The Second Episode of TheGuysOnFOSS Podcast

Here it is ladies and gentlemen, the second episode of the podcast! Remember to get in on the contest, simply email guysonfoss@gmail.com with "contest in the subject line. You could win a Steam Key for Plainsight or a Trial Key for Starcraft 2 In a few weeks we will randomly select a winner. Errors: There was an error in the show where The Thoth mistakenly refered to polishlinux.org as polishlinux.com.



Links Mentioned in the show:
Ubuntu 10.10 Beta
Blender Beta
Distrowatch
Polish Linux
Linux Tracker
Puppy Linux
GraphicALL
Pendrive Linux:


Music credit: Killing Time by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

The First Episode of TheGuysOnFOSS Podcast

On this, the first, GuysOnFOSS podcast, Inerg and I talk in an informal manner about jcut, Woofy, and what to expect from this podcast. Keep listening for the next episode, which should be quite a bit better. Until then, sit back relax and listen to us ramble for 13:26.


Music credit: Killing Time by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

The Best/Worst of 2009/2010

The past year has been filled with hits and misses. Stokes of genius and catastrophic botchery. Triumphs of the human spirit, and humble defeat. Inspiring successes and... well you get the idea. Now on the one year anniversary of the creation of the GuysOnFOSS blog, we would like to share our favorite hits and missed from the year past in this collaborative article

Google Wave
The Thoth
The bigger they are the harder they fall, and what a fall it was for Google. There was so much hype surrounding this open source project that it seemed like everyone simply had to get their hands on an invite (some even going for $70 on ebay!) When I got mine, let me tell you, I was ecstatic. Wave promised to be ‘Email 2.0’. Wave was supposed to change the way people interacted on the internet forever. You could integrate video, pictures, maps, files, and even translate text in real time. How could it fail?

In short, nobody could figure out what to do with it. After all of the anticipation, it turned out to be just another Nintendo Power Glove. In the past everything that Google released was very self explanatory as to what it actually did. It was obvious what Gmail was, or what Picasa did, but it took Google along time to actually tell us what Wave was for. The early confusion lead to the misuse of the product among the many beta testers. People were unclear on how to integrate it into their lives. This misuse turned Wave into a weird IM tool with hundreds of clutter inducing messages all over the page. It was difficult with the Wave not being organized in chronological order. When Google had designated the product it was not intended to be used in such a way. Throw in bots, all making their own comments and things got hectic and messy very quickly. Google later came out with a handy little start menu (see picture)

This menu was supposed to suggest to people what they were supposed to do with Wave, but it was too little too late, as many of their users had already tested Wave and left. Perhaps under different circumstances, Wave could have worked. There were also a lot of other problems with Wave (For example, the scroll bar was messed up) but in my opinion, that is not why Google ultimately failed, as I think these problems would have been fixed eventually as the product moved out of beta.


Google Buzz
Systemtwo
Social networking has become one of the most used service on the net. Due to this, everyone wants a part of it. Of course, not everyone has been ultimately successful with implementing their site. Some are duplicates of popular items like Facebook, Myspace, ect. Buzz, Google’s idea of Twitter with their own branding was is an example of one of those failed ideas. Although there was a large banner like page that appeared when you signed on, not many were sure what to do with such a thing. An almost identical copy of Twitter, no-one wanted to update their status onto two sites with signing on and such. For me, I don’t use any social networking for the purpose they were designed for. I find that the act of posting your current action is quite impractical and not intelligent at all. Any good googler could search for you and determine where you live, eat, shop, and the list goes on. Is it useful? In my opinion, it is useless. Duplicates of a service (that do nothing but copy it, with no improvements) should be deleted immediately, for quite a number of reasons, such confusing users to what social networking is. Also it will help with the IPv4 problem. :)

Dell
The Thoth
For a while now, Dell has been doing a little bit of experimentation with desktop Linux. They have been offering Ubuntu pre-installed on a select few (very select) laptops and desktops. I think this is a [baby] step in the right direction. Although I think desktop Linux still isn’t completely ready, I think that it is approaching a point where it is a viable option for people who are frustrated with the current woes of MS. That is where Dell steps in. By offering Linux pre-installed, they remove much of the smoke and mirrors surrounding Linux and give Linux the opportunity to grow. We have always been painfully aware of the vicious circle which has kept Desktop Linux out of the mainstream: No software is developed because not enough people use it in their daily lives, People don’t use it in their daily lives because there is no software developed (when I say “no software” I am only really speaking about commercial applications which people require to do crucial tasks like taxes or banking). Dell is helping to break the cycle by giving folks the option to try something new which in turn will draw the game manufacturers and whatnot to Linux. Dell’s execution, however, is dreadful, for instance when I was looking on their website to find the amount of money one would save by going with the free software as opposed to Windows and MS office , I found something rather shocking: The amount of money you’d save on a popular Desktop pc (Studio XPS 7100) was $-9. That is not a typo. It cost YOU money to get free software on your computer instead of Windows. Another problem is that Dell has been put under a lot of pressure from, you guessed it, MS, to keep the copies of 7 rolling out. Remember when Dell told it’s customers that Linux is “more secure” than Windows? Ya, that comment went missing very quickly from their webpage. To be fair to them, this page still puts Ubuntu in a very favorable light, without directly comparing it to Windows. As mentioned above, they offer so few PCs with Ubuntu installed that it is hardly worth it, plus they hide them so well on their website it would be almost impossible for someone who didn’t already know that Dell offed this service that Linux was even an option. In conclusion, I think that Dell’s actions and medium success will force other manufacturers to offer something similar. This in turn will further develop desktop Linux as people realize it’s potential. We will just have to wait and see what the future holds.

Koffice
Crazy2be
So i discovered koffice. It’s awesome, because it has a sidebar. I was going to write an online-base word processor like that, and discovered koffice which was basically exactly what i was envisioning. Awesome. Bye.

Well, thats it for this year. Hopefully next year is just as good to GuysOnFOSS as this year was. Thank you all for reading over the past 365 days, feel free to leave us a message in the comment section ;)

Time does indeed aeronautically transverse...

My god, nearly a year? I would have never guessed when I started this blog that it would get anywhere near this lifespan. A month, maybe. I'll post something more heartfelt on the day.

Due to having quite a bit more time this year, I can probably post a bit more and hopefully be at least a little interesting.

See you on the day.

Time flies like an arrow... Fruit flies like a banana

Great Scott! How can it be the beginning of August already? It dawns on me that during the school year we blame studying for the lack of posts and then when all the work is finished for the year, we still manage to go a month without a post. 

Anyways, as the one year anniversary approaches, the entire staff is getting excited. In fact, if you are to lazy to look, the first post was made on August 14 2009. In order to count down to the date, I have added a counter to the website. It is written in JavaScript by Robert Vahid Hashemian, who maintains a website that includes many free web tools including the countdown timer that you see on the page.

 So what is coming up in year 2 of GuysOnFOSS, honestly we have no clue. So if you have an idea for this blog then let us know and we will most likely jump on it. I know that Inerg has a contest he will be kicking off soon, which should be fun. Hopefully we'll have something put together for the big anniversary. BTW, did you notice the new colours and layout? We thought that it was time for a change from the generic blogger template now that we are 1 year old.

Thanks for the support!

Time for a update

Well its been a month since there has been any post and a long time before I posted so I have returned. First I'm going to start with talking about Alien swarm. Then I'll talk about our contest for a free Starcraft 2 trial key. Lastly ill post a question which you can answer in the comments section.


Alien swarm
Alien swarm is a free game released by Valve that originally was a UT2004 mod. When Valve hired 3 of the developers from the Black Cat studio they started to port Alien swarm to the source engine in there free time. Now Valve has released this and the entire source code so its extremely moddable. But lots of people questioned why they would release this game for free until someone posted in the steam forums why he thought they released it for free. The major reason Valve released this for free is that its more of a demo for the full game. The full game will be something you purchase with a lot more content instead of the campaign you get. Now there are some limitations for this game. These are you have to have a Steam account, Its limited to windows unless you use Wine or other windows emulation software and it seems to not work well with some hardware even causing some hardware to over heat. Now even with these issues I must say that this game is very fun to play even with just the one campaign.

The game play is a over head view of your characters. You play with 1-3 other players against what is called the swarm which are a alien race of bugs. From what I was able to figure out is that this race is attacking outlining colony's. You play the role of a military squad that is sent to recover and save all the civilians and kill the swarm. Any ways back to game play, The overhead view that you are placed in is a bit strange but is fairly easy to get used to and once you do you will probably be able to complete the normal campaign with out to much difficulty. While normal is a good level to start at you probably will want to go to hard fairly soon. One warning I will give is that often people who are new will just join hard/insane right away and ruin the game by dieing right away my suggestion would be to vote them out or play with friends. Any ways I found the game play quite fun especially with the unlock system were you get a new item or weapon every level.

The graphics I have to say look very nice. They did a great job of making the aliens look like they are running on the ground not just floating. The levels are set out amazingly and you will come across stressful points that are difficult but shouldnt be to hard if you figure them out. The actual look of the game is amazing I don't think they could have done a better job using the Source engine. One thing that surprised me is that they actually use the standard poly count in there weapons and models that they would use for a fps which is around the 6000 range. But this does show in the detail in the game.

Over all this game definitely worth the 2Gb download. I would suggest you try this game and when you get bored of it leave it installed as lots of good mods seem to be in the works. Also for those that complain I'm late about this I'm aware of that.


Contest
Ok so I purchased Starcraft 2 on a midnight release and got a trial key that I figured would be good for contest here on Guys on FOSS. While blizzard doesn't make there games open source they do at least release there games for multiple platforms even if they don't support Linux. I haven't figured out how to do the contest yet. But in my next post which will be some time during this week or next week will explain how to join.


Question
Should Guys on FOSS get a dedicated web server instead of a Garrys mod server to host a forum and our pod cast's.

That is all for now hopefully this post is long enough to make up for the month of us missing. Oh and our pod cast's will most likely continue after summer break. Although ill see if I can get some of us together to make one for at least next month.

jQuery color animation plugin

I've made a simple jQuery animation plugin based off of the github version that will animate colors with alpha, allowing simple cool effects. However, there is no animation at all on browsers that don't support rgba (heeeeeeello IE), so be aware of that. Maybe one of you will fix that without some hack that just checks for IE and does something different for it (it should actually check for rgba compatibility, so it works properly for all non-rgba browsers).

Enjoy!

Rosegarden

Rosegarden – A MIDI sequencer

Music composition software is quite rare, if you try to find it in the FOSS community. While Linux does not have much software suited for music, there is one that stands out. Rosegarden, one of those few. This remarkable software has almost all the functions that anyone needs. It allows for composers to use four different methods for creating music. The notation method allows for composing the traditional way, drawing the notes on the staffs themselves. As well there are the matrix, percussion and event editor methods.

The massive download of files has not allowed me the time to test some of the other more advanced functions but I did get a feel for the program. If you want to try it, go ahead and visit www.rosegardenmusic.com

That would be a good ending for this post if it was that simple. One of the events that people will abandon Rosegarden for is the initial setup phase. First off - if you are running Ubuntu or Mint – is to download the software thru the software center. Then, you must get another program that will receive the signals that rosegarden puts out, and re-route them to the speakers. The JACK system included in the RG install is quite confusing to setup, so many will use something else. I would recommend the use of either qSynth or TiMidity. The qSynth setup is quite straightforward, and a good tutorial can be found here: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linuxquestions-org-member-success-stories-23/setting-up-rosegarden-for-midi-music-in-linux-ubuntu-8-04-a-697198/

I have found that it took quite a bit of system resources while running. So I did a bit of experimenting with the TiMidity software. I installed the package labeled TiMidi ++ Midi Sequencer. I have yet to figure out how the entire thing works, but it seems to automatically start when you login. RG will auto-configure to the proper TiMidity ports as well.

Well, I hope this is a good introduction to Rosegarden, bringing this post to the end.

An Introduction

Hello there!
I thought I'd better introduce our newest writer so here it is:

On Wednesdays he goes to the dog wash, with his cat.
On Thursdays he skydives, armed with only a teacup and a reclining chair.
On Friday, he goes to mac conventions - with his Ubuntu machine.
On Saturday he has a tuna sandwich and then goes swimming with sharks.
On Sunday he goes for a jog - through a mine field.
On Monday he swallows flaming swords while doing jumping jacks.
On Tuesdays he plays cards, on the wing of a Boeing 747.
On Wednesday he sleeps in until 11:00 and spends the rest of the day in his pajamas.

He doesn't often drink beer, but when he does he prefers Dos Equis.

Ladies and Gents please welcome: Systemtwo

We look forward to your opinions!


-The Thoth-

MuseScore Con't

GOOD MORNING INTERNET LAND!!!

If you recall, my last post was mostly historical, but this one will contain more about the software. Since writing the last post, 2 significant things have happened.

The first is that I have changed my work laptop from Ubuntu to Linux Mint (yes I know, it is a variation of Ubuntu). Why? I'm not a fan of the way Ubuntu is going with their desktop environment, but I still like the general way it functions. So I switched to Mint since I wanted to stay connected to the Ubuntu repositories, as there is a lot of great software there and I require something reliable for this computer, since it is for work. My other pc has remained my test computer for running the more fun stuff ;)

The other significant thing is that I have finished that instrumental music assignment I had mentioned in part 1 and have been assigned another one. This one is a composition assignment as opposed to the previous assignment which was just arranging. Once again I used MuseScore 0.9.5.

Having never used the alternatives, it is hard to really compare this WYSIWYG music notation software to anything else but I will try to pass on my experience.  Installation on Mint was a breeze, as it is included in Ubuntu's repositories. If you are not using a Debian derivative, MuseScore has also provided a RPM and the source code.

My first impression was good, I was impressed with how professional and clean the interface was. it is obviously designed for ease of use, which is good when doing long compositions. Navigation is accomplished by grabbing and dragging or scrolling using a scroll wheel. Being a true  WYSIWYG editor, the composition looks just like it will print when you're done. Adding instruments was easy as well, and MuseScore contains more than anyone will ever probably use, including a massive amount of voices. It is worth getting acquainted with the many keyboard shortcuts, as they will save you a lot of time. Entering notes is rather intuitive: the number keys change the length of the note, and the note itself is entered by using the corresponding letter on the keyboard. MuseScore also is capable of working with a MIDI piano keyboard. Transposition headaches are a thing of the past, as all of your transposing is as easy as hitting the "Concert Pitch" button which (surprise, surprise) toggles concert pitch on or off.

Probably the best feature (Apart from the price) is it's ability to playback your compositions. This allows the composer the opportunity to hear what they've written before a band actually plays it. This feature is in no means unique to MuseScore, but it is worth mentioning because it is such a huge help.

I did have a few little glitches with the software. For one, it crashes occasionally. Probably once every 3-4 hours of work, so keep saving if you don't feel like composing the same thing twice. Another thing was sometimes when I switched to concert pitch mode and back some notes were given flats, and sometimes double flats. This was fixed by going Notes -> Pitch Spell, so it wasn't too much of an inconvenience but a glitch none the less. Also, once and a while it would stop recognizing my keyboard, this was fixed by restarting the program. Since I haven't had the time to test this on any other machines, I don't know if these are isolated incidents or not.

Overall, I'd recommend this software to anyone looking for notation software. I believe it can defiantly compete with other free software, and may even be able to compete with some paid software. Plus it is opensource and cross platform, what more can you ask for?

Here are the links to the project that appears in all the screenshots:

• MuseScore project file 
• PDF
• WAV

Coincidently it is also my project for my instrumental music class. I'd like to include a disclaimer. I am not a professional composer, listen at your own risk ;)

That brings us to the end of the post, don't worry, I'll be Bach.

-The Thoth-