Larmeir.com
Dustin Larmeir's tech blog.
Ubuntu 10.04 LTS issues on my Toshiba Satellite L305 ( X crashes )
Aug 18th
When running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on my Toshiba Satellite L305 laptop it has a really annoying issue. The issue is that X is crashing randomly ( especially at login ) . It appears that this is a known bug that Ubuntu has not yet found a solution for. There are several suggestions mentioned under the release notes ( https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LucidLynx/ReleaseNotes#Intel 8xx X freezes/crashes ) however I am going to go through them and figure out what works. Once I have the solution at hand I will post it here and will share it with the masses.
Ubuntu 10.04 LTS makes a awesome desktop.
Aug 17th
Click on the image above to see the full size. The open source community has made customizing so fun 
This is why I use GNU/LInux!
Ripping a CD to MP3 in Ubuntu 10.04 LTS with Ripperx
Aug 9th
For my church every Sunday I rip a audio CD that is made during the service and need to encode it into an MP3. I prefer to use open source tools and the best tool I have found for this in Ubuntu so far is ripperx. Ripperx is not anything fancy, but it is super easy to use and gets the job done. Below is a very simple howto:
Step 1. Installation – Log into your terminal ( I don’t encourage the gui way because you don’t learn ) and type the folllowing command:
# sudo apt-get install -y ripperx
This will install ripperx and if you don’t run into any issues proceed to step 2.
Step 2. Opening ripperx – This can be opened by going to –> Applications –> Sound & Video –> Ripper X
Step 3. Insert a CD and prepare the track – Just click X button next to any track you would like to rip to MP3 or alternatively just select all tracks. Then fill in the all of the fields regarding the track.
Step 4. Start Ripping – Click Go and that’s it! Once the rip completes it will generate a folder in your home directory with the MP3 in it.
How to change your time zone in Ubuntu from shell
Jul 30th
Changing the system time in Ubuntu from the command line is easy – All you you have to do is run sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata .
Select your region of the world.
Select the city that corresponds to your time zone.
And that’s it. Your time zone is set.
