Finally OBS Studio virtual camera works! The Story So Far… I have been using OBS Studio to record classes online. I post these recordings on YouTube so students would be able to review the class. The students would do well to review the lesson delivery, activities they did and instructions I vomited out my piehole. I had been attempting to use OBS Studio for another thing, which is as a virtual camera to be used in Google Meet or Discord video chats. There are a lot of neat things you can do with it such as live transitions, camera switching (if one had more than a single camera), overlays and neat filters as well. In Recent Days… I have been having problems with installing the plugins that would allow me to use the OBS screen output as a virtual camera. I cloned the two different modules required, obs-v4l2sink and v4l2loopback, […]
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Mint 20 is Here
I noticed that there as a Mint update notification at the system tray yesterday. When I looked it up, it was the upgrade to 64-bit Linux Mint 20 Cinnamon. Its codebase is Ubuntu 20.04 LTS codenamed Focal Fossa. Since this is a Long Term Support system, I decided to upgrade ASAP. It took two hours or so, and in the end I was running Mint 20:
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Newly Minted OS
The Situation Last year some time, I upgraded the Linux Mint on this laptop from 17.0 to 17.3. In the last couple of months, I pushed it higher, upgrading from 17.3 to 18.0 to 18.3. However, this was where I hit a brick wall. I was unable to upgrade further because of an mdm display manager issue. None of the troubleshooting guides I read solved my problem. Additionally, the 18.3 build I had was noticeably getting slower to boot up AND it froze for three minutes or more intermittently. The freezes were happening a lot when I had a Nemo file manager window open. Saving on LibreOffice also immobilises the machine. This was a frustrating new development. Even more worrisome, because I had to use the machine for online teaching. Finally, I have been wanting to use the latest Discord and Blender programs (among others). There are no new 32-bit […]
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Remote Teaching
One thing after another throughout my life, I have needed to familiarise myself with matters that I had never considered before. Because of this excellent plague year, I now teach my course online for the rest of the semester. After a two-week break during a worldwide pandemic quarantine, the university found its bearings. Thus I was ordered to begin teaching week 7 onwards through the interwebs. I taught my students from Irfan’s room in the back. So far it has been good. I still wish that I had an audience to interact with. No, that’s not right. I do have one, but I wish I could meet their eyes to judge their growing understanding of the lesson. In the meantime, I have set up my “studio” so to speak. I address my classes via Google Meet. However, the laptop which runs on 32-bit Linux Mint 18.3 has a slight defect. […]
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Irfan’s Jaunt into Robotics
Some time last month I received an email notification of an Introduction to micro:bit Workshop for schoolchildren to be held at the Mechatronic school at the university, and so we enrolled Irfan. It was a full day’s programme. Ain and I decided to save our transport fuel by hanging around at the expansive computer lab. Because of that I got to play around with micro:bit as well. To my surprise all the desktop computers in the lab were installed with Linux Mint. The micro:bit is a small but multi-functional system with a processor, sensors, output jacks, LEDs and USB port. It can be used in conjunction with other hardware to create amazing tools. It can be programmed using a Javascript Blocks Editor online. The online editor has a handy virtual micro:bit for you to test out your program live. You can experiment with the micro:bit code yourself here. And then […]
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Desktop of a Street at Night
My latest desktop on this Linux Mint machine is “Tokyo Street Night” by an artist named arsenixc. I love the colours on this piece. It overlays a sense of peace over what could be a bustling street. Click on the image below for the bigger picture pop-up. Click here to see the image at its DeviantArt page. Bonus: Here’s the same street in the day and at sunset.
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Hishgraphics Illustrations Video
I’ve been playing with OpenShot Video editor on this Linux Mint laptop. I downloaded the one in the repository, which was v1.4. Keyframe animation was a joy with it, but I was not able to copy and paste animation properties from one video clip to another. I did a little digging and I discovered that OpenShot 2.0 had been released recently and this version allowed me to copy paste animation properties. After the upgrade, I discovered that I had less control of the animation than I did with 1.4. (For example, I could go to and easily set the values for the start and the end of the horizontal position each clip with 1.4.) In any case, this is the result of my tinkering about with OpenShot. I am certain I will get the hang of it as I keep using the program. How is this for a TV commercial?
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This Pangolin is Precise
So it came to pass that if I needed to use the new Bamboo Pen graphics tablet, I had to upgrade my operating system. Long story short: I decided on totally replacing my ArtistX 1.0 OS with Ubuntu’s latest Long Term Support distro, which was 12.04 also dubbed “Precise Pangolin”. After installing the sucker, I finally came face to face for the first time… with the Unity desktop! Click on the thumbnail above to see the desktop, including the Dash HUD. Searching Ubuntuforums.org, I discovered how make a 3rd generation Bamboo Pen work with the Precise. I also reread on how to set up the Benq scanner using Snapscan’s binary file so I can scan using Sane or GIMP. Finally, I installed MyPaint I found on Ubuntu Software Center and discovered that it worked great with the Bamboo. Below is my first doodle-type sketch using the tablet in conjunction with […]
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Arise, Newer Graphics Tablet; But Not So Fast!
Once upon a time, I bought a Wacom Graphire 3 graphics tablet. With its stylus I made many a drawing, til its USB cable died screaming. Actually it died quite some years ago. In the interim, @plasticstitch had told me he had an unused Bluetooth-connected Graphire tablet and sent it by air mail to me where I made many more drawings. This device acted finicky with a Linux operating system, and I was using an Ubuntu distro. One day I upgraded to Ubuntu 10.04 by dint of installing the Ubuntu fork named ArtistX 1.0, and the device refused to talk via Bluetooth to the tablet. Today I bought a new tablet, a Wacom Bamboo Pen. Its matte-black housing looks sleeker than the silver-hued Graphire. I’d prefer to have purchased a Wacom Cintiq 24HD, but the Bamboo Pen is the only one I could spare cash on. Incidentally it’s the cheapest […]
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Wallpaprometheus
I appear to have a new wallpaper for the Artist X 1.0 desktop. Click to expand it. It’s that ship sent by Weyland Industries. S.S. Lollipop or something. Can’t wait for the movie. I’m not saying it’s ALIEN, but it’s ALIEN.
Continue readingCalibre Ebook Reader
I have discovered and installed the free ebook reader and management application named Calibre to read books and stuff! Apart from reading ebooks, Calibre can also manage your digital book library, search for ebooks in various locations from the Amazon Kindle store to Feedbooks.com and synchonize with a mobile reader such as my smartphone. Seeing that I’m pretty OCD about book cataloguing, I’ve used Calibre to ensure all the books’ metadata, cover image and such are meticulously entered. Thanks to Feedbooks and Project Gutenberg, I now have quite a lot of books in the queue to be read. Calibre also has a list of DRM-free ebooks on its website here Below is the ebook management interface screencap. Click on the thumbnails to view larger images. [[popup:calibre-capture01.jpg:(thumbnail)::center:1]] Here is the interface used to edit the ebooks’ metadata, displaying E.E. Doc Smith’s Triplanetary. Calibre could search the metadata and cover image online […]
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This Desktop Has An Owl
There’s an owl on the desktop.
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Amarok 2.0 Woes… Then a Solution!
A few nights ago, I decided to upgrade the Ubuntu operating system from 8.10 Intrepid Ibex to 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope. (Yeah, yeah. I should be at 10.04 Lucid Lynx right now. I’ll get around to it.) Everything went along swimmingly with the applications I’ve had installed… until I ran Amarok. Amarok version 1.something had been automatically upgraded by the OS level-up to version 2.0. The user interface looks somewhat different. But more important than that, there was no sound! Upon executing the application the systray warned me, “Phonon: KDE’s Multimedia Library. The audio playback device HDA Intel (AD198x Analog) does not work. Failing back to default.” Playing any songs, a warning would pop up, “Too many errors encountered in playlist. Stopped playback.” When I played the same songs using Totem, they worked perfectly. So I did a some Googling and discovered this solution which worked. 1. Create the file libphonon.conf […]
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Ubuntu Miscellanea
Three things come to mind. Flash Problems I’ve been having some problems with browser-embedded flash files. Those of you who notice my reluctance to click on Youtube links during chat will be pleased to know that I’ve gotten Youtube working on this browser, as well as the new Photobucket user interface. It took me quite a while to hunt down the solution at the Ubuntu forums. There were several false leads, but finally flash is free to be fully-utilized by Firefox. What I did was to input the following commands line-by-line on Terminal and follow whatever instructions that was displayed. sudo apt-get remove swfdec-mozilla sudo apt-get remove mozilla-plugin-gnash sudo apt-get remove adobe-flashplugin sudo apt-get remove flashplugin-nonfree sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree Never Doubt The Weather Applet This morning when I sat down at this computer, I saw that the gnome-clock weather applet said it was raining. I looked out the window […]
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Irfan’s NimbleX
I’m currently running a new LiveCD within which resides the Linux operating system called NimbleX, and I’m writing this article with the Konqueror browser nestled deep within the LiveCD. The reason why this article is entitled “Irfan’s NimbleX” is because upon the startup of the OS, a voice says, “Welcome to Irfan’s NimbleX” in the voice of famed Star Trek and The Simpsons guest actor Stephen Hawking. The special thing about NimbleX is that the ISO file you download to burn into a CD is customisable! You get to decide what applications are included, how the default wallpaper looks like (and upload your own), the startup and shutdown sound and other neat stuff. This is how part of the custom ISO generator page looks like: Click on the thumbs to view the full images. I haven’t fiddled around with xorg to get the screen to conform to 1200 by 800 […]
Continue readingBlue Underpants Goes On The Dragon
[[popup:nextwave_foom.jpg:(thumbnail)::left:1]]Since the desktop is deader than a doorknob now, I’ve been using the work laptop for both work and leisure internet use. The current desktop background that greets me every time I boot up the computer right now is… Well, just hit the thumbnail to see it. Please take note that it isn’t the dragon speaking in the picture. The lady, saying all the words in the word balloons, at the head of the fiery trail of the jetpack is Tabitha Smith of Nextwave.
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