Pi and I
Setting up my Raspberry Pi. Experiences with crunchbang, ubunutu, bunsenlabs help, but in Raspbian some things still are slightly different, namely:
(1) Autostart
Autostart
How to Stream Music from Linux PC to iPhone over Wifi
There are endless possiblities to stream music from your computer to your phone over wifi, but few dedicated howtos that walk you through the process step by step.
Option 1: UPnP
Universal Plug and Play (UpnP) is developed by the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) and has interoperateability in mind. See Make Use Of for a list of possibilities.
Server: Subsonic
Install from here http://www.subsonic.org/pages/installation.jsp
Costs $1/month to use pro features
Get started here
Mendeley Migration
Alreet.Sometimes Mendeley content has to move. There’s no easy way to tell Mendeley that. So.
sudo
Connect Crunchbang Linux to Bluetooth Speaker
I got myself one of these and after setting it up properly I must say that while I am a bit disappointed by the reach, I am very impressed with the sound quality for this kind of money (a white label apparently as »C26« sells under various brands and for different prices).
Anyway, the whole setup was a true Linux afternoon, reminding me of my NDISwrapper-days, just like it was 2006 again.
First, It took me a while to get crunchbang to discover the device and connect [1] (Blueman works much better as a bluetooth manager). Then apparently I manually needed to let pulseaudio know where to send the audio [2]. Atfer fiddling with some files, pulseaudio was broken, so I needed to reinstall [3]. Finally, the sound was much poorer than via my phone. I don’t know if I overlooked it or if loading rtirq changed something [4], but in the volume control center of pulseaudio there is a tab called »configuration« where I had to choose »High Fidelity Playback (A2DP)« to get decent sound (instead of »Telephony Duplex (HSP/HFP)« or »off«). Now most of the times it changes to the Bluetooth-device automatically once I switch it on and back when I switch it off. Sometimes not. But hey.
The sources I used were these:
How to make pulseaudio bluetooth-ready: http://askubuntu.com/a/223203/80611
How to switch the sink in pulse audio: http://askubuntu.com/a/108882/80611
How to clean up after you screw up (which I did), i.e. reinstall pulseaudio: http://askubuntu.com/a/435221/80611
How to improve the sound once it works but reminds you of a telephone: http://askubuntu.com/a/520384/80611 and
Automatically batch rename photo files
Following Robert Seale’s advice, I was looking for a solution to batch rename photo files. After my last shoot I used digikam and while the results were as desired, it took a second or more per image, which I thought a bit long. After not finding a different suitable solution I asked the question on unix.stackexchange and was overwhelmed by two people’s in-depth answers. I learned a lot from both mikserv and Gilles and in the end settled with Gilles’ suggestion. I take zero credit for the solution, I don’t even understand parts of what is going on, but I amended it a little bit nonetheless and thought the extended version might help someone.*
Preliminaries
What I get when I come home is file names looking like this: _DSC1234.NEF. What I wanted instead was
- date-shot in YYYYMMDD-format plus
- a descriptive shoot-name plus
- image-number
looking like this: 20140708_WeddingAdamAndEve_0001.NEF
There are a few issues with this:
ad 1. Date Shot: sometimes I can only copy and rename the files a few days after shooting, so the date should reflect the date the picture was taken, not the date it was copied. Getting date-shot from the file itself is difficult as there is no birth time recorded. The closest is mtime which is the time the file’s content has last been modified. However, creation date is stored in image file’s EXIF data.
ad 2: Name of Shoot: Ideally I wanted this to be a variable I could set as a parameter when calling the script.
ad 3. Number of Image: This should reflect the age of the image with the oldest one having the lowest number. The problem is that cameras usually restart numbering at 0000 once they hit 9999. So images n-9999 can potentially be older than 0000-n. I needed a solution that would cater for this special case.
The code
# original solution by @Gilles (http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/141138/) # set base
Crunchbang on x200s
Through a few very lucky coincidences I received a Thinkpad x200s a few days ago and set it up with Crunchbang which must have been the most straightforward os-installation ever. Two Three Four things though:
Rawtherapee
A slightly outdated version is in debian’s repositories, but if you want a newer one, go to »Kbyte’s Hideout«. Download .deb package and dpkg -i rawtherapee_<xxx>.deb
If there are unsolved dependencies: apt-get install -f and then dpkg -i rawtherapee_<xxx>.deb
Picasa
Well.
It still is the most straightforward programme I know for editing, simple retouches and exporting smaller sizes. I’m not happy with wine, I’m not happy with a google tool, but I cannot and cannot find an alternative (see here). Hence:
before following the
MTPFS FAIL
My ubuntu 12.04 computer cannot see my Android 4.1.2 phone, instead I must install go-mtpfs and control it via command line. Thankfully, Andrew over at webupd8 provides all the necessary tools (all credit goes to him, for long version see there):
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/unstable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install go-mtpfs
Optional:
sudo apt-get install go-mtpfs-unity
Mount:
go-mtpfs
Tethered Shooting under Linux
When you connect your camera to your computer and have the image displayed on your screen as you shoot, it is called »tethered shooting«. One reason
Network Sync
I recently got my hands on a shiny eee-PC for surprisingly little money. As I am travelling a fair bit at the moment, the opportunity was more than welcome. Now, mobility comes at a price and the price is called »multiple instances of files«. When the files in question are your PhD, it has the potential for a fantastic nightmare. Most people use dropbox to tackle this, but for one reason and another, I neither want to use that, nor ubuntu one. I have owncloud [see here], and after resolving some issues, the sync client works, but I still would like to keep more data in tune then I could possibly channel through my shared hosting plan. Unison (via ssh) seems the way to go.
Setting it up was a lot easier then I though. All it took was rbgeek’s exccellent article »File Synchronization Between Two Ubuntu Servers using Unison«.
Falko Timme’s article »
Overheating Thinkpad T60
Since 12.04 my thinkpad (T60) regularly shuts down due to heat. I don’t like it and I am afraid of damage – to hard drives or to the system.
The
Picasa Alternative [ongoing]
For a long time I have been looking to replace Picasa (the desktop programme) but haven’t been able to come up with a true alternative. Many people ask for Picasa-alternatives in the forums, yet most of the answers and suggestions – as helpful as they are – haven’t been satisfactory. I’m not looking for another programme to show me my pictures, theres piles of them that can do that. What I need is a replacement to perform specific steps in my workflow. I thought maybe it helps if I publish something more detailed.
I am an avid photographer and my pictures mainly fall into two types: those that come in a group (like from holiday or hikes) and those where one individual image is more important to me. For the second type I use RawTherapee and am absolutely happy. But before I go into Rwatherapee, I use Picasa for sorting. And I also use it for my holiday snapshots, where most of the edits are minor (straighten here, brightness there).
The reason why it takes me so long to settle ewith an alternative is because Picasa is better then any other programme I know when it comes to sorting and the quick simple fixes.
xubuntu 12.04
Way too many issues with a first attempt drove me to the decission to reinstall. I had a look around and made eye contact with fedora, arch and debian but in the end thought I’d give a clean xubuntu installation a second chance – and I did not regret it. Here goes:
1. Installation from LiveUSB
First surprise:No issues. Only: apparently all of a sudden my computer needs a /boot partition, so my partition map looks like this:
1.
Cross-Distro Live-USB
Want to create a Fedora live USB from ubuntu or make a pen drive with ubuntu in Fedora? Sick of instaling liveusb-creator under ubuntu or usb-creator
Deny Internet in Ubuntu
I have phases in my work cycle, where I want to limit internet access to myself. Thus, I created a »work-user« and in the user’s properties
ffmpeg-GUI
I was somewhat flabberghasted when I found out my mobile phone (Sony Ericsson Cyber-shot) was unable to play .mp4, .flv, .avi and what else I tried.