Categories
Technology

Associating files with URLs on Ubuntu (Gnome) – a quick hack

You just downloaded a file from the Internet, for ex, a PDF, a word document from Google Docs, or a video from TED or a talk from Google Videos. You downloaded this file some days back and now, when you viewed it and wanted to know what the world is talking about it, you don’t remember where you downloaded it from and end up searching for the filename or something related to it in Google.

How many times has this happened to you? How nice would it be if it was possible to associate the file with the URL from where you downloaded it or the page associated with it?

I felt the need for this when I downloaded a lot of TED videos recently and wanted a way to go to the TED page describing the video.

I started searching for the quickest way to do it and I found out a quick way to create context menus in Gnome using Nautilus Actions. So all I had to do was to create 2 commands – one for associating the URL and the other to launch the URL. Did you know it is very simple to create contextual commands in Ubuntu Gnome?

Categories
Technology

Getting Rosegarden to work in Ubuntu (Gnome)

I am one of those many people out there who had trouble in getting Rosegarden to “sing” in Ubuntu under Gnome Window Manager. Finally after trying a lot of permutations and combinations, I got Rosegarden to work. I made this post to share what I did so that others don't have to go through the same trouble I did!

So let's proceed.

Required software

Rosegarden requires some other applications to be installed in your system. So before you fire up Rosegarden ensure that you have the following:

  1. qjackctl
  2. qsynth
  3. rosegarden

If you don't have any of these you could execute this:

$ sudo apt-get install qjackctl qsynth rosegarden fluid-soundfont-gm

Ok, now we have everything we need. Let's proceed to the configuration steps:

Start the Jack server

(Somehow not using sudo gave me problems)

$ sudo qjackctl &

Jack Audio Connection Kit setup

Click on Setup
Here are the settings I used:



Start the Jack server



Start the synthesizer

$ sudo qsynth &

QSynth setup

MIDI Setup



Audio Setup



Soundfonts Setup


Start rosegarden

Ok, it's time to fire up Rosegarden.

$ sudo rosegarden &

Configuring Rosegarden

Go to Settings – Configure Rosegarden.




Ensure that the connections are right in Jack Audio Connection Kit (Connect):




Play one of the sample files and you should hear music!



Troubleshooting

In case your Jack server is not running, you might want to execute this command and then start the Jack server:

$ sudo /sbin/alsa force-reload

Update

One of the readers of this post, Jason Friedman, sent me this information via mail:

I read the information you posted about rosegarden at http://gauthampai.livejournal.com/62383.html and it was _very_ helpful. Thank you for posting it.

I am running Linux love 2.6.31-20-generic #57-Ubuntu SMP and I had to do two additional things to hear the audio: