I was using gmusicbrowser for a while as it was a nice interface. However I came upon Amarok 2.2 and it has persuaded me to go back to it because it has an even simpler interface (in my opinion of course!). The one thing that was holding me back was the multimedia keys not working without setting up the shortcuts on the Amarok menu and then disabling the keys in System>Preferences>keyboard shortcuts. So I looked for a solution to this problem which would enable me to use these keys (play/pause, next track, prev track etc.) in Amarok 2 nice and simply. I came upon this page on the KDE-Apps website and it appears to work flawlessly. It even allows me to still use the multimedia keys in gmusicbrowser or even another media player. Genuis and loads of kudos to the inventor of the script, Chris Brown.

I’ve had this problem with Firefox 3.5 where the font would look a little fuzzy round the edges and I tried changing the Appearances->Fonts and editing .font.conf file in my home directory, all to no avail. Then I came across a post on the net, which unfortunately cannot find again, but it appears the solution is quite simple. At least I think it solved the problem, it may be that my eyesight has simply changed!

Anyway, in Firefox, type in about:config in the address bar and after accepting that you going to make changes that could possible upset your system (not in this case I may add!), type in layout.css.dpi and change it from -1 to 96. I don’t know why this solves the problem but it does and thats all I care about!

While using Handbrake I tried to re-encode some .mp4 files but everytime I pressed start, it would crash almost immediately and close down the GUI. I tried using Handbrake CLI and the error was a segmentation fault.

1. Went to the Handbrake website and downloaded the source

2. Extracted and in the new folder, in Terminal, typed ./configure

3. It said I needed jam so I typed sudo apt-get install jam

4. Typed make

5. Waited a while

6. Error making the bloody thing! So I downloaded winff instead and used that!

7. Tried Handbrake again and it worked! Weird

I’ve discovered this little gem that sits on your panel in Ubuntu in gnome and simply click and it will let you add a blog to your journal very simply and without a fuss. Obviously it’s only simple so you can’t do a lot of html in it but is designed for being quick and efficient.

This problem had been bugging me for ages but thanks to a quick google search for the problem I found that by going to compizconfig-settings-manager in the System-preferences(you need to have it installed obviously, which is easily done via Synaptics package manager) and then into Utility-Workarounds and unticking the full screen legacy support that all is now well.

Here’s a quick how-to guide on installing KMyMoney 0.9.3 which is a budget manager similar to Microsoft Money or Quicken or even GnuCash. I’ve found it be the most user friendly of these on the Linux platform.

Download KMyMoney 0.9.3 from the website

Follow the readme text file within the tarball to read how to install

For some reason I had to configure without aRts whatever that is but it seems to be working okay so I won’t be worrying about that at this moment, but if I find out what the aRts is for I’ll update this post.

UPDATE!

I’ve just found an ever better way of installing this great budgeting program and this is to open a terminal and type the following command:

sudo aptitude install kmymoney2

Make sure that you’ve set the universe repositry in your software sources though, and this command will do everything for you. Such a relief to have found this command as this was causing me a headache!

ScribeFire – Links between Firefox and my wordpress blog. On my Ubuntu 9.04 beta machine I had to install libjs-jquery and libkjsembed1 via Synaptics to work properly. Edit, that didn’t seem to work though. Still getting a Invalid JSON error. I aim to solve this problem!
Stylish – Greasemonkey-esque scripts to modify web pages

I’ve decided to take the upgrade challenge from Ubuntu 8.10 to 9.04 beta. I tried the update-manager -d route but it had some trouble installing it. First there was an error with some md5 hash which I solved by removing the partner sources from the repositries. Unfortunately, this just seemed to partially install some elements of Jaunty and it looked like a hybrid of Ibex and Jaunty. So I decide to do a fresh install of 9.04 beta and so far no problems experienced at all.
The setup process was extremely easy and so much quicker than installing Windows or even previous Ubuntu incarnations. It found my wireless card with no problems, its even installed a lovely nvidia X Server settings UI which is excellent.

First, I set a little shortcut on my menu to run ‘gksudo nautilus’, which when clicked will ask for your root password. Then in the file manager window that pops up, navigate to home/(username)/.local/share/trash/ then delete the files you want to delete both in the files folder and the info folder.

I’ve decided that Ubuntu 8.10 is the best linux distro that I’ve tried, which has admittedly been just a few. Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Linux Mint and OpenSuse 10 are the ones I’ve tried but I feel that Ubuntu has a nicer user interface than the others and there appears to be more help in the community regarding any particular problems.