Category: Tech Tools

Tools and tech tips to get stuff done (music tech has its own category)

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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.

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Untangle Web Filter: Thoughts

Update: Untangle recently released a very affordable “home” complete package. I’m going to reevaluate it, and update as necessary.

A while back I wrote up an article on how to set up the Untangle Web Filter distribution, and explained how it worked.

However, after a few months’ worth of using it, I’ve discovered a rather unpleasant shortcoming. Untangle doesn’t support keyword filtering. So, as easy as Untangle is to set up and configure, it doesn’t do the one thing I really needed it to do well: filter web content.

Don’t get me wrong, Untangle is still an excellent firewall/filter/etc. distro under certain circumstances, but for home use, the regular “blacklist” content filter just isn’t cutting it. Untangle works great for sectioning off your network, doing wireless sharing, access control, etc. and I’d still recommend it for a lot of uses. Just isn’t a strong enough filter to work on my home network. Without even trying, I was easily able to find and get to stuff I shouldn’t have. This is unacceptable when its primary function is to stop people from accessing unwanted web pages!

So, what do I do now?

Well, good news, there are plenty of web filter packages out there. The best one is probably DansGuardian, which is also free and open-source. The problem is, I can’t install it on Untangle, so I’ll have to completely redo the filter box with a different Linux installation.

Smoothwall is an excellent firewall/proxy/filter distribution, and I almost used it initially, but it’s not quite as easy to set up (I went with Untangle because of its easy setup). However, I recently discovered that Smoothwall has the ability to install third-party modules to add functionality, one of which is DansGuardian (and a Samba file server! Yay! Which is something else Untangle won’t do) so it looks like in the next week or two, I will be learning how to install, configure, and run the Smoothwall setup. It should work fine with the existing hardware I have, and it might even work with USB wi-fi adapters, which would be pretty slick. (This would be a great way to repurpose old laptops, etc.)

I will begin the process and document as it goes along. Wish me luck!

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Hate The NSA? Do Something About It: Start Here.

If you haven’t heard about Snowden and the NSA whistleblowing scandal, you either 1. live under a rock (with no internet) or 2. only use the internet to play Candy Crush (which is just as bad).

Basically, it was made publicly known that the U.S. Government records everything you do on the internet, including emails. Do you like the government having access to all of your emails and surfing history? Your passwords? Your private information? I hope not… and today, I’m going to show you what you can do about it.

Disclaimer: I’m not going to even address the faulted logic of saying “Why use encryption, I have nothing to hide!” Basically, the government can and will use anything you do or say against you if they want, for any reason they want, and their track record of mistakenly incriminating innocent people isn’t particularly good! Encryption is basically the digital version of the Fifth Amendment. Protect yourself.

Back before my web hosting server got wiped a few years ago, I had written a few articles on how to use something called “GPG” to encrypt computer files, primarily emails. GPG (Gnu Privacy Guard) is a fantastic application that basically encrypts computer information using public and private keys.

How GPG works:

  • You download the GPG software. The easiest way to use GPG is to add it as a plug-in to your email client, like Thunderbird or Outlook. (I use Thunderbird with the Enigmail add-on, works fantastically!)
  • You pick an email to identify yourself… this is your digital “identity” that people will associate you with. Doesn’t matter which email it is, but most likely your primary one.
  • You create a “Key Pair” which includes a Public Key and a Private Key. The public key is what other people use to send you messages, and the private key is what you use to decrypt, or read them. You publicly hand out your public key, and you keep your private key, well.. private.
  • You will also want to create a revocation certificate which lets you “revoke” the keys if they ever become compromised. Keep it safe!
  • Now if someone wants to send you a private encrypted message, they use your key to send it to you, and nobody but you can read it. Not even the NSA. You can encrypt messages or files with more than one key, so it does work for group messages. Just be aware! If more than one person can read it, you’d better trust them!

There are lots of other interesting things you can do, and of course, it doesn’t encrypt the email’s headers… who it was sent to, the subject, and any other header data. But if you want to simply communicate without being snooped on, GPG will do it.

You can get started by downloading GPG and trying it out. Feel free to send me an encrypted message to try it out!

My public key (jeff@jeffhendricks.net) can either be downloaded here, or you can search for and download it from a GPG Keyserver.

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Less Is More: Recycle An Old Computer

One of the ways I’ve been able to save money over the years is to not buy new computers, or software for my older computers.

Seriously. When you buy a new computer, you’re paying for the hardware, plus a license to use some version of Windows, but to get Microsoft Office, you have to dish out another few hundred bucks. And antivirus, of course, need that, so that’s another $60. CD burning software? It doesn’t come with that? Another $20. Games? $20-$50 a pop. And you need other stuff to go with it, of course.

Wouldn’t it be nice to just buy a computer, and then be able to use it? Man. Who wants to spend an extra $300 on software to use on a $400-$800 computer? I sure don’t. Did you know that there are thousands of perfectly usable programs out there, that work just as well as the Microsoft stuff, that you can download, legally, for free?

Yup. So fire up that shiny new computer, and immediately go find a free web browser, like Chrome or Firefox.

Need something to open and edit Office files? Spreadsheets, documents, and so on? OpenOffice, or Libre Office. Both are fully-functional office suites, but completely and legally free.

Antivirus? Did you know you can download AVG Antivirus for free?

There are tons and tons of more productive things you can put on your computer, for free. Can’t upgrade to Windows 7/8? Things like Evernote, Dropbox, or Winamp will work fine on older computers.

But if you want to build the ultimate cheap/free computer, you can pick them up (usually with wiped hard drives) at Goodwill or garage sales. Sometimes I find them in a dumpster! If you happen to find a working, functional computer- even if it’s old- you can usually bring it back to life by installing some version of Linux on it, probably Ubuntu.

And Ubuntu is completely, legally, free. It works very similar to OSX, but you don’t have to pay $300! Not even $30!! You get an awesome, virus-proof fast-running computer for absolutely nothing more than the cost of the used hardware. How can you beat that?

It comes with Audio/Video software… free. Word processing, internet, chat, webcam, graphics, you name it! All for free, legally. All it takes is some time to get used to it, and learn.

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My Linux Rig

I got the idea to post up the computer setup I’m using from MyLinuxRig, which is itself a derivative of The Setup which outlines what successful people use to get things done. So without too much fuss, here’s my Linux Rig questionnaire! This is what I use to get stuff done.

1. Who are you and what do you do?

I’m Jeff Hendricks. During the day, I am a technical writer for the Manufacturing Engineering department of a major agricultural equipment manufacturer. By night, I’m a writer and musician. On the weekends, I organize and lead the music in our local church.

2. What Distro do you run on your main desktop/laptop?

I’m currently running Ubuntu Studio 12.04, probably will upgrade to 13.04 for testing/documentation purposes. I started off with Red Hat 7.3 years ago, migrated to SuSE for a few years, and then settled on Ubuntu somewhere around 2008. When I discovered Ubuntu Studio in 2010, I knew I had found what I was looking for.

3. What software do you depend upon with this distro?

Ubuntu Studio is geared towards audio, video, graphic, and creative production in general. For music, I use Ardour, Hydrogen, SooperLooper, and a bunch of other tools… LMMS is nice, Rakarrak, and so on. Ubuntu Studio comes with just about everything you’d need for music production already installed and configured.

For writing, I use the Linux Beta of Scrivener, from Literature and Latte. I also use WriteOrDie (with Adobe Air) for those stubborn days of writer’s block.

For productivity I use Dropbox, Evernote (running in Wine), Lastpass, XMarks, Thunderbird, and LibreOffice occasionally. I use a lot of Google Chrome plugins too, especially CloudPrint, XMarks and LastPass. I use Evernote Clearly on a daily basis to read news articles without all the garbage ads and sidebars.

4. What kind of hardware do you run it on?

I’ve got an inexpensive HP 625 laptop, I upgraded it to 8GB of RAM. It’s not that fast, and the touchpad on it is very iffy… otherwise, it’s rock solid, haven’t had a problem with it. Does everything I want it to. If I upgrade in the future, I’ll probably go with a higher-end HP with a better chipset. (I’m also HP repair tech certified, so fixing those laptops is a piece of cake)

5. What is your ideal Linux setup?

I think an HP Elitebook 2170p (I’ve used these, they’re very nice!) would be perfect with an SSD and 8+ GB of memory. It’s got ridiculous battery life (around 8 hours with the extended battery) and it’s very portable, yet packs full-size laptop performance. And everything is Linux-compatible. It’d be perfect with a docking station and dual 22″ monitors! The only downside is that is uses Intel graphics… not my first choice. It wouldn’t be for gaming, though, so it’s okay.

6. Will you share a screenshot of your desktop?

Here’s a shot of my desktop running Native Instrument’s Guitar Rig 5 under Wine using ASIO drivers.

GuitarRig 5

 

ADDENDUM:

What is a computer if you can’t have fun with it? Here’s some games I play on my Linux machine when I’m not working! Some I got from the Humble Indie Bundle, some from Steam, some I bought direct. All are native Linux versions.