mp3fs is a neat FUSE filesystem that you can point at a collection of FLAC music and you’ll get a mirrored filesystem full of MP3s that will get transcoded from your FLAC files on demand. Great for use with an iPod, etc.
Unfortunately there’s a bug when trying to transcode certain FLAC files(which are valid and fine) that causes the filesystem to fail - requiring an unmount and a remount. Hopefully it gets fixed up quick!
Maegg.com appears to have expired - at least for the moment - but it had a really nice article on making frosty looking text. So I’ve preserved what I could here:
Paint Shop Pro
Snowy, Frosty, Icy Text Effect
5. Click Selections > From Vector Object. Then click Selections > Promote Selection to Layer. Now we need to save our selection to alpha channel so we can call it up easily. Click Selections > Load/Save Selections > Save Selection to Alpha Channel don’t change anything and just save the selection as is.
6. Make the promoted layer active by clicking on it in the layer palette. We need to duplicate the promoted layer for the glow we are about to add. Right click on the promoted layer in the layer palette. Click Duplicate. Now make the copy layer active by clicking on it.
7. Add an inner glow. To do this click Effects > 3D Effects > Cutout and set options as follows:
Vertical: -5
Horizontal: -5
Opacity: 21
Blur: 3
Shadow color: white
No fill color so uncheck the box
Click OK.
8. Merge the inner glow layer down onto the one under it. Click Layers > Merge Down.
9. Click Effects > Texture Effects > Sculpture. Set all options as they are in the screen shot from paint shop pro:
10. Now for the snow shadow. Click Effects > 3D Effects > Drop Shadow and set options as follows:
Vertical: -4
Horizontal: -3
Opacity: 100
Blur: 0
Color: white
11. Click Selections > Select All. Now we need to float it to get our text plus the shadow selected. Click Selections > Float.
12. To get the snowy effect we will be using our smudge tool. The smudge tool is bundled in with dodge, soften etc. On my workspace it is under the clone (two people) tool. Click on smudge tool and make it active. Set all the options as in this screen shot. I left the graphic big so you can also check your progress. The brush is the default. Now to smudge in our snow. Go around each letter smudging the white into the the blue. Put brush at top part of white and hold down your cursor and make small short smudges down and slightly to the right. If you don’t like a stroke, click undo and try again. Smudge all the white into all the letters until you are happy with your snowfall :0)
13. I like to apply a blue drop shadow. You can do what you want from here to make it your own. To add the blue shadow that I did, click Effects > 3D Effects > Drop Shadow and set options as follows:
Vertical: 10
Horizontal: -1
Opacity: 100
Blur: 15
Color: #769DFA
14. If you see any edges that are too sharp just barely smudge them to blend them in. I like to lighten the text as a last step to make it look a little more frosty. To do that click Adjust > Brightness and Contrast > Gamma Correction and set it at 2. Merge all your layers, click Layers > Merge All. Click Selections > Select None and your done!
All done with Paint Shop Pro For splicing USB to all those various widgets and gidgets:
| Pin | Name | Cable color | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | VCC | Red | +5 VDC |
| 2 | D- | White | Data - |
| 3 | D+ | Green | Data + |
| 4 | GND | Black | Ground |
Pin x of mini-USB connector may be not connected, connected to GND or used as attachment identification at some portable devices.
Occasionally you have those those your shows Myth box misses or which you just don’t get but need to watch. It’s easy enough to download them via BitTorrent - but how to get them to show up in the recordings, that’s the trick:
The tool myth.rebuilddatabase.pl is the secret (on Mythdora it is found under /usr/share/doc/mythtv-docs-*/contrib/).
Run it while in your storage directory, with a –ext <avi,mpg,…> if you want to limit its scope and it will pick up on any shows missing in your database.
Provide it a channel, title, sub-title, and description - or as much as you know and away it goes.
Currently I manage an e-mail server on Fedora Core 6 for myself and some family members - but apparently GMail will let you keep your domain and use GMail and the frontend. Excellent.
PinkyTagger is a promising music tagger that uses the MusicBrainz library to help you identify and tag your music.
Unfortunately it has a bug currently where after tagging an album compressed with FLAC in addition to the Vorbis tags you also get an empty ID3v2 tag which prevents PinkyTagger from rescanning the album.
Been working on a SNES controller to USB adapter using a PCB from raphnet.net. And what better way to connect a SNES controller to a USB port than via a broken SNES console from eBay.
Hardest part was getting the SNES open with its custom screws. Luckily, Engadget has a good article on getting those pesky Nintendo screws out. I used to melted pen method and it worked like a charm.
And the finished product!
Probably going to upgrade to Fedora 8 soon when Mythdora 5 comes out but until then this is a useful guide for getting Coldfusion working on the older Fedora release:
There are some cool remixes of games music beyond the obvious: http://www.ocremix.org.
Q. Do you believe in ghosts or evil spirits? Would you be willing to spend a ight alone in a remote house that is supposedly haunted?
R. I no reason to believe or not to believe in them - so any inclination I might have is purely the product or other interests. My best answer is that I’m rather agnostic on the issue. As for the second question. I suppose that I would be willing - I don’t know that the fact that it’s supposedly haunted and remote would inspire me to go but it wouldn’t preclude me from doing so.
