Points of Interest

Drumset (openclipart.org, public domain)

The core of my home studio consist of a Notebook and a firewire mixing console. Unfortunately, Flash used my notebook speakers for audio output instead of the firewire device. There are several workaround setups to circumvent this, but most of them are at least a bit cumbersome.

Thorben Hohn fortunately wrote a library which provides an elegant solution. Here’s what to do:


mkdir libflashsupport-jack
cd libflashsupport-jack
git clone git://repo.or.cz/libflashsupport-jack.git
cd libflashsupport-jack
sh bootstrap.sh
make
make -n install
sudo make install


Restart firefox and listen to your favourite music video on Youtube (Zansa and Bimoya) via jackd – what a joy! All credits to Thorben for the excellent work.

Penguin (openclipart.org, public domain)

According to my last posting, I wanted to record some audio on my Linux Box. If you don’t want to use a fully flavoured digital audio workstation or sequencer, you can for example use qarecord or timemachine. First I tried timemachine.
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Penguin (openclipart.org, public domain)

I’m using Linux for more than 10 years now, and it is my operating system of choice. There is plenty of cool software available, and any programming environment is right at my finger tips. Even on “The Desktop”, it is often much easier and more convenient to use than any other operating system.

However, there are still a lot of glitches which are capable of rendering the machine useless for average users.
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I moved to Karlsruhe, Germany, 9 years ago, due to my employment at extragroup:

My default bank, however, still is in a town called Miltenberg where I grew up:

Until now, that was no problem at all. The bank has siblings spread all over germany, even in Karlsruhe. I could use their ATMs without being charged for the service – I just enjoyed the benefits of living in the digital millennium.

The only thing that causes complaints is the (absence of) speed on the machines. It’s simply unbearable. First, they put absolutely dated computers into their ATMs – stealing your time. Then, they use the delay times to annoy you with some advertising. And finally, their user interfaces just suck. Not to mention the often unresponsive keyboards of the machines. But anyway, remember you use a free service.

However, things have changed. Due to some business war (true, that’s a hendiadys), even the banks of similar provenience now charge their customers for each individual transaction (this means, as a consequence, that I will discontinue the contract with my long-term bank soon).

But that’s only one part of the story. Tonight, we met at the monthly meeting of the local GPS and geo enthusiasts. Unfortunately I was short in money supply, but someone lent my some bucks. On my way back home, I passed a bank and tried to get some money at its ATM machines. Unfortunately, three of them treated me with ads for about a minute, but then told me that there was some timeout.

I tried another bank which I frequently use, but all ATMs there have been out of order. So yes, I got no money at all.

Abroad, germans usually are impressed how reliable and fast the ATMs work, though the distance is much bigger than within germany and the machine you use belongs to a totally different company.

What can we learn from this? True. The germans still suffer from the consequences of WW2, have no working infrastructure and very slow computers. In short, we need your assistance! If you have some used computers left, please dedicate them to the german VR-Banks. Thanks a bunch!