Author: Randy

Netflix Error Code n8156-6013 Fix

I ran into this issue while changing my VM’s configuration. The VM is a Windows XP machine that I use primarily to watch Netflix on Linux, since Netflix doesn’t support Linux. After I made a change to the VM configuration, I could no longer view Netflix videos. The error code was N8156-6013 and the error message said that my system date was not valid, even though it was completely correct.

Examining the issue, I found that some solutions point to a file in the C:\ProgramData folder. This folder doesn’t exist in my XP VM. XP keeps the file in:

c:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\PlayReady\

The file is mspr.hds. All you have to do is rename that file. If you get an error while trying to rename it, close out any browser that has Netflix running on it. After you have successfully renamed the file, you should be able to watch your Netflix again.

Clickbank Analytic Software

There’s a site called cb-analytics.com which has always been a great resource for information on Clickbank products. However, I’ve always found the site hard to navigate and I wanted a site that showed some of the “hot” clickbank products. So, I’ve written a site called cbniches.com which I hope will rectify these issues.

The site shows all the latest products in each category and shows gravity and earnings per sale. It also has a graph for each product to show gravity over time. I think this will be pretty helpful to affiliate markets looking for new products to promote on Clickbank. Check it out at http://cbniches.com. I wrote it with the latest version of my LavaPHP framework, another product I’ve been developing as open source. LavaPHP can be found on github, but it’s still in early development, look at how to give good customer interactions.

Weird video issues in LinuxMint (and others) Gnome 3 + Netbeans Re-Revisited

I’ve posted about this issue on two other occasions, and I finally decided to really dive into it and find the true problem.

If you have noticed some video/graphics issues in LinuxMint or another Debian/Ubuntu based distribution along the lines of slanted tooltip fonts, random desktop environment restarts, and strange menu issues in Java apps, you may have the same problem I have been having.

My issues were a lot easier to resolve than I though they were going to be. The problem stems from an older version of the AMD/ATI video drivers that are found in the repos. If you have installed them and see these issues, then I may have the quick and easy solution for you.

This is the post on the LinuxMint forums that helped me considerably:
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=96957#p553730

Gnome 3 + Netbeans Revisited

I wrote at some point in the past about a small bug in Gnome 3 where Netbeans menus behaved strangely. My solution then was to switch to Gnome classic. Well I started using Cinnamon recently and found that it has the same issue. So I wanted to find a better solution.

I came across a strange way to fix the issue. I tried it out, and it worked beautifully, even if it is weird.

Unmaximize Netbeans so that it is in a Window on the desktop. Grab the top left corner of the Window and move it all the way to the top left side of the screen. Now, maximize it. The menus work again.

It’s weird, but I’m glad it works. I spend most of my time in Netbeans, and I’m really digging Cinnamon.

Introducing LavaPHP – Yet Another PHP Framework

I’ve used quite a few PHP framework to varying degrees, and like many other PHP developers, I’ve decided to make my own. Of all the current frameworks available, I prefer CodeIgniter, because it is easy to use, has great documentation, and generally stays out of your way.

Everyone has their opinion of the best PHP framework, but I like the ones that let me write PHP and don’t throw a lot of features that I don’t need into the mix. I found that no matter what PHP framework I was using, I was always creating a table for users. I was always creating login functionality for users. I was always creating email confirmation functionality for users. I was always creating an admin interface for working with my configuration. I was always creating classes that helped me work with web services/REST APIs. I always need a small web service of my own for Ajax functionality. I always needed to add curl functionality just in case the hosting provider had fopen disabled (which most do). A Managed Cloud VPS would be great for such purposes

Those were the things I needed. ORMs are great and all, but I really didn’t want to learn proper YAML syntax just so I could setup automatic object models for my database tables. Creating models for my database isn’t that much of a chore. Creating a complete user system can be.

So, I set out to create a framework that I can use for my own projects and have all the functionality that I find I usually need right out of the box.

Another thing about frameworks is that they are designed to make enterprise level sites. They aren’t designed to create software system which can be distributed. By that, I mean I wanted to create a software package that could be installed by end users and used by them to create their own websites (custom CMS system with a specific purpose). A normal framework doesn’t work well in this area because of the way views are usually handled. Mainly, I wanted third parties to be able to create themes for my CMS systems without much effort. With something like CodeIgniter, I could use a templating engine via a plugin or Codeigniter’s own minimalist template engine, but I don’t like take one piece of software and adding on a bunch of plugins.

First you have to learn how to use the plugin. Then you have to hope that there isn’t a bug in the plugin that will spring up in your app. Then if there is some small customization that needs to be made to the plugin, you could spend days trying to figure out a way to make it work with your system, when it would have taken less time to just write your own. Using plugins also feels a bit like cheating to me, as well. I want to know every little part of my system, so that if a bug comes up, I’ll know right where to look or at least have a decent idea where to look.

With all that said, I’m announcing my PHP framework. I’ve written it completely from scratch and I’m hosting it on Github. I also have purchased the dot com for it. I’m calling it LavaPHP. The motto will be “LavaPHP – Add a little lava to your LAMP” and it will have a lava lamp as it’s mascot/logo. If you’d like to help with the initial development, hit me up and fork the project here: https://github.com/lpcustom/LavaPHP

Slow internet in LinuxMint

I installed LinuxMint earlier today because I found that I really liked the Cinnamon desktop environment on my laptop. I promised that I would post how well it works on my desktop.

Well it mostly works fine. There’s still a slight hiccup that I’m trying to work through, where the desktop environment just seems to die. I have this same problem on Gnome 3 and Unity though, so I think it has something to do with the ATI drivers. I wish I had a good nVidia card to go in this thing.

There’s one bug that I had to post about. I was getting terrible internet speeds from my LinuxMint install. My top speed was around 190KBytes/sec. Some people may still regard this as fast, but I’m on a 30Mbit/sec connection. I should be seeing speeds around ten times that.

It was across the board too. I thought it was a bad mirror at first because I first noticed it while trying to update the system and install new software from the repos. I soon found that the problem was also happening from every web site and speedtests showed the same results.

I started out by searching for the issue and was coming up with a lot of duds. It was the standard first level support answers like “unplug your router and modem”. No need, I know that’s not the issue. After some intense searching, I finally found the answer. It was a problem with my network card drivers in the latest versions of Ubuntu and LinuxMint.

My system was showing a RTL8111/RTL8169 network device. The 8169 is the part to look for. This driver is built into the latest kernel and it has problems. I found that the solution was to build the r8168 drivers (note that’s 8168 not 8169) from source.

A full walk-through can be found here: https://unixblogger.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/the-pain-of-an-realtek-rtl8111rtl8168-ethernet-card/

Follow those steps and you’ll not have this issue again. Much thanks to the author!

Cinnamon – Another reason to love Mint

There’s plenty of Debian-based distributions out there. So many, in fact, that many of them have derivatives of their own. Ubuntu has been a leading distribution for many years, and it owes much of its fame from its Debian roots. Enter many Ubuntu-based distributions which add to the great works done on Ubuntu.

LinuxMint is probably my favorite of the derivatives. It started out as a more feature-rich, multi-media version of Ubuntu. It also added its own (better looking) theme. I’ve always disliked the default themes in Ubuntu, whether it be orange, brown, or purple, although I give them point for originality. LinuxMint brought a minty green flavor to the Linux desktop.

I’ve recently posted that I can’t stand Unity or Gnome 3, and I was searching for an alternative in a more modern distribution. I could have went with Debian Stable or CentOS 6, which still use Gnome 2, but I wanted a distribution that uses more up-to-date versions of software like Blender, LibreOffice, Firefox, and such.

The problem with that scenario is that there aren’t many “modern” distros which use something other than Gnome 3 or Unity as their default desktop environment. I tried to use XFCE4, but it just wasn’t for me. I can use it in spurts, but I wouldn’t want to use it permanently. I wanted something that looked fresh.

For a few days, I tried to adapt to KDE4. You know things are rough in my Linuxland if I’m trying to adapt to KDE. I was getting by and actually liking the experience until I tried to do a little Java game development. For some reason, anytime I switched my Java app to fullscreen and then back to a window, it would disable my second display. This peeved me off enough that I just installed Windows 7. I’ve been using it for the past month.

Today, I was messing around on my laptop, which happens to have LinuxMint 12 installed on it, and I remembered reading something about a Gnome 2 fork that the LinuxMint crew was working on called Cinnamon. I thought, “what the hell, I’ll give it a shot”.

It was impressive. It was actually more than impressive. It was exactly where I thought Gnome should have went. It’s like a better looking version of Gnome 2, with all the same Gnome 2 features. It felt like home, which is coincidentally like the subtitle of the Cinnamon homepage:
“Love your Linux, Feel at Home, Get things Done!”
This is a great slogan, because it really goes right along with how I felt about Cinnamon. I loved using Linux on the desktop again. I felt at home. I bet I’ll be able to get things done in it as well.

I rarely use that laptop, so next I’ll be installing LinuxMint on my main desktop again. I’m going to cross my fingers and hope that their isn’t some annoying bug that makes me wish I’d stayed on Windows 7.

It’s pretty sad when a Linux advocate, that loves working in the command line, doesn’t want to use Linux because of the sad state of desktop environments. I wish the main developers of this type of software would lose the “unify everything” mentality and make the desktop just work.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to give Cinnamon a thumbs up on my main desktop and just stay in Linux heaven. I’ll post my results later.

lwjgl.dll: Can’t load IA 32-bit .dll on a AMD 64-bit platform

If you encounter this error while trying to write a game on a Windows 64 bit system using Slick2d, I can give you some insight into how to fix the issue. I’d ran into this issue some time ago, but I don’t remember if I posted about it or not. I solved the problem then by using a recompiled version of slick2d. It worked well, but I did something different this time around.

I downloaded the latest version of LWJGL and used it instead. The process of importing the libs is much the same except you use the new LWJGL and its natives instead of the ones included with slick2d. If you need help getting the imports correct, leave a comment and I’ll go into it in more detail.

jMonkeyEngine “An instance of the program cannot access specified user directory”

This is a simple issue and most Linux users can probably figure it out rather quickly. I don’t mean to offend anyone, but the error message is pretty straight-forward when it comes to the problem. However, I’ll explain it to those who run into it and want to know how to fix it. Then again, I may be the only person who runs into this problem. Either way, I’m posting it for anyone who may need it.

The problem stems with the installation of jMonkeyEngine. The installer is a .sh file which which can be executed like so:

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sh jME3_SDK_Beta-Linux.sh

However, if you are like me, you may have ran it with sudo like this:

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sudo sh JME3_SDK_Beta-Linux.sh

The good thing about using sudo is that the program will be installed for all users on the machine. I’ve not ran it without sudo to see if it will install for only the user running the installer, but I’m assuming that it will.

After the installation occurs, it asks you if you want to start jMonkeyEngine. If you answer yes, it will start it as root, and it will write it’s hidden users directory in your home directory. The home directory will have root:root as the owner because the program was first started by the root user.

So when you go back and run the program again, it will not have access to the required folder. The solution is to change the owner of the folder. This is accomplished simply by typing this in a terminal while in your home folder (the terminal should open in your home folder automatically, but just to make sure we’ll change directory into it first). In the following example the word “username” should be replace with your actual username.

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cd ~/
chown -R username:username .jmonkeyplatform

You should now be able to open jMonkeyEngine. The -R, for those of you interested, means “recursive”, which will change the owner of all files and folder inside of .jmonkeyplatform, not just the folder itself.

The Wrong Path for Desktop GNU/Linux

I’ve tried to use Unity. I’ve tried to use Gnome 3. While many others have had success adapting to the these new desktop environments, I find them buggy and frankly…terrible. I know there have been many debates about it, but I want to give my two cents about it as well because it really hits me hard as a long-time Linux user.

Before KDE version 4, I used KDE most of the time. I rarely used another desktop environment. I was used to it. So believe me when I say I’m not afraid of change when it comes to Linux. When KDE 4 came out, it was different, but it wasn’t so different that I couldn’t have kept on using it. What made me switch to Gnome was the fact that KDE 4 was still in beta and very buggy. I couldn’t use it because of the bugs. So, I switched to Gnome and grumbled about how change for the sake of change isn’t that great.

KDE could have waited until it was ready for production before releasing it. Many distributions continued to use KDE 3 for a long time, but KDE 4 scared me away from it. I switched to Gnome and was happy with a desktop that worked well. I wasn’t alone. Many people switched to Gnome. I became a staunch advocate of Gnome and tried to steer every new Windows convert away from KDE because I didn’t want them to have a bad first experience with Linux.

Enter stage left Gnome 3 and Unity. These two flaky pieces of garbage have been pushed on every major modern distribution. I say modern to refer to the distributions that use more bleeding edge software packages. Debian Stable is still using Gnome 2, but Debian Testing (which will become Debian Stable someday) uses Gnome 3. If you want to use Debian Stable, you’ll be stuck with older versions of many software packages. If you want to use modern packages, such as VLC 2.0 (which has minimal support for bluray playback) you’ll need to go with a more modern distro.

The problem with going with a more modern distro is that most use Gnome 3 or Unity, and they don’t really have a choice. Gnome 2 and GTK2 will no longer be supported or developed.

The philosophy, as I’ve heard it, from the developers of Unity and Gnome 3 is that users don’t migrate to Linux because of all the software choices. Too many desktop environments create confusion for new users. Should they use XFCE4, KDE, Gnome, FluxBox, or something else? The claim is that this massive amount of choice scares away new users.

This is a terrible philosophy. The competition is what helps drive free software. People love having a choice, especially the type of users that actually USE LINUX. The main reason more people haven’t adopted Linux is because MOST PEOPLE DON’T EVEN KNOW THEY ARE RUNNING WINDOWS. They just know they have a computer and they use what it came with. They don’t know which version of Windows they are running, and they don’t care, as long as they can get on Facebook and talk about how bored they are. People don’t flock to Linux because Manufacturers don’t put Linux on their new computers.

Manufacturers have deals with software vendors which lets them cut the cost of their computers. They get paid by software vendors to install their “crapware” onto the new computers. Computer manufacturers actually get paid to put all that junk on your new computer. If they start installing Linux on their computers, they will have to raise the price of their new systems, because they will no longer be getting the “crapware” income.

An example of how Linux on new devices actually increases market share can be found in Android. There are millions of people using Android on their phone right now oblivious to the fact that it’s Linux. They have no idea, and they don’t care. There are many internet browsers they can install on their phone, but most will never do so. It already comes with one. There are many software choices out there on Android. That doesn’t scare away Android users. They install something if they want it. It’s as simple as that.

This whole notion that unifying user interfaces will bring people to Linux is garbage. More and more people use Linux every day. In time, manufacturers may install Linux on more of their computers. Only a few do it today. As that happens, however, the number of Linux desktop users will grow exponentially.

While we are waiting on that to happen, though, why not listen to the users who are actually USING the software right now. Most HATE unity and Gnome 3.

And now that KDE 4 is pretty solid, most, like myself, will be moving to it. I installed it yesterday, fixed a small distortion in the audio, removed the blue shadow from the active windows, and will not be looking back. It’s working flawlessly for me. I’m very happy with what it has become, and I’m glad it’s available for me at this time when Gnome developers apparently have their head stuck where the sun doesn’t shine.

I don’t mean to badmouth the developers because I know they have a tough job and they do it all pretty much for nothing. Perhaps the problem is with the project management. I’m not sure where the problem lies. Did the Gnome project get taken over by Microsoft or Apple? I have this curious feeling that it is being led by a bunch of suits instead of developers.