Episode 042…Bullet holes…watch it.

That isn’t a typo. I found a front end for recordmydesktop over at kde-apps.org a little bit ago. I wasn’t really looking for a gui front end since there is already gtk-recordMyDesktop(gnome) and qt-recordMyDesktop(kde). However, I downloaded it anyway to try it out. Wow! reKordmydesktop is a kommander script so nothing to install to run it. Just untar it and click on the executable. I think I will start using it for awhile. I like the “grab window” feature so that I don’t have to issue the xwininfo command prior to recording. Also, just add “-device hw:1,0″ to the custom command line options if you use a usb (logitech) microphone.

further reading here: reKordmydesktop

Well, I got openSUSE 10.3 installed. The only two glitches that I have are Compiz-Fusion and MPlayer.

Compiz-Fusion:
Something is definately not working here. I installed the NVidia driver with the 1-click install. That was very nice by the way. As soon as I switch from Xorg to Xgl then something goes wrong. It appears as if I loose 3D acceleration. I can run “regular-stable” Compiz (the dumbed down version that ships with openSUSE and ubuntu, among others) just fine. As soon as I switch to Compiz-Fusion though…WHITE SCREEN! This usually means that I have a video card problem…I think. In the mean time I run the default Compiz. A little is better than nothing I guess. Not sure, though, if the problem is Compiz-Fusion, NVidia, or Xgl, or just user error.

MPlayer:
WTF! When I play any of our screencasts the video plays but all I get for audio is loud white noise. The version of MPlayer has the letters “rc1″ in the package name. Maybe it isn’t fully baked yet. As a work around I am using kaffeine. Kaffeine seems to work pretty well but I HATE THAT DAMN PLAYER!

Also, I am switching over to Banshee. Amorok just seems to be getting so bloated with features. Banshee seems a little simpler and cleaner. Plus I like the interface. Beep is actually my favorite player for mp3’s but I have gotten a chance to install it yet.

Screencasting seems to work ok. Nothing seems to have changed there, thank goodness. If I have problems with MPlayer though I may have problems with mencoder, which will effect my screencast encoding. Crossing my fingers.

Other than that everything seems to work pretty well. Yast is flipping incredible now. They made major improvements there. I may not even install Smart and just stay with Yast. There are plenty more things to discover and install. I hope everything goes well.

Here’s my desktop with a custom wallpaper that I made just for this release:

WOOT!

I have uploaded my latest screencast a day early. Episode 041 illustrates how to make three-dimensional text using the interpolation effect instead of the extrude effect. There are actually a number of ways to simulate extruded text or shapes in Inkscape but I’m not sure if many would choose interpolation over any other method. When using this method one might have to adjust the stroke thickness to get all of the copies to blend into each other. Just play around with it and you’ll get the hang of it real quickly. Perhaps practice on rectangles or circles at first.

There are quite a few neat effects that can be made using Interpolation. For instance, one could curve the text and make a duplicated copy that is smaller. After interpolation this generates a perspective effect of sorts. I didn’t bother converting the “Agent Orange” text into a banner or logo since there are so many things that one could do with it. I will leave that creativity up to you.

So I’m sipping my morning coffee, munching on bag of M&Ms (not mine but left on my desk so they become mine), and thumbing through my engineering publication of choice, Design News, when I run across a short article describing CCNTV. Hmm…what’s that? CADCAMNETtv. It’s a bi-weekly netcast, with an anchor (sorry, it’s not Ron Burgundy), who scoops on CAD announcements, updates, news, and scandals in the CAD industry.

Check it out!

If you are not an engineer and have no interest in such things then your video of any random 3 year old girl whacking daddy in the sweets with a big red bat is over on YouTube…somewhere. That’s right…something for everybody.

A new version of the Flash player was released today. One can read about the changes here. The main feature that I like in this new version is the full screen mode for LInux users. I use this feature extensively on my Windows XP machine and now I can use it on my Linux machines as well. Keep in mind that this version is still a beta so beware. So far I have not experienced any problems. YouTube and blip.tv  work well and most importantly, so does the screencasters’ site. If you haven’t watched one of our screencasts in full screen mode then give it a try. The flash files are a little pixelated but still legible. Once Richard and I move over to MP4 in the future…eventually…some day…the full screen resolution on our streaming files will be even better.