No sound from applications such as Amarok or KSCD using Kubuntu

After long hours of searching for a solution to my lack of sound in KDE's premier music player "Amarok", I discovered the solution to my problem in the KDE forums.

I have two sound outputs, Internal Audio Stereo and Digital RV570. I had somehow configured KDE to send Amarok output to the RV570, which I had no speakers connected to.

I used the tool "pavucontrol" that has a GUI to configure what applications send output to what outputs. The kicker is that the sound-generating application has to be running and generating audio in order to configure its output.

So, launch Amarok and play some music. Next, launch pavucontrol. You should see the Amarok application in the Playback tab. Configure the output by clicking on the button showing the current output.

New ductwork: I didn't do it, but I do like it!

As part of our basement project, we needed to redo some of the ductwork in the basement. The old ducts and trunk hung down quite low and would have made the future dropped ceiling even lower.

So, behold a new trunk tucked up as high as it will go, and new oval duct work to replace the old 6" rounds.

Looks like I'm on a freakin' jet!

Removal of another wall

The latest wall to come down separated the old laundry room area from the old paint room and general basement area. It was composed of tongue in groove 1 inch planks on one side and plaster and lathe on the other.

It came down pretty easily with the help of an electric reciprocating saw (compared to my cordless) and a new wood cutting blade.

Again, Anne and I are both pleased with how much removal of this wall opened up the space. Anne is starting to think about decorating (she's a confirmed pre-decorator).

We have the HVAC guy coming early this week to redo the ductwork to move it higher up and also to correct the limited cold return air situation.

Basement Remodel progress

Ductwork coming down to make room for reinforcing the floor joists


Me: Wait, isn't supposed to be really COLD this weekend?! Crap!



Taking advantage of the opportunity to rewire some 1st floor outlets that had 110 year old electric work

My new basement

Bathroom finally complete and outdoor projects winding down as fall approaches, I decided start out the basement remodel project.

So far I've

Taken down a workbench
Removed a storage room and ceiling in that room (plaster and lathe)
Remove a wall that created a long narrow closet
Removed the west-facing exterior wall (2x4 + plywood)
Removed a bunch of carpeting from the west half of the basement
Repaired a bunch of foundation problems with concrete patch.

Here's the current state of affairs


The is the remaining stuff that is in this part of the basement all packed in. The excitement is behind that dropcloth...


This is the back west side of the basement, where the storage room was.


This is facing fully north, where there used to be a wall separating this part of the basement from the furnace area.


This is the north west foundation wall. Lots of crumbling paint/dryloc and a few problems that required some concrete patching.

Sound woes, solved by a USB sound card.

I built a computer several years ago, and until recently it was chugging along just fine. It was a little slow, and a little short on RAM, but it suited my needs just fine.

After taking a Windows 7 update, I noticed that my sound was no longer working correctly. Rather than emitting a normal sound, it would just emit static until the end of the sound when it sounded vaguely like it should.

Assuming a sound driver problem, I scoured the internet for a driver for the onboard CM-1801 chip for Windows 7 and came up empty handed. Apparently, the company that makes these audio chips are know for providing very little support. This chip was from the Windows XP and Vista era, but it was never officially supported on Windows 7.

I next queried some of my friends to see if anyone had an old sound card for which I could find Windows 7 drivers. I got a few cards in response, one of them didn't work, and the other had no Windows 7 support (Creative Labs Sound Blaster 5.1)

Then someone told me to just get a USB sound card. A what? I never heard of such a thing. A quick search on NewEgg.com led me to the solution. USB dongles that look much like a memory stick, but that have 1/8" jacks on the opposite end to connect headphones and microphones!

$13 and a week later, it showed up. I plugged it in, Windows 7 installed the driver, and my glorious sound was back! Now, if you are a Dolby Pro 5.1 or higher power audio user, you may be out of luck, but simple stereo is all I need from my computer.

Configuring DNS in Ubuntu

My company recently added a primary and secondary DNS server, but I was unable to resolve any of the server names to IP addresses after configuring the name servers.

The file /etc/resolv.conf contains the following

nameserver 192.168.1.164 
nameserver 192.168.1.48

Which seemed perfectly reasonable, yet running a nslookup resulted in:

** server can't find mycomputer: NXDOMAIN

I instead tried a reverse lookup using nslookup, specifying the IP of the server I wished to connect to, which returned my first clue

servername.domainname.com

It appears that the domainname was required in my lookup. So I searched for servername.domainname.com and got the IP address as I would have expected.

This led me to the man page for resolv.conf, which identified the domain configuration option, and the following contents for resolv.conf

domain rocsoft.com
nameserver 192.9.200.164 
nameserver 192.9.200.48

Now running nslookup servername returns the IP for the computer.