EasyLinuxGuide Blog

After some deliberation, we decided on Castlevania - Curse of Darkness as the Game of the Month for August. This game is a bit of a departure compared to the last few. While it is an adventure game much like Psychonauts or Spiderman could be classified, it has an old school feel, bearing the Konami tag and being a game not so much dependent on flashy graphics but more on storyline and gameplay. Here is the schedule with all of the maps for this game below and also, you can find a walkthrough here. Good Luck!

Although I am a big fan of the Gnome Desktop, there are few glitches here and there that sometimes bother me. One such annoyance is that Gnome’s default CD ripper known as “Sound Juicer” does not appear to come with built in mp3 support. It does rip to flac and ogg though. While I do realize that some people use these formats, mp3 is still by far the most common audio compression filetype for the regular user so it absolutely perplexes me why the powers that be would not incorporate mp3 ripping support into this application. I read through some different threads on the net and some of them blame the user in the sense that gst-register was not run or that mp3 support packages were not installed. While these are slight factors (especially the latter), the major issue still remains even after these tasks are performed. I ended up finding a solution to this issue which requires some user patchwork but it is really straightforward.

I do have to give credit to the people on the Fedora Forums where I found this workaround. I will be using my own screenshots to show how to add mp3 to Sound Juicer. First, you need to open Sound Juicer, then click on Edit and then Preferences which will get you a new window. From here you can click on the Edit Profiles buttons and then New. The information you enter here will be up to you, but I set mine up with one new entry for a constant (not variable) bitrate of 128 kb/s for my PSP and another one for CD Rips I might do where I want to preserve a good amount of quality which I set to a bitrate of 192 kb/s. You may want to set yours up differently and that’s fine, please feel free to check out the guide for using the proper command syntax at the HydrogenAudio Lame Wiki.

It’s great to have this workaround, but what about adding it to the application itself? I have been using RipperX for a long time because of this but I will try out Sound Juicer now that it functions more like an actual cd ripper.

What really caused me to buy a PSP in the beginning was the ability to be able to work out and listen to my own choice of music. I decided on a PSP at the time because unlike other mp3 players, it offered a superior screen and could play games. Although I’m not a huge gamer, it was definitely a selling point. Most purchases I make are very well thought out and by the time I get them I have discovered nearly all there is to know so I can focus on usage. With the PSP, things were different. I did do some research and did consider it for a while but I really didn’t delve into all the factors. So, here I am now, discussing what I’ve learned about its capacities and what I use it for these days. Here are some ups and downs for starters:

PROS - Fantastic Viewable Widescreen area and picture quality (destroys the Ipod video in this category), Plays games, Wireless networking and wireless game play with others is available.

CONS - internal memory virtually non-existant which forces the consumer to purchase a memory card (Sony’s inclusion a 32mb card does not count). As expected, Sony is vigilant about offering new firmware upgrades that prevent modifications being made that would allow for homebrew applications and games as well as playing games stored on memory sticks. Some people would consider the PSP rather bulky, but most will understand that a screen any smaller would not be suitable for gaming.

Software - It took me a while to find software to use in Linux for encoding my videos, but eventually I came upon PSPVC (Playstation Portable Video Converter - logo shown above and screenshots available) which encodes video in H264 or MP4 - I did a comparison for encoding a file that was 350mb and I encoded one file with H264 with ended up having a prefix of MAQ and it ended up being 145mb. I also encoded the exact same file into MP4 format and it ended up being 137mb. Although the difference was not substantial, it does add up as memory cards tend not to be that large for all purpose activities like listening to music and watching videos. This software is very young in development but it does look promising. The ability to queue up files is very nice.

Optional Mods - There has been a lot of talk about using homebrew applications and games which is a nice option, but it has long been a tedious process for anyone who has a more recent firmware revision. I did see this modchip available and heralded as a breakthrough. There are three main differences with this modchip method compared to the older software mod. For one, it is done via hardware which involved soldering, secondly- it allows you to still use the PSP regular firmware by using a bootloader like screen which allows the user a choice between the original PSP firmware or this modded firmware version. Lastly, this device, once installed, allows for updates to be done via a usb cable which means as long as there is development being done on this method, there will be constant improvements. The modchip will allow the user to play games from a memory card and use homebrew games and applications.

Memory/Storage - Currently the largest card I have seen that would accommodate the PSP is 4GB and it comes at a hefty price of $240 while in comparison, I recently picked up a 2GB card for roughly $70. The convenience of having one four GB card would be nice, but I decided it wasn’t worth the ticket. Currently I have a 2GB card and my previous 1GB card which I was going to sell to my roommate but unfortunately discovered that the ‘magicgate’ series is not compatible on that particular camera past 128mb.So, I am still contemplating selling it or using it for something else.

Conclusion - I must say that I am completely happy with my purchase of my PSP. If I could change anything about it, there would be two things - 1: Sony’s restrictive firmware upgrades preventing the usage of homebrew apps and such which I can understand from their perspective especially with the threat of users playing games from a memory card. 2: The major thing I would change at this point doesn’t really have much to do with Sony, but it is the storage capacity. Memory Stick Pro and Duos are still very expensive when you start looking at the higher capacities like 4GB and up. These cards are so expensive that you could actually purchase a second PSP in its place! In time, the cards will come down so PSP users will need to deal with lower capacities. It would be nice to have the kind of storage something like an Ipod video offers at 30GB but I am definitely not willing to sacrifice the quality of the screen, the ability to play games and the option to watch videos with audio that comes through speakers and doesn’t restrict you to only using headphones - that’s right - the Ipod video only plays audio for videos through headphones! This would have already frustrated me since I’ve sat at tables once in a while playing a video for a group of people with the audio coming through the speaker. I can live with my 2GB card for now, but ideally I would like a more complete product that can allow me to use it more like a computer which the homebrew apps offer and also with more storage which hopefully will be coming soon. I don’t think I’m asking for much, my main system has about 850GB of storage, I am only asking for a measly 10 to 40 GB’s.

There has been a growing trend over the last few years of applications becoming less exclusive to the operating system. Now there is a myriad amount of applications from which to choose for users which is basically rendering the OS underneath almost a non-issue when considering the foundation. I have listed some of my favorite applications to use below and as you will see, a vast majority of them have been ported to other OS’s. I use Linux almost exclusively - let’s say 99.9% of the time to modest (the only exception is certain rare applications built specifically only for Windows which are very few and far between experiences for me). There have been some articles here and here on longtime Mac users switching to Linux in order to reap the benefits of the OS itself since the applications were cross platformers for the most part anyway. The other trend lately is hardware interoperability including being able to use different operating systems, mainly Mac and Windows, on the same machine. Linux has long had versions available for virtually not only any hardware configuration (PC or Mac style), but also for almost every architecture imaginable (ppc, i386-i686, athlon, x64, sparc etc) which is a solid credit to Linux and the adherence to the philosophy of allowing the user a choice. Let’s take a look at some applications and how cross platforming can make switching Operating Systems a far less arduous task than it has been in the past.

OpenOffice (Linux, Windows and Mac) - Openoffice is catching more popularity as it matures in various platforms. I’m seeing more people choosing Openoffice in Windows over MS Office not only because of the financial benefits but also because of the features included. At one time, there were some import issues between the two due to fonts and buttons being different but I am finding that Openoffice does an almost perfect job of keeping the same structure and look of any documents created in MS Office which almost exclusively pertained to word. There may still be some issues with fonts, but can be easily corrected by added the font with which the document was created to the machine you are using to view the file.

The Gimp (Linux, Windows and Mac) - This is a very extensive application that allows for photo editing, creation and applying all sorts of filters and effects. The Gimp is loaded with functionality and has been compared to Photoshop.

Nvu (Linux, Windows and Mac) - Through searching for a rich featured application that was similar to Dreamweaver, I came upon Nvu which is available for both Linux and Windows. This does lack some features that are a bit more intuitive in Dreamweaver (so I have been told) such as drag and dro flash code, but it does by and large create much nicer code and obviously the developers of Nvu appropriately recognize how important web compliance is at this time. There are options to check your page online with a validator which not only tells you how many errors it may contain but also exactly where they are in your code. I have used Nvu to build some basic pages and found it quite easy to use and i’ve also edited some prebuilt pages that were done in Dreamweaver and they were imported without any glitches and edited nicely. This really looks like a promising application and definitely is appealing when comparing the pricetag with Dreamweaver.

Thunderbird (Linux, Windows and Mac) - I wrote a previous blog article on why I had switched from Evolution to Thunderbird. In short, Thunderbird allows for some extra features that I really like and also does not include some of the features that I found I was not using in Evolution anyway. If you find having a full featured calendar useful and use groupware of syncing features, you may want to stick with Evolution which is a very nice application in its own right. I personally now find Thunderbird more suitable for my needs. Thunderbird offers some nice features such as theming, allowing for viewing RSS feeds within the same window as well the opportunity to use extensions such as reminders which take the place of a calendar without having to integrate a full featured function in order to do this. I previously had used Liferea which is a very nice application for viewing RSS feeds and I would still recommend this for anyone who needs a standalone application for this function.

Firefox (Linux, Windows, Mac) - Another staple application of multi platforms. Firefox seems to be more widely used than any other web browser for anyone in the know these days. The firefox team has to a small extent revolutionized the web browsing experiencing by offering tabbed browsing long before Microsoft was bothered to copy the option in IE 7 which is still not officially being used by default Windows users. Firefox also offers a plethora of extensions and themes which users have the pleasure of customizing which again illustrates the trend of making the application being used almost irrelevant to the OS underneath.

EasyTag (Linux, Windows and Mac) - Application used to rename audio files or edit tags. This application has single handedly saved me hours upon hours of sitting and renaming songs manually. All I can say is thanks!

EmelFM2 (Linux only) - A longstanding personal favorite for pane viewed file managers. The only negative thing I can say about this application is that sometimes with new versions there is a need to create an entirely new configuration file as well as the newer version abandoned some of the older icons that were much nicer in my opinion. I personally have built an Arch Linux package to include these icons in addition to the default ones which alleviates that preference for me.

Mplayer (Linux, Windows and Mac)- Mplayer has long been regarded as the king of media players in the Linux world. The best features of Mplayer are the option to use either a graphical front end or a command line version. Both are full of more than adequate features including subtitle controls, skin choices, on screen display and easy controls for either version. Mplayer also offers mencoder which allows for encoding of media files. One of my favorite things about Mplayer is running it from the command line and using the easy and intuitive controls such as spacebar for pause and the arrow keys to adjust the playing position.

Acidrip (Linux only) - written by Chris Phillips, this application is an excellent and straighforward method of ripping dvd’s. If does require a few other dependencies like lsdvd. The interface is intuitive and logical and works well. The only suggestion I would have would be to auto scroll the output box and also to create buttons for setting the filesize and filename as these changes do not take effect unless you highlight different areas - I watch the output box to see if the settings i’ve applied actually take effect.

Midnight Commander (Linux Only) - an ncurses based file manager. This has been around for ages and is a prime example of how something simple can be powerful. This is a multi featured application allowing common file manager functions as well as ftp access from within the application itself. This application lends itself very nicely to a command line driven system but also can be used within a more complete and full featured graphical desktop offering a nice balance between simplicity and usefulness.

MPD (Linux and Mac) and GMPC (Linux only) - this is a very unique method of music management. Music Player Daemon is run at the daemon level which allows it to run without any interaction from a graphical front end. There are many frontends to this daemon such as Glurp, Pympd and GMPC as well as others. I personally use the Gnome desktop and find that GMPC fits my needs very well. I also like how the newer version allows for plugins to be added such as a cover art function. GMPC also can minimize to the taskbar to allow control from a small input box as well. Other noteable features are drag and drop re-ordering of songs (now working again since the latest version, thankfully), crossfade, on screen notification of song changes. GMPC has become a staple application of mine for music playing.

Gnome Terminal - I had previously been using Eterm for a long time but since I had been using the Gnome desktop, I decided to give it’s default terminal a try. I found some really nice features including tabs and customizations which can be created using profiles. Gnome Terminal is now my default terminal.

Xchat (Linux, Windows and Mac) - This is my favorite application for using IRC. There is a Windows version available but it will cost you. All Linux versions are free.

Nautilus (Linux only - designed for the Gnome desktop) - The default file manager for Gnome. This is a typical file manager but also offers some really nice features like original and unique view options as well as the ability to insert scripts or write your own. This is particulary useful for a lot of plugins that are fairly straight forward. There are nautilus scripts for things such as resizing images without having to open an application and also converting audio files to different file formats all within the same directory.

In the end, although at first I was a little perturbed about the idea of sharing precious Linux only applications with other Operating Systems, ultimately it is a good idea for a few reasons. Linux is all about choice and this is another indication of Linux demonstrating allegiance to the tenet of allowing for user choice. Arguably, sometimes this is giving too much credit to the user but that is a concept I am OK with overall - let the user rise to the occasion and evolve, if not, no harm done. Also, once more people become more comfortable with the applications themselves (I’ve seen situations where I have introduced someone to using Linux and most of the relevant struggle was introducing them to the different application and explaining how they can do the things in this different application that they were previously doing in something different. The end result of almalgamating people to the same applications in different OS’s is that it can allow for something that has never been available before — allowing the user to choose an OS based specifically on the merits and downfalls of the OS itself. So, instead of explaining how to use these different sets of applications, more focus can be spent on explaining the differences in things such as file systems, package management (or lack thereof), security, ability to fend of viruses and spyware as well as the concept of ‘free’ which has a few different meanings like cost and free-thinking or free-use. These are far more valuable selling points to people in terms of evaluating different Operating Systems rather than having to endure an arduous and sometimes painful task of adapting to a new application and unfortunately letting the actual benefits of the OS itself become an afterthought until such time as the user becomes adept at these programs.

Finally after a long wait -  Toronto based band Billy Talent has released a new collection of songs. On the aptly named “II”, the band delivers what fans of the previous release appreciated. Songs that have received some airplay are “Red Flag” and “Devil in a Midnight Mass”. Although these straight ahead rock tunes re-introduce us nicely into the Billy Talent sound, there are many other tracks worth checking out. The syrupy elements of “Pins and Needles” and “Surrender” should give both attention on the old school commercial infested radio stations. In contrast, “Burn the Evidence” crunches and forces itself ahead with the signature sound once again. There’s something to be said for the interweaving of screaming background vocals of Ian D’Sa and pressing nasal tone of Benjamin Kowalewicz wrecklessly wrenching his way through with a sense of intention.