What do I need?
- A computer with Ubuntu (you can still do the same on other distributions, but this post won’t cover that).
- A microphone (a cheap one will do).
- Some application(s) which you want to control and which can be used with commands on the terminal.

Installation
Go over to my PPA and install packages julius and julius-voxforge from there.

Writing the command and control application
Follow the instructions from /usr/share/doc/julius-voxforge/examples/README to create your own grammar, and then edit the command.py file to suit your needs (the simplest configuration would be to just edit the dictionary near line 60). Finally, to execute it: julius -quiet -input mic -C julian.jconf 2>/dev/null | ./command.py

Problems
I don’t really have much experience with Julius, but if you have problems with the instructions explained here leave a comment or ping me on IRC (RainCT@Freenode) and I’ll try to help you. But first look at the examples below to ensure that you’ve done everything right :).

More?
I’m currently working at further improving those packages and getting them into Ubuntu. Also, I may write another post in the future explaining how to create your own speech corpora and acoustic models, but I can’t promise anything.

Example on how to control Rhythmbox:

. example.voca:
% NS_B
<s> sil

% NS_E
</s> sil

% ID
DO d uw
COMP k ax m p

% COMMAND
PLAY p l ey
NEXT n eh k s t
PREV p r iy v
SHOW sh ow
UP ah p
DOWN d aw n
SILENCE s ay l ax n s

. sample.grammar
S: NS_B ID COMMAND NS_E

. command.py’s parse function (note: Wordpress breaks the indentation)
def parse(line):
params = [param.lower() for param in line.split() if param]
commands = {
'play': 'rhythmbox-client --play',
'silence': 'rhythmbox-client --pause',
'next': 'rhythmbox-client --next',
'prev': 'rhythmbox-client --previous',
'show': 'rhythmbox-client --notify',
'up': 'rhythmbox-client --volume-up',
'down': 'rhythmbox-client --volume-down',
}
if params[1] in commands: os.popen(commands[params[1]])

. Usage: (Action - Verbal command)
Reproduce - DO PLAY
Pause - DO SILENCE (I didn’t use “DO PAUSE” because like that it had a very high error rate)
Next song - DO NEXT
Previous song - DO PREV (”DO PREVIOUS” can’t be used because VoxForge’s acoustic models don’t support some of it’s phonemes)
Show the name of the current song - DO SHOW
Increment Rhythmbox’s volume - DO UP
Decrement Rhythmbox’s volume - DO DOWN

Random tip:
You can let the computer answer to your commands using either espeak “text to say” or, if you have Festival (which sounds more natural) installed, festival -b ‘(SayText “text to say”)’.

Happy hacking!

Okay, I know this is not a forum, but I wanted to ask for recommendations about what’s the best way handle internationalization of XML documents (of the content in it, of course, not the tags themselves). More details about why I’m asking this will come later :).

Thanks.

Aquest dissabte, a l’UPF; t’hi esperem! Inscripció gratuïta aquí.

Well, to not leave this post so short, I’ll also refer a post explaning threads on PyGTK which looks quite good (I didn’t look carefuly at it because I already knew 99% of what it says… it’s a pity that because of that I didn’t notice the 1% that I didn’t know and which would have saved me one hour of debugging :/). Also, note that if you write your own __init__ function in order to pass data to the thread you will have to call threading.Thread.__init__(self) somewhere in it.

I’m a 17 year old technological baccalaureate student with experience in XHTML, CSS, PHP, Python and Debian/Ubuntu packaging (plus a bit JavaScript, bash, etc.), and the languages I know are Catalan, Spanish, English (mostly written) and spoken German. Ask for the CV if necessary.

Thanks!

As a start, we have created a mailing list and this Friday we will hold our first event in Sant Cugat, which will be a dinner where we will meet together and discuss the further goals of the group. Of course, all of you under the age of 30 who speak Catalan are invited to come and join us!

Ara, al connectar el dispositiu ja no ens sortirà erròniament com a unitat de CD, i els passos per poder-lo utilitzar s’han simplificat als següents:

• Com abans, el primer que hem de fer és posar la targeta SIM que el mòdem incorpora en un mòbil qualsevol que tinguem a mà i des d’allà desactivar-ne el codi PIN (pot ser que també funcioni sense fer això, però no ho he provat i en tot cas tampoc em sembla probable). Tot seguit, connectem el mòdem a l’ordinador amb el cable USB que ve a la caixa.
• Anem a Sistema -> Administració -> Xarxa, desbloquegem la finestra (fent clic al botó «Desbloca»), triem «Connexió punt a punt» i premem el botó «Propietats» que hi ha a l’esquerra.
• A la finestra que apareix, marquem el quadre de selecció per habilitar la connexió, triem GRPS/UMTS a «Tipus de connexió» i emplenem els camps restants. A continuació anem a la pestanya «Mòdem» i al camp del port introduïm «/dev/ttyUSB0».

I ja està! Un cop fet això, cada cop que connectem el mòdem s’hauria de connectar sol al cap d’uns instant (valor que pot rondar entre 10 segons i un o dos minuts).

During the morning I ran a short packaging jam for the more experienced attendants and after that Jordi, introduced by a town councillor, did a great presentation (photo below) that covered Free Software, GNU/Linux, Ubuntu and our team (I guess one of our members being a teacher is a good think ^^).

Then, at midday we stopped some hours for lunch, and after that the install party continued and we organized a Free Software related treasure hunt game (which of course included a Freevial match), and the winning team got a bread which looks pretty much like the Ubuntu logo.

La versió per a servidors de l’Ubuntu 8.04 LTS combina funcionalitats avançades amb cinc anys de manteniment i suport.

La versió per a servidors de l’Ubuntu 8.04 amb manteniment estès (LTS) afegeix noves funcionalitats per millorar el rendiment, l’estabilitat i la seguretat d’aquesta plataforma completament mantinguda. La versió LTS va més enllà en l’expansió de l’ecosistema comercial de programari, maquinari i proveïdors de serveis que donen suport a l’Ubuntu Server.

El període de manteniment estès dóna resposta a les peticions de les empreses a fi d’implementar l’Ubuntu de manera generalitzada al llarg d’un període d’anys. Així mateix, posiciona l’Ubuntu Server com a plataforma on els venedors de programari i maquinari poden implementar les seves solucions. Un gran nombre de venedors han donat suport a l’Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, i molts altres l’estan provant i certificant actualment.

Quant a l’Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server Edition

L’Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server Edition és la quarta versió per a servidors de Canonical, i rebrà actualitzacions de seguretat i manteniment durant cinc anys. Entre les noves i millorades característiques disponibles amb aquesta versió LTS trobem:

Uns fonaments sòlids

• Major varietat d’aplicacions per a infraestructura de xarxes, incloent autenticació (FreeRadius), monitorització (Munin), VPN (OpenVPN) i còpia de seguretat (Bacula).
• Seguretat millorada amb més polítiques integrades per a l’AppArmor i un reforçament de la seguretat del nucli.
• Ampliació de la varietat de possibilitats d’emmagatzematge, incloent iSCSI i DRDB.
• Més de 500 paquets amb manteniment per a servidors, i accés a a més de 20.000 components addicionals preparats per a l’Ubuntu 8.04 LTS.
• Tallafocs integrat per a protegir servidors accessibles des de l’Internet.
• Actualització directa des de la versió 6.06 LTS.

Ampli ecosistema

• Integració amb l’Active Directory com a estàndard, amb LikeWise Open.
• L’Ubuntu és la primera distribució que inclou l’Open JDK de Sun com una opció.
• Aplicacions certificades per a l’Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server Edition per Alfresco, IBM, VMWare, Parallels, Qumranet, Tresys, Zarafa, Zend, Zimbra, Zmanda i d’altres.

La plataform virtual ideal

• S’afegeix KVM per a virtualitzar aplicacions i sistemes operatius.
• Importants millores al nucli a fi d’optimitzar l’ús de recursos en virtualització.
• S’ha millorat l’Ubuntu JeOS per optimitzar els sistemes virtuals i està llest per a ser executat en entorns VMWare o KVM de qualsevol sistema.

Assistència tècnica

• El servei de gestió de l’Ubuntu, Landscape, proporciona seguretat, manteniment i gestió d’aplicacions millorats.
• Les aplicacions i el sistema base tenen l’assistència de l’Equip de Servei de Suport Global de Canonical (GSS).
• Podeu contractar assistència per a l’Ubuntu directament a https://shop.canonical.com o contactar amb un comercial de Canonical si desitgeu més informació.

Preu, disponibilitat i informació tècnica

• Podeu trobar informació detallada quant a l’Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server Edition a www.ubuntu.com/server
• Teniu disponible l’Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server Edition ara mateix per a ser descarregat a www.ubuntu.com/download.

Copyleft 2008 - Text original de Canonical Ltd., traducció de Siegfried Gevatter i Josep Sànchez.

Integra les últimes aplicacions estables amb manteniment estès.

L’Ubuntu 8.04 proporciona una plataforma estable per a venedors, desenvolupadors i usuaris de programari i maquinari. Amb tres anys de manteniment per a la versió d’escriptori, la 8.04 LTS és una gran opció per a desplegaments massius. Un ecosistema substancial, i creixent, de programari lliure i comercial preparat per a l’Ubuntu proporciona un ampli ventall de possibilitats als usuaris. Aquesta és la vuitena versió de l’Ubuntu per a escriptoris i la ruta marcada en portar –en una precisa programació semestral– un sistema operatiu comercial, gratuït, estable i completament mantingut segueix essent única.

Les últimes i millors aplicacions

L’Ubuntu 8.04 LTS eleva el nivell en l’experiència de l’escriptori GNU/Linux. Inclou l’última i més estable versió dels productes principals i, amb aquest esperit, és la primera distribució en portar el Firefox 3 a milions d’usuaris. La combinació de GNU/Linux i Firefox fa de l’Ubuntu 8.04 LTS un gran escriptori web, amb una àgil navegació i una molt reduïda exposició als virus, la suplantació de llocs web i als programes espia. «A Mozilla estem molt complaguts que milions d’usuaris tinguin la seva primera oportunitat de provar el Firefox 3 amb l’Ubuntu», digué John Lilly, CEO de Mozilla. «L’Ubuntu i el Firefox demostren com les tecnologies de programari lliure no només poden equiparar-se a les alternatives de programari de propietat, sinó que, de fet, les superen».

Experiència fotogràfica millorada: la versió millorada del gestor de fotografies predeterminat, F-Spot, juntament amb una millorada detecció de càmeres i mòbils fa possible publicar, classificar, gestionar, visualitzar, esborrar, imprimir i compartir fotografies amb els amics i la família de forma més fàcil que mai.

Compartició i descàrrega de música: els usuaris poden connectar una PSP, compartir les llistes de reproducció amb amics, comprar a la botiga de música en línia Magnatune, emetre ràdio en temps real, i connectar més dispositius que mai (amb UpnP).

Millor reproducció de vídeo: el nou reproductor de pel·lícules predeterminat permet navegar pel YouTube i altres recursos de vídeo que es troben a l’Internet i compartir vídeos amb altra gent. S’integra amb MythTV, el TVR lliure, i et permet veure els teus programes preferits directament a l’escriptori. Brasero et permet gravar fàcilment tot el contingut a CD o DVD.

Millores de productivitat: la integració del rellotge i el calendari permet gestionar el temps al voltant del planeta amb un sol clic per establir, assistir i rebre alertes relacionades amb les vostres cites.

Escriptori actual: l’Ubuntu 8.04 LTS combina les últimes aplicacions del GNOME amb efectes visuals d’escriptori, donant als usuaris una experiència més agradable, intuïtiva i visualment atractiva.

Abast dels serveis

Manteniment estès: l’Ubuntu 8.04 LTS per a l’escriptori tindrà actualitzacions de seguretat i manteniment durant tres anys, de manera que tant els usuaris corporatius com els particulars tenen un cicle més llarg fins a la propera actualització. Aquells que volen les últimes, i millors, aplicacions podran actualitzar a l’Ubuntu 8.10, previst per a l’octubre del 2008, i aquells que prefereixin cicles de desplegament més llargs poden continuar amb l’Ubuntu 8.04 durant tres anys fins a passar cap a la següent versió LTS.

Més aplicacions: més de 30 venedors independents de programari tenen planificat distribuir i mantenir les seves aplicacions a la plataforma d’escriptori 8.04 LTS, incloent Adobe, Google, Real Networks, Nero, Skype, Corel, Parallels i Fluendo.

Millor accessibilitat: el suport gestual permet als usuaris navegar per l’Ubuntu d’una manera més natural. També hi ha disponible un major suport per a les ordres de veu, l’accessibilitat de teclat, les tecles lentes, l’ampliació de l’escriptori i més.

Preu i disponibilitat

L’Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop Edition és gratuït i el teniu disponible per a ser descarregat a http://www.ubuntu.com/download.

Copyleft 2008 - Text original de Canonical Ltd., traducció de Siegfried Gevatter i Josep Sànchez.

With school, a Wordpress upgrade (see below for more details), the strange fact that I only have ideas for posts when I can’t write them, etc. this has been pretty abandoned for some months but well, I guess I’ll be posting something from time to time again, and as a start I thought that I might write one of those nice random-stuff-which-nobody-wants-to-know posts.

Wordpress
First of all, I now understand why there were that many “Yay! I upgraded Wordpress!” posts. After skipping two new versions I decided to finally upgrade as there were some important security fixes, but for some reason it failed to update the database correctly and my blog was kinda broken for some weeks until I took the time to mess with it and create the new tables manually… I hope that everything works again now, please tell me if you find something that doesn’t. Ah, and of course they’ve already released a new version by now… Let’s see when I upgrade to that one :P.

The important stuff
Just two posts ago I explained that I had become an Ubuntu Member. Well, now I’m also a MOTU :). I’ve also become 17 two months ago, but as by that time the blog was already broken I couldn’t write one of those cool “myself.age += 1″ posts xD.

Packaging Jam
I’ll be running a little Packaging Jam together with Jonathan Davies during our LoCo Team’s Hardy Release party (in Catalan). So if you speak Catalan, always wanted to learn how that packaging stuff works and and happen to be near Caldes de Montbui the 26th of this month, have a look at this wiki page (in Catalan) and inscribe yourself.

Shell history memo
Well, everyone is doing this, so I can’t be less:
[rainct, ~]$ history|awk ‘{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] ” ” i}}’|sort -rn|head
70 geany
68 bzr
59 cd
25 ls
24 rm
22 cat
16 egrep
16 apt-cache
14 debuild
11 ping

Això resol el dubte de com l’home que va petar tot l’Internet va aconseguir-ho. Segur que feia servir l’OpenOffice.org. (Allò que diuen al vídeo de tenir moltes pàgines obertes es tonteria… Com volen que així s’espatlli l’Internet? L’OpenOffice és una amenaça molt més creïble! :P).

So, why am I writing this? You all know our friend Launchpad, right? Now let’s have a look at Debian’s BTS… One word, intimidating. At least this was what I thought the first time I saw it, so I decided that I would write this post to introduce you to it’s basic use (it doesn’t make much sense, as there’s a big link to the help on the start page, but well… perhaps if you read it here you’ll fell more like reading it… or not :P).

Reporting a bug

How does it work? Just send an e-mail to submit@bugs.debian.org, with the following content:

Package: <package name>
Version: <package version>

<Bug description here>

Easy, isn’t it? The mail subject will be the title for the bug, and the version field can even be omitted if you don’t know it… Now, there’s something more you should know as an Ubuntu user: if you want to recognize a bug as coming from Ubuntu (for example if you are forwarding it from Launchpad), add the two following lines after the package name:

User: ubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Usertags: origin-ubuntu hardy

OK. Now this is all. Just send such a mail and after some minutes you will receive a message telling you the bug number it got. If you want to send additional information just mail to <bug number>@bugs.debian.org. You won’t need much time to feel comfortable with it ;).

Searching bugs

Searching for bugs can still be somewhat unfriendly. If you think so, this might help a bit: «sudo aptitude install reportbug-ng». Now look on Applications -> System Tools. Now you are ready to rock on forwarding bugs to Debian!

Not much time had passed when, early this summer, after I had been messing a bit with Launchpad, I had the idea to visit the #ubuntu-motu channel and perhaps try fixing some little bug; and well, that’s how the evil awesome guys there achieved to wash my mind letting me forget about the web projects I was working on by that time and helped me to successfully start contributing to Ubuntu with packaging related stuff :D.

So that’s the story of how that «planet were many great Ubuntu guys post», became the «planet were many great Ubuntu Members post and were my messages might appear, too, some day», and now is «the planet for which I’m writing this message right now».

Well, what more can I say now that I got you all bored, beside this last words?

Join us now and package software;
You’ll enjoy it, MOTU Contributors, you’ll enjoy it.

Vull donar les gràcies a tots els que m’heu donat el vostre suport!

I… bé, ja diré més a planet.ubuntu.com

En un post al planet anglès, en Raphaël Pinson ens explica com gaudir dels «backports» de forma segura; segurament aquesta no és una cosa que interessi gaire (se suposa que els backports no han de portar problemes), però sí que és molt útil el que escriu: el mateix procediment pot ser adaptat molt fàcilment per tal de que ens possibiliti la instal·lació de paquets de la Hardy utilitzant les mateixes eines amb que treballem habitualment.

Per a això poder fer això només cal:
1) obrir una terminal,
2) executar-hi «sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list», afegir la línia «deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ main restricted universe multiverse» al document que s’obrirà a l’editor de textos i guardar,
3) executar (altre cop a la terminal) «sudo gedit /etc/apt/preferences», escriure les quatre línies que hi ha a continuació a l’editor i guardar,
Explanation: Hardy packages have a lower priority
Package: *
Pin: release a=hardy
Pin-Priority: 75
4) Executar l’ordre «sudo aptitude update» per tal d’actualitzar les llistes de paquets.

Un cop fetes aquestes quatre coses, ja està! Ara ja podeu córrer a obrir el gestor de paquets Synaptic, buscar-hi aquell programa que voleu actualitzar i al menú «Paquet» triar l’opció «Força la versió…», on ens apareixerà aquella que hi ha a la Hardy. Si sou d’aquells que, com jo, preferiu la terminal, podeu actualitzar un paquet fent: «sudo aptitude install reportbug-ng/hardy» (on «reportbug-ng» és el nom del paquet en qüestió) o en cas de que això no funcioni «sudo aptitude -t hardy install reportbug-ng» (per agafar les dependències també de la Hardy).

La qüestió és que s’ha filtrat la informació de que l’estimada companyia Renfe, vist que viu una gran època d’esplendor i considerant el gran bé que té l’honor d’aportar a la societat, portant la gent amb tant retard tanta puntualitat com pot a la seva destinació, està pensant en canviar el seu avorrit logotip per un de molt més adequat a la situació:

Traducció per als qui no entenguin la llengua del país veí, que tan amablement ens imposa ofereix els serveis de la Renfe: “Tingues fe”.

El que caracteritza aquest joc, a part de que és programari lliure, és que a més de consistir en disparar a tot el que es mou també compta amb elements de joc d’estratègia en temps real, o traduït: també hi ha construccions. Així, els humans tenen els “telenodes”, què són el punts de “spawn” (el lloc on ressusciten els personatges que han mort), i els aliens tenen els “eggs” que venen a ser el mateix; també hi ha defenses automàtiques, punts de regeneració (per als humans, els aliens es curen sols), construccions que possibiliten l’evolució (per als aliens) o la compra de noves armes (cadascuna és bona per a una cosa en concret) i objectes (armadura, “jetpack” per volar, etc.) per als humans, etc. He dit que els aliens poden evolucionar i els humans poden comprar; això ho fan gracies als punts d’evolució / crèdits que aconsegueixen al matar enemics. Els objectes disponibles també augmenten segons el nivell en que està l’equip (n’hi ha 3, i aquest puja a mesura que es mata enemics).

Podeu trobar el joc als repositoris de l’Ubuntu i Debian sota el seu nom, Tremulous, (aneu a «Sistema -> Administració -> Gestor de paquets Synaptic» per a insta?lar-lo) o baixar-ne la versió per a Mac o «aquell altre sistema» a la seva web: tremulous.net.

Ah, també comentar que el mapa que més m’agrada és el “ATCS”, els altres són molt grans i sempre m’hi acabo perdent (a part de que sembla que els aliens hi tenen avantatja) :P. Vinga, a veure si ens trobem jugant-hi!

Idea de’n Nil i desenvolupat per en Carles Oriol i jo, el Freevial és un joc de preguntes tipus trivia, amb gràfics similars als dels concursos de TV, que estem fent per a la GrescaGutsy de l’Equip català d’Ubuntu.

Aquest matí ens hem reunit uns quants per tal de provar el joc en una partida real, i de pas escriure més preguntes entre tots. No crec que en papapep tardi gaire en penjar alguna foto.

Ha estat molt bé això de trobar-nos cara a cara desprès de tant temps a les llistes i l’IRC, i el joc ha pogut demostrar ho bé que funciona.

Per cert, aquesta nit hi ha reunió extraordinadia de l’equip, i si recordo bé el personatge que s’ha menjat la meitat de les galetes (aka papapep) ha estat tan amable de proposar que matarà a qui hi falti ;).