Making Amarok start really fast in Gnome (Ubuntu)

One of the things that striked me most when I started using linux was Amarok. I like very much Rhythmbox as an application to play music, but Amarok is simply amazing. In Ubuntu 7.04 that I use (Gnome DE), amarok starts usually for about 10-15 seconds, which is VERY much for me. Luckily, this startup time may be shortened to 1-2 seconds. Here comes the good old "sleep script", that I used to launch conky with (a bit modified).
1.

#!/bin/bash
sleep 5 &&
kdeinit &
exit

[This loads the libraries of kde (which are needed to start amarok) in the memory at the time when the system starts; however, it does not increase the login-startup time, cause it sleeps the process (at least by me). If it DOES increase it, then a bigger setting should be applied for the sleeping part - "sleep 10" or 15 or whatever.]

2. Then, this script goes saved into a text file (for instance as ~/.kdelaunch), then a terminal is being opened and the following command is being issued:

chmod +x ~/.kdelaunch

which makes the file executable.

3. Afterwards, one has to go to System->Administration->Sessions (or whereever the startup of programs is; this part is not in English at my system) and add this as a new launcher (give it a name and in the place for a command type: ~/.kdelaunch).

And that's it all about; now Amarok would start for about 1 second on my system. Hooray! Btw, this could be used to increase the startup time of other kde applications in gnome as well (kopete, Kplayer, whatsoever).

Some humor about coffee

Do you drink coffee? Yes? But do you know, if you're drinking too much coffee? At this website you will find out whether the answer is "YES" or "NO". Have fun :) It's sad to admit it, but I may fail into some of the categories there (Going to sleep just to be able to wake up and smell the coffee, for instance). :)
P.S.: Some more humor about coffee may be found in the middle column here: (in Bulgarian, but most of them are cartoons).

Speed up Ubuntu

Making Ubuntu faster has always been an idea of mine I wanted to accomplish. Here's a link to a post, which would speed up the OS. Link to the website
This is supposed to work, though I have not tried it yet. Hope it does.

P.S.: There is also a Thread giving some more enlightenment about this stuff. I think that some of the methods showed in the link to the blog above are worth trying though. I think from the ubuntu team have implemented nice features for speeding up the system and the boot time for Feisty (for which there goes a big THANKS to them).

Live earth - the appeal

It's been several days since the concert "Live earth", the concert aimed at bringing information to people about global warming stuff. More about the stuff may be found at the links at the end of this post and HERE. The site claims one can watch live videos at http://www.liveearth.msn.org/, but with a slow internet connection it takes forever for them to load. If one wants to watch some videos, there are www.youtube.com and http://video.google.com; with the keywords "live earth" there comes a bunch of videos, and almost all songs of this event.

Here's a video about global warming and about how crucial it is to act now:

Here's a trailer for the concert:


The global warming survival guide

Effects on climate change by 2020

Some more information about this stuff may be found at http://www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction/
and http://green.nationalgeographic.com/
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming
and http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/gsteps.asp
and http://www.nature.com/climate/index.html
and http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/
and http://www.pewclimate.org/

Sharing files - free, safe and unlimited

There's an application, to which this post is dedicated - the Java based Qnext. I have all my thumbs up for this one. As described in Wikipedia, Qnext is a p2web application. What does this mean? It means, that Qnext allows you to share everything on your computer (if you want to) - files, photos, music - with a selected group of friends. And what's the best part of it, the friends even do not need to have Qnext installed on their computers; all they have to do is use their webbrowsers, for to reach the shared content.
With Qnext, your computer acts as a server for your friends; there is a big list of waht one can do with Qnext at http://qnext.com/music_streaming.shtml.
Qnext is p2p, which means there are no servers in the middle of the communication between you and your friends (which means no observation (as stated at their website) of the content being shared). And, as the http://qnext.com/faq.shtml claims (the FAQ section of the website of Qnext), logon is highly encrypted and every communication is encrypted at very high level, which is more secure than the standard for online banking. Which apparently should mean it is secure.
So, how do you know how to share with your friends? Qnext provides instant messaging services, which means, that you can share files from your computer with your buddies from ICQ, MSN and some other instant messaging clients; but that's not all of it. You can also enter the e-mail of a buddy you want to share with, and he/she will receive an e-mail with a link directly to the shared files (the so called "zone"). As described in the FAQ section of their website, your computer needs to be turned on, for to allow others to access the files. As good as it seems, qnext is free, multiplatform (java based), which means it runs on everything - Windows, Linux, OSX. One feature I have not tried yet is the video conference, but reviews at the ubuntuforums.org claim, that it works just great. I am not trying to convince anyone to use this; I just wanted to share my enthusiasm about this program, which had made the file sharing so easy (and pretty much secure). For the ordinary person, sitting in front of their computers, thinking about how to send fast this 100mb important files to somebody at the other side of the country, this would be a nice solution.
Links to some articles, related to qnext:
1. Pcworld (english)
2. Computers.bg (in bulgarian)
3. Wikipedia (english)
4. Linux.com (english)

Niches for listening music legally on the internet

So, let's start with the definite place to visit, if you're searching for music: Skreemr.com. The site itself claims, that it does not break any copiryghts, as it just links to music on other sites. On my opinion, this site is just great. It allows listening to the chosen song through the web browser, so there's no need of winamp or some other music player to listen to songs. It searches for album covers on the net (so you can watch the cover while listening if you want to); it provides tons of information about the songs; the search algorithm brings out a huge list of songs, especially for popular artists. If the results brought are too many, the searching may be customized - by writing for instance "The Artist I Want To Listen To" in quotes will bring out results with the exact match of the text in quotes; if you want a word necessarily to be present in the search list, you have to write a + sign in front of it; the - sign serves for the contrary action. There is a plugin for firefox, by which Skreemr may be added to the search engines of the browser, afterwards accessible via Ctrl + k.

There are search engines, such as Exploseek.com, for instance, that would search for songs on the internet, but the aim of this post is not to point to such engines and sites, the latter one added just for info.

The next place that is mandatory to be visited, if you want to listen to nice music on the internet, is, of course, Last.fm. For the nonregistered users it gives the opportunity to type the name of their favourite artist, and then creates an internet radio station with artists, similar to the preferred one. If you don't like the current song played, you can just skip to the next song. The music may be listened directly from the brower, without the need of any media players. The more interesting part comes when someone registers; the registration is very easy and fast, and reveals many more opportunities for the users. Among them is the opportunity to pay a relatively reasonable (to me) fee, for which one can listen to the favourite songs wherever he is (one creates his own playlist on the internet with the songs one loves). There are also user groups, and a bunch of radio stations, created by users (for instance, radio station for smooth jazz and so on). Last.fm is very well integrated in the best music players - winamp, amarok, rhythmbox, xmplay, foobar2000 and many others, through plugins for these players; the plugins are usually to be found at the websites of the players. Unfortunately, recently last.fm wass bought by a huge company, which may be for good (or maybe not) for the future of this great resource on the net. Still, if one has a favourite artist and is looking for diversity and for new music, similar to that artist, last.fm suggests such music, and I like the way it does it. An interesting feature for registered users is the opportunity to embed a radio station with the beloved artist in weblogs. But let's move further to the next resource on the net.

Magnatune.com has a very interesting music selection. Although the artists there are not so well known, some of them are VERY good. I personally like the quitar things of Jeff Wahl. The site lets users listen to mucis on the net (throught the browser, no additional media players needed). After that, if the user likes the music, it can be purchased in exchange of a sum, which the user decides upon (I think 5 dollars for an album was a possible cost there). There are plugins for some media players in Linux (for instance, Rhythmbox, Amarok, GMPC/MPD) supporting streaming of music through Magnatune. I can say nothing but a huge "Thank you!" to the developers of these players.

Of course, there are also countless blogs pointing to mp3's and music resources on the internet; there are appllications like Songbird that are specialised in searching for music on the internet. Mentioned in this post are just a few places that offer some diversity in finding music of the favourite style one likes to listen to.