Check out my new site!

I am moving this all my content over to a new site www.adamclmns.com. Come check it out!

OMG! Linux and GuitarPro6!

So, I have this software that I love to use. And before you ask, yes. I paid for it in full. Twice. I liked it so much that I bought the newest version when it came out. This software is Guitar Pro 6. I love it! It has a native Windows, Mac, and Linux version, but the Linux version has a catch. It's 32-bit only. 


Now, I've spent some time hopping through the GuitarPro forums, and there is high demand for GP6 on x64 Linux, but it's just not happening. Let's face it, we Linux users make up less than 10% of the total user base in the US. Not a lot of reason to throw money at developing something for an even smaller percentage of people who use that product on Linux. 


Wait... We're Linux users... we don't need a proper 64 bit port. WE'LL MAKE IT WORK!


Since version 12.04 LTS, the usual "hack n' bash" method won't work to get this fine piece of software running on the 64 bit version of Ubuntu, but I have stumbled upon a method through long searching of ubuntuforums.com (Great place, check it out!) and Googling what things meant. So here we go!


First, I had to install a few things. Because this is a 32 bit application we need the 32bit libraries so it can run. In a terminal, run

sudo apt-get install ia32-libs


There, now we have those pesky libraries. 
GuitarPro uses the qt library system to draw it's windows and buttons. We'll need to install a configuration tool to change some qt settings as to avoid an incompatibility error with the 64bit version of qt.


sudo apt-get install qtconfig-qt4


Now just run qtconfig from the dashboard or menu, or gnome-do, or whatever you use and set the theme to anything but the default. I chose clearlooks. 


Now, I'm hoping you've already downloaded the GuitarPro Package from their website, if not, you should do that now and then direct your terminal to the directory that package is and then run


sudo dpkg --force-depends -i gp6-full-linux-demo-rxxxxxx.deb


(where rxxxxxx is the release number)


This will install GuitarPro! Yay! It's installed!


If you try to run guitar pro it won't start. This is because it's missing a dependency. Go back to your terminal and run 


sudo apt-get install -f


Now you have the libaudio library that GuitarPro needed, but now Aptitude is getting an attitude and removed GuitarPro. 


Go back to your terminal and once again run 


sudo dpkg --force-depends -i gp6-full-linux-demo-rxxxxxx.deb


Now run GuitarPro and activate it and update it. The update process is buggy, so you have to be a bit patient. By the time you've got it activated you've probably noticed the giant warning message in your system tray about broken packages and what-not. Don't take any action yet, it wants to kill GuitarPro again, because it thinks GuitarPro is breaking dependencies. 

Open up that terminal again and let's backup GuitarPro!


sudo cp -r /opt/GuitarPro6 /home/user/GuitarPro6 

sudo apt-get install -f


sudo rm -rf /opt/GuitarPro6


sudo cp -r /home/user/GuitarPro6 /opt/GuitarPro6


(where user is your user name)


Now, you have GuitarPro and fixed packages, but you have no dashboard icon for GuitarPro, or even a menu shortcut (for those of you on non-Unity DE's). There's a fix for that! 


You can create a dashboard/menu icon manually using alacarte (Tutorial to come later) or you make one manually (my preferred method). You can also create a dashboard icon for just you, or for everyone.


For just you, you'll need to create a file called gp6.desktop in /home/user/.local/share/applications/ 


For everyone, you'll need to create the file in 
/usr/share/applications/


Your .desktop file can be created in any text editor and should look like this



#!/usr/bin/env xdg-open
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=GuitarPro6
Comment=Best Guitar Tabulature Software Evrar!
Exec=/opt/GuitarPro6/GuitarPro
Path=/opt/GuitarPro6/
Icon=/opt/GuitarPro6/GP6.png
Terminal=false
Categories=Audio;
StartupNotify=false

I had to download my own icon and place it in the directory, so your icon may not show up right away. 


After that, you're done! It works! 


I'll try to get some screenshots up for this, and until then, please let me know if you try this and run into any errors, or things that don't work. I'll be trying this on an AMD powered system very shortly, but until then, later!

It's Been a Long Time Indeed

It's been quite a while since my last post. Summer has taken it's toll on my time and money, but I'm back and ready to start posting some tutorials, cool links, and gadget/software reviews. Here's an update on some of the things I've been dabbling with this summer just to give you an idea what to expect the coming weeks.

I've been programming in Java and Python for some time now, but I've recently started learning some Android development. You'll probably see some tutorials on how to make apps for Android and how to sideload them to your phone, or how to put them on the marketplace (depending on if I figure those out :P ).

You can also expect lots of linux tips and tricks as I tend to post those when I can't come up with something cooler to post. 

I absolutely will be doing some game reviews, some a bit outdated, but a few others that will be fresh and new. Dark Souls will be a game I'll be reviewing as soon as I get my hands on it for PC.

You can expect lots of Minecraft! Enough said. 

Aaaaaand.... that's it! I hope you'll come back to check out what I've got going on here. There if enough of you follow me here, I'll be moving this blog to a private server and domain where I can host all kinds of cool content and games, and downloads, and videos, and pictures, and... and... and... you get the idea, so off I go, back to the real world for long enough to find something cool to share with you all on the interwebz. 

HP ProBook, possibly the greatest laptop ever.

When I say the "greatest laptop ever" I do not mean that a ProBook will thrash anyone's AlienWare, though there are some ProBooks that could. The ProBook i'm specifically talking about is the "refurb" 4430s.

 For $450, I snatched this laptop while on a tight budget to replace my monster Acer laptop (Nvidia 240M, Core2 Duo, 4Gb RAM, 500GB MomentusXT, 15.6" screen). I loved that Acer. I could play Crysis comfortably in class, or I could run up enough Chrome tabs that all you could see were the favicons. Sadly, the Acer was no longer viable after taking a leap of faith off of a desk, so I got the cheapest decent thing I could find. The 14" HP ProBook 4430s. No webcam, no eSATA, no dedicated GPU, no fingerprint scanner, no 15.6 inch screen. I was expecting a budget laptop to get me through, nothing more.


When I ordered it, it had 2GB of RAM for Windows 7 Pro x64, so I ordered a 8GB kit, thinking it could use all the help it could get with extra RAM. When I started using it, I was amazed. 6 Hours of battery life, and attractive aluminum exterior, a MacBook style keyboard, and an i5 2410M. The only thing I thought I'd miss was playing games on it. This tiny, little bussiness laptop will even do that! Borderlands on Medium-High settings will hold 30-40 FPS. Source games will do 60 (I run VSync to keep from thrashing it too hard) and it will even play Civ V like a boss (in medium-low graphics). I couldn't have hoped for more.

The WEI rating on my ProBook

Aside from that, I am especially hard on computers. I carry my laptop with me everywhere, and run all manner of things they weren't designed for. Right now, I'm dual booting Ubuntu 11.10 (waiting for 12.04) and Windows 7. I have a web server running for development purposes and a VM of XP, Server 08 R2, Server 03 R2, Ubuntu, BSD, and FreeDOS in VMWare Workstation 8.0. I have filled the RAM completely and had to start nixing processes to keep from running out of RAM. Sometimes I have to use a cooling pad to keep it from getting too hot while i'm running Network simulations between different server types. 


Even when I run it through the gambit of horror that I tend to put on laptops, It doesn't slow down. Sure, it's not "snappy" but I have never found myself waiting for 5 minutes for the Task Manager to open up. All in all, this laptop is everything a student could hope for, and everything an IT guy could hope for, in one package.


The standard HP ProBook 4430s goes for about 600 dollars, with 4GB of ram, a webcam, USB 3.0, and was recently discontinued. The updated model is the 4530s and will run about the same with comparable hardware. If you're needing a laptop that is versatile, durable, and attractive, this is the way to go. 

DD-WRT - IT'S SO COOL!

For those of you who don't know, DD-WRT is an open source, Linux-based firmware for Broadcom based routers, such as the Linksys WRT54G/GS model, shown below. This firmware is said to turn your "60 dollar router into a 600 dollar router." The features are amazing, and if you don't want all of them, or just a certain subset, there's a build of the firmware with you in mind.

Now, before I go further, there was a reason I discovered this awesome firmware. We had one of these running our home network for a while and it was extremely unstable. Crashed every day, multiple times, and would cut out the wireless radio. We replaced it and this was forgotten in a drawer. 
I recently moved and had issues with the wireless router being too far away from my desktop (it's got a wifi card) and me being too lazy to run a cable that long decided to figure something out. 


On a whim, I decided I would dig out this old router and use it as a switch and extend the too-short 100ft Ethernet cable and use this as just a switch, but then that didn't solve my issue with getting wireless to my laptop. So I did some research and found DD-WRT. 


Once you go through the incredibly picky process of finding the right build of the firmware for the right version of the router and properly resetting and clearing out the router, and disabling certain protocols on your NIC that interfere with the firmware upgrade,... etc. You can finally install your firmware and you're router now has a lot of very cool features. Here's the ones I like the most so far. 

The status page is crazy informative! You can see everything from your Signal to Noise ratio, to your nvram usage on the router, to how much queuing space the router has for packets. You can check the signal quality to wireless clients and you can see real-time graphs of your bandwidth through the connected interfaces on the router.


The configuration on the wireless is great. Currently, I have my router underclocked to 190mHz from 200 to increase stability and keep it just a tad cooler, and I've over driven the power on the signal from 70mW to 80mW because that's where the sweet spot for dB power was (Spent 3 hours tuning it). You can set virtual interfaces, so you could have a virtual, isolated wifi network called guest that had a landing page with ads (it supports ads and redirects for hotspot networks) and you can even set up your DynDns account in the router. For Access Point mode, you can forward DHCP to the main router, and set the WAN port to just be part of the switch, so you can connect  5 hosts to your router.


The cool part - I'm running the "Mini" build that is cut down.


If you want to set up a non-standard home network, or just want to breathe some life into an old linksys router, this is the way to do it. 


Thanks for reading! 


Feel free to comment or leave questions and I'll get back to you.

JDizzle's Digital Dabblings: The Downfall of Customer Satisfaction

JDizzle's Digital Dabblings: The Downfall of Customer Satisfaction: As you may or may not have heard, Electronic Arts (EA) was recently crowned the award in Consumerist's "Worst Company in America" ( read her...

Software Review 1: Foobar, The Greatest Music Player Ever

A long time ago I discovered iTunes, and it did everything I wanted it to. It would search my music, it would play my music, and had some nifty visuals. However, as my Music collection grew, iTunes wasn't enough anymore, so I started shopping around. I was a HUGE fan of Amarok on Linux right up until the 2.0 update. Amarok 1.3 was the greatest music player I have ever used until Foobar2000 on Windows.

I tried out the Windows music player called Clementine, based on Amarok 1.3, and found it solid, but lacking in the feature department. When I fired up Foobar for the first time (Several months ago) I was given options on how to customize the GUI. Right off the bat I'm starting to like this. Then, I see a very materialistic interface that does exactly what I want. I want to see what's playing now, and browse one artist or album at a time. So that's how I set mine up.

After a bit more digging, I found the preferences menu. More options than you can shake your mouse at. With added components (there is a catalog on the Foobar website) you can add even more options and interface tweaks. There's an API for writing your own components as well.

Natively, Foobar supports almost any audio codec from flac, ogg, mp3, aac, wma, and wav (that i've tried). There is an equalizer, and the option to split stereo into 4 chanels, so if you have a 5.1 setup, you can use more of your speakers than iTunes will use. There is a component for mp3 player syncing, including iPod and iPhone.

The visualizations are the only part of this player that aren't top notch. I have to hand it to Apple when they made the iTunes visualizer (the original, not the new one... bleh...) because nothing has beaten it yet. Foobar does use significantly less memory than any other player I've tried. Weighing in at 41MB of RAM usage after 36 hours of up time when I took that screenshot, it's using less memory than windows explorer.

If you're looking for a basic player with a small footprint, check this one out, it's free, it's easy to install and uninstall, and if you have iTunes, it won't interfere with your music collection sorting like other players will.

Game Review 1: Modern Warfare 3

If you're looking for more of the same over the top spec-ops single player campaign play, or the same multiplayer with tons of guns and attachments and perks, then you won't be disappointed. However, I was disappointed. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 gives you the exact same things you saw in Modern Warfare 2. I'm a big fan of the CoD4, don't get me wrong, but I expected more.

I've been playing FPS games for a while, and something they've all been lacking for the last 3 years is some innovation, or something that sets that FPS apart from others. CoD4 did that with one of the first real world combat games. FPS games had fallen into a sludge of WWII games, and CoD4 broke that trend and it was a major hit. The gameplay was good, the mechanics were great, and the graphics were beautiful. Now, the FPS catalog is riddled with modern combat games, all with the same M4-A1 assault rifle, and the same M9 pistol, and maybe a few variations here and there. The scenery is all the same, and it's just been done, over and over and over again.

Modern Warfare 2 came in right as the overload of modern combat games was peaking. It featured a few variations on the original CoD4 that made it interesting, the multiplayer had a better leveling system than the previous game, and it was still good. A bit predictable, but good. MW2 wasn't without a gross amount of technical problems on PC though, and Infinity Ward did a pretty good job of alienating PC gamers, but the game was good.

I'm ashamed to say I threw away 60 bucks on pre-order for MW3. I reached level 25 on the multiplayer, almost finished the campaign, and then reached a point where I couldn't' force myself through the rest of it. It's the exact same game as MW2, but with a few new missions, a texture upgrade on the graphics, all running on a 5 year old engine. The multiplayer is still good, but I couldn't tell a difference between MW3 and MW2, except that there's now more hackers on MW3. 

On a scale from 1-10, I'd give this game a 7. It's not bad. Quite the opposite, but it just doesn't make me want to rush home and play it, or even play it when I'm bored. I find myself playing Bloons TD before I fire up MW3.

If you want the next chapter in the campaign, or to keep up with the hordes of players moving out of MW2 to MW3, go spend your money on it, but you might want to buy it on console so you can trade it out when you're done. 

Thank you for reading!

After I've had time to play more of it, I'll be reviewing Battlefield 3 as well.

What ever happened to the Flight Simulator?

As a child, I was fascinated  by things that could fly. So, naturally, the game that really got me into PC's and gaming in general was a flight simulator called Comanche 4. This game was truly amazing. Played like a flight simulator with all the adrenaline pumping action of a first person shooter. From there, I discovered F16 Multirole Fighter, by the same company, Novalogic.

Sadly, these games have gone out of popularity, and I don't know why. The only decent flight sim that I've found for PC in the last while is Wings of Prey and it's a great WWII combat sim, that can run on most systems with a discrete video card, or just a really beefy integrated chipset (HD-3000 runs pretty smooth).

Flight simulators were emensly popular for a long time, and I've been looking for a good flight sim to play on my triple screen setup (which is ideal for simulators of all types). Janes Advanced Strike Fighters left me disappointed, as it's an arcade game, with no flight cockpit view, no flap control, no landing, no loadout management, no real air to air combat, and no eyefinity options.

My challenge for all of you who are reading this is to find your favorite flight sim and leave the title and publisher in the comments, I'm looking for something that's a true flight sim, so if you know of one, post it and I'll get my hands on it and review it.

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to your comments.

The AMD FX-8150 8-Core CPU

Up until recently, I had been running an Intel Q9400 Core 2 Quad. I upgraded to the new AMD FX series for a few reasons, and I'm happy to say I'm not disappointed one bit.


I use an i7-2600K at work, and the i7 is a powerhouse, however, it gets bogged down when running VMs, or Virtual Machines. I use VMs to troubleshoot issues on older operating systems, and use tools that you just can't run on Windows 7 Enterprise. My work computer can handle 2 or 3 VMs with a gig of RAM each. My home machine can run 6 VMs before it begins to noticeably slow down. The FX-8150 has significantly lower per core performance, and you can really feel it on heafty 3d games, such as Battlefield 3. With that said, The multitasking performance is unmatched. I know the benchmarks disagree, but over my work computer, which cost the company significantly more to buy than my FX rig cost to build, It's a striking difference in multitasking.


The FX-8150 does not under-perform in gaming. You might not hit a ridiculous frame rate, but everything I've thrown at it is playable on high or better settings. Games I've thrown at it include...

• Skyrim
• Civilization V
• Crysis 2
• Crysis
• Sins of a Solar Empire (admittedly, even my laptop runs this)
• Far Cry 2
• Battlefield 3
• Battlefield - Bad Company 2
• Oil Rush (Linux and Windows Versions) 

All of these games run flawlessly on my current rig, but the workstation performance is amazing. If you do video editing, graphic design, or if you're looking for a cost effective Linux rig, this is a great platform. The FX-8150 really shines on the latest Linux kernel with performance up to 25% higher than on Windows. I bench-marked using Blender 3d renders and compared the time on various projects varying in complexity from a still render to a 30 second animated clip.


I can't vouch for overclocking yet, because I'm waiting for a proper cooler, but the few small tests I've done were pretty good. On automatic overclock of 3.9 Ghz, Passmark scores were above that of the i7-2600K and temps were stable, but still a bit high for my liking, so I've been running stock. 


Feel free to leave questions in the comments and I'll answer as I get time.


Thank you for reading!

Introduction!

I love PC's. It's literally my life. I've been a PC gaming enthusiast since 2003 and except for my longing for PlayStation, haven't gone back to console since. I started off on my mom's HP pavilion, and have moved on to my current rig. I run a FX-8150 8-core processor with a tripple screen eyefinity display on an AMD 6870. 


I play all manner of PC games from RTS to Civ, to Call of Duty and Battlefield. I don't play MMO's cause I just don't have the time, or want to pay a monthly fee. On this blog I'll be reviewing games new and old. Sometimes I will review old games you've never heard of, but they're worth checking out.  I'll also be reviewing new technology, or consolidating the data about technology I can't afford to buy. 


I'll be posting a new game/tech review every two weeks.