MIDI on the Cheap Ubuntu 12.04

A friend just gave me his old midi keyboard to play around with so I ordered a USB Midi device from www.shophde.com for something like $5-6 shipped, here is how far I have gotten with it so far.

aplaymidi -l returns a line including 20:0 USB Midi USB Midi MIDI 1

aplaymidi -p 20:0 /path to a .mid file plays it. 

The only thing that got me for a minute is that when I plugged in the cable into the synth, I had to switch around in and out (in goes to out and out goes to in)

Now I just have to figure out rosegarden and develop some sort of musical ability.

Anyone with a good handle on midi software for ubuntu, drop me a line and make some recommendations!!!

AirCrack & Reaver in *buntu 12.04 the Easy Way

I've seen many directions for installing aircrack-ng on Ubuntu 12.04, and for the mose part they are all just cut-n-paste of each other involving editing text and such.. A bit of searching and I found a PPA run by a user named PHI-RHO making it muck easier.

https://launchpad.net/~pi-rho/+archive/security?field.series_filter=precise

If you are using Ubuntu 12.04 just copy the following two lines and add them to /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/pi-rho/security/ubuntu precise main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/pi-rho/security/ubuntu precise main

Drop to a terminal:

In Unity

In Gnome Classic

In Kubuntu

In Xubuntu

In Lubuntu

Thanks to http://www.psychocats.net for the above images... BTW: Check them out for lots of cool info!

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

hit PGDN until you are at the end of the file
Hit CTL-W to save the file
hit CTL-X to exit

Now copy the following line and paste it into the terminal you opened or just open another

sudo apt-get update ; sudo apt-get install aircrack-ng

With any luck that should be it, you can test to make sure it is installed by typing airmon-ng at the terminal prompt. It won't run because we didn't tell it what to do, but if you see a help screen, your install worked.

Now for installing Reaver. Go back to a terminal and cut and paste hit enter and let it go.

sudo apt-get -y install libpcap-dev sqlite3 libsqlite3-dev libpcap0.8-dev ; cd ~;  wget http://reaver-wps.googlecode.com/files/reaver-1.4.tar.gz ; tar -xzvf ~/reaver-1.4.tar.gz; cd ~/reaver-1.4/src ; ./configure; make; sudo make install; cd ~ &&  rm -rf ~/reaver-1.4 ; rm reaver-1.4.tar.gz

Now test to make sure it installed by typing reaver at the the command line and hit enter, it should give you a help screen since you didn't tell it to do anything.

Now to test reaver on your AP (or one you have permission to test on)

If you know the name of your wireless interface just skip this part

type ifconfig at the command line and look wor something like wlan0 wlan1 ath0.. anything that starts with eth is a wired connection

Put the interface into monitor mode. This will give you another interface usually mon0, but your case might be different.

sudo airmon-ng start wlan0  #or whatever your interface name is

Find the mac address of your target AP

sudo airodump-ng mon0

wait until you see your AP name show up, hit CRL-C to exit airodump-ng

Now run reaver and susbstitute the mac address of your AP for  xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

sudo reaver -a -i mon0 -b xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx -vv

Now just go about your work and check in about 10 hours.

Hopefully everything works well for you!

Ubuntu 12.04 Blue Tint Flash Fix

Recently after an update on my Ubuntu 12.04 box, The sound in Google Chrome flash player started acting really 'flakey' sll sorts of static whenever another sound played on the system... here is what I did to fix it.

Go to   chrome://plugins/

Under flash, make sure the one that says /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so is the only one enabled.

Worked like a charm for me!

Conky startup problems in *buntu 12.04

I've noticed alot of people have been having problems running conky at startup in *buntu 12.04. I installed a newer version than is in the repos and everything just works now. (at least for me!)

Download the following two .debs and run sudo dpkg -i on them, and you should be good to go.

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/conky/1.9.0-2/ will give you the binaries you need.

I use Google Chrome most of the time at home and on other computers, so it is nice to be able to log into chrome and see all your bookmarks, and have the ability to start up a session just like you left at home.

Let me know if I missed anything cool/fun/useful.

Extensions :
FlashBlock - Stops flash stuff from running until you click on it, helps speed things up

 MuteTab - Allows you to mute any tab you want.

SMEStorage Cloud Dashboard - One place for Dropbox, Box.net, Skydrive, etc....

TabCloud - Allows you to save all your tabs.. Useful if you change computers, or have different "profiles/common tab sets" for specific tasks, It can really cut down on distraction when working or whatnot.

Google Voice - Call, SMS

Add-Ons:

Weather Channel & Full Screen Weather 

Subsonic  - Since I have a subsonic server, it is nice to have.

JoilCloud - Fun to play with

Bloxorz - Really fun puzzle game

IsoBalls 3 - Like the old school marble madness of my c=64 daze...

Skydrive in Ubuntu 12.04

I now am happy with my 12.04 mostly xubuntu system, I just wanted a way to mount Skydrive.. Turns out it is easy with the SME packeage. Very easy to install, let you link to 3 storage providers (including Skydrive!!) plus they give you 5gigs from their own service... not too bad.. 

Just go to smestorage.com and get the package for you.. If you have problems installing sudo apt-get -f install should fix you right up.

Went to wordpress for awhile.... I like blogspot better, so I am going to transfer by posts from there over here.