Blake Anthony Johnson

If you are reading this, most likely it’s because you are trying to figure out how to get Amazon’s MP3 downloader to work in OpenSUSE 11.0.  If that’s the case, I have a solution (until Amazon comes out with an official version for OpenSUSE 11.0.)

1. If you have the “boost” package installed, remove it.

   $ sudo rpm -e boost

   or if you are feeling dangerous…

   $ sudo rpm -e --nodeps boost

2. Download the “boost” package from the OpenSUSE 10.3 repository, and install that.

   $ wget http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/10.3/repo/oss/suse/i586/boost-1.33.1-108.i586.rpm

   $ sudo rpm -Uhv --nodeps boost-1.33.1-108.i586.rpm

3. Install AmazonMP3

   $ sudo -Uhv --nodeps amazonmp3.rpm

4. Enjoy

The other day I ran into a rather annoying issue. I was trying to copy all the data from a Mac OS X computer to a FAT32 flash drive. The problem was, it kept on choking on me. It was because the person that created those files used colons in the file name. (Well, in Finder, colons show up as ‘/’.)

An example of what I mean is…
Mac OS X Finder: “Phonelist - 10/1/2007.xls”
Terminal, Linux, etc.: “Phonelist - 10:1:2007.xls”

As you can see, they are both shown differently, but they are the exact same file. Why Apple decided to allow this is beyond me, but it seems like a pretty stupid thing to do. NTFS allows colons and some other special characters in it’s filenames, but Windows itself does not support that. (In other words, if you are using Linux, you can use filenames with colons on an NTFS file system, but you can’t in Windows.)

At any rate, instead of going through the hundreds of documents and looking for colons to replace, I wrote a script to do it for me instead. It’s still in its infant stages right now, and it seems to need a bit more work, but for the most part, it works fine. It should not break anything, but I can’t guarantee anything at the moment about that. When working with important data, it’s best to have a backup just in case something goes wrong.

The only bug I’ve found so far is where it only does so many, and then it stops renaming files. Not really sure why yet, but I’ll look into that. As a work around, it seems to work if you just run the script a couple more times. (Can bash variables only hold so much?) I’ll do some testing on this.

Link: Filename Sanitizer

Update: I changed the name of the script from “ColonKiller” to “Filename Cleanser”, but this post will still remain a rant about colons I suppose. About why the script kept choking and not finishing some files, it’s because some of the filenames ended with spaces, which my script does not seem to catch at the moment. The white space at the end of each line seems to get cut off. I’m working to find a way to stop that from happening.

Update: I changed the name to “Filename Sanitizer”, just because I think that it sounds better.

Before I get started, let me just say this was (to my knowledge) the easiest way to get MIDI support working.  It’s not really the recommended way of doing things, but it works non-the-less.  I used a couple packages from the Fedora Core 9 repositories.

1. Download the “libtimidity” and “gstreamer-plugins-bad” packages.
2. Install the libtimidity package as-is, using the “–nodeps” argument if needed.
3. Extract the “libgsttimidity.so” file from the gstreamer-plugins-bad package.  This can be done using File Roller, or a similar archive program.
4. Copy “libgsttimidity.so” to “/usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/”
5. Enjoy.  You can now play MIDI files with Gstreamer.

One note though, as of this guide, Banshee does not seem to want to play MIDIs yet.  However, Totem (a.k.a. Movie Player) works fine.

Packages I used:

• gstreamer-plugins-bad-0.10.7-2.fc9.i386.rpm
• libtimidity-0.1.0-6.fc9.i386.rpm

Note: The links to the packages may change at any time.  If that happens, just go out and find another package.  As long as the same steps is followed, there is a good chance everything will still work.

OpenSUSE 11.0 actually makes this quite simple.  Just follow the steps in this order..

1. Superuser yourself.

   bjohnson@ThinkSUSE:~> su

2. Install the b43-fwcutter package.

   ThinkSUSE:~> yast -i b43-fwcutter

3. Unload the loaded b43legacy module.

   ThinkSUSE:-> rmmod b43legacy

4. Install the bcm43xx firmware.

   ThinkSUSE:-> install_bcm43xx_firmware

5. Load the b43legacy module.

   ThinkSUSE:-> modprobe b43legacy

6. Enjoy

Update: I don’t feel as if this solution is complicated like the guys at Boycott Novell seem to think (see comment below), but if that’s the case, I’ll explain it in less steps.

1. Install the b43-fwcutter package.

   bjohnson@ThinkSUSE:~> sudo /sbin/yast -i b43-fwcutter

2. Install the bcm43xx firmware.

   bjohnson@ThinkSUSE:-> sudo /usr/sbin/install_bcm43xx_firmware

3. Restart your computer and enjoy your wireless freedom.

In no particular order…

OpenSUSE 11.0 came out a couple weeks ago.  I’ve been using it since about Beta 2.  I think it’s a great improvement over OpenSUSE 10.3.  For example, I now have basic 3D acceleration without installing any ATI drivers, and I have native 3G support.  However, there are two bugs which are rather annoying from my perspective.  One of which, if a laptop goes into suspend mode, and then wakes up, the touchpad no longer works.  Second of all, all new windows seem to open up below the current active window.  (Using GNOME /w Metacity)  This makes it feel as the window / program never opened at all, which tends to cause some confusion at times.

Wordpress 2.6 is supposedly coming out seen.  I upgraded to the beta over at SimpleScripts.net.  Seems pretty nice so far.  I have not figured out how the post versioning system works yet, but I suppose I will eventually.

My cousin, Angie Miner, is on her way to Honduras to help out down there as she was accepted by the Peace Corps.  Best of luck to her, and I hope she enjoys it.  It’ll be an experience of a lifetime for her that I could not say I’m willing to take myself.  I’d be extremely grateful if you would check out her web site, and possibly leave a comment for her telling her how much you appreciate what she is doing.

I had a great 4th of July weekend.  I would like to thank Brady Whealon for hosting the party at his place, and putting up with all of us.  Many thanks for all the bottles of Sprite I went through, and many thanks for everything else.

One of my buddies, Scott Werley, bought Metal Gear Solid 4 last weekend.  I can’t wait to play that with him, or at least watch him play.  It looks like (and sounds like) an epic game.

30 Days: Season 2 is now out on DVD.  Season 3 is currently playing on FX.  I really recommend anyone and everyone to watch one or two of those episodes.  I can almost guarantee that watching one will make you think a bit, and might even change your mind on some things.  Morgan Spurlock is an amazing guy though, and that might be the real reason why I like the show so much.

For the past couple weeks, I’ve been doing the whole vegetarian thing.  The main reason for doing it is just to see if it will actually be a challenge for me.  So far, it’s been a breeze.  There have been a couple times where I have wanted BBQ chicken pizza, or snack on a can of tuna, but nothing too temping yet.

I’m pretty sure my website needs a new look.  I should get on that.  More than likely, I’ll settle on a K2 based theme.  I love the flexability that comes with it.

Last, but not least, my internet connection here at my home has been pretty shotty lately.  I’ve been switching to my 3G card when it gets really bad.