Something New #48, # 49 – Kdenlive

Something New #48 – Again!?!

Yes.  Again.

Your imagination is likely better than the actual event; but to protect the innocent, we’ll stick with the graphic.

Something New #49 – Kdenlive

Now for something we can actually talk about.  I was drafted at work to bring together the “for pay” job and the “not so much pay” job: my work with Sahana and film production.  In the process of producing a few marketing videos (more on that later) I needed a good linux video editing software ~ we only have linux machines at work, I just converted my home machine to Ubuntu, and my laptop just doesn’t have the kojones for editing.

After a sojourn into Cinelerra and 5 hours of shooting I discovered that the ‘most popular’ linux video editing tool couldn’t support the codex that came out of the camera I was using.  Another 5 hours of troubleshooting later I found, on a random forum review of the camera itself, that Kdenlive supported it… but how, in all those other googles, I didn’t find Kdenlive I couldn’t tell you.  It’s great!  At least for what I need it to do, which isn’t super technical.  I had a few hurdles with the user interface; for example, I’m used to being able to trip my clips as I go but I can’t for the life of me figure out how to do that.  There’s better documentation than any of the other free linux editors I found, which is nice.  I’d say if you were looking for a free linux video editing solution you should at least keep this on your short demo list.

Something New #26 – Write a Design Spec

My part-time job involves working with the Sahana Software Foundation on the Agasti project’s Mayon branch, and on Friday Google announced that SSF has been accepted as a mentoring organization for Google Summer of Code 2011! That, combined with a few other community building opportunities, means the Mayon project needs to fling the doors open and have something for all these hands to work on; and those of us closest to the project have had to step up and get some work done.

Saturday morning was spent writing design specs for new modules for Mayon.  It’s probably not that exciting for anyone not interested in Emergency Management, HFOSS, or PHP programming, but I started by developing this spec template over the last few weeks and then fleshing it out: like this Volunteer Management spec.

Hopefully we’ll get a great batch of students for GSoC and a healthy injection of other volunteers this summer to help flesh out Mayon and make it a viable (free) planning tool for Emergency Managers all over the world.

Something New #20 – Thinking Space

Yay #20.  Had I planned ahead this would have been something epic and awesome; but it was really just a new app for my Droid Incredible.

I’ve been looking for a good creativity aid for when I’m on the subway, and I’ve been a fan of mind-maps for quite awhile.  Sunday I stumbled upon Thinking Space, a mind-mapping app that exports to Free Mind and has a great interface (which, of course, they just released an update for yesterday and changed it just as I was getting used to the old one).

I’m quite pleased with it… though I wish the instructions that came with it (screen-captured above) included more information on how to use the gestures.  It seems like it would save time; but there’s very little info.

Something New #7, 8, 9 – Ubuntu, Beer, and The Ginger Man

A busy couple of days has resulted in a lot of technology and a lot of beer, so I’ll get right to it:

#7: Troubleshooting Ubuntu

On Something New Day 6 Ubuntu 10.10 was installed on my old Windows desktop in a fairly clean, simple process; and then it promptly failed.  There was a crazy little problem where if you opened a program you would work within it, but any clicking external to the program window wasn’t functional.  Sure, you could use your keyboard to navigate and work within or close the program, but who really wants to do that?  Ubuntu and I were going rounds.

Round 1:

My plan was simple: get in there and get as much information about the problem as possible.  One problem: over night some magical gnome had climbed into my computer and messed with it enough that it would only boot to shell.  Hard to identify the problem when you can’t even get that far.  So it was suggested by my personal IT guy (you know who you are) that I revert back to 10.4 as it was the last stable.

Round 1 to Ubuntu.

Round 2:

Next up I reverted to 10.4.  It was simple as the original install of 10.4; until I tried to reboot and ran into a string of “I/O Error”s.  It didn’t take long for me to realize that I’d left the thumb drive with the installer on it in the USB port.  Did I mention I’m a bit of a ditz?

Round 2 to The Amazon.

Bonus Round:

My husband felt that the ease with which I got a Linux install up meant that I didn’t get the full feeling of what it’s like to install a Linux OS; so he issued me an additional challenge.  For extra credit I had to get Wine installed… enough to run Civ V.  Wine is up, packages are installed, and I know that Civ V will work on Ubuntu 10.4; but I haven’t gotten my configuration tweaked right yet.  For now the Bonus in process.

#8: Tripel Perfection

In response to Mike’s suggestion of Johnnie Walker for last Sunday’s new thing my buddy Chuck decided it was time I try some really good beer:

It was last years Ommegang Belgian Pale Ale and man is it tasty!  It’s got a lot more flavor and depth than the beers I’m used to drinking (read: cheap) and some really good reviews.  If  you’re even a little bit of a beer snob I highly suggest you give it a try.  Which leads me to…

#9: The Ginger Man

On 36th between 5th & Madison is a sweet little bar on the North side of the street.  If you get there a little early in the evening (as my friend so knowingly did) you can settle into the back room ~ which he lovingly referred to as “The Reading Room”.  If you’re not eating there are couches and low tables, but we were in for a long haul and had a good seat.  Their house beer, a Ginger Lager, was awesome… but it was their hot dogs that really made me fall in love.  ”The Ginger Dog” had bacon… bacon on a hot dog! Not to mention the awesome special sauce that came with it.  Let me spell it out for you:

= Awesome!

Any questions?

Something New #6 – Ubuntu Install

and other technological mortals.

My old desktop has been languishing, unused, in our office for almost 18 months.  Sure, I’ve turned it on once or twice and gave it a few clicks; but really it’s just been holding down the floor since we moved to NYC.  I’m not a complete stranger to the idea of linux; in fact, my survival job is in a linux office and I’ve spent more than a few hours smacking my face against my ergonomic keyboard because wine made me want to slit my wrists.

I’d also be lying if I implied that I’m anything more than a novice with computers.  I’m not.  I can stumble my way through some basic HTML, I can do a few things in the command line (but I can count them on one hand), I get some of the more l33t jokes in Tron (only some), and this morning my husband had to give me a verbal lesson on the concept of x11 during our Saturday morning cuddle session.  So while I’m better equipped then some for this adventure, I was also really glad to have him around when I had no idea what was going on.

All and all it went well ~ we dropped a version of the 10.10 installer onto a thumb drive (ubuntu calls it a pen drive, which I love for some odd reason) and I dumped all my old files onto the terabyte hard drive my dad gave me for my birthday.  (Yes, my dad loves me enough to give me digital memory for the anniversary of my birth; deal with it.)  Once I changed the boot order it was basically driving itself and the install was fast and clean.

Until…

While I was installing some programs I wanted, the machine stopped responding.  It wouldn’t let me close any windows but the mouse would still move… weird.  Of course, the window I was trying to close was the software manager, which means that there were partially constructed files still working and when I tried to re-boot it failed.  So I told it to repair the damaged packages… and while it chewed on those hubster & I watched the new Karate Kid.

Jaden Smith is awesome, adorable, and so his father’s child!!

Cute? Yes.

Once the packages were repaired I rebooted again and everything seemed fine; until I tried to close the software management window again!  Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!?!?

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

So I did a bit more clicking than the ‘click-first-ask-questions-later’ approach to IT I’d administered earlier.  I discovered that when I opened a window my mouse will continue to function within that window; but not in any of it’s menus or the shell of the window, or anything outside the window.  So, say I have Chrome open as I do here on my windows laptop.  If I wanted to close the window I’d click that little “x”, right?  On the ubuntu install that X would do nothing.  Will not respond.  But I can do alt+f to get into the film menu and use the keyboard to navigate to close it.

Weird, right!?

So guess what today’s new thing is?

Troubleshooting a Linux issue!

The adventures will never cease.