News and Ripple Notifications for Piding

I have currently switched to archlinux, but I will continue to post my finds and try to be distro non specific.

An example.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nI3tTctdM4

The tutorial.
http://forum.compiz-fusion.org/showthread.php?t=2191&highlight=ripple+notification
*Note I used the second script.

Local Mirror

I had an extra computer that needed to be put to work. I turned into a local repo for ubuntu. I would post the speeds but its too fast.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Debmirror

Removing Arrow From Panel Menu Icon

For those of you wondering what I am talking about look at the picture to the left; notice the white arrow? After searching through folders trying to find a way to change the color, I found this guide. Just make sure to end "gnome-panel" in system monitor and then rerun it. Hope this helps someone.

Menus With a Kick

I got a little bored with the standard menu action because it was a little plain. I found a nifty way to spice it up with Compiz.

• Go to the animations plugin
• Click close animation
  
• Click New
• Under window match insert "(class=Gnome-panel) " *Edit If you want all of your menus and not just the main menu to do this animation substitute "(type=Menu | PopupMenu | DropdownMenu)" instead of class = gnome-panel
  
• I chose the animation "sidekick" and set the value to 200
• Click on the arrow and move it to the top of the list
  
• Unless you want to have different animations for closing and opening, do the same procedure in open animation
  

Pretty easy to do and you have a couple other animations to chose from. The only problem I have is that it also animates the calender and tool tips, but not the notification area. I am still trying to find out how to fix that. Have fun.

Basic Tutorial Using Audactiy Tool: Noise Removal

In my previous post I touched on converting tapes to mp3 files for backup. This is cool for just starting out, but eventually I wanted to improve that audio quality. For me there was constant white noise that I am guessing was a combination of the tape and the equipment I was using (I found it in a closet). Hopefully this method will help you out some.

First open your sound track that you have previously recorded. The next step is to find a portion of the track that exemplifies that white noise you want to get rid of. The best place I found was the beginning because there is nothing but the white noise, but to each his own. The next queston: Do you select the whole noise or a small portion? I had the best results when it was only and very small selection because when I did a long selection it ended up sounding like he was on another planet. Enough talk lets get down the steps.

1. Select small portion of white noise
2. Effect>Noise Removal
3. Select "Get Noise Profile" (What you don't like)
4. Select whole track (Where you want to remove what you didn't like)
5. Effect>Noise Removal
6. Select "Ok" (The Linux version has many more settings. Play with it until it sound good)

Make sure you listen to parts of the song and make sure you don't get any alien echos. If you did undo it and go back to Noise Removal and lower how much it takes off (mine was almost 0). I hope this helps.

Updated Compiz Repo *At Your Own Risk

I previously had installed compiz from git. It worked but to start it I had to enable the fusion icon. Not a big deal but waiting until it started then enabling it was a pain. This post Tombuntu shows has some nifty pictures and the repo line.
Note in order I had to run these two commands. I noticed that it removed everything compiz related so be careful.

cd compiz-git < This was in my home folder
./compiz-git uninstall

After that I just went to synaptic, clicked on origin, then on the compiz repo and added the debs.

Replacing Openoffice Splash Screen

I was getting tired of the openoffice splash screen because it really clashed with the black and blue theme I was going for. These steps are for replacing the default splash screen with this image, but you can use any image you find. I just think this one looks the best. I personally use a theme folder so that if my computer ever dies all of the files I need to fix it are all in one location.

• cd /usr/lib/openoffice/program
• sudo mv /usr/lib/openoffice/program/openintro_ubuntu_sun.bmp /usr/lib/openoffice/program/openintro_ubuntu_sun.bmp_backup
• cd Directory Where You Want The File
• wget http://gnome-look.org/CONTENT/content-files/58642-intro.bmp
• sudo mv 58642-intro.bmp /usr/lib/openoffice/program/openintro_ubuntu_sun.bmp

*Note if you use a different file ignore the wget command and substitute 58642-intro.bmp with the file name of the image you found.