World of Warcraft on Ubuntu Gutsy w/ Teamspeak (and Music)

So I've gone upgrade crazy. I've got the Latest Ubuntu Gutsy Gabon (7.10) installed. And I got all my doo-dads working as well.

First off, I found the most useful walk-throughs on answers by prefacing my searches with "Ubuntu"

For example "ubuntu warcraft install howto" on google did wonders. Lots of good advice, etc.

In a nutshell the procedure is

1. Install wine on Ubuntu
2. Get the WOW download or copy the contents of all 4 install CD's into a single directory.
3. enter "wine Installer.exe"

There are many other details depending on your video card, etc. but probably the most useful notes are as follows:

1. Wine will try to "own" the audio device. So only one program at a time when running under wine will have audio. The solution to this is to use either aoss or arts on Ubuntu.

With aoss you do something like:

aoss wine wow.exe
aoss TeamSpeak # the linux binary

I found aoss to be not so good and had static when using TeamSpeak.

I personally use arts. You start up artsd first (the daemon) as follows:

artsd -d

The -d puts it in full duplex mode so you can use your mic.

Then start your applications like aoss, i.e.

artsdsp wine wow.exe
artsdsp TeamSpeak
artsdsp rythmbox

Anything that uses audio in wine or any linux programs that use oss audio need to use either aoss or arts if you want to run more than one program with audio output at a time.

Enjoy...

Legal MP3 Downloads, Somebody finally got it

In case you haven't heard. Amazon has MP3 downloads. DRM free, no download client required, just purchase the music and download it with your browser. It's not about paying for the music really. You can try the file sharing networks, but it can be hard to find the song you want and quality tends to vary, not to mention, if you get popped by the Metalicops. It could get ugly. If I figure my time is worth $60 an hour it only has to save me a minute of time to be worth the download charge. I really think Amazon has got it right, large selection, and I'm not locked to a single computer or device, I get decent quality MP3's fast download.
It will be interesting to see if the service flies with the recording companies. There is a note on the site about this being Beta. I wonder if there's some kind of digital signature in the MP3's so they can see how many of their purchased files wind up on P2P networks. In the mean time, I'm downloading like a madman and filling out my library. Enjoy.

Will Internet Radio, as we know it, die on the vine?

At least in America that may be the case. A recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board may mean the end of listener supported radio stations like SOMA, Chronix, and Radio Paradise.

Internet based radio stations will now have to pay an additional fee, per listener, on top of the fees they already must pay to royalties performing rights organizations like BMI, ASCAP and SESAC.

Having been in the radio business myself I know that even with advertisers and commercials, most radio stations run on a razor thing budget. A large cut of their revenue goes to pay the royalties. For listener supported radio, that margin is even thinner, with no commercial sponsors to help pay the royalty fees.

The music industry keeps trying to force the old model into the new technology and it's a square peg in a round hole. Certainly there needs to be protection for the artists who's work we enjoy, so that they are properly compensated, but it needs to be balanced in a way that we can actually hear this good music. If it's left up to the current delivery machine of FM radio stations, I fear we will be resigned to listening to the same tired music over and over and over.

If you want your voice to be heard, you can sign the on-line petition, or use THIS LINK to call, write or e-mail (Calling is best) your representative in the US.

You can also read a bit more about the subject in this Wired Article

Do your part to save Internet Radio.

Napster Bad... Beer Goood!!

This one has been around for awhile, but I thought I'd post it here. Remember the old Napster, before they got bought out?

This is a little piece on the RIAA's effort to shut them down.

Champ Chaos Video from Yesteryear

Free Custom Treo 700p Ringtones

So I've had this phone for almost a year now and I finally got tired of reaching for my phone every time somebody else who has the same phone gets a call while they are standing in my proximity. So I finally broke down and tried to get my own custom ringtones on the Treo 700p. I specifically wanted the Timmy! ringtone from Comedy Central after seeing it during the Daily Show (John Stewart Rocks!).

When I went to mobile.comedycentral.com, the first thing it tried to do was play a bunch of flash, on a mobile phone? Come Comedy Central... I guess the jokes on me eh?

I finally break out my laptop to bring up the mobile.comedycentral.com site, after finding that it didn't work on my mobile phone. I had the option to listen in a flash file, or to buy the ringtone.

Ummm.... Riiiiiiigggghhht.... So I do a bit more looking, and I can get MP3 ringtones on my phone, but I have to buy a 25$ program to be able to use these files as ringtones.

Bzzzznnnnntttt..... On to more fruitful pursuits. After much googling about I found that the following works for putting custom ringtones on your phone.

1. Take a PCM wave file or files, of 195k in size or less and e-mail it to yourself.

2. Then using your mail program download the attachment and when the attachment shows up in the bottom of your message, tap and hold the icon on the right of the filename. When the menu comes up tap "select viewer", then pick "voice memo"
3. After you have selected the viewer all you should have to do is click on each wav file, then click "View"
4. Answer yes to transfer it to Voice Memo, then when Voice Memo appears, press the menu button and select "Copy to Ringtone"

Your Wave file should now be available as a Ringtone along with the stock Treo Ringtones.

This will allow you to create your own ringtones from sound files and play them on your phone.

As a note:
You'll have to convert your wav file to a lower bitrate, mono, lower sample rate, etc to get a good length tone. The Treo also chops off WAV ringtones at the 195k mark. Also as a last bit of advice. Don't make the sound file longer than 20 seconds, as it will cause problems with going over to voicemail.

Enjoy.

GT

Tunes in your mobile

I have one of those new phones that stores my mp3's. The only problem is that I have yet to find a decent device that will play my music on the car stereo. Leave it to those forward thinking engineers at Chrysler to put an auxiliary jack right in the front panel of the in dash stereo. Next time you rent a car, ask for the Chrysler. You can plug your mp3 player in and cruise down the road in tuneful bliss.