Comic con Prep

This is trying out making some robot arms for a a costume to wear at the local Comic-Con.

Unfortunately I only have a week to get it done as the idea wasn't agreed on until late and I didn't get the phone ordered and delivered until 10 days ahead of the event.

The gloves are turning out OK, hopfully the test of our turns out at least as good, hopfully better.

I've made helmets before, but never anything like this and even though I'm following a pattern, I'm not really sure how it will get attached.

Prior work was with cheap floor mats, this time it's with quality 6 mm craft foam in large sheets for the robot arms, and thin craft foam to cover the gloves.

So I missed updating for all of 2017, but it wasnt a total loss.. I upgraded my Ubuntu workstation to the latest 17.10 and it didnt break everything this time. I am now at a point that I want to upgrade hardware, as there are programs that would take advantage of the new video, memory, disk, and cpu advancements.  But at least the core system didnt get destroyed by an update.

Progress.

Ubuntu 16.04 and 16.10 broken USB sound

So I first discover that my headset sound (which frankly I rarely use) was not functioning after I had upgraded to 16.04

and theres where I fell into the rabbit hole and began my chase.

Since I was on the latest LTS version I figured it was time to update again. And from all first views the upgrade worked fine. Applications were still there s I expected. The ones I hadnt used in ages had lost some things, but since they were seldom used it was no loss.

Thing is, this machine is really for a very few select items, mostly browser activities and games, and thats where I fell...

It started out odd too, I was listening to a Youtube video and everything was fine as far as I could tell. Then I went to launch GuildWars2 which was working perfectly before the upgrade. And that seemed to go ok too, and was starting its round up patch upgrades like it always does.

Go back to reading this and that, and finally notice GW2 is up to the point of allowing me to launch. Launch it and decide to listen to the game for a change. nothing... Hmm, open the shell I use to launch the game from, notice errors about pulsaudio.  Which then sends me down the path of finding out that thats not supported, and we are stupid to think anything should work with it and why arent we using Alsasound instead you heretics.

Hmm, ok maybe 16.04 had some update issues and I need to clean it up. No such luck, and after wiping my system and fresh install there is still no sound.

OK, lets try 16.10 then, go latest greatest.  Looks ok, though still no sound. Check the sound dialog and run a test. I hear "Left Speaker" then nothing.. Not only nothing, mouse and keyboard (both USB as well) go unresponsive. Great.. hard reboot.

Try again. crash. Several more ties I find maybe I'm missing a Logitech Solaar unifying application.. Ok, get that.. nice app lets me see my mouse battery status.. Still no sound, still locks up.

Short of it is, my USB headset is now sitting unplugged and I will likely get a gamer headset instead. 

Everytime I would try to listen to sound, and bump the mouse or type on the keyboard the USB devices would all go comatose. Sad that it worked on previous Ubuntu versions, broke exceptionally on this version (both 16.04 and 16.10) and now all forum posts I can find on it talk of disconnecting the pulseaudio. Nice. Especially since when you do that, you lose the volume control on the task bar.

Maybe I will try again with next version update, or if/when I get a new computer.

Ubuntu 16.10 sound struggles

Getting my sound working is now on the agenda after getting the primary game I like (Guild Wars 2) to install and load.

Now all attempts to play sound through my headset fails with what appears to be a USB lockup. Specifically these seem to roll around the fwupd process and this bug
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/fwupd/+bug/1574079

Since I have a USB - Mouse, keyboard, headset, and wireless NIC this could be a problem for me if the system cant keep it straight which device is supposed to do what function.  Apparently it could try to send mouse commands to the sound device or sound outputs to the mouse device. Umm yeah...

But I dont want to go the route of some of the references, in saying that my hardware is too old. Once I start that I will need to replace everything as its all fairly old as far as computer hardware goes. Maybe that is the final real answer, but hopefully not today.

I found these kinds of references on boards concerning that bug that spoke of the Logitech Unifying driver and how to get this installed, and registered properly by unplugging and replugging each device.  Now I have a tray icon showing me the power left on the mouse. Unsure what it does for the keyboard

Installed per this
http://pwr.github.io/Solaar/installation.html
and this
https://launchpad.net/~daniel.pavel/+archive/ubuntu/solaar

Using these command sequences

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:daniel.pavel/solaar
sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install solaar

Now I'm working my way through the other known bits needed by wine and Playonlinux I had already found , such as needing libpng.so installed and ensuring the wine:386 components are installed. 

libpng

sudo apt-get install libpng-dev

sudo apt-get install zlib1g-dev

http://askubuntu.com/questions/508934/how-to-install-libpng-and-zlib

Now I'm back to setting up the rest of the components

Playonlinux

1. Add the repository by using the following in the terminal,

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:noobslab/apps

2. Then update your package list,

sudo apt-get update

3. And then installation,

sudo apt-get install playonlinux

And Wine

1. Add the PPA via command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa

2. Update package cache and install wine1.9:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install wine1.9 winetricks

Install latest Wine Dev release from the Official WineHQ PPA:

Open terminal from Unity Dash, App Launcher, or via Ctrl+Alt+T shortcut key. When it opens, paste below commands and run one by one.

1. For 64-bit system, rum command to enable 32 bit architecture:

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386

2. Add the wine PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:wine/wine-builds

3. Once you have the PPA added in your system, run below commands one by one to refresh package caches and install Wine 1.8:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install --install-recommends winehq-devel

The installation automatically replaces old wine releases installed on your system.

4. Finally you may run below command to initialize your wine configuration.

winecfg

Inside the winecfg is the critical to GuildWars2 of going into the wine configuration and setting to emulate windows desktop.


And now finding the Ubuntu Software Center wont load

Software Center

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PackageManagerTroubleshootingProcedure

Step 10 Ubuntu Software Center fails to open

If the Ubuntu Software Center fails to open, then please execute these Terminal commands: 

sudo rm /usr/lib/python*/dist-packages/__pycache__/*pyc

sudo apt-get install --reinstall python3-gi

sudo apt-get purge software-center

rm -rf ~/.cache/software-center

rm -rf ~/.config/software-center

rm -rf ~/.cache/update-manager-core

sudo rm /var/lib/apt-xapian-index/cataloged_times.p

sudo rm /var/lib/apt-xapian-index/values

sudo update-apt-xapian-index --verbose --force

sudo update-apt-xapian-index --force

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

sudo apt-get install software-center ubuntu-desktop

sudo dpkg-reconfigure software-center --force

sudo update-software-center

sudo apt-get install --reinstall software-center

Then reboot and retest. 

Impromptu Upgrade to 16.10

So like years past, I'm not on a faster track Ubuntu version even though everything was working fine on the LTS version 16.04

Fine, except for the one thing I rarely use, and I now kick myself for obsessing over. In Guild Wars 2 I wasnt hearing the sound. Started digging, since I originally loaded it up using Wine directly, then switched over to Playonlinux as that was much easier to handle and load the game. Up until a recent update the sound was fine. I didnt do anything to the native Ubuntu pulsaudio as I really dont care what the mechanism is as long as it works.

Well, now it wasnt working and I began digging, and finding several "you should have known this" kinds of posts in the Playonlinux forums that said they dont support pulsaduio and the tone seemed to be that if you did use it you were a dredge not worth their time. Go setup Alsasound and be done!

Fine if it hadnt been working just a few short hours ago.  So I kept digging. Tried to halt pulsadio, uninstall pulsaudio. Neither worked. Then I tried to uninstall wine just in case the wine 1.9 was conflicting with the ver 4.? of Playonlinux. Nope, no sound.

So, now its maybe something just needs to be cleared out, the game had been through upgrades as far back as Ubuntu 12.  So I clean out all remnants of wine, uninstall playonlinux, go dig out the latest GWinstaller app and start over fresh.

Big time fail now as the installer wont work and I get a log similar to the following.

fixme:ntdll:NtIsProcessInJob stub: 0xffffffff (nil)
fixme:advapi:RegisterTraceGuidsW (0x495320, 0x24ef248, {3dada31d-19ef-4dc1-b345-037927193422}, 1, 0x24a4f04, (null), (null), 0x24ef260): stub
fixme:gdi:GdiInitializeLanguagePack stub
fixme:ntdll:NtIsProcessInJob stub: 0x26c (nil)
fixme:ntdll:NtIsProcessInJob stub: 0x26c (nil)
fixme:ntdll:NtIsProcessInJob stub: 0x26c (nil)
fixme:ntdll:NtIsProcessInJob stub: 0x26c (nil)
fixme:ntdll:NtIsProcessInJob stub: 0x26c (nil)
fixme:ntdll:NtIsProcessInJob stub: 0x26c (nil)
fixme:ntdll:NtIsProcessInJob stub: 0x26c (nil)
fixme:ntdll:NtIsProcessInJob stub: 0x26c (nil)

But all the references there talk about mixed 64bit and 32bit wine issues. Clear everythgin again and try pure 64bit, and then pure 32bit....

Fail again.

Finally upgraded to 16.10 thinking maybe there was a change in there that might help/

Fail again.

Decided to really clean out everything (since my home directory is on its own partition) and full erase the root and install fresh fresh everything from OS up to the wine and Playonlinux version and all its subordinate needs.

Still fail, and am seriously thinking its time to update system and get Win10 for games instead.

Then I stumble upon one line in an old forum post that said essentially
"I must go into Configure Wine --> Graphics and then check Emulate a Virtual Desktop. And it runs just as if it was on Windows for me!"

What do you know? that worked! I'm now in prcess of the long network layer download of the GW game finally.  yay!

So like I had back on 13.10 I am now at the point of success.
"At present I am able to run Guild Wars 2, Secondlife, Gpodder, Chrome, Wally, and Blender without any additional tweaking. The last round through this update maze had me losing sound and video from the GW2 install until I went and pulled a beta release of Wine. Almost fearful I was going to have to dig out the compiler and do some make make-install steps, but I didnt have to the beta repo set itself up nicely. But, this time I didn't have to go there. It just ran. Sound was active without glitchy stuttering and everything.

Sound, in Secondlife is always a challenge. This time I thought it was that way again. Since its my main reason for running the application if the sound doesnt work then there isn't much else. But, that worked well too. Seems like something wrong when it all just "works".

 Except this time around I didnt bother with Secondlife, Gpodder, or Wally (yet). Guild Wars 2 and Chrome are fine so far. 

Notepad++ and a "grep" like feature

I was needing to pull a bunch of lines out of a huge file. Over 200,000 records long, and I didnt want to resort to pushing it over to one of my linux servers just to grep the lines out, and then pull them back in to use the output selectively.

So, I found out this neat little sequence using the latest version of Notepad++

1. Open the document
2. hit Ctrl-F 
3. In this find window, go to the "Mark" tab

4. make sure the "Bookmark" is checked
5. place what you are looking for in the "Find what" field
6. Mark all
7. Now close this and go up to the search menu
8. Do a search  "Bookmark"
   
9. in here are options to strip out all bookmarks or copy all bookmarks
   

For my use case I needed to copy all the bookmarks and paste them into a fresh document.

Year in Pictures 2014