art, life and software development

One way to improve server code performance in Flash Media Server is to compile it as Bytecode. I really do not bother much about protecting code as, I feel it is the generousity of others who have not protected their code that has brought me thus far. Having said that it is also a good way to protect your server code if you so desire form peering eyes. In addition you can also archive your server code in the situation where you have more than one script managing the logic on the server. The tool to do this is the FAR executable, a compiler that comes with the FMS install. This tool gives you the options of compiling your *.asc files to *.ase bytecode and your files *.asc or *.ase into an archive that FMS interpretes. This archive is a *.far.
The method I detail below works in the Linux environment - If you use Windows the difference in syntax is nominal

1. Find the FAR executable, in Linux it is in the install folder. An easier way to get it is to untar the FMS package and look inside the root folder.
2. Place the FAR inside the folder of the scripts you want to compile
3. Open a Terminal and 'cd' to the directory.
 ayo@W34PON-X:~/IDE/Tools$ ./far
4. Compile your *asc file into a *.ase file
ayo@W34PON-X:~/IDE/Tools$ ./far -compile ./getbytes.asc
This compiles getbytes.asc into getbytes.ase
5. Deploy the *.ase file to the application on FMS instead of *.asc

My VLC media player suddenly started to disappear every-time I tried to play videos - the audio play-back was fine. This procedure fixed it. Look at your video output settings in VLC. Tools/Preferences/Video/Output. Change the video device out settings. Video play resumed for me without any hassles. Good luck

The only way to describe using the Ubuntu OS and the daily pleasant surprises I get is to compare it to Christmas coming everyday. Honestly its no exaggeration. In my view no OS is better, Ubuntu is just BOSS, period!!! ... and it keeps getting better.
The latest 'Christmas present' comes in the shape of fb4linux a port of the Adobe FlashBuilder for the 'nix' platform. I give my heartfelt THANKS to the wonderful person who has spearheaded this project. Once set up its a perfect working copy of FlashBuilder. I really was not keen on the idea of installing Wine in order to experiece FlashBuilder, and though I could install in VirtualBox that would mean I'd be developing in Windows which I did not want to do.  There is the usual problem of there not being a designview in this IDE as well but, I've been developing on FlexBuilder for Linux for so long that frankly I do not miss it at all.
I installed fb4linux on Ubuntu Karmic 64-bit, my Eclipse build was Gallileo. By Golly does it rocket when you compile, you hit F11 and before you can say 'F11' your build is up. There are some set up procedures to adhere to if you are developing on a 64 bit linux distro. You need to set up a 32 bit Eclipse build as neither FlexBuilder nor FlashBuilder can be run on the 64 bit versions of Eclipse. The instructions for doing this are detailed quite clearly  on this blog .
I have copied the main parts of the blog post relevant to setting up FlashBuilder here (this was how I set it up) on the assumption that you have downloaded Eclipse Gallileo and the fb4linux project zip. With a Ubuntu Karmic 64 bit you need to install ia32-sun-java6-bin and all its dependencies.

1. For 64 bit: In a terminal window run “sudo update-alternatives –config java” and select ia32-java-6-sun as your jre of choice.
2. Unpack your Eclipse download and place it where you want it to be, I like /usr/local/bin/eclipse-galileo, by running “tar zxf eclipse-SDK-3.5RC2-linux-gtk.tar.gz” to unpack it.
3. For 64 bit: Move the eclipse.sh script into your eclipse install folder and run “chmod a+x eclipse.sh“.
4. For 64 bit: Set java back to the regular 64 bit variety using the same method as step 1 (but obviously selecting just java-6-sun).
5. Untar the fb4linux package in a folder of your choice. I would suggest you have a parent directory called FB4Linux and untar your package in here. Mine was placed here home/ayo/Adobe Flash Builder Beta 2 Linux
6. Download the Flash Player 10 debug player for Linux from Adobe. Create a directory wherever you like and place the standalone player there. Mine was placed here '/home/ayo/DebugFlash/
   

Please restart Eclipse after you have done this to be certain that Eclipse works. Once you are in Eclipse go to Help>Software Updates> Configuration. Add the path to where you untarred your download of fb4linux. Thats it - done. Well almost. You need to create an 'sdks' folder in the parent folder, in my case the 'Adobe Flash Builder Beta 2 Linux' directory. You need to set up your SDKs and the location of your web browser and standalone player, in my case /home/ayo/DebugFlash/flashplayer.
Now create your first test project and enjoy the goodless of Ubuntu and FlashBuilder

For a very LIMITED time only download FB4Linux here

After installing Flash player on Ubuntu Karmic 64, I was a bit disconcerted to find that all the Flash video players I tested did not respond to ant mouse clicks. Google-time. this particular solution worked for me.

First you need to open and edit this file: /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper/i386/linux/npviewer . You can do it from terminal by typing:

gksudo gedit /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper/i386/linux/npviewer

Add the following line before the last line of text

export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1

Save and close the file. You will have to clear these changes when you next upgrade your system. I hope this works for you :)

I promised myself I would skip one distro and wait before upgrading my Ubuntu OS. Well I did not suceed - I had been reading the pre-release reviews and every thing alluded to the fact that this was arguably the most advanced Ubuntu release ever- naturally. For the first time Ubuntu got mentioned on the BBC news. Seriously I knew that there were a number of new features added to Ubuntu, and lots of improvements. A few of the core changes like the Grub2 and the Ext4 filesystem were introduced in Intrepid but, I felt at the time probably too error prone so I left them alone. At any rate I could not resist the pull of a new OS so on the release date I downloaded and did a fresh install on my HP 8710w. The first ISO did not work so I had to do it again. Success it did work - Gosh, the speed of the thing - installation time definitely much faster, about half the time. I have to say I was a bit disappointed at first glance, the default look is ghastly- wallpaper and all - I cannot believe that such a nasty looking interface can pass Q&A - why oh why does Canonical keep with the this livery - it really has to change. They should take a cue from the Intrepid Ibex wall paper which, in my view, was very nicely done. That should be the benchmark. The default desktop look and feel inspires no confidence with any user whatsoever except, you're colour-blind which I'm not. This is made considerably worse when you know how much resource there is out there with regards to stunning wallpapers, icon themes and GTK2 themes. There really is no excuse for such a poor looking desktop. Fortunately, this so far seems to be the only negative point against Karmic. Now the tough part - checking what worked and what did not.

• Changing my login screen - Impossible, there's a new login screen and no tools and probably no new GDM themes for such a modification at the moment.
• Flash Player 10+ - The plugin-installer does a good job. However I am an Actionscript developer so I need a debug version. The traditional way did not work. Untarring and trying to install via Terminal using ./flashplayer-installer. I got an error stating that my glibc needed updating and that was that. The only way was to do a sudo nautilus and replace the default libflashplayer.so with the debugger version. The destination folder is /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer. After that all was well.
• Eclipse - Installing new application did not work - Buttons clicked did not call the action. Apparently this will be fixed in the next Eclipse build but,that will not help with Flex Buiildre Linux which at the moment can only be deployed on Eclipse Europa 3.3 - no update for that I'm sure. So for FlexBuilder on Europa all you can do is the workaround - click on the button of interest and then hit the Enter key.
• Software Center - I do not really like it and I think the older method of 'add and remove programs' is much better and definitly easier especially when you want to select multiple application for a to install. The Software Center seems targeted at the new Ubuntu convert and may help them see and select software easier but, not for me.
  

Those are the issues I've found so far - other than that all seems better than Jaunty. Sound is so much better and I had no problems with my media after I set up Medibuntu and all the restricted media elements. No issues with hardware drivers at all. Samba network fileshare seems to work somewhat - It never successfully networks with the computer names but, if you know the network IP of the computer then all is well. However this may be a peculiarity of my local network.  I enabled my Compiz Desktop effects at first try and that's the first time I have ever successfully done that on any Ubuntu/Ubuntu-Studio release. Having done all this it was time to update to Ubuntu-Studio Karmic. Ubuntu-Studio is my preferred version of the Ubuntu distro. It ran smoothly from the Synaptic MAnager and was perfect in every way - for me - best of all it restored the old 'Add and Remove' software feature and removed the Software center.
All in all I'm very happy. Its a really nice OS - More bounce to the ounce for Canonical, Ubuntu, Ubuntu Studio and the Ubuntu Studio team.
3 days later: This is without a doubt the best operating system I have ever used. Its simply beyond amazing. I'm speechless with delight. Bloody Well Done to The Ubuntu/UbuntuStudio Teams!!!.

For some strange reason, Acrobat 9 + seems to crash seconds after opening a PDF document in Ubuntu Jaunty. Doubtless other Linux users may experience this in their different distros. It happens both as a standalone PDF and in the Firefox plug in. There does not seem to be a workaround or fix for the moment. My solution was to uninstall Acrobat reader 9 and install Acrobat Reader 8. That works fine. I'll put AR9 back on when Adobe sorts out the problem

Brasero's normalisation plugin is buggy. If you have more than one audio track in a burn list it loops endlessly at the beginning of the burn process, preventing the burn process from completing. The workaround is to go to Edit>Plugins and disable the Normalisation plugin. The downside of this of course is No-Normalisation of your audio tracks. Other than this I do like Brasero - the Audio split tool is really useful.

I've had a few problems connecting to other Windows computers on my network since I installed Ubuntu / UbuntuStudio 9.04. This solution worked for me.

gksu gedit /etc/samba/smb.conf

Find the [global] section, and insert this line:

Code:

client lanman auth = yes

You need to reboot after saving the samb.conf

When you log back in use the LAN IP address smb://192.162.x.x to find the computers you want to share files with. Make sure file sharing is enabled.

N.B: This works nicely for Ubuntu < -- > Windows filesharing. Its not that straight forward for Ubuntu < -- > Ubuntu filesharing. In my experience Samba only works properly between Ubuntu machines whan they are the same version (Intrepid to Intrepid or Hardy to Hardy)

I tried to use KStreamripper in Ubuntu Jaunty and came up with an alert which stated  'dcopserver  not running'. I tried a number of Google results none of which worked for me. However looking at all the results it seemed the problem was permissions based so I opened my 'User settings' panel, opened my  'Group Settings', selected my account < username > and ticked the root and username boxes. When I opened Kstreamripper again it was fine. It may be neccessary to reboot but, that worked for me.
Good Luck!

The dreadful nature of Amarok 2 in Ubuntu 9.04 pushed me to trying out Exaile. Still there are things that Amarok is peerless at. Its Shoutcast station list is extensive so I started to find a way to get Amarok 1.4 back. I found this blog entry that just does the job, http://nomad.ca/blog/2009/apr/3/amarok-14-jaunty-ubuntu-904/ . If you want Amarok 1.4 back go there.

These are the steps:

Add the PPA to your sources by creating a new file for the Amarok PPA:

Then in that new file add the following two lines:

Add the key for the PPA:

Now update your sources, remove Amarok2 and install Amarok1.4:

Enjoy!!

N.B: Exaile Media Player will not play files or files nested in folders with certain characters in their name. In my own case the containing folder had the # character in the folder name. It may be different for you. If you rename the file or folder it should be fine.

Boy did they take their time! I waited till about 3.30 pm on Thursday 23rd and posted a complaint to the Ubuntu forums while I was waiting but, finally I looked in Synaptic and it was there - the new distribution upgrade to Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty. I had given a 64 bit ISO of Jaunty a run a couple of hours earlier and I liked the experience though brief, so I was eager but, the thought of setting up my computer from scratch reminded me of the prudence of waiting a few hours for the upgrade. Anyway with a thumping heart "I bit the bullet" and installed. I kept hearing the voice in my head say "You had the perfect set-up, now you've invited trouble. You'll be sorry you did this. Prepare to reinstall and reformat and.....". 90 minutes later it was all done, the alert came up asking for a restart, I obeyed and, all was fine.

I'm very pleased with Jaunty, its much faster than Intrepid and God knows Intrepid was fast. The boot up times are quicker too. The fontmatrix has been vastly improved resulting in sharper looking fonts. The quality of the sound also seems to have been improved and the system sounds all work with no complaint at all. Listening to music seems a completely different experience. Eclipse/FlexBuilder woukd merrily as before. I had no reason to touch my Flash Media Server installation - it worked perfectly. Ok that was the good part. The screensaver engine has been improved - it seems to use so much less of the system memory. Screensavers which I never used because of their high memory consumption, rocket away at very low CPU load and display their graphics fast with no stuttering at all. Its difficult to believe its the same hardware.

There were a couple of irritations though - first I could not get Compiz to work - googling, I discovered that somehow or other my Dell graphics card had made it to the Compiz - blacklist and I had to look to the Ubuntu Forums to fix it. Fortunately it was not big deal to fix and I soon had that running as before. Next was the new Amarok 2. I had really looked forward to it but, in using it I felt very short changed. The Ubuntu offering is a horribly stripped down version - apparently its much better in KDE (I would not know, I hardly go there). You cannnot customize the colours, you cannot set the audio drivers to your choice version (ALSA being mine).No equalizer. It kept defaulting to Pulse and sometimes hijacking my system sound, and ab-initio it would not play MP3's and was stuttering the Shoutcast streams. Frightful!! Apparently you have to install phonon xine and check that the kubuntu restricted extras were installed. Having done that all seemed well.

sudo aptitude install libxine1-ffmpeg kubuntu-restricted-extras phonon-backend-xine

However I was not happy with Amarok 2 and started to search for a way to get back my ole Amarok 1.4. A number of ways were suggested none of which worked for me and then in all that trawing the name Exaile popped up at me. I installed it and Ama-who?? This is the player for me and it really looks good - still needs extra customization tools but, its brilliant. I cannot still get my Bluetooth to work but thats another story as I could not get it to work in Intrepid either. Still all in all the best offering yet from Ubuntu/Canonical - WELL DONE!!! Try Jaunty it ROCKS