Let Ubuntu speak to you

I discovered that Ubuntu has a built in speech synthesizer called espeak.

From the site http://espeak.sourceforge.net:

eSpeak is a compact open source software speech synthesizer for English and other languages, for Linux and Windows. http://espeak.sourceforge.net

eSpeak produces good quality English speech. It uses a different synthesis method from other open source TTS engines, and sounds quite different. It's perhaps not as natural or "smooth", but I find the articulation clearer and easier to listen to for long periods.

It can run as a command line program to speak text from a file or from stdin.

To test it out right now, open a terminal window and type in the following command:

espeak "Welcome to espeak, how may I help you?"

You can type whatever you like within the quotation marks, so have some fun.

If you'd rather a female voice, then enter this command:

espeak -v en+f4 "Welcome to espeak, how may I help you?"

The -v command allows for different languages. You can find more info on voices as well as all the other commands here:
espeak commands

Technorati Tags: ubuntu, ubucrates classroom, espeak, speech synthesizer,

The bugs in the Earth

I recently installed version 4.3 of Google Earth which is the latest beta version of this great software.
I always had this app on my computer when I was using Windows and never had a problem with it. It always ran smoothly, but the Ubuntu versions that I've tried have been very buggy.
I had installed version 4.2 to begin with, but the screen was always flickering and the globe was impossible to view. This bug hasn't changed for me with the new beta version release. I'm not sure why this is happening, since I don't read anything about this bug online.
I'll be exploring this in the hopes that I can correct it and begin enjoying my virtual globe trotting holiday.

Laptop wifi glitches

It's just over a week since I installed Ubuntu on my daughters laptop. She's been extremely happy with the speed increase of her Compaq Presario V2000. I left her the choice to use either Windows or Ubuntu as I created a dual boot system for her, but to date, she hasn't booted Windows up yet. She's been happy using the Linux software I installed. When I set her computer up, I took time to walk her through the differences between Windows and Ubuntu and what to expect. I explained all the software that she likes to use compared to its Windows equivalent. I gave her no less than 3 Instant Messaging programs to test drive to see which one she likes best. She's still trying each one out.
Lately, she's been finding that the Wifi signal doesn't load automatically on booting. I'm puzzled as to why this is. I noticed that one time it happened, I tried rebooting only to find the wifi unavailable again. It was only when I shut the laptop down and restarted that the wifi mysteriously came back on. I haven't spent much time yet to try and track down a reason or a fix for this just yet. I only hope that this doesn't totally discourage her from continuing on as a linux user.

Ubuntu gives birth at home

After having initial success with my desktop Ubuntu installation, I convinced my daughter to let me install Ubuntu on her laptop and set it up as a dual boot system. It was easy to do as her laptop was running Windows and was constantly having problems to which she would come to me for help.
The installation went well except for the major hurdle I had with trying to get the Wifi working on her Compaq Presario V2000. I'll explain what I did to get it working in another post.
All updates/upgrades are now installed and she is currently exploring the new environment. I told her to try everything so that she can see which software applications she prefers. I installed three IM clients, AMSN, Emesene, and Pidgin. There are also several music players for her to choose from. I'm trying to decide if I like Amarok, Rhythmbox or the new Banshee vr1.0, so I told her to try them all for herself to see which one she likes.
Today I enabled Network printing with a bit of help from the Ubuntu community help documentation. Very easy to get up and running with 2 Ubuntu machines. For some reason, I couldn't get it working with a remote Windows machine, but I didn't spend much time working on it at the time.
I'm pleased that we have two linux computers now in the home, and now I'm trying to convince my wife to allow me to install Ubuntu on her computer, but she'll need a bit more convincing that having another baby is a good idea.


Technorati Tags: Ubuntu, ubucrates classroom, printer sharing, laptop, compaq, presario, v2000,

Booting two separate hard drives

When I first installed Ubuntu, I made the decision to install it as a separate operating system on my second hard drive with it's own grub file so that it wouldn't mess with my Windows drive.
Installing version 8.04 was a very simple process. I simply unplugged my Windows drive and made the second hard drive the master drive. I then rebooted the computer with only the second drive connected and allowed the Ubuntu DVD to boot up and whereupon I installed ubuntu. Once it was installed, I removed the DVD and rebooted that drive. I left the Windows drive unplugged as I only wanted to use Ubuntu and get familiar with it. I installed updates, new software and hooked up my peripheral devices.
I plugged my Windows drive back in so that I can use it as a backup drive for my data. Since the grub/menu.lst file did not have any Windows boot information in it, I can always remove the Linux drive and move it to another computer if/when I upgrade and it will be a plug and play drive.
Recently, I wanted to be able to boot into either Ubuntu or Windows via the grub file. Sounds simple, but since Ubuntu was already installed, that meant editing the menu.lst file. This is simple enough to do, but most information online is for those who have installed ubuntu on their second drive with the grub file located on the windows drive. I had done things the other way around.
I need to add some lines to the menu.lst file to let the computer know that my Windows drive was the slave drive and that I wanted it to boot first and then load Windows instead of Ubuntu.
Here are the steps I took to make this all happen.

Load up the menu.lst file
gksudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

Edit the file to include the following lines.

## ## End Default Options ##

title Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.24-18-generic

root (hd0,0)

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-18-generic root=UUID=86e9f44e-08bb-470d-98f8-56023839f9c0 ro quiet splash

initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-18-generic

quiet

title Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.24-18-generic (recovery mode)

root (hd0,0)

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-18-generic root=UUID=86e9f44e-08bb-470d-98f8-56023839f9c0 ro single

initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-18-generic

(hd1) /dev/sdb

title Windows XP

root (hd1,0)

savedefault

makeactive

map (hd0) (hd1)

map (hd1) (hd0)

chainloader +1

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

I also changed the boot time and made the menu visible by changing the following lines as shown here:

## timeout sec
# Set a timeout, in SEC seconds, before automatically booting the default entry
# (normally the first entry defined).
timeout 5

## hiddenmenu
# Hides the menu by default (press ESC to see the menu)
#hiddenmenu

I wanted to be able to boot into windows without having to reach inside the computer and swap the drive cables to make it the master drive each time. I've tested my changes and it works well, but I have no desire to use Windows at the present time, but I can just choose it from the screen menu on bootup. If I simply turn on the computer and leave it, it will automatically boot into Ubuntu by default, which is just how I like it.

Installing the latest Nexuiz

I downloaded Nexuiz 2.42 today, version 2.41 can be found in the Ubuntu repositories, but I wanted the latest version.

Installing it required some steps that I wasn't familiar with as there isn't a 2.42 deb file, but I found a site with a step by step guide on installation here.
I'll document the steps here as well in case that site goes down and I need to refer to them again.

Download both the game and the Map Pack first.
Create a /.Games in your home directory and unzip the game files there. I used Nautilus to accomplish this but the link above shows terminal commands.

mkdir ~/.Games
cd ~/Desktop
unzip nexuiz-242.zip -d ~/.Games
unzip nexmappack_r2.zip -d ~/.Games/Nexuiz

Download the nexuiz.png icon. Run the following commands.
Nexiuz icon found here

cd ~/Desktop
mv nexuiz.png ~/.Games/Nexuiz
alacarte

alacarte will open the Main Menu found under System>Preferences>Main Menu
Create a New Item in Main menu and name it Nexuiz
The command should read as follows:
/home/your own USERNAME here/.Games/Nexuiz/nexuiz-linux-glx.sh

You can now find the game under Applications>Games

If you see me in the game, go easy on me!


Technorati Tags: nexuiz, installation