Skyy Black Light Lamp

This is basically a quick guide for how to build a lamp out of a bottle. You can fine tune it as you see fit, the basic process is the same. I made a black light lamp out of a Skyy bottle. I've also made a Grey Goose lamp in the past.

Stuff you need before you start:

• Bottle for base
• Lamp shade
• Old/cheap lamp to smash (for parts, its cheaper usually then buying all the components at a hardware store)
• Wirecutters
• Wire strippers
  
• Dremel (with diamond bits)
  
• Drill with tungsten drill bit (or something that is rated to drill glass)
• Electrical tape
  
• Light bulb
• Masking tape
  
• Wire nuts

The components of the lamp you need (if you choose to buy them from a hardware store) are:

• Light socket with switch
• Cord

Once you get the technique down, this takes around a half hour, if this is your first time plan on spending a bit more time on it.

First off, if you just have an old or cheap lamp to smash do that, then cut the cord about an inch below the socket, then strip both ends of the cord like so:



Next prep the bottle for drilling. This means wash it out with warm water and apply masking tape where you plan on drilling the hole (the back of the bottle at the bottom is where I usually drill).


After drilling the hole, you may need to widen it with the dremel. Next, take apart the socket and dremel the bottom with a sandpaper bit so that you can fit it somewhat loosely into the top of the bottle.




Make sure its not too loose, but you can take it out easily. Now, use a pencil to push a strip of electrical tape on the inside of the bottle like this:


When you have this done, wrap a strip of electrical tape around the bottom the socket where you dremeled. This ensures that the socket is lodged firmly in the bottle.

Now push the cord through the bottle and socket so it sticks out the top. Attach it with wire nuts to the light switch component.



If the nuts are small enough, you should be able to cram it all into the bottom of the socket underneath the switch, if not you'll have to leave them in the bottle under the socket. Screw the top of the socket on, attach a lamp shade, screw in a light bulb, and viola! Your new lamp is completed.

Fedora 8 Test 3 Thoughts

Being the avid Fedora user I am, I couldn't wait to try out the final test release of Fedora 8. I am excited for a few key features of Fedora 8, mainly Iced Tea (a OpenJDK implementation) and CodecBuddy. The full list of features can be found here. The Fedora 8 Test 3 LiveCD can be downloaded here. Without further ado, I'll break down what I saw as the good and the bad of Fedora 8 Test 3.

The Good

I really liked the Nodoka theme, I think it will succeed in making the Fedora desktop stick out in the crowd, as well as give it a look Fedora users can associate with it. The default wallpaper is also a devatation from the norm, not even including the Fedora logo in any way. In keeping with the trend of using all OSS, the Fedora team has included Abiword instead of OO.org Writer as the default word processor. Iced Tea preforms as expected, with one minor glitch (to be covered in the next section). With the addition of CodecBuddy and a cleaned up GUI for package management, Fedora is becoming easier to use, while still maintaining its high OSS standards.

The Bad

There is no Firefox Iced Tea plugin. I am hoping that the Iced Tea team will make this a priority and we will have one in the near future. Also, my dual screen configuration was not automatically detected (while not really a 'bad' thing, it is something that Windows and Mac OS are very good at, and Linux in general needs to get better at detecting and managing). The old bluecurve icon set is still being used, and although it doesn't look horrible with the Nodoka theme, I am ready to move on to a new default icon set (my personal favorite is Echo).

Conclusions

With the release of Test 3, the Fedora team has once again shown their dedication to providing people with the easiest to use fully Open OS. Keep it up guys!

Dual Screens in Linux

While it is true that installing a second screen and getting it to span the desktop isn't as easy in Linux as it is in Windows or Mac Os, it isn't terrible to set up if you are willing to break out vim and edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf. A major note is that using the system tools in GNOME (sytem-config-display) to set up the dual screens fails as it does not edit the xorg.conf correctly.

I used this guide to assist in setting my dual screens up. I have two AOC LM742 17" flat panel moniters (ranging in price anywhere from $130-$189). I have a EVGA 7600GS and XOrg 7.1.

Here is my xorg.conf for dual screens in FC6 using the Nvidia drivers


Section "ServerLayout"
   Identifier "single head configuration"
   Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
   InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"
   ModulePath "/usr/lib64/xorg/modules/extensions/nvidia"
   ModulePath "/usr/lib64/xorg/modules"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
   Identifier "Keyboard0"
   Driver "kbd"
   Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
   Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"

### Comment all HorizSync and VertSync values to use DDC:
   Identifier "Monitor0"
   VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
   ModelName "LCD Panel 1280x1024"
### Comment all HorizSync and VertSync values to use DDC:
   HorizSync 31.5 - 67.0
   VertRefresh 50.0 - 75.0
   Option "dpms"
EndSection

Section "Device"
   Identifier "Videocard0"
   Driver "nvidia"
   BoardName "geForce 7600 GS"
   BusID "PCI:2:0:0"
   Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
   Option "TwinView"
   Option "MetaModes" "1280x1024,1280x1024; 1280x1024; 1024x768,1024x768; 1024x768; 800x600,800x600; 800x600"
   Option "TwinViewOrientation" "RightOf"
   Option "SecondMonitorHorizSync" "UseEdidFreqs"
   Option "SecondMonitorVertRefresh" "UseEdidFreqs"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
   Identifier "Screen0"
   Device "Videocard0"
   Monitor "Monitor0"
   DefaultDepth 24
   SubSection "Display"
     Viewport 0 0
     Depth 24
   EndSubSection
EndSection



Enjoy and good luck!

A Quick Hack to Convert m4a to mp3 in Linux

As I was getting ready for my eight hour car trip back to MTU, I wanted some music to ease the pain of the long trip. I do not own a portable MP3 player, so everything I wanted was going to have to be burned to an audio CD (I use GnomeBaker to do this). The only issue was, most of my Pink Floyd music was in M4A format, and GnomeBaker only handles OGG/MP3 for inclusion in an audio CD. So without further ado, here is the code for the bash script I wrote to convert M4A's to MP3:


#!/bin/bash

for i in *.m4a; do
  faad -o - "$i" lame - "${i%.m4a}.mp3"
done


After this ran, I also executed a rm *m4a. Enjoy!

The Practical Linux Desktop Part 2: Software

So now that you have your new desktop built, the next major question is what Linux distro should you choose to install? I will cover this, as well as some of my favorite desktop software below.

Choosing a Distro

The two major distros vying for desktop domianience these days are Ubuntu and Fedora. Both have their strengths and weaknesses. Ubuntu seems to be the choice for users that are completly new to Linux (usually coming from a Windows background). It is easy to install, and Ubuntu 7.01 has a nifty script that autodetects most hardware and installs the approprate drivers (even nonfree drivers, so beware!). The other nice thing about Ubuntu is the community is aware of its stance as a "Distro for newbies", and takes pride in their motto: "Linux for Human Beings".

On the other hand, you have my personal favorite, Fedora. Fedora is sponsered by Red Hat, which gives it a unique advantage over several other Linux projects: it has strong and steady cash flow. Fedora is all about showcasing cutting edge open source software. This means that open applications will be installed by default, and as such it can pose a few issues for complete Linux newbies, even so, it is still considered by many to be "newbie friendly". I have chose Fedora to install on my desktop systems because of ease of installation and the cutting edge open source software that is always included.

The Next Step

After you've chosen a distro and installed, you will usually have some work left to do. If you have an Nvidia card, make sure you install the proper drivers (in Fedora):

yum --enable-repo=livna install kmod-nvida

After this, you can enable such things as Beryl or Compiz. I personally use VLC to view videos, Rhythembox for music playback, Firefox for web browsing, Miro for Internet TV, and Evolution for email (many people prefer Thunderbird). Many of these programs are already in the distro repositories, therefore you can just use the package manager to install them if they are not already installed.

Programming

If you are a programmer, Linux is definitely the best OS for you in terms of practicality. Many languages are included with the install (Perl, Python, bash, C, C++), and most others are trival to install. The main issue of note here is that installing Java has been an ordeal, however, the Java VM included with Fedora 8 called Iced Tea will be an OpenJDK implementation included in the main repository (hopefully). This will be a huge relief to many Java on Linux programmers.

More Multimedia

Multimedia is huge these days, and of course you should expect it to be a huge part of your desktop environmet. Many detrators of Linux try to bash its seemingly low quality support for multimedia. As a long term Linux user, I can tell you that multimedia support under Linux has improved dramitically and with increasing rapidity over the last few years. I use Fspot for my digital camera and photo management, GnomeBaker for audio CD burning, mencoder for DVD ripping (XDVDShrink works just as well, and has a GUI), dvdauthor to create DVDs, Audicity to create audio, and Cinelerra to create and edit movies. Installing all of these programs is fairly trivial in both Ubuntu and Fedora.

Final Thoughts
So that's it! The next step? Enjoy your powerful new Linux desktop!

A Practical Linux Desktop Part 1: Hardware

Every year, the Linux Magazine does an article on the "Ultimate Linux Box", and they include all of the latest and greatest hardware, as well as rate how well it works with Linux. The price tags on these boxes are generally out of my price range, and I can only assume out of the price range of many a poor college student like myself.

So in my next two posts, I will show you how to build a great Linux machine for under $1000 (this includes the price for a monitor), and what distros you will want to consider along with instructions for setting up some useful applications.

Getting Started
To start out, I will list my system's specs. I purchased this box back in January 2007.

• Processor: AMD X2 4200+ (2x2.2GHZ)
• Motherboard: Asus M2N (Socket AM2)
• Video Card: EVGA Nvidia 7600GS
• RAM: 1GB PQi DDR2 800
• HDD: WD SATA2 80GB
• Optical Drive: LG 18x CD+-RW/DVD+-RW
• PSU: Logisys 575W
• Case: Cooler Master Centurion 5

This cost me ~$650 at the time. Currently, you could buy a comparable system for ~$450-$500.

Let's take a deeper look at what kinds of hardware makes the most practical Linux desktop by starting with considering some tasks you will most likely want your desktop to preform. Chances are, you will want to do video editing, word processing and other office tasks, play games, store your data, as well as play and possibly edit your music.

Processor

The first thing you will want to budget for is a processor. I chose the AMD X2 4200+ because I believe it offers me the best price/performance ratio. At under $100, this processor offers plenty of power as a mid-level dual core, not to mention that the stock heatsink and fan is great. AMD processors usually get a bad rap for being power hungry and running hot, however, I believe they still have the best mid-entry dual cores for the price (newegg.com shows the AMD X2 3800+ 2.0GHZ at $65 and the Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 2.0GHZ at $125.99). This leads me to conclude that AMD is in fact the better processor manufacturer for our practical Linux box.

Video

For several years now Linux users have been waiting with bated breath to see which of the two major video card manufacturers (ATi and Nvidia) will have better support for Linux users. Unfortunately, neither company offers an open source driver solution, although at the time of writing, Intel integrated graphics do use open drivers. For the last few years, Nvidia has won out in terms of better support for Linux users, their drivers work and are included in all major distro repositories. While ATi does have drivers that are also included in most repositories for major distros (the fglrx driver), this is always far behind the times and never seems to work on recent hardware reliably. For example, I have had my ATi Radeon Xpress 200M for over two years and just got direct rendering working a few months ago (it is broken again with a new Xorg update).

For these reasons, I chose to purchase Nvidia. For a practical desktop, we don't need the latest, most powerful GPU, so once again I opted for the mid-level 7600GS that would accomplish all the tasks I need it to. The Nvidia driver for the 7600GS is fully supported with Linux, and it is a breeze to set up (as you will see in the next part).

Storage

I chose an 80GB SATA drive for storage, however I had tight price restrictions. I would suggest at least a 250GB drive, or perhaps a 2 disk RAID1.

Conclusions

Hopefully these tips have helped you realize that a practical Linux box can be powerful as well as... practical! Not to mention easily fitting in your budget. In the next part we well look at how to set up Linux and install all the useful applications and games for you to get the most out of your new hardware.

LVM vs. Mass Storage Device

My desktop has a 80GB hard drive. In this day and age, for most people that just doesn't cut it. I had been planning on upgrading my storage space as soon as possible, and with the advent of a new school semester I have enough extra loan money to consider this.

My first thought when I built my desktop back in January was that I would RAID four SATA 80GB disks. At the time, I only had enough money to purchase one drive. After researching RAID a little more, I came to the conclusion that it would be a little too complicated for me. I'm not worried about data redundancy and disk parity for my desktop, and a simpler RAID (such as RAID0 or RAID1) just didn't seem worth the headache of setting it up. Not to mention the cost of buying another three 80GB drives.

A more recent thought was to purchase a large drive (such as a 250GB drive) and use LVM2 to span both devices, allowing me to essentially use the larger drive as an extension to my /home. This idea seemed very appealing to me until I realized that in order to use LVM2 on the large drive I had to install an OS on it. I had decided that the primary purpose of this drive would be to store movies, music, and a backup of my /home, so doing more than formatting it with a filesystem seemed a little excessive.

I have arrived to a solution that I think works out for the best. I will purchase an this internal 250GB hard drive and this external drive enclosure. This is cheaper than purchasing an external 250GB drive, and will give me the same amount of total storage as 4x80GB disks. It also has the added plus of easy portability.

In the end, while a spanning LVM would be nice, it proved to be too much of a hassle and slightly overkill for my purposes.