Audio playback was fine once I got all of the restricted drivers installed so I could play any type of audio or video file I wanted. The big trick to playing some of the proprietary formats (mp3, wmv, etc) was figuring out where look to install the necessary software.

This link was a great help in figuring out what to do.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats

Once my codecs were all set I needed some good software to listen to podcasts on. I listen to a lot of different podcats because it is a good to digest a lot of information. However I struggled for a while to find a good media player for my podcasts. I tried Rhythmbox, Banshee and Amarok. I really didn’t much like the way Rhythmbox or Banshee worked and Amarok didn’t run all that well because it is a KDE application and Ubuntu runs the Gnome desktop. When all is was said and done I settled on Amarok because it allowed to to organize my different podcasts into sub folders. The one thing I was looking for that iTunes provides is the ability to start from where you left off in a podcast episode even if you switch tracks or close the application.

Overall I had no real issues listening to audio and keeping up with my podcasts. And since my iPod had recently died I didn’t have to deal with trying to sync music between the two.

Here is a random trick in PHP that I stumbled upon today. I was trying to split a string into a number pieces and I was passing an equation of variables into substr. I wasn’t getting the result that I was expecting, so I began to look at what data I was passing into it one by one. Then I realized that I could just look at the whole thing by doing something like this.

Take this sample piece of code.

$x = substr($y, ($a + 8), ($b - $a + 8));

I did some calculations to find $a and $b and I was trying to use those numbers to extract a particular piece of the string $x. Instead having to echo $x, $y, $a, and $b individually, I just changed the line to this.

echo "$x = substr($y, ($a + 8), ($b - $a + 8));";

And it very plainly revealed to me what the second and third arguments (start and length) were evaluating to.

= substr(the random string I was extracting from, (22 + 8), (35 - 22 + 8));

This kind of seems like a pretty basic trick to use, but it was just something I never really thought about trying before and it turned out to work pretty well.

The link for this week is a simple remake version of Apple’s OSX operating system. Only it runs entirely within your web browser. the functionality is pretty basic but it does include things like the Finder, iTunes and Safari. It is interesting to play with and gives us a taste of what may come in the future as operating systems become more and more integrated with the Internet.

The system is called Mercury and it ran pretty well when I was using it in Safari. I couldn’t get it to work right in Firefox or Internet Explorer though.

Main Website
http://www.se51.net

Mercury Launch Page
http://www.se51.net/index.php?page=mercury

The link for this week is an interesting tool that will let you check in on pretty much any airline flight around America and see exactly where it currently is. They will give you an overlay map showing the flights progress pretty much up to the minute. They used to give you live updating where you could just watch a flight progress across the nation, but now you have to signup to get that feature.

http://www.flightaware.com

In using my laptop one of the things I need to be able to do is use the built in camera to video conference over Skype. This is a requirement for me because I need to be able to attend meetings when I am out of the office. I searched around on the web to find a way to get the camera to work. A found a good forum post and my camera was up and running in no time.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=225621

However, after I got the camera working I quickly found out that the Linux version of Skype only currently supports voice and not video. Which is a huge drawback for me because Skype video works very well on both Windows and OSX and I already have an established network of friends, clients and employers established using Skype. I have been looking for other clients that support video and the Skype protocol, but so far I have had little luck. Furthermore, there is little word on when the Linux Skype client will support video.

The link for this week allows you to create a quick web based chat room to meet people online with. You create a name for your chat room and then anyone who knows that name can join to talk. There is no registration required and it doesn’t require downloading or installing any software. It is great for having a quick conversation with people who don’t normally chat or are not in reach of a chat client.

http://www.chatmaker.net