Linux Mint and retired iPhone 5 - Adding Music

 A while ago someone gave me their old iPhone 5 and suggested it might be useful to replace an iPod touch I have had for about ten years and that I haven't used much because its battery doesn't last as long as it used to and I didn't think it had Bluetooth connectivity.  

These days I run my audio for all my computers via a Logitech Bluetooth Adapter, and since I have all the computers running on a single Monitor and all controlled from a single keyboard and mouse, it is simply a matter of scrolling across to a computer and switching it to the Bluetooth Adapter.

Of course, in the process of messing around with stuff we discovered that 1) the iPhone only had about 1.6GB storage free, and 2) the old iPod does in fact have Bluetooth.

I also discovered that there is almost no way to access a folder on the iPhone from Linux Mint, to easily copy mp3 files across (the only files that are small enough to be much use).

Then I read about an iPhone App called Evermusic.  Evermusic was supposed to be an 'Offline Music Player' and there's a Free version with some functions limited, and a Pro version that costs $14.99.  Initial impressions suggest I might be parting with some cash shortly :-)

Evermusic surprised me because a couple of interesting dialogs popped up immediately after install offering to help me set up any cloud/online accounts I have that contain Music.  For the moment I skipped that and the next thing it showed me was computers connected to my local wireless network.

I tapped one of them and it asked for my login and password.  I answered with that computer's network credentials and the next screen showed all the shared folders on that computer.
I navigated to a folder that had music in it, then remembered I have limited space on the iPhone and changed to a folder with MP3 files.

The music player screen opened to a list of songs.  I chose one and tapped and it began playing.

Next I opened Settings on the iPhone and turned Bluetooth on, the iPhone found my Logitech Adapter, I connected to it, and the iPhone is playing music across Bluetooth.

A little looking around and I discovered that if I tap on the three dots  ...  at the right end of any song in the list, I can download it.  A little more poking around and I realised I can tap 'Select All'  and download all the songs in a folder once it is opened for playing.
I can't download a complete folder, but it seems that might be an option on the paid version.

For now though, I have a cheap music player and one more iPhone saved from scrap!

BLOGGER Seems to be working on Mobiles Again!

 Since my post in April, I haven't had a chance to do anything with the blogs again.  However I checked the Isla Blog just now and it seems the problem has been fixed - or resolved itself.  

I have not edited a blog since the post about the resizing problem, but I'm happy to report that ALL of our Blogger posts ARE WORKING, and scaling properly to mobile devices again !     :-)

Linux Mint 20.1 Xfce and VNC

 Since I closed my computer business in 2007 and started spending all my time concentrating on learning how to live with recovering from all the injuries, then two lots of open heart surgery and a couple of brain injures, so much has happened.  Now that I reached retirement age, I have other challenges.

Cyclone Ului in 2010 and Cyclone Debbie in 2017 destroyed my yachts in Shute Harbour, and with them, the part time live aboard lifestyle i was enjoying.  Changes in my personal life as well as Australian Government legislation changes, followed by the 2017 medical emergency and surgery meant my retirement plan, to live on the resort I helped set up in the Philippines, is no longer viable.  

Now I'm relegated to living in what used to be my computer workshop and classroom.  While I have always had computers (since the 1970s) I have rarely been interested in them as anything more than a work tool.
Now I am beginning to 'enjoy' aspects of computing that I previously only bothered with for 'work'.

This blog is testament to my keeping computers around, and to my still experimenting with different aspects of the things.  However over the last week I have done something I never bothered to do when I was working.  
I set up a Home Network.  Not only that, instead of having several computers on one desk, each with its own dedicated tasks and its own monitor, I have three computers connected to one monitor (a 55 inch TV) by a different HDMI port each.

I didn't bother with a network, because as before, I didn;t need one.  I could do everything from one computer.  The m93 has become my everyday computer because the i5 processor is a little more powerful and responsive than the Brix' Celeron.  The Raspberry Pi was just there because, well, it's a Raspberry Pi.

Last week, the Realtek sound chip in the m93p lost a channel.  I liesten to music a lot.  Like, 'all the time'.  I have several mp3 devices, some hooked up to dedicated speaker systems.  But having the m93 unable to play music or show a video irked me.

Obviously I could play music on the BRIX or the Pi, but then I had to switch HDMI ports every time I wanted to adjust the volume.  Something had to change.  

I remembered VNC.  If I set the BRIX up as a VNC Server, I could view and control it through a window in one of the Virtual Desktops (Workspaces) in the m93p.  That would allow me to control the volkume, and the playlist etc. from the m93p, without the hassle of grabbing the remote and swapping HDMI inputs to the screen, and grabbing another keyboard and mouse to drive the BRIX.

It should have been dead easy.

It wasn't.

Linux has plenty of VNC server programs available.  It also has a number of VNC viewers.  I installed several servers one at a time on the BRIX, and viewers, one at a time on the m93p to test each server.  The viewers on the m93p were not seeing any of the servers I installed on the BRIX,  

Then while I had the tigerVNC-scrapin-server  running on the BRIX, and I installed a remote viewer I had not noticed in the repositories, called    'vinagre'   on the m93p.

Immediately it recognised the IP address I typed in as the Host, as the BRIX, and opened a window to its Desktop.

I installed tigerVNC-scraping-server on the Pi as well, and that was also immediately found and opened.

In the next post, I'll try to lay out the steps I went through to set this up.

LIBRE OFFICE and that annoying Lock File problem

 For years now users on the Libre Office forums have been discussing a problem where some kind of lock file issue prevents LibreOffice saving, or in some cases even opening files.

This is not limited to a certain type of file, but I first came across it with LibreOffice .odt (text) files when I tried to save one and was told that LibreOffice could not get access to permissions to lock usage of ...   or some rubbish warning along those lines.

Later I got a similar warning when I tried to open an existing LibreOffice document.

Now, when this happened some years ago, i managed to clear the problem by finding and deleting the offending ~lock  file in my /home/Documents directory.  This year however, and perhaps it can be blamed on Covid, I could not clear the problem.  I tried every trick I know and then stalked the LibreOffice and other forums, only to find that there is no known solution. 
Basically, if it happens to you, you 'might' be able to clear it by finding and deleting the offending lock file, but otherwise, you're stuffed.

So I found a couple of work-arounds.  None are perfect, but one way or another they work.

All Linux distributions regardless of their Desktop Environment have a couple of programs for Text editing (Abiword) and Spreadsheeting (Gnumeric).  

The one that might be noticed though is LibreOffice Impress (Presentation Manager).  There are some options in the repositories, but one I have always had access to was Calligra Stage - part of the old KDE KOffice Suite.

For that matter, Calligra Words and Calligra Sheets are also good replacements for LibreOffice, although they have a bit of a learning curve due to their unusual implementation of some common functions.
That said though, they are excellent.

So between AbiWord, Gnumeric, Calligra Words, calligra Sheets and Calligra Stage, I had all my requirements covered.

Then I remembered a program I use on my Android Tablets that I chose because it is almost identical to LibreOffice in looks and function.
That program is SoftMaker Office.  It can be downloaded from:

SoftMaker Office Home Page

The Download page is here:

DOWNLOAD SOFTMAKER OFFICE for Linux

The Current version (2021) is NOT Free.  It costs about $64 one time payment, but divided by a year that's about One Dollar a week.  That's pretty cheap for commercial software, and the charge includes appropriate on-going updates.  Instructions are on the site are provided to set the PPA for updates.

However, there are a couple of previous versions, with the latest of these the 2018 version available HERE:

The 2018 version has TextMaker (Writer equivalent) and PlanMaker (Calc equivalent) plus Presentations (the Presentation manager). 
This is Free to download and use, but requires a Product Key.  I cannot remember how I got the product key, but SoftMaker emailed one to me.

SoftMaker Office early versions Download

I'm going to hit PUBLISH, but I intend getting back to this to add some images and further comments.

There is one more useful link on the SoftMaker website:

Tips & tricks: Installing SoftMaker Office 2021 for Linux

My 2018 version of SoftMaker Office is Free to use, although it did require email registration.

If for some reason you cannot get SoftMaker Office to send you a registration Product Key, Calligra Stage works nicely as a Presentation Manager, and calligra Words with Calligra Sheets, teamed with Abiword and Gnumeric will get you out of trouble.

Desktop Publishing is covered nicely by Scribus !

GooGle changes mean BLOGGER is broken on MOBILES !

 GooGle changes mean BLOGGER is broken !

I have been using Google's Blogger for years.  One of the reasons I like it, was that no matter what device someone was reading a blog on, the screen conten always fitted, whether it was being viewed on a Computer, Tablet, Phone etc.

Recently Google announced that it was no longer supporting mobile devices!

This came as a complete shock to me.  Google Blogger has always been great at resizing content at its default settings.  I am getting too old to start rewriting all my blog pages now.  

I just checked Wordpress, and my blogs there still fit all devices on all browsers by default.  I don;t understand what caused Google to stop supporting Mobile Devices, but I think it is a fairly strange thing to do.

It looks like I might have to start redirecting or mirroring all my BLOGGER posts across to WordPress, including the Resort business content!

I apologise now for any inconvenience caused by this very strange GooGle action.

RossD 

Linux, Music and Cheap Stereo Equipment

 Linux Mint 20, Music and Cheap Stereo Equipment seems like a bit of a weird combination, but there's something exciting about getting results on a budget.

I like listening to music.  Over the years I have ripped almost all my CD and DVD collections to file so I can listen to them on modern devices like computers, phones, tablets and mp3 players.  I decided not to do what I did when cassette tapes became fossils.  I spent so much money before mp3 was a thing.

So, I have been using a set of Logitech X-230 speakers for years.  These things are quite old, have been in use for years, and can't handle much volume if the Bass is turned on anyway, so I was thinking about doing some surgery, either piggy backing a set of bigger car speakers to the little twin 2" speakers in each satellite.  I thought I might get some extra mid range without losing too much bass or treble.

Than my son mentioned he had a set of X-230 speakers that he was planning to sell on ebay.  He had to fly up for a visit, so he brought them along for the ride.  That way I could pick the best set to keep original and perform surgery on the others.

I forgot about them for a few days, then when I was looking through a box of 'stuff' I found a 6 inch male to female one into two splitter cable for 3.5mm audio, and an idea started to form.

The problem was distortion in the small speakers if I had the Bass turned up.  The Logitech X-230 set have a volume control on one of the satellites, and on the sub-woofer.

What if I connect both X-230 sets to the splitter, dial UP the Bass on one, and dial the corresponding satellite volume down until any distortion stops?

On the other set, I could try dialing the Bass DOWN on the sub-woofer and dial the volume on that satellite pair up.

So I tried it.  Then after an exciting day listening to a vastly improved stereo experience, I remembered Linux Mint uses PulseAudio, and I had installed PulseEffects!
So I started PulseEffects and tried some equalizer presets I had experimented with around Christmans.

W O W !!

I have the two 8 inch sub-woofer boxes stacked one on the other with a layer of foam between them. 
I have one pair of speakers each side of, and behind my 55 inch monitor (about 1.5 metres apart), with the Sub on the floor about 1.5 metres lower and dialed down to about 20%(ish).  
I have the other pair of satellite speakers a little further apart, about 200mm further to the front and about 200mm lower and that Sub is on top of the other and dialed to about 80%.

The volume of the satellites is simply adjusted separately until the desired richness and thump is coming out, and the mid range and treble sound crystal clear.

The whole thing is then tweaked depending on how the input of various mp3 files affects the sound over an afternoon of music, and the setup can be saved as a new preset in PulseEffects.

I had been planning to buy a new audio system for the computer, but this leaves everything I could imagine getting for dead at a total price of a couple of hundred dollars.

Providing the two speaker systems have a volume control on the sub, and another on one of the satellites, a similar system could be rigged cheaply using any couple of budget speaker sets.  Mixing brands or models would not be likely to affect the setup much, and the only unusual part is the 3.5mm - 1 male plug - 2 female sockets splitter, and they are available at any electronics hobby store for a couple of dollars.

For now, I am enjoying the richest sounding music experience I can remember since the 60s when we all discovered our first 'National Panasonic' affordable stereo systems  :D

Actually, this is more like when we discovered BOSE..