Voice of the Kernel Album re-released

Thanks to Chris Ahlstrom (G+ account), who requested to post "ÜBERG33K" in a single tar.gz archive, I made my 2009 "Voice of the Kernel" album available for download via Mediafire (thank you Mediafire, for making this possible <3).

Here is the direct link to the tar.gz file (files in Ogg-Vorbis audio format).

Voice of the Kernel is in fact a compilation album of geeky "computer Love" related songs, including a couple of new songs especially written for the album.

Voice of the Kernel is dedicated to all GNU/Linux advocates out there. Thank you Ladies and Gentlemen, you probably have no idea how important your advocacy is and how happy it makes me feel. You Rock!

GNU/Linus is not only an Operating System, it is a way of Life, a very exciting way of Life ;-)

Like all my music, it is released under CC-BY-SA, Enjoy and share!

Love Marti :-*

New Album "ÜBERG33K: 2012 The Alan Turing Year" Released.

I am very proud to announce the release of the successor to "Voice Of The Kernel", my new album "ÜBERG33K: 2012 The Alan Turing Year".

The album strictly includes new songs, thus no remixes or previous released songs. It is my 30 anniversary album, since I released my first "One Man Band" Audio-cassette in 1982. "ÜBERG33K" is dedicated to the memory of Alan Turing and the track "For Dennis Ritchie" is dedicated to the memory of Dennis Ritchie, who unfortunately passed away this year.

The album, was entirely created using strictly 100% Free Software.

The Tracks.

Please click on the title to listen to and/or download the song.

0x01. Atlantis.

A New Age Soundscape made out of 3 Public Domain samples.

0x02. TechBytes.

Extended version of the Tune I wrote for the TechBytes Audiocast.

0x03. Megatones.

Inspired and dedicated to the Memory of Patrick Cowley.

0x04. Unity (Is Sexy).

A song to celebrate Canonical's Ubuntu Unity Gnome Desktop Shell. Featuring an extract of a Interview with Mark Shuttleworth and a quote of Ted Gould, using Gespeaker.

0x05. HAL9000.

A homage to the HAL9000 Computer, featuring a selection of HAL9000 voice samples, including the song "Daisy".

0x06. 2012 The Alan Turing Year Morse Code.

Title says it all.

0x07. ÜBERG33K.

Title song, dedicated to the Memory of Alan Turing.

0x08. Bletchley Park.

Dedicated to Turing's Code braking work at Bletchley Park. Includes voice sample of myself, for a change ;-)

0x09. Anonymous (We Are Legion).

A New Wave song with High Quality Samples, dedicated to the Anoymous Hacker Collective

0x10. Project X (CD-BONUS).

A extended version of a song, that was the Level 2 tune in previous versions of the Alien Arena Game. Since I was up until now not able to ask the author for permission to use his work, I am unable to upload the "remix" to my Soundclick page (which would be a violation).

There for, no link to this song, only available on the CD.

0x11. For Dennis Ritchie.

This song is dedicated to the Memory of Dennis Ritchie, creator of the C Programming Language and co-author of the Unix Operating System.

0x12. Mark 1 Music.

A recording, late 1960's by the BBC demonstrating the Manchester Mark 1 Computer's  digital sound abilities.

The Used Software.

The used Operating System is Ubuntu GNU/Linux (Precise Pangolin) 12.04.

The most important application I've used to compose the songs is openMTP. Since openMPT is a Windows Application, I used PlayOnLinux to install and run it without hassle, on my beloved GNU/Linux.

The songs where fine-tuned (including lead out) with Audacity.  The Final Master CD was recorded using K3B, the most reliable, flexible and user friendly CD authoring Application ever® IMHO.

The Cover Photo was recorded using Cheese, edited using KoverArtist, "Printed" to PDF, converted to PNG using PDFEdit and finally edited with The GIMP.

The T-Shirt I ware on the Cover Photo was created using LibreOffice Writer.

I sincerely hope you will enjoy and share my Free Music. It is made with unconditional Love towards the brilliant giants who created the Free Software ecosystem and Computer Industry.

Update: August 5 2012.

Here is the complete album (in Ogg-Vorbis audio format) as a single tar.gz (archive) file, including the cover as PDF and the Bonus Track. Thanks to Chris Ahlstrom for the request. Comes in very handy now that the Soundclick site is obviously down.

Marti Van Lin, April 2012 (The Alan Turing Year).

Unity is Ready for Prime Time Now!

A couple of months ago, I posted a DOOM-scenario to show why Unity was Not ready for Prime Time, back then.

Fortunately a lot of progress has been made in Unity and I assure you that it IS most certainly ready for Prime Time by now.

Zeitgeist, upstream from the Gnome 3 project, keeps track of file activities. Unity obviously takes advantage of Zeitgeist.

Now fortunately in system settings a Privacy option was added, which gives you control over what file types and paths Zeitgeist may record or should ignore.

There you have it! The "dumbed down" stuff was simply upstream growing pain from the Gnome 3 project and most advanced users have already found the required packages in Ubuntu Software Center or Synaptic, to be fully back in control again.

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS: Future (of computing) is Now!

Bart Smit Tomtec Ultimate 10: Het ultieme tablet voor € 199,--

Mijn broer GL1MST heeft van de kerstman (hijzelf) een Bart Smit TomTec Ultimate 10 Tablet Execellent, voor de zeer schappelijke prijs van € 199,-- gekregen. Het tablet draait Android 2.3 "Gingerbread" en doet voor die prijs niet onder voor de Samsung Galaxy TAB en vergelijkbare duurdere tablets.

Het volgende is overgenomen uit de beschrijving van Bart Smit.

• 9.7" IPS scherm (25 cm doorsnede);
• Multitouch;
• Cortex A8 1.2 GHz chip;
• 1 GB DDR3 werkgeheugen;
• 4 GB opslaggeheugen;
• Micro SD/SDHC slot;
• HDMI output;
• Hoge capaciteit accu;
• 2 camera's;
• Luidspreker;
• Video-, Muziek- en Fotoweergave;
• Internetbrowser, e-mail;
• Wi-Fi en USB ingang;
• Inclusief oplader;

Nog in de specificaties bij Bart Smit, nog in de handleiding wordt om de een of andere mysterieuze reden geen woord gerept over de Bluetooth ondersteuning, die wel degelijk op het apparaat aanwezig is.

Uiteraard mocht ik het tablet eens flink aan de tand voelen, tijdens de kerstdagen (die ik met veel plezier bij GL1MST hebt doorgebracht). Ik heb een Bluetooth switch en Bluetooth File transfer widget geïnstalleerd en dit werkte formidabel!

De DUN verbinding is nog niet getest, maar tijdens het nieuwjaarsweekend blijf ik ook weer bij GL1MST logeren, dus zal er weer heerlijk geknutseld worden. Ik verwacht dat een DUN verbinding met een Smartphone ook zonder al te veel moeite te realiseren valt.

In tegenstelling tot mijn TomTec WM8650 7 Tablet, draaide Skype en aDOSbox als een zonnetje op de TomTec Ultimate 10 Excellent.

Mijn conclusie: de TomTec Ultimate 10 Excellent is een fantastisch tablet, met alles er op en er aan (2 camera's, een micro en full sized USB socket, een snelle (1 Ghz) CPU, voldoende RAM (1 GiB (werkgeheugen)) Mini HDMI socket, (ongedocumenteerde) Bluetooth. Kortom: het ultieme tablet voor een habbekrats.

De natte droom van iedere zichzelf respecterende geek!

Looking forward to Ubuntu Precise Pangolin

Like never before I am looking forward to the first Alpha release of the Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution.

First of all I am a huge fan of Ubuntu's Unity and from what I understood from sadfl's posts is that Unity will get the final touch and polish it requires.

I am very pleased that Canonical finally gives up on Banshee and the entire Mono stack, which means I don't have to remove this trojan, each time I upgrade to a new version of Ubuntu any more.

As soon as Precise Pangolin Alpha 1 is released, I will install it on the internal hard disk drive of my laptop.

Homage to Dennis Ritchie

13 October 2011 started as a sunny day, which was dubbed "Ubuntu 11.10 release day". Unfortunately that day was overshadowed with the sad news that Dennis Ritchie passed away on October 8 2011.

As you probably know from my Hackwerk poster, Mr. Ritchie is one of my heroes.

More information on Dennis Ritchie and his magnificent contributions to the world are available on Wikipedia.

Thanks you Dennis!

Why Unity is not ready for prime time.

Preface.

No this is not yet another "Unity sucks" "Canonical is the new Evil Empire" rant. I am searching for Canonical's attention to urgently address a serious flaw in Unity, which I think the Unity dev team somehow overlooked.

The problem.

The problem is the absence of a "clear history" or "delete history" function in Unity as present in Gnome 2.

A (Sample) Scenario.

John Doe, typical 35 years young dude next door, married to Jill of the Jungle and father of 2, has a computer running Ubuntu "Snappy Snake", to do some "administrative tasks" (riiight). In reality he games his ass of and has a huge pr0n .avi .flv - and its ilk - collection.

Nothing wrong with that, nobody notices or suffers from it and John has a good time...

... Until Jill one fine night comes into John's hobby room and asks him if he has a program to manage recipes.

John clicks the Ubuntu logo on the left top of his screen and searches for "recipes" in the Dasher.

And OOPS, there it is! although the search was totally unrelated. Dasher shows John's file history, including a thumbnail of JeniferLopezFingersPussy.flv.

Congratulations Canonical, you have just unleashed WWIII on a family scale!

Until a "clear history" function is implemented, Unity is not usable. Just as simple as that :-p

Good luck implementing it ;-)