1. Clear your browser cache

If unsure how to do this, please google “clear [browser name] cache”, where browser name is either “Internet Explorer”, “Firefox”, “Chrome”, etc.

2. Clear your flash cache

I didn’t know about this one, but if you browse to the Flash Settings Manager page, you can delete your Flash cache.

3. For good luck, close your browser and re-open it

Seems to have done to trick for me, now I can listen to albums and playlists without playback stopping anymore! Only thing is the issue seems to reproduce itself every now and again.

Token countdown:

So, to change the effect the volume keys have:

1. Press Alt+F2 to bring up the “Run” box.
2. Type in “gconf-editor” and press enter.
3. Select “Apps > gnome_settings_daemon“
4. On the right hand side you’ll have a single option named “volume_step“
5. Change the numerical value (6 by default) to a lower one (3 seems pretty good)

Simples!

After reinstalling gstreamer and rhythmbox a few times I turned to the Ubuntu Forums. The answer is in the following thread, but I missed it on first glance so thought I’d post it here: [ubuntu] rhythmbox 9.10 mp3

To save you reading through all the posts, to fix the problem after upgrading to 9.10 (not from a clean install), you need to delete your gstream preferences. Open up the terminal and type the following:

rm -rf ~/.gconf/system/gstreamer
rm -rf ~/.gstreamer-0.10

If you log off and back on again now, you should have mp3 playback in rhythmbox again. If that doesn’t work, take a look at the other suggestions in the ubuntu forum thread.

Anyway, one of the more difficult problems was getting 5.1 sound out of the sound card in Ubuntu. The motherboard has a built-in 5.1 sound card, the realtek ACL662. Some people have little trouble enabling surround sound but there seems to be an issue with this card. I managed to find a solution by merging a few ideas together.

Here are the steps I took:

1. By default, Ubuntu is only set to run 2 sound channels (left and right). To enable 6 channels (5.1) we need to edit the sound config file. Theres an excellent tutorial for doing that here. But put simply, edit /etc/pulse/daemon.conf and uncomment the line "; default-sample-channels = 2", changing it to "default-sample-channels = 6"
2. The most important part for this card. Edit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base and add "options snd-hda-intel model=3stack-6ch-dig" to the end of the file.
3. Restart the machine.
4. Open sound preferences (System > Preferences > Sound)
5. Make sure that the ALSA mixer is selected.
6. Bring up the sound mixer.
7. Hopefully, the “Front, Center, Surround & LFE” sliders will be available. If not try to add them by clicking on Properties.
8. Make sure all sliders are on full.
9. Still on the mixer, go to the ‘Options’ tab and set ‘Channel mode’ to ‘6ch’.
10. Ok everything and close the mixer.
11. To test, at the command line try "$ speaker-test -Dplug:surround51 -c6 -l1 -twav"

Hopefully that’ll do it. If not, there are a tonne of other guides if you search for “Ubuntu 5.1 sound”. Checkout the forum post that helped me find this solution here, at the Ubuntu forums.

If options 7 and/or 9 aren’t available to you, I’d guess the fix hasn’t solved your problem.

I’d used the extigy on the mac before, and it certainly does detect it and play sound. Unfortunately I hadn’t paid much attention to the rear speakers. It turns out creative never released any drivers for the mac, so not only can I not get proper 5.1 surround sound, the CMSS feature won’t work either.

So that was a waste of time and money, considering I can get the same sound from a normal stereo cable. Apparently the newer macbooks (hopefully mine included) have optical audio out, but I’m not sure I want to buy the cable to find out?

As a “sort of” fix, I’m going to play music using parallels running Windows XP. I don’t think I’m ever going to get away from Windows for good.

There are a number of options available to do this:

1. Using a flash (swf) file to perform the upload
2. Using a java applet to perform the upload
3. Using an HTML file input box to create a hidden array of file input boxes

My issue with #3 is that you still have to individually select all the files in a folder before clicking upload. If you want to upload 50 files, thats 100 clicks and a case of RSI. So, I ignored #3 entirely.

Ideally,  I wanted solution #1, but I found a lot of answers to solution #3,  followed by #2. In the end I tried out four different solutions, all open source.

SWFUpload

By far my favourite, and the one we ended up using, this is the same tool wordpress use for their image upload plug

in. It is the most difficult to configure, but its got the most flexibility. SWFUpload uses a .swf file for the actual file uploads, which get posted to a script you specify in the setup. There are then a load of javascript callbacks that allow you to track the progress of files and update your page with the results. All in all, very impressed.

Check it out and download it here: http://www.swfupload.org

There are also demos at: http://demo.swfupload.org

UPDATE: I stumbled across a blog post with a tutorial for creating your own flash file, incase you don’t

want to use SWFUpload. It looks pretty simple, so check it out: Multiple File Upload Using Flash

jUpload

jUpload was the first tool I tried, but couldn’t get the Firefox Java plugin working on my desktop (ubuntu) and so gave up. I’m sure the tool would have done the job, but I’d have needed to compile it and more importantly, it looks ugly.

Check it out at: http://jupload.sourceforge.net

jQuery-transmit

Had this worked for me, I think it could have been pretty good. It works on the same principal as SWFUpload, but with seemingly less features. The fact that it used jQuery made me want to use it.

Check it out at: http://code.google.com/p/jquery-transmit/

jQuery multiple file upload plugin

This uses option #3 from the list above, and I couldn’t get it to work. It may have been something silly I was doing but, because it uses method #3, I didn’t spend too long trying to fix it.

If you’re still interested in trying it, check out: http://www.fyneworks.com/jquery/multiple-file-upload/

In conclusion, if you have the knowledge and patience to set up SWFUpload, it really pays off. Once the file manager is done I’ll put up a demo, I’m unashamedly impressed. For now I’ve got a screenshot. Ignore how ugly it is (and the garish colours), I haven’t given it to the designers yet!

SWFUpload concept demo

Yesterday I was unable to browse the store on my phone because I was in the UK. Today I’m able to browse the store, but unable to download Shazam, an app that I could download yesterday.

I’m also a little worried that, as it grows bigger, it will be harder to find the application you are after and with only IE support if you want to view it on your computer, that sucks.

Hopefully we’ll see a load of updates over the next few days!

With the error not dissapearing, I gave them a ring. The first question they asked was, “what browser are you using?“. Firefox, of course. Apparently the application form will only work in Internet Explorer. A few years ago I would have thought to try this first, but I was under the impression Firefox had enough market share to be taken seriously.

What really annoys me is that there is nothing in this process that should require internet explorer to operate properly. Its just a series of simple forms. Its ironic because the government probably paid more for this one form thatn we’ve ever charged for all forms we’ve ever built, and it isn’t even accessible to 30% of the Internet (counting Safari, etc).

The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades (keynote)

I’d never heard of Aral before, and as he cheesily ran across the stage at the beginning (to a silent reaction) I was a little worried! It turns out I’d judged him too soon, as the talk turned out to be really interesting. I think his point about remembering the first piece of code you ever wrote, and how excited you were about what it did, really hit home with a lot of the people in the audience. He finished with “make sure you’re always working on things that excite you” (paraphrased, I’ll try to find the actual quote).. which is something I really want to work towards, but sometimes you just need to pay the bills.

Sharding Architectures

I’d already heard Scott talk about the new features of 5.3 so thought I’d checking Sharding. Although I didn’t know what “Sharding” was before the talk, I was familiar with the technique, I just didn’t know what it was called! I thought the topic was delivered well, although some key points were missing from the explanation of consistent hashing.

Of Lambda Functions, Closures and Traits

Sebastien’s opening line: “I’d like to confirm that Marcus and I don’t hate each other”. I’d not heard any rumours but had always wondered what would happen if the SimpleTest and UnitTest creators had met up. Apparently nothing. It was great to see some of the new PHP 5.3 features and examples of how to use them. I’m looking forward to the introduction of Lamba functions and closures but it sounds like there are a few useful (perhaps even key) related features that didn’t make it in to 5.3 in time that will hopefully get in to a future release soon. I couldn’t think of a use case for functors though?

Living with Frameworks

Although Stuart tried to stay impartial, he is clearly a big fan of Symfony. :p I think 80% of the room were already familiar with frameworks, me included, but it was good to hear other people had experienced similar issues to us when implemeting a framework. Towards the end I got a little bored with the reading of the quotes from Will, James and Bob (or whatever their names were). The talk was pretty popular though, and I was the last one to get in.. which was lucky, as the alternative was PHP on Windows. Its not that I have a problem with Windows, I just won’t be switching any time soon.

Flex and AIR for PHP programmers

Not a lot to say about this talk. Flex is something I’m interested in getting in to and so it was good to see Mihai creating an application live on stage. But I’m still not sure I had enough info to get me started. I’m gonna email him for one of those free books.

Security-Centered Design — exploring the impact of human behavior

I’d not heard of Chris before either, but he seems like an interesting guy and was pretty happy to openly share his opinion on pretty much anything. The talk didn’t get in to anything too specific, but shared some ideas on how to subtly let users know that they are on a secure site or, that they’re on the wrong site in the case of phishing. Either way I left the talk feeling I’d learnt something and had a good time.

Otherwise, the rest of the day was great. Lunch was tasty, events ran on time and everything seemed well organised. The only downside? I didn’t win anything.