bem's blog

I found ubuntu bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/192888 which describes what is happening in great detail.

For those that don't want to click on the link, the short of it is that the flash player has an interface so that you can write an library to make it support audio output libraries that it doesn't natively support. There is a bug in the flash player that makes the player very unstable when this interface is used. Modern Linuxes all tend to use this interface to support modern sound servers, since flashplayer doesn't have any support for sound services.

Apparently, flashplayer 10 does support the sound correctly, so I ended up following the instructions here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=5587712&postcount=472 and that seems to work. We'll see how my milage fares.

Note that I tried installing the flashplayer manually from here: http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html. But I couldn't get the sound to work, so there is still something wrong with ubuntu's sound packages, and one really does need the backported packages from Intrepid to get player 10 to work.

For those of you not on Ubuntu, you can try removing libflashsupport and installing flash player 10, as that might work just fine for you.

This link here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=4928900 is the manual steps that one can do to get the Ubuntu audio configuration to be sane (and also has instructions on how to install a wrapper for mozilla plugins so that when they crash, they don't take down the browser), but I couldn't get everything to work right with player 10 with those instructions, and I then noticed the link at the top which redirected me to the other forum post that I mentioned earlier.

Phew. Hope this helps.

This morning, I ran up a trail that I hadn't explored before, and I discovered the Walnut Creek Open Space. The really neat part about it is that it's up in the hills, so there are plenty of spots for a nice view of the valley. In some ways it's a shame that the sun comes up so late these days, because it's really hard to take nice pictures without a tripod with the light that I have when running. (And it helps that I managed to forget to try and take a few at a higher ISO than 80. =)

(download)

Click here to download:

The_joy_of_discovery.zip (5.39 MB)

Because Brett did it, I've been infected with the photo meme.

Instructions: Take a picture of yourself right now. Don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair - just take a picture. Post that picture with NO editing. Post these instructions with the picture.

By popular demand, here are lots of pictures of Miss Emma doing her thing!

Don't ask me about the giraffe. I only post the pictures I'm given. ;)

(download)

Click here to download:

Friday_Emma_Extravaganza.zip (63.21 MB)

On my run this morning, I ran back to the hill I had previously found a nice view of Mt. Diablo. This time, I had my camera, so I was able to take some non-cameraphone shots. The sun wasn't quite over the mountain yet, and it was a bit chilly, so we have Mt. Diablo rising out of the fog in the valley. I tried to take a shot of the moon, which was in the western sky, but I failed to get a decent picture of that.

(download)

Click here to download:

Good_Morning_Chilly_Mt._Diablo.zip (4.39 MB)

Note: This was originally written at least a month ago, and somehow, It never got posted. I started up Evolution this morning after not using it for a while, and apparently it had this unsent message in it's queue. I guess my network setup wasn't working very well at all when I wrote this.

I've generally been annoyed that Network Manager in Ubuntu doesn't give you the option to save a dynamic DNS configuration when you save a network configuration that uses DHCP. Also, I'm unhappy that Network Manager doesn't save the Gnome proxy configuration as part of the configuration. But these are minor gripes. I have recently found out that while Network Manager will let me configure my wireless for a static IP, the resulting configuration will not actually work. At all. I can get associated with the access point, and the routes and other network configuration looks fine to me, but I simply cannot send or receive anything. (And in troubleshooting this, I found that Network Manager doesn't save your WPA password between invocations (when you have a static setup), so if you do something like change the configured IP address, you need to remember to also re-enter the WPA password, otherwise, it will happily forget it.)

Anyways, I ended up having to figure out wpa_supplicant (which is surprisingly straightforward), and reconnect to the access point manually. Now things work, but with the general amount of polish Ubuntu has been showing lately, I really didn't expect to find something this integral to the system as this unfinished. It just makes me sad. I've seen some reports that Network Manager 0.7 fixes the static IP issues, and that's coming in Intrepid Ibex.

Anyways, that's enough pointless complaining. I'm going to do something productive. And perhaps after I move, I'll find enough free time to see if I can help fix some of these problems with Network Manager, because it really is my biggest pain point in Ubuntu these days.