Alright so you have a USB mic and Ubuntu is being a bitch about it.  Meaning it probably is thinking that your primary input device is in your soudn card somewhere as apposed to a USB port.. How on earth do we tell get Ubuntu to use the USB port instead of the Soundcard?  We’ll I’m glad you asked because coincidentally that is what I’ll be going over today

First thing first, for most all applications with the exception of those running in WINE, you can to get your butt over to this thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=789578 and get PulseAudio installed.. Pulse is the key to running a proper sound server in Ubuntu(as long as you can get it running properly – something that took me weeks)

The key I found to making sure that pulse works properly in skype with multiple options for inputs is to make sure that in /system/preferences/sound you have everything on auto detect except for the Sound Capture – which is set to Pulse and that your Mixer track is set to ALSA PCM on dmix via DMA PulseAudio Mixer.

The other thing I found was that you NEED to make sure that your ~/.asoundrc file is blank.  This will become key as in the latter part of this post I will show you that you need to fill that same file with a bunch of good stuff if you want to run a USB mic in WINE appz.

So for a lot of you that probably does it for USB mics and Ubuntu.

Now for the rest of you running games and appz in WINE the story is a little different.  This is where my struggles with learning how to get audio properly working in a linux environment when from taxing to hellish.  First a word of advice to all of you wanting to use TeamSpeak and ubuntu with a USB mic or headset – USE WINE and the Windows version.  don’t even bother with the linux version as you will have days and weeks of your life sucked away.  It just doesn’t work

For some reason, at least for me WINE and pulse do NOT mix very well when it comes to the input side of things.  So when I want to use an ingame chat or Teamspeak the first thing I need to do is to shut down Pulse and rely soley on ALSA.  Now this means that a lot of the nice convenient mixer stuff that pulse does needs to be done manually. I posted all this up in the Teamspeak discussion forums and but I’ll save you the trouble of going there and copy it here as well

Now from this point onwards I am going to assume you are using ALSA , if not then you have your own google adventure to go on.

So:

go into your home directory (cd ~) and create a file called “.asoundrc” minus the quotations of course with your favorite editor ( vi ./.asoundrc ) if it doesn’t exist already.. If it does you need to make a backup of it and clear it all to start fresh
The .asoundrc file in your home directory acts as kind of a configuration file that is used to override default settings
Our goal here is to make our default capture device our USB mic and NOT our sound card, this is accomplished by inserting the following text into the .asoundrc file:

pcm.!default {
        type asym
        playback.pcm {
                type plug
                slave.pcm "hw:0,0"
        }
        capture.pcm {
                type plug
                slave.pcm "hw:1,0"
        }
}

***Something to note: “hw:0,0″ and “hw:2,0″ are MY card locations for my soundblaster and my usb mic. Yours might be different. ***

In order to find out what your desired output device is you type the following in terminal:

“aplay -l” and you should receive and output something like this:

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: CA0106 [CA0106], device 0: ca0106 [CA0106]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: CA0106 [CA0106], device 1: ca0106 [CA0106]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: CA0106 [CA0106], device 2: ca0106 [CA0106]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: CA0106 [CA0106], device 3: ca0106 [CA0106]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Obviously My card is 0 as that is the only one that shows up, so I use “hw:0,0″ you need to make extra sure what yours is and use that.

now to find my capture device I type:
“arecord -l” and my output should be something like this:

**** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
card 0: CA0106 [CA0106], device 0: ca0106 [CA0106]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: CA0106 [CA0106], device 1: ca0106 [CA0106]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: CA0106 [CA0106], device 2: ca0106 [CA0106]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: CA0106 [CA0106], device 3: ca0106 [CA0106]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 2: default [AK5370 ], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Now we already know that Card 0 is my soundblaster, which I don’t want to use, so we can rule that out.. The only other option(which is conveniently labeled USB Audio) is Card 2 so that means I used “hw:2,0″ . Yours could be different so edit your .asoundrc file accodingly.

I quickly check to make sure WINE was seeing my usb mic by running the command ‘winecfg’ and going into Audio and making sure that the ALSA WAVE IN device show up as USB Audio.

I have Hardware Acceleration set to Emulation as well as Driver Emulation checked on, not sure if it matters but it is on for me and works.

So there you have it, easy peasy!  Well it is easy to do but figuring this out with next to no documentation on this specific subject was a bitch..Hope this helped

After going through the same problem again and the above solution wasn’t working all that hot for whatever reason.

pcm.!default {
type plug
slave.pcm “combined”
}

pcm.combined {
type asym
playback.pcm “playback”
capture.pcm “hw:1,0″
}

pcm.playback {
type dmix
ipc_key 1024
slave {
pcm “hw:1,0″
period_time 0
period_size 1024
buffer_size 4096
rate 44100
}
bindings {
0 0
1 1
}
}

ctl.dmixer {
type hw
card 1
}

Bev Plester and Clare Wood, Senior Lecturers in Psychology have conducted a study on text messaging for 11 year olds that was published in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology.

The research included the study of spelling and punctuation on regular users of text messaging.  No difference was found in their success and achievement levels of non-texting children of the same age and academic level.

Bev commented, to the British Psychological Society, “There is no evidence to link texting to a lower ability of standard English.  Children using textisms such as, “GR8” were found to be better spellers and writers”.

The study involved 35 children to complete a questionnaire about their mobile phone use.  Other tasks involved translating English and text language and completing tasks on writing, reading and spelling abilities.

This can also be linked to a 2006 study by the same researchers which found that contrary to popular belief, the use of text message abbreviations is linked positively with literacy achievements, according to work carried out by researchers at Coventry University.

Mrs Beverly Plester and Dr Clare Wood from Coventry University presented the findings of their research (which they conducted with eleven-year old children) at the British Psychological Society’s Developmental Section Annual Conference at the Royal Holloway, University of London.

The study explored how the use of text abbreviations might be related to the skills children need in reading and writing. This was in response to concern raised by parents and teachers about whether text messaging could damage a child’s ability to use standard English.

The children were quizzed about their use of mobile phones and asked to translate messages between standard English and text language, as well as complete tasks to reveal their English writing, reading and spelling abilities.

It was discovered that children use their mobile phones more for sending text messages than for talking. Unsurprisingly, the majority of texts were sent to friends.

Most text abbreviations were phonetically based, such as ‘wot’ for ‘what’ and combination texts, such as ‘C U L8r. Many children also used a form of ‘youth code’ which is a casual form of language such as ‘dat fing’, ‘gonna’ or ‘wanna’.

Surprisingly, the children who were better at spelling and writing used the most ‘textisms’.

Mrs Plester said:

“So far, our research has suggested that there is no evidence to link a poor ability in standard English to those children who send text messages. In fact, the children who were the best at using ‘textisms’ were also found to be the better spellers and writers.”

“We are interested in discovering whether texting could be used positively to increase phonetic awareness in less able children, and perhaps increase their language skills, in a fun yet educational way.”

It is hoped further research work can be undertaken with a wider cross-section of schools in Coventry and Warwickshire if funding for the research can be identified.

Articles Quoted:

http://wwwp.coventry.ac.uk/cu/newsandevents/a/3163

http://www.coventry.ac.uk/latestnewsandevents/a/2341

The BBC is also running an article right now on a similar topic : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7910075.stm

http://www.perfecturine.com/

This was just too funny to pass up posting..A website strictly dedicated to shipping you clean Urine for those awkward tests that your pot smoking brain somehow forgot about.  Only in the age of the internet do we have international businesses setup to mail good clean urine anywhere in the world

I am so grateful to have witnessed this performance tonight.. My lord I have never seen passion personified like I do in Gustavo Dudamel, this is the first TED talk that when it ended I cheered and applauded with the audience.  Do yourself a favour, quiet everything down, put this on the bigscreen and loud speakers and allow the spirit of this man and what his orchestra create wash over you and take your soul to heights that it has never seen before.

The Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra contains the best high school musicians from Venezuela’s life-changing music program, El Sistema. Led here by Gustavo Dudamel, they play Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10, 2nd movement, and Arturo Márquez’ Danzón No. 2.

About Gustavo Dudamel and the Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra

The Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra is the national high-school-age youth orchestra of El Sistema, made up of the best young musicians from throughout Venezuela. Gustavo Dudamel, himself a… Full bio and more links

An absolutely mind blowing, eye opening talk about a species of primate that it would seem no one pays any attention to because of how pias we are against sexuality, that being that their activities mirror our own so closely that it makes us uncomfortable.  My god, these discoveries and research about the Bonobo could be some of the most important in all of the animal kingdom and our religious squirminess has stopped us from truly glorifying what seems to be the other sentient intelligent species on this planet!!  We’ve been looking for a missing link that connects us to primates?  While these made not be the exact genus we decended from, the answer has been sharing this planet with us all along!

About this talk

Savage-Rumbaugh’s work with bonobo apes, which can understand spoken language and learn tasks by watching, forces the audience to rethink how much of what a species can do is determined by biology — and how much by cultural exposure.

About Susan Savage-Rumbaugh

Susan Savage-Rumbaugh has made startling breakthroughs in her lifelong work with chimpanzees and bonobos, showing the animals to be adept in picking up language and other “intelligent” behaviors. Full bio and more links

Fantatic speaker talking about the most amazing stuff in our future.  If we have a future that is.

Haha, man this one cracked me up today.   Remember kids when you fail your next math exam because your decimal was out by two places just tell your teacher it is a matter of opinion.

.002 Dollars does NOT Equal .002 Cents

This video was sent to me and while the first 45 seconds or so I was wondering what was going on and why it was special. It really turned around after that and made me say ‘Wow’ .. What a brilliantly put together piece by this young woman.. Well Done!

Tuxradar has some great benchmarks out that showcase the performance differences between Windows 7(and Vista) against Ubuntu.  And the results sure make me glad I am no longer a windows man

Click Below for the rest of the results

http://www.tuxradar.com/content/benchmarked-ubuntu-vs-vista-vs-windows-7

Caught this talk from Bill Gates this week and although he may not be the most inspiring or poetic of speakers he is perhaps the most influential man in our lifetimes and that alone puts me in a state of awe to listen to. A man that can forever change the world perhaps more than any other single person alive has a mind that needs to be tapped to it’s fullest.