Clementine MP3 distortions

I had some distortions, spikes, blubbs, blopps, quirks ... when I played some MP3 files with Clementine under openSUSE. The same file played fine in foobar2000, Rhythmbox, etc. I could not find any solution on the internet. Suggestions tested, like changing the output plugin for the GStreamer audio engine, did not work. I finally found the solution by uninstalling:

gstreamer-0_10-plugins-fluendo_mp3

0.10.18-3.1        271.0 KiB

and installing:

gstreamer-0_10-fluendo-mp3

21-1.2     1.4 MiB

Now Clementine is my favourite music player under Linux, but foobar2000, customized over the years, is still my #1.

Firefox, some settings

• Allow unsigned extensions / addons

about:config ➪ xpinstall.signatures.required ➪ false

• Horizontal tabs
• enable OpenGL OMTC go to about:config and set:

about:config ➪ layers.acceleration.force-enabled ➪ true
about:config ➪ layers.offmainthreadcomposition.enabled ➪ true (default)

• Turn off the disk cache

Preferences ➪ Advanced ➪ Network ➪ "Cached Web Content: Override automatic cache management" on ➪ "Limit cache to" 0

• load multiple tabs in the background:
  change in about:config "browser.sessionstore.restore_on_demand" to false

Kudos go here.

P.S.: Firefox add-ons

• "Colorful Tabs" does not work well together with other add-ons that effect tabs.
• The Greasemonkey script "Linkify Plus Plus" severely slows down the browsing experience. (This may be dependent on other add-ons that manipulate links.)

"Windows 10 Task view" button start

Using a multimedia keyboard the additional buttons can be remapped. I remapped the Web/Home button using the following registry settings:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\AppKey\7]
"ShellExecute"="C:\\dienst\\batches\\taskview.bat"

The batch script "taskview.bat" contains:

@echo off
nircmdc.exe script "c:\dienst\batches\taskview.ncl"
exit

(So the batch file will start NirCommand and tell it to do the stuff in the .ncl file.) The Nirsoft command script "taskview.ncl" contains:

sendkey lwin down
sendkey tab down
sendkey lwin up
sendkey tab up

(So the Windows button and the Tab button are pressed together and released. This combo starts the taskview in Windos 10.)
With e.g. KeyTweak it is also possible to map a function key to one of the AppKeys and by that to make F3 to the Mission Control / Task View key. :)

P.S.: More convenient then the start by the press of a button is the start triggered by moving the mouse into a hot corner of the screen. For this I found a AutoHotKey script.

Multimedia keyboards key list

Registry file example:
; configure the calculator button
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\AppKey\18]
"ShellExecute"="C:\\dienst\\bin\\nano.exe"

Kudos go here.

List:

Key	Function	Name	Value
1	Back (Internet browser)
2	Forward (Internet browser)
3	Refresh (Internet browser)
4	Stop (Internet browser)
5	Search
6	Favorites
7	WebHome	Association	http
8	Mute volume
15	Mail	RegisteredApp	Mail
16	Media	Association	.cda
17	My Computer	ShellExecute	::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}
18	Calculator	ShellExecute	calc.exe
24	Mute microphone
25	Lower microphone volume
26	Raise microphone volume
27	Help
28	Find
29	New
30	Open
31	Close
32	Save
33	Print
34	Undo
35	Redo
36	Copy
37	Cut
38	Paste
39	Reply
40	Forward (mail)
41	Send
42	Spelling checker
43	Toggle dictation and command/control
44	Toggle microphone
45	Corrections

Rating in foobar2000

Wie man ein Ratingsystem in foobar2000 benutzt wird hier beschrieben. Als Displayscript wird

$pad($repeat(★,%rating%), 5,✩)

angegeben. Wenn  foo_playcount installiert ist erscheint aber nur ✩✩✩✩✩ in der Spalte. Dieses liegt daran, daß dieser Erweiterung %rating% für seine interne Datenbank benutzt, wie hier erwähnt wird. Daher muß %rating% mit $meta(rating) ersetzt werden. Das Displayscript muß daher wie folgt aussehen.

$pad($repeat(★,$meta(rating)), 5,✩)

Clink in ConEmu

Leider funktioniert clink nicht mehr in ConEmu. Beim Drücken von Alt+H passiert nichts. Das is leicht zu beheben. In dieser Meldung ist beschrieben wie. Einfach die alten clink Dateien mit denen aus dieser Version, die Minhook verwendet, ersätzen.

Cirque Wave Keyboard GKB330 → Prolific PL-2303 → USB → openSUSE /dev/ttyUSB0

I have an old ergonomic Wave Keyboard from Cirque, ca. 1998, 1590 g light, which  I wanted to use at my PC. Therefore I bought an serial → USB adaptor.

Cirque Wave Keyboard GKB330

USB 2.0 to Serial RS232 DB9 9Pin Adapter

So the PS2 connector for the keyboard part goes into the PS2 from the PC and the serial connector for the Glidepoint Technology touchpad goes to the adaptor, which is plugged into an USB 2 port.
Under Windows this was to get the touchpad working. The CD that came with the adaptor was broken but it was easy to find a driver for the Prolific PL-2303 on the internet. Only an old version of the driver worked under WinXP, Win7 and Win10, which Win7 always wanted to update.
Under Linux openSUSE 13.2 it was a little bit more complicated to get the touchpad to work.
The command "lsusb" listed the "Prolific Technology, Inc. PL2303 Serial Port", so the device was detected, but "xinput list" did not show the touchpad. In this post I found how to change "/dev/ttySS0" to "dev/ttyUSB0" using "minicom". I don't know if this is necessary, but it was done.

(2018-12) Add: This change of setting is necessary. Install minicom - start it like "minicom -s" as superuser form the console - in "configuration" select "Serial port setup" - type "A" - change the Serial Device to "/dev/ttyUSB0" - twice "Enter" - select "Save setup as dfl" (default) - type "control-A Q" to leave minicom - Done

From this post I learned about the "inputattach" command, which unfortunately only worked with "sudo". To make the install permanent the command has to be started on startup. As openSUSE 13.2 does not use the "/etc/rc.local" any more, " /etc/init.d/boot.local" has to be use as described in this post. You probably could also use the "after.local script" as described therein. I changed  "/etc/init.d/boot.local" and added the line:

inputattach --microsoft /dev/ttyUSB0

Now "xinput list" reports the touchpad as:
⎡ Virtual core pointer              id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer    id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Microsoft Mouse               id=8    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Dell Premium USB Optical Mouse id=10  [slave  pointer  (2)]

:)

P.S.: After updating to openSUSE 42 this didn't work any more but after moving the line
inputattach --microsoft /dev/ttyUSB0

into the "/etc/init.d/after.local" script all was fine again. :))

P.P.S (2018-12): After updating to openSUSE 15 Leap this didn't work any more. The autostart function is slowly moved to systemd. I found introduction about how to use systemd here.

Just changing the "/etc/init.d/after.local" to look like this didn't work for me. #!/bin/bash inputattach --microsoft /dev/ttyUSB0 I wrote a file called "pl2303.service" containing the following text and copied it into to "/etc/systemd/system/pl2303.service".

[Unit]
Description=Wave Keyboard Touchpad on PL-2303

[Service]
User=root
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/inputattach --microsoft /dev/ttyUSB0

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

The following commands finished the procedure:
sudo chmod 777 /etc/systemd/system/pl2303.service 
systemctl start pl2303.service 
systemctl enable pl2303.service
systemctl --system daemon-reload 

:))