Author: digitaleagle

Troubleshooting: Playing DRM Videos from Amazon

digitaleagle Amazon Instant Video, Firefox, My Acer Media Laptop, Uncategorized, Video Leave a comment

This is the second time this has happened.  I keep getting:

Sorry we were unable to stream this video.  This is likely because your flash player could not be updated.

I had just reinstalled my media laptop with Linux Lite OS (a flavor of Ubuntu), and I was trying to watch a video from Amazon.  It was one of the Prime Instant Videos.

To fix the issue, I followed McDougall’s instructions.  Basically, it was just installing the “hal” package and deleting the .adobe and .macromedia settings directories:

sudo apt-get install hal
rm -r ~/.adobe ~/.macromedia

Finally, I rebooted and retried.  It all worked fine after that.

Resources

Fixing Super Tux Kart

digitaleagle Games, Troubleshooting, Uncategorized Leave a comment

Super Tux Kart is a fun game that my son and I have gotten into.  It has recently improved quite a lot, and we have enjoyed playing it.

But, just recently, I found that it crashes a lot.  It’s not predicable, it will either freeze the X display or it will just close in the middle of a race.

So, I decided to do a quick Google search to see if there was a solution out.  I can’t find the article now, but something suggested that maybe it was a bug that was already fixed.  I found I had version 0.7, and version 0.8 was available.

On the download page, it suggested a repository.  So, I installed this repository:

sudo add-apt-repository http://ppa.launchpad.net/stk/dev/ubuntu

To get it to install, I ran the regular apt-get update…

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

After that, I had the 0.8 version.  In addition, the crashes seem to have gone away, so far.

Fixing NAT for Virtual Box on Ubuntu

digitaleagle Uncategorized, Virtual Box, Virtualization Leave a comment

For some reason, NAT quit working for me in Virtual Box.  Everything works fine, but the machines won’t connect to the Internet unless I change them to bind to a particular adapter.  The problem is that I use different adapters based on my location.  At the office, I have a docking station and the network goes through the USB connector.  At home, I use wireless.  So, when I bind, I have to remember to change the adapter for it to work.  If I use NAT, it doesn’t matter.

So, here’s how I found I could fix NAT to work again.

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Serverless Download

digitaleagle Javascript, Uncategorized Leave a comment

I have a little time-tracking tool that I have been using to track my billable time.  The program stores everything in the local storage within the browser.  The challenge comes when I want to export or backup the information stored in the browser.  I don’t want to force the user to send the data to my website just so it can turn around and download it back to the user’s hard drive.

Here’s the solution that I came up with:

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Building an Eclipse Plug-in Project Wizard

digitaleagle Eclipse, Uncategorized Leave a comment

I found this really great article at Hidden Clause called Writing an Eclipse Plug-in (Part 2): Creating a custom project in Eclipse – Adding to the New Project Wizard.  My only problem with it is that I am using a newer version of Eclipse, and I really needed screenshots to understand what it was talking about.  So, here’s my experience at walking through that tutorial…

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What’s in a Unified Name?

digitaleagle Great Links, Uncategorized Leave a comment

I ran across this article …

Engadget: Project Unity stuffs 20 classic consoles into one: if you can’t play it, it’s probably too new (video)

… and it made me wonder how many projects we have named Unity!

Canonical’s Unity

This Unity is the (relatively) new user interface for Ubuntu Linux.  You can read more about it here:

For me, the biggest difference is the new menu.  Instead of a traditional “start”-style menu, Unity introduces this new dash:

One of the things that I need to master as a blogger talking about the Unity interface is the lingo.  Here’s a little article that shows what the different parts are called:

Ask Ubuntu: What’s the right terminology for Unity’s UI elements?

Just FYI, I discovered some nice information about Unity and some of the alternatives:

Unity Gaming Engine

I have a friend and colleague that did some work with the Unity Gaming Engine.  Since it is a 3D engine, I get it confused easily with the “Unity 3D” interface, but it’s completely different.

Just by looking at their website, you can see the quality of the graphics.  I haven’t had a chance to work with it, but it looks very nice.

.Net Unity

While looking around for other things called Unity, I came across this .Net project.  I am not sure I have the bandwidth to try to understand it, but it’s yet another unrelated Unity project.

Codeplex: patterns & practices – Unity

Unity Linux Distribution

I am not sure this distribution is still active.  When I first searched this out, it was there, but now, the site doesn’t respond.  The Wikipedia article describes it a little.  A distribution with that name would be very confusing.