’d like to get all that music into your computer.

Grab the first CD you want to encode (and remember, this is for your one, archival purposes only copy of your CD.  Don’t sell it, share it or do anything illegal with it – or if you do, remember that I told you not to).

You’ll have to install a program called Sound Juicer to rip those tracks from your CD and deposit them to your computer.  Here’s a previous post on how to install Sound Juicer and enable it to rip to MP3 format if it doesn’t default to that option for you.

When you run Sound Juicer, I’d suggest saving all of your files to your Music folder.  You can find it at /home/your-user-name/Music, or click on Places -> Music.

In my 8.04 Ubuntu install, Sound Juicer wasn’t put into the Applications menu for me.  You can always hit the terminal and type sound-juicer but I like a menu entry as much as the next guy.  Right click on your Applications menu and choose Edit Menus.  From there, click on the Sound & Video menu on the left, and then click the New Item button on the right.  Call it Sound Juicer, use the command sound-juicer and the icon should find itself.  Click Okay and exit out of everything until you’re back on your desktop.  Open it up and rip some CDs!

Now, you’ve got a few CD’s ripped, you’ve downloaded all of Barry White’s music from Amazon and you also have a gig or two (or twenty) of music you’ve been carting around with you since your brother’s friend used to DJ, you’ve got to decide what to do with all this stuff.

My first suggestion would be to take the whole cart load of music, in it’s many folders and various locations and put it all in one place.  Ubuntu 8.04 has a nice place all set up for you called “Music” which we talked about earlier.  Not terribly original, but eminently workable.  The folder is located in your home director, under Music, or Places -> Music.

Once you’ve got everything in one place, what should you do?  I’ve been working hard at getting all of my MP3′s tagged correctly.  Tags are bits of the file that tell you and your computer what the song is, where it came from, who the artist is, what album it’s from and lots of other information. Improperly tagged music can cause a lot of problems for those who like order and organization.  It’s also the leading cause of MP3s showing up in players as “03.mp3” rather than “Sweet Barry White.mp3”.  (I made that title up, by the way).

So you’ve got your music in one place, what now?  Let’s make sure it’s all properly tagged!  If you’ve downloaded the music from a reputable site, it’s most likely tagged correctly, although it could have some extra information there you don’t want.

What about all the other stuff?  If you’ve ripped it and made sure your info was correct in Sound Juicer (default settings usually work) then you should be okay as well.  All the other files you’ve got laying around though, they could use some work most likely.

In comes MusicBrainz.  It’s a community run and updated music metadata site!  Wha?  Essentially they’ve compiled a list of music, musicians and albums and have made a way for you to use that information to correctly tag your stuff.

You’ll need to get get a nifty piece of software called Picard to utilize their services.  Go to System -> Administration -> Synaptic File Manager.  Once synaptic is open, search for Picard.  Find it, right click on it, mark it for install and say okay.  Synaptic does it’s thing and you’ve got Picard!

Again, you’ll have to add it to your Applications menu manually.  Right click on your Applications menu and choose Edit Menus.  From there, click on the Sound & Video menu on the left, and then click the New Item button on the right.  Call it Picard, use the command picard and the icon should find itself.  Click Okay and exit out of everything until you’re back on your desktop.

Now, start up Picard from your new menu entry.  You can do a single MP3 or load up a whole folder’s worth by clicking the Add Files or Add Folder buttons.  For this example, I’ll use a single file.

Click the Add Files button, browse to where your dubiously tagged MP3 file is and open it.  I’ll show you how this works, by illustrating tags with one song.

Once your file is opened, double click on it to see what kind of tags you have.  I’ve used a Bobby McFerrin song because he’s cool and I like to seem worldly.  As you can see, there’s only one tag, and that’s the file name.

Click Okay.  Now, back at the main Picard screen, with your MP3 highlighted still, click the Lookup button.

BAM!  There’s your MP3 info!  It’s like magic!  Or not.  Anyway, highlight the song on the right side panel and click the Save button.

Now you’ve got all the info you need for this MP3.  You can use the Add Files or Add Folder buttons to put up as many MP3′s as your mind can handle, and then highlight them all and click the Lookup button.  You’ll have to go through and save what you want but it sure beats manually looking up all this information.  This means opening each album, and saving the selected MP3s.

Picard can do a lot more but those are the basic tools you’ll need to get started.  Here’s the documentation for those who want to dig deeper.

There may be songs that Picard and MusicBrainz just won’t have info on.  At this point, you can manually tag your songs using a program called Ex Falso.  Ex Falso can be gotten by going to System -> Administration -> Synaptic File Manager.  Once synaptic is open, search for ex falso.  Find it, right click on it, mark it for install and say okay.

Strangely, this was added to my Applications -> Sound & Video menu automatically.  Open the program up, select an MP3 to modify, click on it and you can see all of the tag information.  By clicking on a tag, you can edit it.

Okay, you’ve got your MP3′s all lined up, they’re tagged and just ready to go!  What now?  Now you need a good player and playlist organizer.  On to my new favorite program for this – Amarok!

A note to Ubuntunistas.  Yes, I know Amarok is a KDE program.  I don’t care that I’m running it in Gnome.  I love this program.  Love it in a near-biblical sense.

Back to Synaptic, search for Amarok and install it!

Once you’ve gotten it installed, fire it up and walk through the Wizard which will tell Amarok where all of your MP3s are.  Applications -> Sound & Video -> Amarok.

This is an easy to use yet fully feature piece of software which you can use to do everything from create and play simple play lists, to sync your MP3 players.  This would take an entirely new post to describe how to use this. Or bettery yet, head on over to the Amarok site and check it out yourself.

There are lots of other music players for Linux and Ubuntu out there that you can use as well. They’ll be a lot more fun now that you’ve got your music organized and tagged correctly.  Banshee is a great Gnome native player which just hit release 1.0.  I’ve also used XMMS with a good deal of success.  All of these are available through Synaptic on your Ubuntu computer.

You’re organized, you’re tagged and you’re ready to go!

Technorati Tags: mp3, music, rip, tags, mp3 tag, amarok, musicbrainz, geek, picard, how to, ex falso

First, download this .deb file (or this one if you’re on a 64 bit Ubuntu install).

Once you’ve downloaded this, double click on it to install it.  You’ll be asked to provide your password and your Ubuntu install will probably download a few dependencies.

After you’ve done this, you’ve got Google Gadgets installed!

Now to get it running.  For starters, you can run a one-off instance of this to see if it works.  hit CTRL-F2 (hit gently friends, your keyboard is your friend) and type:

ggl-gtk

A neat little sidebar should now appear on your machine, causing all of your friends to drop their caffeinated beverages and wonder why the hell you switched to Vista.

If you want this to autostart when you turn your system on, go to System-> Preferences -> Session and click Add.  Call it Google Gadgets and in the command line, put

ggl-gtk

Now each time you start your computer up, Google Gadgets will auto start.

By typing ggl-gtk -help, you get this handy list of extras:

-z zoom    Specify initial zoom factor for View, no effect for sidebar.
-b         Draw window border for Main View.
-ns        Use dashboard mode instead of sidebar mode.
-bg        Run in background.

Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: google, gadgets, linux, ubuntu, open, debian based, magic 8 ball on every desktop

I forgot all about it by the time I made it home and then for some reason today it was triggered again. Thankfully in this modern age of course, nostalgia is just a click away and I found the following!

KISS on 3 2 1 Contact- How to make a KISS concert.

Technorati Tags: 3 2 1 Contact, Kiss, Rocking programming, PBS, bite me Dora

With gas prices now over the four dollar mark (Road Warriors still plays in my head when I think about that).

Seth Sandler, you’re my new hero. With merely a cardboard box, tape, a piece of glass, paper and a webcam; he was able to create a Multi-Touch pad. His parents should be proud.

With the $10,000 you save, you can actually afford that tank of gas.

The tool you need is Aimersoft Mac DVD Copy, which you can download for free from:
http://www.aimersoft.com/mac-dvd-copy.html

It’s very easy to use, just with three simple steps then you can easily copy DVD on Mac.

Step1. Select DVD Source

After you install and lunch Aimersoft Mac DVD Copy, put the DVD disc into your DVD drive. Click the “Select Source” drop-down list to browse your computer and located your source DVD movie (either in a folder or from your DVD-ROM).

Step2: Select DVD Copy Method
Aimersoft Mac DVD Copy allows you to back up DVD to a folder on your hard drive or directly copy DVD to a new DVD disc. In the “Select DVD Copy Method” field, select a method to output the selected DVD movie according to your need:

If you want to back up your DVD movie to a folder on your hard disc, you can select the “Output DVD Folder” option, and specify a directory to save the copied DVD movie.

If you want to directly copy your DVD movie to a new DVD disc, you can just select the DVD Burner where you have inserted a blank DVD disc.

Note: If you are copying a DVD disc from your DVD Burner to a new DVD disc, Aimersoft Mac DVD Copy will ask you to insert a blank DVD disc when the program gets ready to burn. Then you can just take the original DVD disc out and insert a blank DVD disc.
But if you have two or multiple DVD Burner, you just need to change object DVD to another DVD burner and insert a blank disc into it , then Aimersoft Mac DVD Copy will automatically copy DVD movie to the new DVD disc. No need to wait for the conversion to insert a new blank DVD disc.

Step3: Program Settings (optional)
Set Buffer Directory: Specify a directory on your hard drive as the buffer directory to store the temporary files generated during the conversion. We recommend that you select a folder on a hard drive that has relatively big free space.

Select Language: Select an interface language for the program. The currently available languages are English and Simplified Chinese.

Step4: Start Copying DVD
After all things done, click the Start button to start copying your DVD movie or burning it to a new DVD disc. That’s all.

Technorati Tags: dvd, max, osx, copy, backup, for legal use only, wink, wink, technology, geek

Phaser Blasted Alarm Clock! – video powered by Metacafe

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM.

That’s a bummer because it generally means you’ve got a corrupt registry. Thankfully most windows XP installs (unless you’ve manually tweaked it not to) create restore points for you registry from which you can attempt to resurrect your Windows install.

NOTE: You will be digging into your windows system32 folder and mucking about. If this makes you feel queasy, or if you’re not entirely confident that you have a complete backup you may not want to do this. In other words, proceed at your own risk.

Hop on in to your Ubuntu install, and lets install a few tools we’ll need to access your Windows partition. You may have ntfs-3g installed already. Open up a CLI (Applications-> Accessories-> Terminal) and type:

sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g ntfsprogs

Now we have what we’ll need to work in the NTFS partition that contains your Windows install.

Next, we’ll have to determine which partition that is and then mount it so we can work in it.

sudo fdisk -l

That command will list all of the available partitions on your hard drive(s). You’re looking for the one that says NTFS. It may look something like

/dev/sda2 1 9327 74919096 83 NTFS

If you have multiple NTFS partitions it’s a good idea to start with the first one. We’ll go through mounting them and you won’t do any harm in looking around. If you can’t find the directories needed in your first NTFS partition, try the next one. In this tutorial, we’ll use /dev/sda2. Remember to change this to correspond with what actually exists on your system.

So, we know what we want to mount (or have a good idea) so let’s get that partition mounted.

First let’s make a directory where it can sit.

sudo mkdir /media/windows

Now let’s mount it and make it read/write so we can modify it.

sudo mount ntfs-3g -o rw /dev/sda2 /media/windows

Change ‘sda2‘ to reflect your hard drive. If this generates an error message, you may have to force the mount with:

sudo mount nfts-3g -o force,rw /dev/sda2 /media/windows

Now you should be able to change directory into your windows partition.

cd /media/windows

That’s the root of your drive. Lets go to where the files you’ll need to replace are.

cd WINDOWS/system32/config

There are five files you’re going to need to pull from your restore point and plonk down here. First though, let’s back up the original files, even if they’re corrupt. Better safe than sorry.

cp default default.bak
cp SAM SAM.bak
cp system system.bak
cp software software.bak
cp security security.bak

Now you have your backup. Next we’re going to overwrite the corrupted files with ones from your last restore point.

cd ‘/media/windows/WINDOWS/System Volume Information’

Now let’s take a quick look.

ls -las

you should see at least one directory that starts with ‘_restore’ and then some random characters. Change directories into that.

cd _restore*

Now another ls to find the restore point directory with the latest date.

ls -las

Look for the most recent directory that is similar to RP123 – it will be different on your machine. Lets move into that directory

cd RP123

Now into the snapshot directory

cd snapshot

If you want to take a look around, do an ‘ls‘ to see what’s there. We’re going to copy those five files we made backups of back to their appropriate place.

cp _REGISTRY_USER_.DEFAULT /media/windows/WINDOWS/system32/config/default
cp _REGISTRY_MACHINE_SECURITY /media/windows/WINDOWS/system32/config/security
cp _REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE /media/windows/WINDOWS/system32/config/software
cp _REGISTRY_MACHINE_SYSTEM /media/windows/WINDOWS/system32/config/system
cp _REGISTRY_MACHINE_SAM /media/windows/WINDOWS/system32/config/SAM

Now that you’ve copied these, let’s tell windows to to force a file system consistency check.

sudo ntfsfix /dev/sda2

It’s time to boot into your Windows partition and see if we’ve fixed the problem. So restart and select Windows from your boot loader menu. When it first starts up, you should get a blue screen telling you that you’ll need to run a file system consistency check. Let it do it, and reboot again. Hopefully you’ll be back into your Windows install!

Technorati Tags: windows, ubuntu, technology, registry, corrupt, dual boot, geeks

Do little gadgets seem to jump out of your hands as if to commit suicide? Ash came over today with her latest phone (her fourth or fifth one due to butter fingers), and a pile of boxes filled with bubble wrap prompted my latest idea (that has probably been done already, and if it has, please don’t pop MY bubble).

Bubble wrap phone covers!

First: take the phone and place it under the bubble wrap (smooth side up), trace the area around the screen and buttons. You’d want to cut the bubble wrap slightly smaller than the actual holes because the material will stretch a little once you wrap it around the device. Carefully cut out the holes and then cut four strips around to make it look like a +. Cut the top strip where it’s narrow on top so that it widens at the base so you can conveniently tuck it in after you wrap the cover around the phone. Tape the sides together with adhesive and voila- A cell phone cover made of bubble wrap.

For extra protection I made a case for the case out the bubble wrap using the same idea but with no holes and a little pocket for business cards.

The bubble wrap covers also come in pink, green and blue! Granted I’ve only done this once and already I see improvements that could be made- but YEE! Geeky solutions that allow you to be as clutzy as you wanna be.

See more pictures of it in use and and the phone cover complete with business card pocket.

Time to dump Windows?
Can it be done? Is it the right time? Find out what it’ll take to finally switch to desktop Mac OS X or Linux

By Galen Gruman at InfoWorld

InfoWorld’s “Save XP” petition asking Microsoft to keep Windows XP available indefinitely, not end most sales on June 30 as currently planned, has prompted many readers to suggest that maybe the best answer for those who don’t like Vista is to switch to another operating system completely.

“Don’t be afraid. Just switch to Linux and become a member of a really free society,” wrote Carlos Raul Gutierrez.

[ Find out the deployment secrets of early Vista adopters ]

“Windows Vista was the reason I bought a Mac mini. I didn’t want my only choices to be an operating system that would soon be obsolete (XP) or one that was buggy and would break much existing hardware (Vista), and I’m not enough of a geek to use Linux (do things from the command line? Puhleeze…),” wrote “Jack.”

How realistic is a switch to Linux or Apple’s Mac OS X? For some users — often technically savvy people such as engineers, consultants, designers and CTOs — it is clearly an option that already works quite well. In the past year, running Mac OS X or Linux as your default OS has been made easier by the capability to run Windows in a virtual machine, giving you access to both Windows-only applications and Web sites that rely on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer-only ActiveX technology. But in a business environment, switching to a Mac or Linux PC may not be quite as easy.

The Mac OS X option
Of the plausible alternatives to Windows, Apple’s Mac OS X has the largest market share and history. InfoWorld chief technologist Tom Yager has written that the latest version of the Mac OS, Leopard (10.5), is simply the best operating system available. And Macs are indeed popping up more frequently even within IT circles — I’ve seen more MacBook Pros in the hands of CTOs and IT execs at conferences in the past year more than I’ve seen Mac notebooks in such venues ever. Although there are no real numbers on just the business adoption of Macs, it’s clear that Apple is in growth mode, gaining an increasing proportion of all new computer sales for more than a year now.

InfoWorld’s Yager has chronicled the adventures of one PC user who switched to the Mac OS, showing that for an individual, the conversion was ultimately a rewarding one. The TechWeb site has also provided a good guide on how to make the switch to Mac OS X.

A key tool for any Mac OS X switcher is a virtual machine to run Windows for those apps and Web sites that require it. Both Parallels Desktop 3.0 and EMC VMware’s Fusion software will do the trick, as InfoWorld’s comparative review has shown.

Although Macs are compatible with most typical hardware, such as monitors and drives, fitting a Mac into an enterprise’s management systems and ERP applications can be a different story. Yager’s Mac Enterprise blog and the Mac Enterprise user group both provide advice on managing Macs in a traditional IT environment.

The Linux option
The more technically inclined may be attracted to Linux, the most popular form of desktop Unix. Linux desktops typically are challenged by limited hardware compatibility (due to lack of drivers), limited application options, and user interfaces that require active participation to get work done, which tends to keep Linux away from the general user population. But those who work with a Linux server all day may find that using it on the desktop as well actually makes their lives easier.

Just as Mac users need occasional access to Windows, so do Linux users. Because Linux distributions run on Windows-compatible hardware, it’s straightforward to use desktop virtualization software, such as Parallels Workstation, Sun’s (formerly Innotek’s) VirtualBox, and EMC VMware’s Workstation software, to provide access to both environments.

Although some enterprises have committed to wide Linux deployment — such as automaker Peugeot Citroën’s plans to install 20,000 Novell Suse Linux desktops — most have left Linux to the engineering and development staff.

InfoWorld Enterprise Desktop blogger Randall Kennedy argues that desktop Linux is doomed to remain a tiny niche OS, given the Linux community’s lack of interest in providing a UI that regular people could use. Kennedy tried to spend a week working on nothing but the Ubuntu distribution of Linux but gave up on the fifth day.

But Kennedy’s take isn’t the last word on desktop Linux. Frequent InfoWorld contributor Neil McAllister put together a special report on how to move from Windows to Linux, concluding that the effort was not as hard as you might think.

Who’s right? As with any platform choice, they both may be. A one-size-fits-all approach may be unrealistic. And that likely explains why many businesses will have a mix, dominated by Windows XP today (and perhaps Vista in a few years) but not exclusively tied to Microsoft’s OS.

If you’ve already installed the menu, you can skip this step – or just for fun, you can run this command again. The worst that will happen is you get a message telling you it’s already here. There are two components you’ll want to install.

sudo apt-get install menu menu-xdg

Now that you’ve got them installed, right click on Applications in your task bar and choose “Edit Menus”.

Here, check off Debian and close the Main Menu window.

Now, back in your terminal session, type:

sudo update-menus

That worked on two out of three 7.10 machines I have. On the third, for some reason I had to go back into Edit Menus and check off Debian again after running update-menus.

Technorati Tags: ubuntu, debian, menu, how to, linux, geek, technology, would you like fries with that

To install this program, open up a terminal session (Applications-> Accessories-> Terminal) and type:

sudo apt-get install yakuake

You’ll be prompted to install this program and all of it’s dependencies, so type Yes (Y).

When that finishes, you’ll have Yakuake (which does sound like something dirty from Japan) installed. To test it out, type this in your terminal:

yakuake

You should see a little box pop up on your desktop telling you that the program has started. That’s a great sign. Now hit your F12 key and a terminal should spring into being fully formed, like one of Zeus’ prodigy. Yes? Great. Let’s move on to configure Yakuake to start when your computer does and use the ‘~’ key instead of F12.

Go to System-> Preferences-> Sessions. From there click the +Add button. In the name field type:

IloveArsGeek

Or. . .whatever you want. In the command field, enter:

yakuake

Now click the OK button to save this. The next time you log out and back in or restart your machine, Yakuake will be there with you.

To configure it, launch it by hitting F12 (if it’s not already started) and click the little down arrow on the right hand side, bottom.

Now, click Configure Global Shortcuts. Once there, click on the only one you should see, which reads “Open/Retract Yakuake F12“. Choose the Custom radio button below and then, gently and with great caution, type ‘~‘ once. Click OK.

You can now hop right into a terminal session just like you would when you’re playing your favorite FPS.

Technorati Tags: linux, howto, ubuntu, yakuake, geek, technology, how to, no it is not porn

2046 rows of Vista group policy goodness can be had by clicking on this simple link:

Simple Link

Any group policy setting, command, tweak, or configuration you can possibly think of is in this 1.6MB testament to the school of who-needs-databases. Use it well.

Technorati Tags: vista, group policy, technology, computers, tweaks, how to, massive freaking spreadsheet

Today Neuros announced a new hack that allows you to control your OSD from your PC. Here’s a handy video for you to see it in action.

Here are transcribed instructions. Note that for this to work, your OSD must be connected to your network.

1.   Download the files onto a USB key, SD card or other media.
2.   Plug the media into your OSD.
3.   Download and install the TightVNC client. Free software for non-commercial use!
4.   Figure out the IP address of your OSD by navigating to Settings > Network on your TV. Usually the IP address begins with “192.168″ or “10.”.
5.   Telnet to your OSD. In Windows, you can do this by going to Start > Run and typing “telnet “, where you replace IP address with the IP address. So, in our case, we entered “telnet 192.168.200.72″ and pressed enter. Username is root, password is pablod .
6.   Navigate to your media’s folder. As we plugged in a USB key into the OSD, we navigated to it with the commands (without the quotes): “cd /media/USB”
7.   Run the command indicated in Bagster’s README.TXT file (without the quotes): “./x11vnc -rawfb fb0 -pipeinput ./send_ir.sh -forever”
8.   Run the TightVNC Viewer. Enter the IP address for your OSD. Again, in our case, it is 192.168.200.72. Press Connect, and off you go!

Technorati Tags: neuros, osd, pvr, dvr, technology, open source, hack, pc, remote control, awesome in a box

Want to get that screen when you boot up in Vista rather than the useless little scroll bar sliding back and forth while you boot?

It’s very easy to do.

Click the Vista pebble start button thingy, and in the search field type:

msconfig

Once that launches, click the Boot tab, and then check off No GUI boot.

Restart and pat yourself on the back.

Technorati Tags: vista, windows, microsoft, technology, geek, how to, boot screen, splash screen, area 51ish

We’ll be using the terminal (Applications-> Accessories-> Terminal) and the dd command to do this. You’ll also need to have your second disk up and running when we get going. You can either have it installed and mounted internally or use an external disk enclosure and USB or Firewire. (Note: Doing this via USB 1 will be excruciatingly slow!)

You’ll also want to either be cloning your hard drive to one of the exact same size, or if you have a larger disk, make a partition of the same size on it and clone to that. Then, use an Ubuntu liveCD to change the partition size (System-> Administration-> Partition Editor). Lastly, you’ll need a LiveCD.

On to the good stuff. Got both disks plugged in? Good! Now you’ll need to figure out which disk you are copying from and which disk you are copying too. In your terminal, type:

df -h

Look first for the partition that’s mounted at root, or ‘/’. Here’s what my root partition looks like.

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on

/dev/sda1 71G 46G 22G 68% /

If you’re using a SATA drive it will appear like that. IDE should be /dev/hda1. See that slash below the Mounted on? That’s the root drive.

Now you’ve got to locate the drive you’re copying too. The same df -h command will do the trick. Look for another disk mounted on /dev/****. If you’re not sure what you’re looking for, first run the df -h command without your second disk mounted. Then plug the 2nd disk in (be sure to shut down if you’re doing this inside your machine and not via USB or FireWire) and run the df -h command again. The newest partition that appears is what you’re looking for!

So if your current root partition is /dev/sda1 and the partition you’re going to copy to is /dev/sdb1 (a USB mounted drive) here’s the command you’ll need to type in your terminal:

sudo dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/sdb1

Replace with the correct paths for your drives if they differ. It’s going to take a while, so grab a book or start up a movie. Maybe go to bed.

Once it’s complete, you’ve got yourself a brand new copy of your current Ubuntu install. You’re not quite done yet though. Now you’ve got to install Grub on your new disk so you can boot from it. Make sure your new disk is attached to your machine and your old disk is unplugged and boot into the Ubuntu LiveCD.

Once your machine boots up, open up a terminal session and type:

sudo grub

Grub will launch and give you the grub> prompt. Here, type:

find /boot/grub/stage1

You should see something come back that looks like hd(0,0). Jot that down, you’ll need it in a second.

Now, still in the grub> prompt, type:

root hd(0,0)

You’ll put in whatever result you go above – it may be different than hd(0,0).

Once that completes, type:

setup (hd0)

Even if you got a result that differs from hd(0,0) above.

Type:

quit

And you’re out of grub. Restart your machine, removing the LiveCD and you should be up and running on your new hard drive. You may also encounter a problem on your first boot where the system will try to scan your hard drive for bad sectors. If that fails, you’ll find yourself in a root terminal session. Just type:

fsck

Let the disk check finish and you should be good to go.

Technorati Tags: ubuntu, grub, mbr, clone hard drive, attack of the . . . nevermind, how to, copy drives, technology, computers, geeks

Technorati Tags: photoshop, tutorial, howto, zombies, effects

Here I’ve listed some good pick up lines to be used at your next outing AND some geeky rejection lines should you find yourself surrounded by nerds or jocks. Back to the lists of 12!

1. I prefer open source software. Everyone contributes! (grin)
2. No worries, I don’t require an external hard drive (straight)
3. Go ahead, touch my iPod.
4. Yes that’s a WiFi enabled UMPC and I *am* glad to see you!
5. Want to see my pac man tattoos?
6. Say, want to meet later at my place and ravage the Horde?
7. Why yes, I *do* have an open wireless network.
8. Want to 1 my 0? I swing binary.
9. It’s cool, I’m McAfee’ed (protected)
10. Hardcode me baby, I want to be embedded.
11. Wanna go back to my place and play with my light saber/sleeve my first edition/fondle my mint condition Wookie?
12. Wow, you look exhausted. let’s go back to my place, I just set up a new server rack. We can grep, finger and fsck until we ruin my uptime.

And for us geek women who wish to pick up a geek male: “Hi”

And when “no thank you” just does not work:

1. You’re like a pc and I’m like a MAC. Nuff said. (the MAC reference is for you Jesse) lol
2. I loved you in LOTR, but I’m just not into Hobbits. Sorry.
3. You’re like the AOL of the club scene.
4. I would but I’m not ULB compatible. (uber loser boy)
5. You seriously come across as someone who has not defragged in quite some time.
6. In this binary world you’re a definite zero.
7. I would rather change my system to Win ME than spend another second talking to you.
8. Isn’t there a group of half naked men grabbing balls that you need to watch? (said to a jock or sports freak)
9. No thanks, I’m not into wo/men with an intellect that rivals the hair ball my cat coughed up the other night and still I find even *that* more interesting than you.
10. Damn, my (moron/jock/nerd)-repellent must have warn off. Pardon me as I must go buy more.
11. I’d rather fsck myself than go out with you.
12. Sorry, I’m only into geeks and you don’t look like you navigate around your desktop let alone my internal drive.

And for that person who can’t take no or an out right rejection seriously: Agree to go out with them and say you make out on the first date. While they’re unconcious, RUN!

-Ghic Chic

Here’s how you do it in Ubuntu, although these instructions will be pretty much the same in any distro.

First, grab a floppy and slap it into your drive. We’re going to format it using a program called kfloppy.

Let’s make sure kfloppy’s on your system by opening a terminal session (Applications-> Accessories-> Terminal) and typing:

sudo apt-get install kfloppy

Once that installs, type:

kfloppy

You’ll end up with a kfloppy window. Leave pretty much everything at default and just change the File System to ext2. You can also change the volume label to something snappy. I recommend “I(heart)oss“.

Now click the Format button. When the disk is formatted, close kfloppy and head back into your terminal session.

Now let’s mount that floppy:

sudo mount /media/floppy0

And we’ll make a boot directory on it and copy your current grub stuff into it.

sudo mkdir -p /media/floppy0/boot

sudo cp -r /boot/grub /medial/floppy0/boot

Unmount the floppy:

sudo unmount /media/floppy0

And proceed to stick it somewhere safe. If grub ever goes bad on your machine, just grab the floppy, put it in the drive and reboot. Once your computer comes back up an is in Linux, you’ll need to figure out where to put grub.

df -h

This will display your filesystems. The -h switch makes it human readable (i.e. sizes in KB, MB or GB). You’re looking for the filesystem that’s mounted on root – the mount point should be / and it will probably be called /dev/sda1 (if you have SATA) or /dev/hda1 if you have an IDE drive.

Using /dev/sda1 in this example, to install grub you’d open a terminal session and type:

sudo grub-install /dev/sda

Note the the number has been left off of the filesystem. That should do the trick. Eject the floppy, reboot and continue on your merry way.

Technorati Tags: grub, linux, boot, mbr, fix, technology, ubuntu, floppy, drive, grubtastic

Why should you care? Well, you can control this to tell you computer how much power and how fast it should allow it’s CPU(s) to operate. This can save some energy and thus battery life at the expense of a little performance – which is great for extending the use time of your laptop when it’s unplugged.

Can your CPU(s) handle scaling? There’s an easy way to find out. Open up a terminal session (Applications -> Accessories ->Terminal) and type or paste the following into it:

cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_available_frequencies

On my machine I get back

1667000 1333000 1000000

Those are in Hertz, so my machine is capable of 1.66Ghz, 1.33Ghz and 1.00 Ghz.

Now that you know your CPU(s) can handle scaling, let’s see what modes are available. In the terminal, type or paste:

cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_available_governors

Again, I get:

powersave ondemand userspace conservative performance

Powersave will keep the CPU constantly at the lowest frequency. Ondemand will set the CPU at the lowest frequency (in my case, 1.00Ghz) until use of the CPU increases, then it will automatically bump it up to the highest frequency (with me, 1.66Ghz). Userspace means that a different program will be used to control the CPU’s scaling. Conservative is where your CPU will go up as needed, starting at the lowest frequency, and then bumping up to the next available until it maxes out. Performance simply sets the CPU(s) at the highest available frequency and keeps it there.

The lower your frequency, the less power you use. So, if you’re bent on extending your battery life to the max, you’d want to keep your CPU(s) at their lowest frequency – but you’ll do this at the expense of computing power. In my case my 1.66Ghz processors would effectively be 1.00Ghz processors.

Now, how do you actively control this? It’s fairly easy. Right click on an empty space in your taskbar (where your applets and such things as Applications, Places and System are located) and choose “Add to panel”. From there, find the CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor. Double click on this and it will appear in your taskbar. Right click on it and choose Properties and you can set various options like have it show your CPU frequency as a frequency (i.e. 1.33Ghz) or as a percentage. If you have multiple CPU’s or a dual/quad core machine you can also choose which CPU to monitor.

To configure this applet to actually allow you to control how your CPU(s) scale, you’ll have to had back to the terminal.

Type this:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure gnome-applets

This will throw up a nifty blue screen asking you to say Yes. Do so. Then it will ask if you want to install cpufreq-selector with SUID root. Say yes. Once you’ve done this, go back to your CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor in your taskbar and left click it. You should now be presented with a bunch of options from which you can choose the one you want. You can also directly set the frequency at which your CPU(s) will run at, which can be handy if you want to scale up or down for a short bit and then manually change it again.

As you can see, I’ve got mine set to Ondemand, allowing the frequency to scale up through three different settings (1 GHz, 1.33 GHz or 1.66 GHz) as needed.

While this will take effect immediately, it will only be in effect until you reboot at which time your default settings will come back. To change the default head back into your terminal and type:

gconf-editor

From there head to apps -> gnome-power-manager -> cpufreq. Find the settings policy_ac and policy_battery and change them to whichever setting you want for the default.

For those with multiple cores or processors who happen to be a bit needy in the info department (like myself) you can add an applet for each CPU. Just add as many applets as you have CPUs and then right click on them, choose Preferences and use the drop down to choose which CPU that particular applet is monitoring.

Now you know a lot more about CPU Frequency Scaling then you may have when you started reading this article and you know how to set it on your computer.

With kudos to thebert and the Ubuntu forums.

Technorati Tags: ubuntu, cpu frequency scaling, howto, linux, mobile, laptops, power saving, battery life

Be cautious here – you’re working with your disks in a very direct manner.  If you don’t have everything backed up or are unsure of anything, you may want to wait until you have a standard Windows CD/DVD.

Boot into your Ubuntu LiveCD on the offending machine. Once Ubuntu starts up, go to System -> Administration -> Software Sources and enable (by checking it off) the Universal repository.

Now, open a terminal session (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal) and type the following:

sudo apt-get install ms-sys

ms-sys is a program used to write Microsoft compatible boot records.

Now you’ll need to figure out what partition is the one hosting your Windows operating system. Back in the command line, type:

sudo fdisk -l

That will list the available partitions. You’re looking for a partition that says something like

/dev/sda1 1 9327 74919096 83 NTFS

The two important bits are the ‘/dev/sda1‘ which is the partition itself and the ‘NTFS‘ which tells us it’s a Windows formatted partition.  So your Windows partition exists on your drive sda and it’s partition 1. The MBR for drive sda (assuming you boot into windows using it’s native boot loader) is what you want to repair.

We want to fix the MBR on /dev/sda. To do so, type:

sudo ms-sys -m /dev/sda

You’ll want to change the ‘sda’ bit if your results from ‘fdisk -l‘ are different.  If for instance your windows install is on sdb or hda.

Once you do that, reboot the machine, removing the LiveCD from the drive and Windows should come back to you.

Sure, you could do this by inserting the correct Windows CD and booting into repair mode from it – but I find the Ubuntu way a bit faster and I’m more likely to have an Ubuntu LiveCD on me than a Windows CD.

Technorati Tags: mbr, ubuntu, linux, windows, fix, repair mbr, howto, how to, repair, technology, geek, compturs

Wonder no more, here’s a fairly simple, fairly quick way to install and enable your new driver to take advantage of your kick-butt card.

First, you need to find out what kernel you’re running. There’s a very good chance you’re running the generic kernel, so I’ll reference that throughout this how to. Open up a terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal) and type in the following:

uname -a

You should see something that looks like this:

Linux yikes 2.6.22-14-generic #1 SMP Tue Dec 18 08:02:57 UTC 2007 i686 GNU/Linux

It shows the name of the OS, the name of the machine, and then the kernel. Generic it is.

Now, go to System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager. You’ll be prompted for your password to launch this. Once it’s up and running, click the search button and search for:

Linux-restricted-modules-generic

If you’re not running the generic kernel, substitute what you are running there. Once you find this package, check it off to be installed and click the Apply button.

Linux-restricted-modules-generic contains madwifi, fglrx, nvidia drivers, and a bunch of other stuff.

Once this is installed, go to System -> Administration -> Restricted Drivers Management. Check off the Nvidia driver and away you go! If you do get an error concerning software or sources, you’ll have to take one more step.

Go to System -> Administration -> Software Sources. Once there, on the Ubuntu Software tab (it should pop up on that tab by default) check off everything but “Source code”. Close it and then click the “Reload” button when prompted to reload your sources. Then go back to the previous paragraph and try again.

Technorati Tags: linux, ubuntu, nvidia, 3d, drivers, modules, how to, nvidiarific