Tag: linux

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New Feature: Retro Game Of The Month

Since stumbling across several old video games from my DOS days (think pre-1995) I’ve decided to fire up a few of them and offer up some fun reviews of games that were made before many of you and gadgets at https://progamerreview.com/best-gaming-keyboard/ were even born. These games, in some way or another, shaped the gaming industry into what it is today. They were the birth of the PC gaming industry, when Atari and Nintendo had been dominating people’s living rooms for over a decade.

I can remember playing my first networked multiplayer games in 1993, when Doom and Descent came out. There weren’t Cat5 ethernet cables back then, everything was 10-Base2 running on Coaxial cable with BNC T’s and terminators. TCP/IP hadn’t become the standard yet, either, so everything ran Novell Netware and used IPX addressing (instead of TCP/IP addresses that everything uses now). The hardcore guys would either play point-to-point on dialup modems, or drag their computers to a friend’s house and use a null-modem cable to simulate a phone line. We’re talking back in the days before Pentiums were invented… the first PC I played Doom on was a 386dx clone, running at 33Mhz. I think it had 2MB of RAM. We’re talking before PCI slots were standard. Just think about that for a minute. A 28.8Kbps modem was all you could get then. Let that sink in. Continue reading “New Feature: Retro Game Of The Month”

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The Prodigal Son Gamer

Recently, in one of their Netflix binge-watching marathons, my kids discovered a show called Video Game High School. Most of what they watch is aimed at younger teens, mostly Disney (teenage soap opera) drama and comedy. This looked pretty promising at first, but as the series ran on, I started not liking what I saw.

The show centers around a kid who unintentionally ends up at an elite high school for competitive video gamers. It’s filled with the usual action and drama, but I guess I was expecting more of the traditional cheesy comedy. I ended up pulling the plug when the show’s main antagonist started dropping 4-letter words (cause my pre-teen kids were watching it too).

The problem is, in typical drama show fashion, VGHS shows unrealistic caricatures of what real gamers are like. If you didn’t know better and only went off of what the show presents, you’d think all skilled gamers are egotistical jerks, they all have some weird accent/slang dialect, and run in weird cliques. But from my experience, the people that have the dedication to drag a computer setup to a hotel ballroom somewhere just to play video games for fun and prizes are much, much nicer than that.

Twenty years ago, I used to be pretty big into gaming. I had a dedicated LAN party rig, and I went to competitions a few times a year. I gave that up to be able to raise a family shortly thereafter, and for the most part, I never really got back into it. Here’s a shot of my last custom LAN rig: Continue reading “The Prodigal Son Gamer”

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Scrivener For Linux

As a creative-type person, I understand when people get picky about what tools they use to create their particular art form. Musicians will obsess over the tiniest things to get the sound “just right.” Photographers will spend hours waiting for just the right light.

But why are writers usually just the opposite? They use kludgy writing tools, and sometimes even physical “index card” information management. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a single program that could do everything a writer needed? Formatting, templates, organization, storyboarding, corkboards, revision management, links and information, pictures, exporting direct to publishing formats, and even a full-screen writing mode?

Well, there *is* such a program. It’s called Scrivener. It’s completely changed the way I write, for the better.

Scrivener was made *by* authors, *for* authors. It’s like a tool that plugs directly into your brain and lets you focus on writing. There are plenty of testimonials praising the OSX and Windows versions, but I run the Linux-specific version, which is technically still in beta. It still has more features than a regular word processor, and I’ve found it has become integral to my writing process.

For those of you familiar with Scrivener, the Linux version is available as a free (for now) Beta. For the rest of you, here’s the overview: Continue reading “Scrivener For Linux”

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Offline/Online Password Management

For someone who’s been using the internet almost since its inception, I’ve collected quite a large assortment of usernames and passwords over the years. I think something on the order of 150+ of them, not including the ones that have gone defunct, or actual local network passwords.

How does a professional geek handle hundreds of passwords? Here’s a quick primer on how I do it, with a few suggestions on general password security, too. I’ve used two programs in the last year to get a handle on my password/username combos; LastPass and KeePass. One is a web-run business; the other is a free, open-source program. I’ll explain a bit about each one, and how I decided to use them. Continue reading “Offline/Online Password Management”

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Guitarix And Ubuntu For Live Use

I’m working on finishing up some articles and videos of demoing Guitarix in a live performance setting. Until then, here’s some screenshots of my rig in action! The last picture is what the laptop looks like when you put Guitarix in “Live” mode. The buttons at the bottom light up as you use MIDI triggers to turn on/off effects, so you can easily see what’s switched on. Also, if you have a pedal mapped to volume or wah, it shows what position the pedal is at. (That’s going to get a video demo as soon as I find the time!)

You can store presets in banks, so you can set up your sounds according to songs and sets.

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Linux For Guitarists Episode 2

If you managed to make it through the first step of getting Linux installed on a computer, then we’re ready to go to the next step, which is finding a decent audio interface to use for live guitar performance. This is Linux for Guitarists, Episode 2.

If you want to play guitar through your computer, you’re going to need some way to plug it in. The best way to do it is with an audio interface. Specifically, you want to look for one that has a “Hi-Z” input. This makes the input jack have the correct impedance for your guitar to sound right. If you want a better explanation of why this is, check out this video on Impedance by Nick Jaffe.

I’ll give you fair warning: most manufacturers are going to cheaper platforms, and putting most of their interface’s features in software. I mean, they only have to write the driver software once, and it costs them nothing to duplicate it. Hardware costs money! So what that means for us is that a lot of these will only work in the most basic ways in Linux. If you know this going into it, you won’t get as frustrated, but I’ll tell you now, there’s only a handful of interfaces that work 100%. One of them is what I have, a Roland UA-25EX. It has hardware switches for settings and a hardware compressor, hardware everything, and it’s USB class-compliant, so it just works.

You may not be able to find one of these, so what you want to look for is something that specifically says “USB Class-Compliant.” That means if you plug it into anything, it will at least work to get audio in and out. The advanced features probably won’t work, but that’s generally not a problem. If you want to see what interfaces are known to work, you can go to the Alsa home page and look through the list. Also, most Firewire interfaces will work, but again, you’re gonna want to check and make sure. I have heard reports that the Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 works perfectly in Linux, but I don’t have one to test yet. It’s still in production, so if you can’t find a Roland UA-25EX give the Focusrite a try.

To install an interface in Linux, you just plug it in. The audio drivers are already built into the kernel, so if it works at all, it should just work. You can plug your guitar into the Hi-Z port, and see if you can get it to record something. If you can get it to work at all, you’re set! It’s all playing with software from here.

I’ll also add, you’ll probably want to find an interface that has MIDI in and out too, but if you can’t, you can always get a simple USB to MIDI cable. They sell them on Amazon for like $19, and they’ll work fine for what we’re going to be doing with it.

Okay, that’s about it! Next episode, we’re going to talk about the two main software packages, Guitarix and Rakarrak. We’ll be talking about how to get a decent guitar tone to start with, and then we’ll get into effects later on.

Again, thanks for reading, and keep on rocking!

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Linux For Guitarists – Getting Started

I’ve been messing around with Linux since about 2001, been playing guitar since about 1992. I’ve done lots of projects with Linux over the years, but the last couple of years I wanted to use Linux as a platform to make music with. I’m not a professional blogger, nor a video expert, but I know a lot about being a geek and being a musician, which is why you’re here. I originally wanted to do Youtube videos, but I’m really better at writing. It would be a lot more informal, like hanging with your Geeky tech buddy. But in the end, I just didn’t have time to make videos of the quality I’d like. So for now, I’m your Geeky tech pal who’s a Linux Guru and just so happens to love playing guitar. Welcome to Linux for Guitarists, Episode 1.

There’s been plenty of stuff written about Ardour, and a bunch of other open-source music tools, which is fantastic. But when I started to try to learn more about guitar-specific stuff, specifically performance-oriented software, I discovered there’s actually very little out there.

Now, a lot of people are intimidated by Linux, and I understand, but it’s not that bad. It gets a bad rap from people that haven’t really used it that much. But I’m very comfortable with it, so I feel pretty good about helping you with it. I’m not gonna go into the reasoning behind it*, but let’s just say, if you want to use something besides Windows or OSX, for whatever reason, you’re in the right place. Continue reading “Linux For Guitarists – Getting Started”

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MIDI Effect Sequencing Software For Guitarists

As many of you know, I’m working on a complete open-source solution to doing guitar amp and effects emulation in Linux. Because, you know, I’m a geek like that. So far, I’ve had great success with Guitarix and SooperLooper, and added a few other tools and utilities to make everything work smoothly. I have to say, considering what the equivalent software would cost, I’ve been pretty impressed with Guitarix. (Rakkarak might someday be a viable performance alternative… it just needs a complete UI redesign. Yes, it’s really that bad.)

One of the guitar effects that I’ve been curious about is an effect sequencer. Some hardware equivalents would be something like the Electro Harmonix 8 Step Program, which lets you sequence a signal that goes to the external control pedal jack of another effect. (Demo video and good explanation of step sequencers (not mine) is here) Continue reading “MIDI Effect Sequencing Software For Guitarists”

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Getting Back Into Evernote

I’m actually a big fan of Evernote, if you hadn’t heard. However, I haven’t been using it much lately. Partly, that’s because I made the mistake of using it (on my tablet) at work, and for some inexplicable reason, Evernote massively multiplied the photos I had uploaded, which maxed out my free account monthly bandwidth in about 10 minutes. I thought I had fixed it and deleted the offending notes, but alas, as soon as my limit reset, it promptly locked me out again for another month.

After a few tries, I managed to delete (really delete) the posts causing it, and everything returned to normal. By then, however, I had gotten out of the habit of using it!

Now I’ve decided to get back into it. Especially with it being Tax Season in the States, there will be plenty of paperwork and things to keep track of. So how do I get back in the swing? I guess I have to start with some things I have lying around, ready to be filed. The program is free, so the only thing it requires is some planning and a little time.

There are currently only four viable options if you want to use Evernote on your Linux computer (that I know of).

  1. Evernote for Windows client in an emulator
  2. Evernote web client in a browser
  3. NixNote/Nevernote
  4. Everpad

Continue reading “Getting Back Into Evernote”

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My Guitar Setup

Some of you may have been wondering what my actual guitar setup looks like, so after some prodding from the Google+ Worship Guitarists Community, I decided to make a short video and explain what I’ve got and why I’m using it. Let me know if you have any questions.

In my quest to minimize, I will probably be rearranging some of this equipment, but I will still keep an actual amp setup in case my computer crashes in some way. Just wish MIDI controller pedals were cheaper on Ebay! Sheesh.