Sound on Linux is Confusing: Defuzzing Part 1: ALSA
So I often hear the phrase: "Sound on Linux is Confusing". While I don't totally disagree with this statement, as with everything on Linux the sound system is pretty logical and if you follow through the steps you can demystify things pretty quickly. So this article will explain how things work on Mandriva and should ensure users are more comfortable with "how things work".
Integrating Login and Home Directory on OS X Leopard Clients
I've recently been dabbling in OS X related stuff. One of the things that is important to me is ensuring that my login details and users can use the OS X machine just the same as any other. Not that I really have any need for this, seeing as I'm pretty much the only user, but I like to learn these things 
New Website
Well, if you've ever visited this site before the 20th July 2009, then you'll probably see some changes!
I've not really updated my old site for a while and I rarely wrote articles etc. This new site probably won't change that and will receive the same update schedule, based on the orbital timeframe of a blue satellite.
So as you can probably tell I'm now using wordpress. So far I really like it. Simple and effective UI, lots of plugins and a ton of templates too. I didn't modify this template too much - just slapped in a nice header image and made the lifestream widget not look silly. I've not checked my changes in any browser than Firefox... so I've probably totally broken it!
The old URLs should be redirected as should my old RSS link. I had to copy the comments across manually but as I only had three real ones, that wasn't really a problem!
What’s cooking in the Pulse Pot
While I've done a bit of pavucontrol hacking, the most interesting stuff is happening in pulse itself, specifically in relation to better KDE support...
Configuring audio ports in PulseAudio
As I added support for changing card profiles in PulseAudio, now that pulse supports "ports" it's time for me to get my developer hat on again!
Upgrading to Mandriva 2009.1
Well it's that time of the bi-year again. The twice annual Mandriva upgrade! Well in fairness, I actually skipped 2009.0 at work, so it's been a year since I last fiddled there. There was no particular reason for me skipping this release, I just think we were quite busy and a convenient time to do the upgrades didn't really pop up.
So, what happened I hear you cry? Well, surprisingly little drama thankfully! There were a few issues, but they were mostly minor so I only mention them here in case they trip up the less ninja skilled out there :p
Configuring card profiles in PulseAudio
The upcoming 0.9.15 release of PulseAudio will support "card profiles". What in the name of Almighty Bob (where Bob is a deity of questionable existence) is a card profile I hear you all cry. Well in our world of cost savings the majority of sound cards can operating in different but mutually exclusive configurations. For example some devices are capable of outputting 5.1 surround sound, but to do this they use the same jacks as are normally used for sound input, so you cannot record sound from the device when it is playing 5.1 sound.
As expected, information concerning what these capabilities are and under what situation they can be used simultaneously is not supplied to us by the ALSA layer. So to get around this problem,PulseAudio will probe for various configurations for you and provide a handy list which will allow for easy configuration. Sadly there is no GUI to control this. Or rather there was no GUI....
Migrating your old IMAP to Google Mail
Some years ago, my mum needed email access from several locations but didn't wand to use a webmail system as her primary interface. Well using an IMAP system made sense. It could provide a webmail frontend when it was needed, but use a proper email client when at her workstation. At the time her ISP didn't offer an IMAP account, so I setup a simple box at her house to handle her incoming mail and give her a Horde IMP webmail interface. Her broadband connection was fast enough that she could connect to it when she was away from home and do the essential tasks.
Over the years, maintaining this box has become more and more hassle, not to mention that the box is an ugly biege thing that makes a lot of noise!
Thankfully, Google now offer IMAP access to their email system and also allow you to register with your own domain name. Perfect!! But with over 2.5gigs worth of data in several hundred thousand emails, migrating to the new system and still keeping the messages looked like it could be a challenge. Well it was! But it wasn't all that bad thanks to imapsync, although there were still some problems I encountered that I'm documenting here so that others will hopefully benefit!
Desktop Notifications and User Interaction
For many years now I've been following the work done over at Galago Project with regards to the Desktop Notifications Specification.
I've never been a massive fan of the design of these popups and have followed work done in AWN and other systems to produce more attractive alternatives, but these always turned out to be a little less than satisfactory. I have toyed with the idea of writing my own implementation (or just a style for notification-daemon itself as it is pluggable), but never really had time to focus on this.
So it was with considerable delight that I noticed MacSlow's latest blog post about the work he was doing on notify-osd. Once I remembered that he's now working for Canonical and I recalled an article on Mark Shuttleworth's blog a while back on which I commented, I realised that I actually had a bit of beef with the approach being taken by Ubuntu...
Gone Fishin’
Well, I'm back now from the KDE coding sprint in Genoa. It was an awesome trip and I met a lot of nice people as well as seeing some of the beautiful city of Genoa.
The trip started well, but sadly my connecting flight from CDG to Genoa was cancelled.... due to "Fish on the Runway"!!! Fish???? Turns out the airport is very close to the sea and large waves carried some fish as they broke over the runway. This in turn attracted some birds. Now birds and jet engines do not get on very well, so closing the airport seemed sensible! The wind probably played some part in this decision too! Anyway both myself and K
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Lifestream
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Listened to Say Something - Sofa Surfers.
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Listened to Sapphire - Thunderball.
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Listened to Solar - Thunderball.
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Colin would like to thank the most considerate of the three wasps I found in my bathroom for drowning himself in the loo. All you other wasps please take note!
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Listened to Scuba - Bonobo.
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Listened to Que sera - Wax Tailor.
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Listened to Blazing the Crop - Rae & Christian.
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Listened to Safe in the Steep Cliffs - Emancipator.
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Colin wonders whether a deployment on a Friday is a bad idea... especially when it's Friday the 13th...
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Colin is glad the bumble bee that has been stuck in our office light has finally escaped.
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