I got my official HTA Update on my Nexus 5! So, I am now at Android 4.4.3…
I am on the T-Mobile network, so I don’t know if the other carriers are pushing at the same time.
Category: Uncategorized
Tools for Singing Practice
Here’s the situation: we have a song that we want to sing for church on Father’s day. The challenge is that it is a tough song for us to learn. I’ve used some open source tools to try to aid our practice and mastering of this song.
Here are my notes…
Office Online Apps in Chrome
Recently, Microsoft’s Online applications have come to the rescue. I’ve learned that I can edit Word documents on my Linux OS without needing Wine or a Windows VM. I don’t have the full feature set, but it’s close enough for basic editing. One big issue that I have is that I can’t create Styles. I’m not sure that I can adjust tab stops either.
So, when I ran across the Chrome store apps for Office Online, I was excited. Maybe Microsoft is showing Linux, or at least Web-based users a little more attention?
Here are the links to the Apps in the Chrome Web Store:
Unfortunately, these apps didn’t help me much. Anytime I click on one of the apps, it requests my email address. Then, it takes me to an Outlook page. I’m not sure if it is because I am using my company account which is has a Sharepoint corporate account associated.
I was hoping that these apps might help me with some major bugs that I have been experiencing. First, in Word documents, Chrome deletes my selection when I press Ctrl + C. If I try to right click and ask it to copy, I just get a message saying the browser doesn’t have access to the clipboard. Second, in Excel, Chrome seems to get in this mode where it deletes the contents of cells when I navigate to them with the arrows on the keyboard.
Both of those are serious issues, so I have taken to using Firefox for the time being. At least this shows that Chrome is on the radar for supporting the online applications.
Resources
OMG Chrome: Microsoft Brings Office Online Apps to Chrome Web Store
Ubuntu 14.04: Misc Utilities & Settings
This is part of my series on installing Ubuntu 14.04 on my laptop. In the previous post, I configured my hybrid graphics card. In this post, I am walking through various settings and utilities that I like to install to make the final tweaks on my installation.
Ubuntu 14.04: Hybrid Graphics
This is part of my series on installing Ubuntu 14.04 on my laptop. In the previous post, I worked through installing Virtualbox for VMs. In this post, I am working through installing the video drivers for optimal use of the video cards. My laptop has a hybrid graphics card, so I attempted to use Nvidia Prime. When that didn’t work, I dropped back to Bumblebee.
Just so you can see what I have, I looked in lspci. Here’s the Nvidia controller:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GK107M [GeForce GT 650M] (rev a1)
Here’s the Intel controller:
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller (rev 09)
Here’s what I did…
Ubuntu 14.04: Virtualization
This is a continuation of my series on installing Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr. My previous post covered going through the different media programs that I installed back onto my laptop. In this post, I’ll install Virtualbox to allow using virtual machines. If you would like to see the complete list of posts, check out my Ubuntu 14.04 install page.
Last time, I just downloaded the deb package from Virtualbox’s Download website. This time, they showed that they have a respository. By installing from the repository, it should keep Virtualbox up to date.
Ubuntu 14.04: Media Programs
This is a continuation of my series on installing Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr. My previous post covered installing programming environments and applications. In this post, I’ll go through the different media programs that I installed back onto my laptop. If you would like to see the complete list of posts, check out my Ubuntu 14.04 install page.
Visual
One of the most important programs that I use now is Shutter. It allows me to easily take screenshots of what I am working and edit the screenshots. The shutter package is easily installed from the Software Center. Once installed, I tweaked a few of the settings in Edit > Preferences.
First, I changed the path for the screenshots from the Pictures folder to a new folder that I created called screenshots.
In addition, I checked the first two options on the “Behavior” tab to allow it to start when I boot up the computer.
I installed the following other programs for working with visual media:
- Gimp: for editing photos
- Inkscape: vector-based drawing
- Xournal: has features that allow marking up a PDF
Audio
Videos
These are the programs I use for playing and editing video:
- mplayer – nice general video/music player from the command line
- mplayer-gui
- gnome-mplayer
- vlc – video player
- kdenlive – video editor
- openshot – video editor
- avidemux (GTK+): Great for converting video, for example see Why Can’t the Users Just Rotate Their Screen?
- cheese – nice for testing to make sure the webcam works (already installed)
Codecs
This installed many different things for media. For example, I noticed that it installed True Type fonts. It also installs codecs for playing videos, etc.
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras
In addition, I installed the libdvdcss to get the restricted formats. That was simply by installing this package…
sudo apt-get install libdvdread4
Then, I ran the script…
sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh
Finally, I determined that I had to use the /dev/sr0 as the device for playing my DVDs. Like this:
Next Steps
If you are following along with the complete install, check out my next post about Virtualbox. Or, you can go to the list of posts in this series (Installing Ubuntu 14.04).
Resources
Ubuntu 14.04: Programming Environments
This is a continuation of my Ubuntu 14.04 Install. In the previous post, I covered all of my notes on installing network/Internet-related configuration. In this post, I’ll cover setting up my programming environments and applications. If you would like to see the list of posts in this series, you can look at the Ubuntu 14.04 Install page.
Ubuntu 14.04: Networking/Internet Setups
This is a continuation of my previous post (restoring files) on my install of Ubuntu 14.04. In this post, I’ll go through configuring and installing things related to networking. You can see the complete lists of posts on Ubuntu 14.04 on my main install page.
Ubuntu 14.04: Restoring Files
This is a continuation of my previous post on my install of Ubuntu 14.04. In this post, I took notes on restoring files from my backup. You can see the complete list of posts on Ubuntu 14.04 on my main install page.
Before installing, I had used Deja-Dup and duplicity to back up my laptop before I installed it. I’ll blog screenshots of backing it up eventually. The first thing after reformatting and installing is to restore my files back onto the laptop. On my last install, I used the command-line to install. This time, I wanted to try a GUI method.