WVW

Somewhere in the beginning of April I was contacted by two young ladies from Montreal, Quebec, Canada. They were looking for an organisation to be able to launch their project concerning guerilla bookmarks. As I have fond memories of my “stage” in Montreal, I decided to say yes and this enabled them to come to Brussels. Next week they will set up a workshop in the Bar of Recyclart.

A synopsis:

WORKSHOP BOOKMARKS - GUERILLA ART
Date : Tuesday 13 May 2008 - Thursday 15 May 2008
Entrance : Free

Artistic guerilla action with L’Oeil dans L’Front: workshop-exhibition-action!

The Canadian collective “L’Oeil dans L’Front” from Montréal is coming to Brussels for a project about “Guerilla Art”. Together with Recyclart they are organizing a workshop about producing artistic bookmarks, which later on will be put in the books of the Brussels ‘ libraries.

This cut and paste workshop is free and open to everybody, on the 13th, 14th and 15th of May, in the bar of Recyclart, from 15h to 17h30. Bring your dose of creativity, we’ll take care of the necessary material.

The collected bookmarks will be exhibited shortly after the workshop, in the bar of Recyclart, after their brief public life and before they are spread anonymously.

If you want to participate, please send an e-mail to fabien. recker [[[ @ ]]] recyclart. be or ring 02-502 57 34.

L’Oeil dans L’Front is a collective founded by the Quebecois Elsa Charpentier and Perruche. Their intention is to gently insert art in daily life and public space. The public is invited to acknowledge and question the poetic details of daily life, by making gestures that softly alter those details. For example by eliminating the borders between spectator and actor or by instigating people to slow down or stop public life. Elsa and Peruche are introduced to Brussels by Constant vzw.

Dezelfde informatie in NL: klik hier voor de website van Recyclart.
Le même info en FR: cliquez ici pour le site de Recyclart.

In the past I had the entention to write a manual on how to configure Jack, for a good performance.

Luckily the Ubuntu Studio blog called Ubustu beat me to it and they have published a great manual here:

**How to Configure JACK in Ubuntu Studio**

I have recently been working on a manual for a certain script with which you can easily record interviews, without having to edit them. More about this script will follow later.

During the research and testing phase of this script, I have encountered many a challenge (euphemism for problem). At this moment in time, my computer has Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon - Gnome desktop - and an Ubuntu Studio realtime kernel (installed through synaptic).

One of the challenges is the multiplicity of sounddrivers/sound servers.
Alsa - OSS- ESD -> and to make stuff more complex, I use an external soundcard..
Here is where you find the sound preferences of your Linux computer through the graphical interface (by using your mouse (^_^).

This is what I can choose from:

Now, as I try to work with a script, I need the command line version of this:
And this is where arecord comes in.
Arecord = alsarecord

This command displays all soundcards and digital devices that can be used to capture sound - at that moment:

$ arecord -l

On my computer I get a result indicating that my soundcard of my laptop is hardware device number 0 for capturing and the external soundcard (USB) is hardware device number 2:

$ arecord -l
**** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
card 0: ICH6 [Intel ICH6], device 0: Intel ICH [Intel ICH6]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: ICH6 [Intel ICH6], device 1: Intel ICH - MIC ADC [Intel ICH6 - MIC ADC]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: ICH6 [Intel ICH6], device 2: Intel ICH - MIC2 ADC [Intel ICH6 - MIC2 ADC]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: ICH6 [Intel ICH6], device 3: Intel ICH - ADC2 [Intel ICH6 - ADC2]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: Pro [FastTrack Pro], device 1: USB Audio [USB Audio #1]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Now, I want to record a test sound through my external soundcard, via arecord (in the Terminal).

$ arecord -f dat -d 20 -D hw:1,1 test.wav

The sound is recorded in the file where you are on that moment in your Terminal.

*Extra*
Two commands which give handy results for trouble shooting:

- To see which soundcard(s) are installed on your computer:

$ cat /proc/asound/cards

- To check what sound modules are loaded:

$ cat /proc/modules|grep snd

Thanks to linuxquestions.org and Cyberciti.biz for the online inspiration.

This is actually the fourth Linux audio workshop!

Some details:

** What: Workshop ARDOUR
** Where: Atelier du web, Rue du Fortstraat 39, 1060 Bruxel
** When: 14/06/07, 19:30 – 21:00
** Info and enrollment: http://wiki.bxlug.be/ProjetAudio/Mini-atelier_2

Thursday june the 14th an Ardour worksession is on the agenda. Learn how to make a radiojingle with Ardour. Ardour is a digital audio workstation with which you can record edit and a whole lot more).

Please take your headphones, microphones, ideas for slogans, and some sound and music!
**
This is one episode in a series of workshops taking place during the months of April, May and June, focussing on useage and knowledge exchange about free software for audio. The software presented include all major open source tools for capturing, editing, production, mixing and diffusion of sound. The workshops are a collaboration between Constant, Collectifs.net, Radio Campus, Radio Air Libre, Radio Panik and Bxlug. The workshops came about spontaneously.
**
See detailed program: http://wiki.bxlug.be/ProjetAudio/
(enroll by clicking on edit and adding your name in this wiki page:
http://wiki.bxlug.be/ProjetAudio/Mini-atelier_2)

Through the Make Magazine weblog I have found a website called Osalt (open source as alternative) which shows what alternatives there are for Commercial software in open source software.

Now, of course it would be better to start with open source software in the first place, but more often than not people are used to certain propietary software to do certain tasks, and they have a hard time changing those software habits.

With this website you can check whether there is an open source alternative for the proprietary software you use/know etc.
An example:

I want to replace Ph*t*sh*p by an open source alternative.

In the software directory I choose Graphic applications, low and behold, Ph*t*sh*p is in the list.

I get a list of comparable open source programmes, or applications that have similar possibilities (whether partial or completely) as the proprietary software.
What I really liked about this website was, that first of all I got more than just the Gimp (Gimp is good!!) and secondly that the compatibility with which operating system is also included (whether you are a linux, mac or wind*ws user).

Part of a screenshot:

A while ago, there was a question for Constant, concerning The Gimp, GNU Image Manipulation Program and possible tutorials on The Gimp. I stumbled upon a review of the following book: Gimp 2 for photographers.
And the review is positive!

My sharp eye is always on the lookout for “multimedia” applications and Linux, especially where audio is concerned. Five minutes ago I learnt about the development of Ubuntu studio, throught Boingboing.

How far will Ubuntu go? What software and hardware support will be included? And above all, will it work easily…..

They plan to release Ubuntu Studio in april.

Curious, I am!

I guess I don’t have a lot of heroes nor heroines. But today I am going to write a little rambling about a hero of mine (from when I was a little girl…). Sir David Attenborough, renouned nature documentary maker (from the BBC website: “On his 80th birthday in May this year he will be on the Galapagos islands filming the Giant tortoises, one of whom, the famous Lonesome George, is about the same age.” Need I say more… ) stated the following in an article in the Independant : Climate change is the major challenge facing the world.
For years Attenborough has been making wonderful documentaries about nature, the planet, ecosystems (he made the plant world exciting, speeding up the rhythm of plants to “human” level, revealing extraordinary strategies and cleverness in plants-> a series called The Private Life of Plants). Through the mass medium television he manages to reach quite an audience (I was one of them) and he creates an awareness about the fragile balanced world we live in, stressing the extraordinary elements of this crazy little planet. In his work he does not ignore the humongous impact humans have on nature but he always stayed skeptical on the subject of Climate change. Up to now…
In this article he clearly states that the climate changes are the biggest threat for humanity.

His final phrases in the article are as following: “I’m 80 now. It’s not that I think, like any old man, that change is wrong. I recognise that the world has always changed. I know that. But the point is, it’s changing more extremely and swiftly than at any time in the past several million years. And one of the things I don’t want to do is to look at my grandchildren and hear them say: “Grandfather, you knew it was happening - and you did nothing.”

Blimy, what a top granddad!! sniff (I’m moved).
(Somewhere about ten years ago I went to the honorary doctorate celebration of Attenborough at the University of Ghent, Belgium. Attenborough gave a small reading about nature and humanity. It was brilliant. Magnificent reasoning with a huge love of nature flowing through hs words, not scoulding human kind but trying to generate an awareness. I wanted to interview him afterwards, but I was too impressed. Tss, there goes my cool I’d like to be as awake at 80 as he is…)

Thanks Treehugger (tss still moved)

For those of you struggling in the world of images and free software (resizing, reworking photographs, drawings etc), there is of course Gimp, The GNU Image Manipulation Programme.
For those people using a certain proprietary sofware with a name ending with …shop, having difficulties to leave their …shop habits behind, yet they would like to use free software to edit their images, there is Gimpshop.
I quote the maker: “Longtime Ph*t*sh*p users should feel very comfortable using GIMPshop.”

HÚhÚ

If you work with multimedia and you are on linux, you will know that it is not always an easy marriage… Getting all the libraries, making sure that all your hardware (camera, soundcard, graphics card…) is compatible and recognized…

We have recently installed Apodio, which is Mandriva based and it seems to be working quite well! A lot of audio programmes are included, and also there is a preconfigured setup with Jack and Alsa (audio server -not so easy to set up, it basically connects your hardware to your software).

In case of doubt try it as a live cd!

(more about live cd’s on wikipedia)

Pictures and a report of the install party at Nadine here.

And remember, live cd’s do not hurt one bit!