Alex Sleat

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HowTo: Install & Use Resynthesizer for GIMP

Remember this Photoshop CS5 sneak peak showing off it’s latest and greatest feature Content-Aware Fill a couple months ago, well it turns out a reasonably old plug-in for GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) named Resynthesizer seems to work just as great and because it is what it is, it’s free and open-source.

Installing on Ubuntu 9.10/10.04 install:

sudo apt-get install gimp-resynthesizer

or for the Source/Windows/Fedora Core 4 versions see the download section.

Once you have it installed, it’s simple to use really just select something on your image that shouldn’t be there and right click on the selection Filters -> Map -> Resynthesize.. and up should pop an options box, these settings are pretty standard and will get rid of most things given that they aren’t too big. It’s best if you’re not getting the results you want to play around with the settings yourself to get to know them better.

Click after the break for an example with step by step guide. Continue reading HowTo: Install & Use Resynthesizer for GIMP

Installing on Ubuntu 9.10/10.04 install:

sudo apt-get install gimp-resynthesizer

or for the Source/Windows/Fedora Core 4 versions see the download section.

Click after the break for an example with step by step guide. (more…)

HowTo: Run .jar files in Ubuntu

To run a JAR file from the command line in ubuntu using the following command:

java -jar filename.jar

Otherwise it is also possible to enable double clicking to run jar files too by the following simple steps:

Find the .jar file in the File Browser (a.k.a Nautilus)
Right click the .jar file > Properties
Click on the “Open With” tab along the top
Change the bullet to be Sun Java 6 Runtime
Click Close and you’re done.

Now you should be able to just double click the file and it will run just like most other files!

HowTo Fix: The file ‘/path/file.exe’ is not marked as executable.

The file ‘/path/file.exe’ is not marked as executable. If this was downloaded or copied form an untrusted source, it may be dangerous to run. For more details, read about the executable bit.

While re-installing Spotify on my Desktop I came across this error while trying to run the .exe through wine (shown above) and here’s a really simple way of fixing it:

Right click the .exe
Properties
Under the Permssions tab make sure “Allow executing file as program” is checked
Click Close and you should be able to now run it through wine..

HowTo Fix: “There is a problem with your sound card. Spotify can’t play music.” (Wine)

Quite a few times I have encountered this problem, which I think is caused when the soundcard was recently used by another program and might still be busy but it means Spotify can’t play music, so a quick fix for this is to load winecfg and test your sound card which seems to force wine into tacking control of the it.

Close Spotify
In terminal type winecfg
Click on the Audio tab (should be in the top middle)
Click “Test Audio” and if you hear a sound this should work..
Re-open Spotify and check a track, if it’s playing it’s worked otherwise you may have a different issue..

HowTo: Stop Ubuntu Checking For Automatic Updates

At work I can’t afford to have my Ubuntu system update and possibly wipe out some important libraries I need, and I get pretty tired of closing the Update Manager every time it decides I need to update so here’s how to stop it:

System > Administration > Update Manager
Open Settings (in the bottom left corner)
Under Automatic Updates
Uncheck “Check for updates: “
Hit Close and the settings should be saved.

HowTo: Fix Jumping/Skipping Sound in Spotify under Wine – Ubuntu Karmic (9.10)

The sound in Spotify was jumping or skipping much like a scratched disk would. After a little investigation I found a couple of ways to fix it with people saying one worked but the other didn’t for them. (Solution 2 worked for me).

Solution 1:

Open terminal and type:

winecfg

Click on the Audio tab along the top and remove ALSA and try OSS as your sound drivers

Solution 2:

gedit ~/.asoundrc

add the following line to the file:
pcm.pulse { type pulse } ctl.pulse { type pulse } pcm.!default { type pulse } ctl.!default { type pulse }

gedit /etc/pulse/daemon.conf

change the following to lines as shown below

default-fragments = 8 default-fragment-size-msec = 5

Howto: Reinstall Grub using Ubuntu Live CD

I recently installed Fedora 12 on my desktop alongside Ubuntu Karmic and Windows 7, however doing so I overwrite my grub which meant my Ubuntu system was hidden. To fix this is pretty simple..

Insert your Ubuntu Live CD
Click “Try Ubuntu without any changes to your computer”
Once loaded click Applications > Accessories > Terminal

sudo fdisk -l

#That’s a lower case L
This displays all partitions on your system, in my case the installation of my Ubuntu system was /dev/sda5 so replace this for yours in the rest of the code.

sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt
sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/ /dev/sda

#thats a double dash before root-directory, wordpress keeps changing it to a long dash, Ill fix it sometime..
If all goes successfully you should be done, try rebooting and see if your Ubuntu shows up.

Thanks to Whiblog in the comments this also works in Ubuntu 11.04:

“same thing except the last line : sudo grub-install –boot-directory=/mnt/ /dev/sda”

Yet Another OpenCV/Karmic error – symbol lookup error: /usr/local/lib/libhighgui.so.4

symbol lookup error: /usr/local/lib/libhighgui.so.4: undefined symbol: av_free_packet

To fix it simply make sure /usr/local/lib is in your library path by using the following command:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

Error: Dependency is not satisfiable: libstdc++5 (Ubuntu Karmic)

Error: Dependency is not satisfiable: libstdc++5
This is a simple fix, just grab the libstdc++5 package for your architecture from here:
http://packages.debian.org/stable/base/libstdc++5

HowTo: Install Player/Stage in Ubuntu Karmic (9.10)

UPDATE:
There is a much easier way of installing player/stage in Ubuntu 9.10 as pointed out by Arkapravo in the comments, however this is the 2.0.4-3.3ubuntu3 where as of 21/May/2010 the latest version is 3.0.1 if this causes any issues with your needs.
sudo apt-get install robot-player stage
also check out: http://icrobotics.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Player/stage
END UPDATE

I was able to install Player but not Stage using the usual install method which can be seen below how I did it:
You will need to have cmake and build-essentials installed:
sudo apt-get install cmake build-essential
How To Install Player:
Player provides a network interface to a variety of robot and sensor hardware. Player’s client/server model allows robot control programs to be written in any programming language and to run on any computer with a network connection to the robot. Player supports multiple concurrent client connections to devices, creating new possibilities for distributed and collaborative sensing and control.
Download the latest tar (I used player-3.0.0.tar.gz in this guide, if those numbers come up just change them with the version you are using)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/playerstage/files/
Extract
tar zxvf player-3.0.0.tar.gz
cd player-3.0.0
Make a folder to store the build files
mkdir build
cd build
Configure using
cmake ../
Now make and install
make
sudo make install
How To Install Stage:
Stage simulates a population of mobile robots moving in and sensing a two-dimensional bitmapped environment. Various sensor models are provided, including sonar, scanning laser rangefinder, pan-tilt-zoom camera with color blob detection and odometry.
Install some needed libraries:
sudo apt-get install libfltk1.1 pkg-config libtool
You will also need to install openGl:
sudo apt-get install libglu1-mesa-dev freeglut3-dev mesa-common-dev
You will need to download and install fltk-1.1.x and do the usual:
(I used fltk-1.1.10rc3 found here)
tar zxvf fltk-1.1.10rc3-source.tar.gz
cd fltk-1.1.10rc3/
./configure –enable-gl
make
sudo make install
Download and extract Stage (as you can see I used 3.2.2)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/playerstage/files/
tar zxvf Stage-3.2.2-Source.tar.gz
cd Stage-3.2.2
Make somewhere to store the build files
mkdir build
cd build
Configure:
cmake ../
Make and install:
make
sudo make install
Currently this will output the following error:
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make[2]: *** [libstage/stage] Error 1
make[1]: *** [libstage/CMakeFiles/stagebinary.dir/all] Error 2
make: *** [all] Error 2
I will make an update on this post when I find out how to fix this, comment if you know how!

Alex Sleat

HowTo: Install & Use Resynthesizer for GIMP

HowTo: Run .jar files in Ubuntu

HowTo Fix: The file ‘/path/file.exe’ is not marked as executable.

HowTo Fix: “There is a problem with your sound card. Spotify can’t play music.” (Wine)

HowTo: Stop Ubuntu Checking For Automatic Updates

HowTo: Fix Jumping/Skipping Sound in Spotify under Wine – Ubuntu Karmic (9.10)

Howto: Reinstall Grub using Ubuntu Live CD

Yet Another OpenCV/Karmic error – symbol lookup error: /usr/local/lib/libhighgui.so.4

Error: Dependency is not satisfiable: libstdc++5 (Ubuntu Karmic)

HowTo: Install Player/Stage in Ubuntu Karmic (9.10)

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