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Paul's Time Sink

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Audio mixing with VMWare on Linux host

Paul Westbrook | 23 October, 2008 11:24

Ever since I switched to VMware from VirtualBox I have had a problem with audio.  If I launch VMware after launching an application that has played some audio, the audio will not work from guest OS.  Also, if I launch VMware first, no Linux application will be able to play audio.

It looks like the problem is that VMware is using OSS for audio, while the sound mixer that Ubuntu uses is ALSA.  This forum has instructions to get this to work.  Essentially the solution is to use the alsa-oss library to have VMware audio go through alsa.

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24 hours of Google Reader Shared Items

Paul Westbrook | 02 October, 2008 22:57

In this post, I decribed that I wasn't able to have Google Reader export a feed of the last 24 hours of shared items. The feed that is generated by Google reader uses the publish date from the original article as the pubDate of the item in the feed.  It would be great if Google embedded the "shared" date in the feed for each item.

In the mean time, I have created a Yahoo Pipe that will do this.  Unfortunately, this requires that the previous period's feed needs to be saved somewhere where this script can access.  I have set a cron job to fetch the feed once a day.  Then the yahoo pipe  uses that cached feed and compares it with the latest feed.

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NuevaSync

Paul Westbrook | 30 September, 2008 10:21

When using a Mac as a main computer, I was able to create an overly complicated setup that would allow me to sync my iPhone wirelessly with Google Calendar/Contacts.  But this doesn't work on my linux computer.  When I was looking foa a solution I found a link to NuevaSync.

NuevaSync is a Exchange "proxy" for Google Calendar/Contacts.  This allows the iPhone to be configured to sync to thie Google apps.  This solution acually makes MobileMe unnecessary. This article has a good walkthough for configuring NuevaSync with an iPhone.

This has been working fine for me on my iPhone.

One problem that is being worked on is better support for multiple calendars.  Also another annoyance, with the iPhone and not with NuevaSync is that you can not connect to multiple Exchange servers.  I would like to connect to my work's Exchange server for mail, but connect to NuevaSync for Calendars and Contacts.

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Virtual Machines

Paul Westbrook | 30 September, 2008 01:58

VirtualBox is a free virtual machine that I have been using for a while It worked perfectly to run Windows XP on my Ubuntu computer. VirtualBox is available for Mac, WIndows and Linux. Connecting my iPhone didn't work. It looks like there is a bug where a connected iPhone is not recognized with VirtualBox.

This isn't a problem in VMware Workstation. I tried the 30 day free trial and it worked with the iPhone. I was able to easily transfer the data from my VirtualBox VM to VMware Workstation.  I backed up the VirtualBox to the Windows Home Server.  Then in the VMware Workstation VM, before I installed an OS, I put in the client restore CD.  This allowed me to restore the image to the new vm.

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Moving to Windows

Paul Westbrook | 30 September, 2008 00:18

About the time that we got our new Dell M1530, the internal video card on our MacBook Pro died.  My wife is now trying to use the M1330 as her personal computer.  I erased the Ubuntu partition and installed WIndows Vista on it.  Also, since our Mac OS X machine was disabled, I have installed Windows XP in a virtual machine on my Ubuntu m1530 to do everything that I can't do in Ubuntu.

There are several things that I have noticed about Windows:

  1. The backup functionality in Windows Home Server works perfectly with Windows machines.  (I actually have used this to rebuild a machine and it worked perfectly)
  2.  There is no calendar program.  I don't get how Microsoft can ship an OS that doesn't have a calendar program.  Mac OS X ships with iCal.  You would think that Microsoft would want a computer to be functional for a family with just the base OS install.  They ship a mail program, photo and video editing programs, but no calendar.  This means that I can not sync my calendar with MobileMe.
  3. I am getting tons of errors from MobileMe Sync on both XP and Vista.  The errors state things like "a sync in progress" or my "MobileMe account is expired".
  4. The Windows version of Quicken is so much more functional that the Mac version.  Once I confugured Quicken for our accounts, it automatically configured itself to use the online bill pay from the bank.  With Quicken for the Mac, you have to use a third party bill pay service.

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Vista on Mac mini

Paul Westbrook | 29 September, 2008 22:29

I installed Windows Vista on our Mac mini.  I wanted to document the process, in case I need to do this again.

When I started, I use the Mac OS X installer to  create two partitions.  One 12Gb partion for Mac OS X and the rest for windows.  This didn't work, as BootCamp can not be enabled unless you have more than several GB of space availble.  So, I had to create one partition and then reinstall Mac OS X.  Once I did that, then I could use the Boot Camp installer to resize the Mac OS X partition and install Windows.

The other problem that I had was that the DVD drive on the Mac mini is starting to malfunction.  I was able to install Mac OS X by putting the Mac mini in Firewire Disk Mode, and using the MacBook Pro to actually do the installation.  Unfortunately, you can not install Windows like this.  You only can enable Boot Camp on the internal drive.  Also, you can't use an external USB DVD drive to install windows, as Mac hardware.  Luckily, I was able to get Vista installed by rebooting without the DVD inserted, and the option key held down.  Then when in the disk selection screen appears, insert the Windows DVD, and then boot into the installer.

I was using our LCD TV as a monitor for the Mac Mini.  Once Windows was installed, I wasn't able to see any video when setup assistant started.  I had to switch to a different monitor that supported that resolution so I could finish the setup.

Once, I installed Apple's drivers everything worked perfectly.  Media Center works on this, and I am able to access this on the Xbox through Media Center extender.

I have installed TVTonic and MyMovies.  I have set up several video feeds in TVTonic, and now I need to start creating images for our DVDs.

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iPhone Gmail behavior

Paul Westbrook | 01 September, 2008 01:18

I noticed an interesting behavior in the iPhone's Gmail implementation.  When I delete a message from the inbox, I expected this to behave the same as it does with IMAP, where deleting a message from the inbox just Archives the message.

But in the case of the iPhone, deleting a message actually deletes the message, (moves it to Trash on gmail).  So if you want to just archive a message you need to move it to the "All Mail" folder.

It looks like this has been documented.

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iPhone Syncing

Paul Westbrook | 01 September, 2008 00:30

Now that we have our iPhones I wanted to find a solution for both my wife and I to sync our data from our Google Apps domain to our phones.  Ideally, I would have liked our phones to sync directly to Google, but that is not available, so I needed something to work on my wifes Macbook Pro and my linux laptop.

For my wife, we are using Spanning Sync to sync Google Calendar to iCal.  Then we sync her iCal and Address Book to Mobile Me (or actually .Mac, since we are still running 10.4.x).  Then her iPhone syncs with Mobile Me wirelessly.  This allows her to modify her calendar on her iPhone, or her Mac.  Also she can use either Google Calendar or Mobile Me to modify or view the calendars on the web.

For me, I don't have my ideal solution.  I am using Google Calendar for my calendar, but since there isn't a solution on that will run on linux that will sync to Mobile Me, and am just using the web interface to the calendar on the phone.  For contacts, I manually imported my contacts to Mobile Me, and then just sync directly to my phone.

Ideally, I will have a solution for my calendar, that would allow me to use the phone's calendar application.  Since I doubt that Apple will allow syncing directly to Google, I think that answer is either:

  • Have Spanning Sync syncronize accounts that are not currently logged in.
  • Use Mobile Me sync and OggSync on the Mac mini that will be running Windows Vista

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Windows Media Center

Paul Westbrook | 23 August, 2008 12:59

I am thinking about installing Microsoft Windows Vista Media Center on our Mac mini, espcially since our Xbox 360 is doing everything that the Mac mini used to do.  I am planning on keeping the Mac mini in the closet, near our Windows Home Server, and then I would view this content on the Xbox 360 through Windows Media Extender.

There are several things that I would be able to do with this setup:

  • Install TVTonic to have access to "Internet TV" and video podcasts  (The 2008 Olympics is available this way)
  • Play ripped DVDs that are hosted on the Windows Home Server (1, 2)

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AAC, SqueezeCenter and Windows Home Server

Paul Westbrook | 21 August, 2008 02:22

On my Windows Home Server, I have installed SqueezeCenter.  This allows our SqueezeBox to play out music, and we don't need to leave a separate computer on.  I noticed that aac files were not playing, but the SqueezeBox was just skipping over them.

When I looked at the configuration of SqueezeCenter aac files are transcoded with mov123.  This program is essentially just a wrapper for QuickTime.  The problem is that Windows Home Server doesn't come with QuickTime installed.

I didint want to install QuickTime, as this install brings of other stuff that I didn't want.  (i.e. Apple's Software Update)  I found this thread that describes mplayer and faad as alternatives to mov123. 

After spending several hours to get either mplayer or faad to work, I decided to just install QuickTime.  I had to search on Apple's support site for a link to a version of QuickTime that would install on the home server.  (The latest version of QuickTime requires XP or Vista, and the home server is running a deritive of Windows Server 2003

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Posting daily activity

Paul Westbrook | 21 August, 2008 01:29

A while ago, I configured del.icio.us to post the list of bookmarks from that day on my blocg.  For some reason this stopped working for me.  I like these type of automatic posts, as it makes it easy to share various pages.

I decided to write a plugin for LifeType that will import a rss feed, and then "summarize" the rss items and create a post with this text.  I probably could have gotten the del.icio.us blog posting to work, but If I created the plugin, this woud allow me to include Google Reader shared items, or Twitter tweets in the post.

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WHS Download Manager

Paul Westbrook | 17 August, 2008 00:04

Our Windows Home Server is running all of the time, so I would love to use this machine as a way to download large files, especially when I am not at home.  I thought that WHS Download Manager would do exactly that I want.  This Add-In allows you to specify urls to be downloaded and where to download the files to.  Unfortunately, the only way to access this is trough the Windows Home Server Console.  So, if I wanted to start a download when I am not at home, I need to vpn into my network, and then rdp into my server.

I am thinking that uTorrent and the Windows Home Server Add-In would be a better solution, at least for torrent files. At least with this solution would allow me to use a web browser to start the downloads.

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email security

Paul Westbrook | 16 August, 2008 21:59

I have used gpg, off an on, for several years now.  I have always liked the ability to confirm that I was the one that actually sent an email, and the ability to send an email and know that the receipient is the only one that can read the email.

Originally when I started to use gpg, the only way to sign a message was to incude the text based signature.  Then SMiME allowed the signature to be included as an attachment.  The problem that I have had is to explain to people that I am sending the email to what the attachement is or what the text at the bottom of the message is.

I think that I will have to come up with a good description that I can put in the signature comment that can help explain what the signature is.

So now, I am using FireGPG when I use the Gmail web interface, and Thunderbird with the Enigmail support  when I am using the desktop client.

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GParted Live-CD

Paul Westbrook | 08 August, 2008 01:55

On my laptop, I haven't booted into Windows for several months, and I am running out of free disk space, so I decided that I would delete my windows paritions and then resize my root partition.  This page mentions the GParted Live-CD as an easy way to accomplish this.

Once I booted the CD, it was very easy to delete the partitions, and specify the size of the root partition.  I was a litte worried about my situation, because my existing parition needed to be moved in addtion to being resized.

But it worked perfectly, and after a few hours, my parition is 70GB larger.

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boxee

Paul Westbrook | 06 August, 2008 22:55

Boxee looks like a pretty interesting "10 foot" experience for watching content from your computer.  Recently they announced a linux version, and I was interested in trying it out on my XPS m1330, especially since Joost is not available for linux.

The install was very easy, but I have not been able to successfully run it.  When I try an launch it, the window appears, but it never finished drawing.  Also, I am not able to select anything.

I have installed it, and may install it again when it enters beta.

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