My opening theme for the show lasts about a minute and a half. For the video I felt I needed to make it shorter just to get the point across that it was for my show. So I edited the audio under Audacity and kept it down to about 30 secs.

The artists I played in the video I needed to get the videos off YouTube.  There are many ways to do this, but one utility that is just awesome is DamnVid. This multiplatform application allows you to download and encode videos into many different formats. So I used the YouTube URL for the videos of the artists I highlighted in the video.

For the actual video I played around with PiTiVi and Openshot. PiTiVi lacks transitions and effects at the moment, which the community has been screaming for them to put in. Openshot is great, but there was some things I feel it’s still missing.

I checked out KDEnlive under Nixie Pixel’s review and recommendation and I have to say, this is a VERY powerful little video editor. A lot of effects, transistions, and easy to boot! I started making titles within the software, but I wound up tweaking them more using Inkscape. Nothing spectacular, just quick and dirty creation because I need to learn to use InkScape more to be honest.  But aside from that I think the final product is pretty damn good for a beginner.

So let me know what you all think! Here’s The Video: 

I reinstalled all the applications and within a few hours I had everything back to “normal” However, there has been some bugs that have been bothering me as of late. Mainly with Gwibber. It seems facebook accounts are not able to be added any more to the application. As well as a few other things I noticed.

I wish there was a native app that handled more social networks. Although Gwibber has some great features, I have been finding apps handling all different options. I have been adding more social networks into my profile of networks but it seems not one app handles them all. And it would be great to have them all in one bundle. The networks I am on now are:

• MySpace
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Identica
• Tumblr
• Flickr
• FriendFeed
• Plurk
• LinkedIn

I have my IM’s all in Empathy at the moment, but in order for me to post to certain networks it’s like I have to go through Ping.FM or some other service to post to them all. That’s not too much of an issue, it’s more or less getting the updates of the people and groups I follow on these service to show in one place.

I have tiredly searched for solutions for this. I just hope that someday soon someone will come up with something.

Aside from that things are pretty stable. I just need to play more with some things to get back into the swing of things.  I need to bone up on GIMP, Inkscape and Audacity some more so that I can begin working on graphics again and also post a new episode of VooDooRadio.

I am looking into getting a Vidcast put up using Openshot but in order for me to do it I need to get the HD with the VooDooRadio logo on it and work on title sequences.

Seeing this is a new era for me, I am considering on changing the theme music for the show, however I have been using the current music for over 2 years now and it’s been branded into peoples ears. Maybe some minor changes on the intro.. I dunno I just want to get something shorter than the 1.5 minute intro.

Alright I think I bitched enough. If anyone has any solutions to a native client or AIR app that handles all the aforementioned social networks, please comment here or contact me through twitter, AIM, Identica. All are named voodoostevie.

Now I know I can rip to OGG or FLAC and convert them to MP3 using Audacity, LAME, and a shit load of other convertors, but that is 1 extra step! I’ve tried Sound-Juicer and K3B and looked at tutorials for each of them and still no go!

So I went back to Gnome. Long Live the Foot!

One thing I noticed is when I installed UbuntuTweak the Add/Remove Programs app on the Gnome Menu generates no programs in it at all. So I have to go through UbuntuTweak or Synaptic to install programs now. No big issue, but hopefully when Karmic comes out this will not happen.

I’m going to add a Page that lists all the programs I use as a reference to myself and to anyone else who wants a similar system. Also I will post tips to install stuff. WHEE!

I didn’t mess anything up this time under Gnome. Everything was working fine. But I decided to back up and do a clean install of Kubuntu. Everything is back up and running and nothing was really lost (except time to get everything).

So last night I loaded up some games. I love the RTS genre so I got Spring Loaded and the Evolution mod. I would really like to play the Star Wars mod but it’s closed for beta testing.

I found my iTalk finally so hopefully I will be doing a new podcast. I really need to find a new power cord for the mixer but I cannot afford it. So please if you wanna help out with VooDooRadio donate!

I have audacity installed and now I have to figure how to work with it better. It’s been WAY too long since I used it. And hopefully I can make a show as good as I used to under Audition when I was under Windows.

I know I could take the OLD microphone I have (either the USB Logitech or the Radio Shack Omnidirectional) and plug it into the mic jack on the laptop. But the quality is really crumby. I paid good money for a condenser mic and now I can’t use it because the mixer has no power. This is very frustrating to me.

But anyway, nothing much to report on. Everything is running the way I like it more or less.

Now Amarok is a decent player, however I am sketchy on the organization thing it does. It really messes up on the ID3 tags sometimes.

I have a few tunes (1 Andrew W.K. tune, Some “Weird Al” tunes and some Kabuto the Python tracks) which it decided to put everyone in mismatched folders. *sigh*

I hope I can get back to Songbird. I loved that program’s sorting feature a lot better. Also Amarok uses Amazon ONLY for the album art. WTF? Nothing I listen to is on there. BAH!

That’s it for today.

Finally I finished sorting out all my music files and got them back on the external HD! So I started to get things together to record my podcast. Hooked up my mixer, turned it on and plugged it into the USB port. The system found it OK. I checked it with Skype.

Beautiful.  Launched Audacity and chose the input for the mixer and started recording.  The waveform was flat..

Hmmmm..

Read on to find out what happened.Well, I’m looking all around on the machine for settings issues and everything seemed right then I looked down and realized that all of a sudden I had no power on my mixer. The powersupply died. FUCK!

And of course I find out there is an Internal Mic bug in Ubuntu. Great.

Before going out and getting a headset, I guess I should see if I can get the Internal Mic going.  I looked on the Ubuntu Forums and found a few others who have the same issue with Acer Laptops and the internal mic’s. Luckily there is a fix!

• Step 1: Download the Alsa Driver from here:

ftp://ftp.alsa-project.org/pub/driver/alsa-driver-1.0.20.tar.bz2

• Step 2:extract the contents.Open terminal and go to where you downloaded the driver. Extract it using

tar -vxf alsa-driver-1.0.20.tar.gz

• Step 3:  Compile the driverNote:  You need checkinstall if you don’t have it use apt-get to get it

sudo apt-get install checkinstall

Then run the commands below
This takes a little while to do its thing

./configure
make
sudo make install

• Step 4: Configure alsa-base.confAdd the following line to the end of /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf file. I did this by using the command:

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

I added these two lines at the end of the conf file then saved it.

alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
options snd-hda-intel model=acer

• Step 5:  Reboot.

This worked, but seriously, internal mic’s are shitty to say the least. But it’s nice to know that it works more or less. By this time I had gotten so fed up with my mixer dying, I decided that maybe it’s best I use a headset or find out if Daddy’s Junky Music will allow me to get a new cable with my extended warranty. GRRRR.

So after fighting with it all I gave up recording for the night and watched my friend’s do their show on XLR and called it a night.

I watched ITRadio on the live stream and it was running decent aside from the slight skipping because of the wireless connection, but I managed to overcome throwing my machine out the window because of it.

I didn’t do too too much because it was my birthday. I actually removed a few programs that didn’t work too well on the machine (mainly some games) but aside from that everything is still running swell.

I hope to work on a podcast soon. It’s been a few weeks since I last put one out. I haven’t even hooked up the mixer to this machine to see if it can work with Audacity properly. Oh well something to set my sights on I guess.

I basically watched TV last night and had my birthday cake and opened presents from Sarah and Emma. I got 2 iPod cases (1 hard the other is one of the soft rubber ones) some pants and some T-shirts which I needed badly. Emma signed the card and brought me the big bag that the presents were in. My sister and her kids stopped by and gave me cards and a little VW Bug car that Emma loves to play with now.

I will have more things that I have done on the machine tomorrow because I barely spent time doing anything on this day.

I began installing the LAMP server stuff. LAMP is Linux Apache Mysql and PHP as one package. Once I got it all installed I tested out the web server. Worked. Installed PHPMyAdmin. Works. I will play more with that later. I need to read up on configuring Apache some more.

So while updating my podcasts from listening to a bunch of them at work, I installed some Applets for Avant Window Navigator as well as some themes for it and for Gnome. I  also added some more Screenlets and downloaded some desktops from Gnome-Look to make everything stand out. You can see the screenshot by clicking the thumbnail at the top of the page.

So I am still itching to get the mixer hooked up and work on getting the podcast recorded so I can really play with Audacity to re-learn it. It has been too long since I used it.

I ran across another Air application called AirTalkr. It is supposedly an IM client and Social media client combined (like Digsby) but it was REALLY buggy so I uninstalled it.

Uninstalling Air applications is kind of easy. You have to actually download the .air file onto your machine and double click it as if you were installing the application and the installer brings up the Uninstall option. See cake!

Ok That is all for today. I will have more on the 7th day.

After that fail, decided to play around with the screenlets and AWN some more.

Opened up Audacity and made a quick opening sound for my next show (which I need to work on). I was able to recreate and improve on the walkie talkie sounding thing that you hear in the opening. Originally that is made with Audition’s Multiband Compressor Filter but seeing I am not using Audition anymore, I have to take more steps. Annoying to some extent, but the outcome I think is AWESOME.

I also played a little with torrents which work fine… Yo Ho!

Nothing much today, maybe more later on. But I so far have not returned to Windows.

I think I need to try out Banshee to see how well it handles podcasts. gPodder works, but just trying out some other things to see what feels better. Banshee was recommended as an iTunes replacement. We shall see.