Getting Rosegarden to Work on Ubuntu 10.04

I finally have Rosegarden running on my Lenovo T60 laptop (2gb RAM). It is sweet. I can intermix midi with audio perfectly. It was, however, a bit of a pain to get running. Hopefully this information will make it easier for others. It should be noted that I have a very low tolerance for pain when it conmes to packages on my laptop (and in linux in general). Either it works out of the box as advertised or I ditch it. It is only in the case when the desired functionality is such that I absolutely need it and the pay-off is significant enough, that I will plod through the web trying to get the necessary components workingt together. Rosegarden is so good that I have to admit, it was one of the rare times where the pay-off was well worth the effort. I am very happy with my free recording studio.

Before starting, the main pre-requesite is that your alsa drivers are working with your sound card. If you can't currently play an mp3 or record using a mic and the built in sound recorder then you should probably correct these base issues before going any further or you will be wasting a lot of your time. Also note that these instructions are for a system that has no dedicated midi hardware connected to it. If you have a working piece of midi hardware then you will probably not want to deal with fluid/qsynth.

One of the first things I had to do was disable pulseaudio which until recently I was blissfully ignorant of. This is because I only have one sound card built into my laptop and it seems pulseaudio doesn't share well. It also seems that pulseaudio was automatically installed somehow by default. The quick fix is to create a file named client.conf in the .pulse subdirectory of your home directory if it doesn't already exist (mine didn't) and to add a single line in it. I used vi to create/edit it like this ...

$ cd
$ vi .pulse/client.conf

In this file I added the following line ...

autospawn = no

To make sure your edit worked do this ...

$ cd
$ cat .pulse/client.conf

Which should produce the following output ...

autospawn = no

Then reboot your system. The changes will not take effect until you reboot your system (though some have mentioned you only need to log out then back in again for the changes to take effect).

BTW - Once I did this my desktop volume control didn't work anymore but it was necessary to get my system working. Like I said, the pay-off is such that I don't even care.

Next I used the synaptic package manager to install (a) jackd, (b) fluidsynth and (c) rosegarden (its under system ---> administration). Note that jack came with jack control (a GUI for Jack), and fluidsynth came with qsynth by default when I selected them using Synaptic.

Unfortunately, even if you have everything working by this point you will still not get any sound. This is because you will now need to prepare a soft font for your software synthesizer (fluid/qsynth). The final step is to download sfark from http://www.melodymachine.com/sfark.htm and then the annoying part is it can't just be untarred in one step you actually have to do this ...

$ gunzip sfarkxtc_lx86.tar.gz
$ tar xvf sfarkxtc_lx86.tar

Otherwise it won't work. Anyway, now that you have the sound font conversion utility you can download the Fluid R3 soundfont. It is available from the HammerSound Soundfont Library (http://www.hammersound.net/) (direct link (http://www.hammersound.net/cgi-bin/soundlink.pl?action=view_category&category=Collections&ListStart=15&ListLength=15)). Omce downloaded, use the sfark utility to decompress it (it actually took like 3 minutes on my laptop) like this ...

$ ./sfarkxtc FluidR3\ GM.sfAr

And it should produce a file with a .SF2 extension (note - i had to run it as sudo for some reason). Once you have your .SF2 file we are ready to go.

The exact sequence of steps necessary to get the Rosegarden studio up is as follows ...

(1) run Jack Control (it should be under applications ---> sound). If it is not running press 'Start' to start it,
(2) run qsynth (it should be under applications ---> other).
(3) on the qsynth panel near the lower left click 'Setup' then select the soundfonts tab. Press 'Open' and point to the .SF2 file we created.
(4) finally, start Rosegarden (applications ---> sound).

If you don't bring everything up in this exact order it usually doesn't work. Also, for some reason Rosegarden launches in a separate pane.

In Rosegarden you will want to click the Studio option, then 'manage midi devices'. Here you should see the qsynth device. It will say something like 'Synth input port (xxxx:x) write'. This is the device you must select for your tracks to play out the midi software synthesizer. If you point to a track and hold down the mouse button and select 'audio device 1' you should also be able to record audio using a standard mic. You can mix and match digital and audio tracks with ease. I have had no problem so far with 2 audio tracks and 4 digital tracks. I set Jack to 48000, 1024 with real-time 32 bit and it sounds just fine.

Note that the main reason for Jack used to be audio support but Rosegarden requires Jack these days and if it is not running Rosegarden will spawn it in some sort of default mode which I couldn't get working. I had to get Jack working properly for Rosegarden to come up. That was very important. This is why I started this entry describing how to disable pulseaudio; because I couldn't get Jack to work with pulseaudio. Good luck.

2010 South Florida Poker Scene

I recently returned home to South Florida from a 3 year stint in Manhattan. When I left in 1997, the Hard Rock casino was the top poker room in the area. The pari mutuals (Jai Alai, dog and horse tracks) had small rooms (maybe 20 tables) that offered limited hours but the Hard Rock had over 70 tables and was open 24/7. I live about 15 minutes from the Pompano Harness track and when I left they also had a small (maybe 30 tables) poker room with limited hours. If you wanted to do any serious poker playing back in 1996-1997 you headed over to the Hard Rock. In fact, when I first started going to the Hard Rock around 2003-2004 you could still smoke at the poker tables.

Now I have many posts on this blog regarding my experiences in Atlantic City while I was up in New York so I won't go over that again but I will say that when I left South Florida back in 1997 I was actually looking forward to playing in AC as the South Florida scene was somewhat limited. Now that I have returned home I can say that I like the South Florida poker scene better than AC. In the 3 years I have been gone the various casino operators down here have invested heavily and we now have a good number of really good poker rooms. In fact the Hard Rock has actually lost ground in my opinion as they have moved the poker room out of the casino proper in favor of more house lucrative tables games like black jack and 3 card poker (they also have a texas hold'em vs the house game that looks interesting).

The Hard Rock poker room in my opinion is not even in the top 3 for this area anymore. I actually prefer the Pompano Harnes track as it has more tables and a better selection of ganmes and tournaments. The Hard Rock doesn't even spread Omaha anymore.

The Isle of Capri who owns the Pompano Harness track has built an entire new building devoted to slots and the poker room. They also added restaurants and bars as well as a vegas class buffet. The poker room is great. It is on the second floor and has over 70 tables. It is new and clean and almost always crowded. They spread Omaha Hi/Lo, Stud, Sit n Gos and tournaments. As of July 1st there will be no buy in limits (previously it was $100) and there is always plenty of money being passed around. They have some great weekly tournaments and best of all, no card shuffeling machines are used during tournaments (a quick note - the Hard Rock used to make sit n go players with less than $150 buy-ins play on computerized tables; no dealer. Since I am back I noticed they got rid of those automated tables). My favorite tournamnet is held every Thursday at the Pompano Harness track. Its a $150 buy-in bounty tournament. It pays $50 for each bounty and draws between 70-120 players. Payouts are usually around $3k for first, $1.5k for second, $1k for third. It typically pays out to 12-13 places. You start with like $5k in chips and it usually runs until 12-1am.

Anyway, I'll post more about some of the other poker rooms in the area over the summer. It will be interesting to see how many players we get consistently now that the snow birds have returned North for the summer.

A WindowsLess Office

So I recently decided to make my Lenovo T60 a dual-boot laptop. I had been wanting to try Ubuntu on my laptop so I popped in my old Windows2k CD and created two partitions. I planned on putting Windows on one and Ubuntu on the other.

Windows2k took about 1/2 hour to install which was expected, however, it didn't pick up any of the hardware. The VGA was defaulted to 640x480 16 colors and the Ethernet card was not recognized, nor was the wireless network. Since I couldn't even plug into a network and get to the internet the install was basically useless.

Fortunately Ubuntu had no such problems. I burned the ISO image onto a CD, popped it into the laptop and chose to use the entire hard drive for Ubuntu. Twenty minutes later my Gnome desktop came up in the right resolution and even correctly picked up the wireless adapter. I can read Office type files using built-in Open Office and after a quick Wine install I can even play poker on PDC, Poker Stars and Full-Tilt.

So it seems I am one step closer to becoming a Windowless office. My Lenovo screams. Windows took nearly 2 minutes to boot and almost as long to shut down. Ubuntu takes about 20 seconds to boot and even less to shut down. I also downloaded Chromium (the open source version of Chrome) and it is about 50% faster then Firefox. All in all I am pretty happy with Ubuntu on my laptop. If all goes well over the next month or so the desktop is also gonna get Ubuntu (10.04 BTW).

Recent New York Trip

I was living in midtown Manhattan for nearly 2 years and left in January to avoid the New York winter. Unfortunately I found myself back in Manhattan January 15th due to a project I was contracted to work on.

During my most recent stay I was living at various times in the Financial District, DUMBO, Cobble Hill and midtown Manhattan. I will briefly comment on each location.

My trip began with a stay at the Millenium hotel across from what was once the World Trade Center. It should be noted that nearly 10 years after the September 11th attacks the WTC is still not completed, in fact new construction has not even started. This is an embarassment. Regardless, my stay at the Hilton was uneventful except to say that such basics as internet access are not included. If I wanted to pay $15 a day with a $75 hold on my credit card I could have internet, but for my short stay I opted out. It just rubs me the wrong way that a Motel 8 or Quality Inn that charges less than $100 a night can provide free wireless inernet but a $250-$300 a night Hilton wants to charge me for what in this day and age should be considered a basic service. Needless to say, if it were my money paying for a hotel, the Hilton would not be on my short list.

After 3 nights at the Hilton I moved into a corporate apartment in DUMBO (which stands for down under the Manhattan bridge overpass) which was very nice. DUMBO is a great area and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a great place that is literally minutes to Manhattan. There is an excellent French bakery in DUMBO which makes the best baquettes I have had the pleasure of consuming and I will be back.

From DUMBO I moved into a small unclean studio in Cobble Hill (note both DUMBO and Cobble Hill are in Brooklyn) which is also a cute place (though the apartment left a lot to be desired including internet access and TV, neither of which were turned on during my recent stay). Cobble Hill is also minutes away from Manhattan and Court street is a neat place. There is a small taco shop which is great (I belive its called Frees) and there is a more expensive Mexican restaurant several doors down (I believe its called Cantina or Mexicali) and I will say that the cheaper restaurant has much better food.

Finally, I moved to the Ace hotel in midtown Manhattan (29th and Broadway) which was the high point of my recent trip. The Ace hotel is one of three or four belonging to the same owner, based in Seattle I believe, though I think I read the owner is originally from Oregon. I would highly recommend the Ace. It is an eclectic hotel with guitars and turntables in each room, an excellent night club (open until 4am) in the lobby and a decent restaurant (I believe its called the Breslin) though I did not eat there because the food was a bit pricey. Across the street from the Ace is an awesome Pakistani restaurant called LaSani. If you like spicey food this place is a must see. The food is excellent and cheap. I will eat there again. BTW, the Ace hotel is around $150 a night and provides free inernet as opposed to the Hilton which is nearly double the rate and charges for internet. I will stay at the Ace again.

Anyway, that is it. I am returning home to South Florida in the morning so hopefully I will have time to blog a bit again. It has been a while since my last post.

Success Is Not For Everybody

One of the most puzzling aspects of my persona that has developed over the years is my proclivity for self destructive behavior. I first noticed this in my poker playing but soon realized it was a life long affliction. It seems whenever I am happy and doing well financially, with no real concerns and nothing to do but figure out ways to enjoy myself, I do something stupid and the next thing you know, escape velocity from heaven is achieved. As I plummet towards hell I expend great amounts of energy to get back to where I was peacefully resting a short time earlier. I tend to spend my life vacillating between these two states; constantly expending energy, ultimately moving very little from one extreme to the other. As I go through my life in this erratic manner I often ask myself whether this is really worth the effort, wouldn't I be better off simply vacationing with my lovely wife and visiting with my wonderful children, I mean at the end of the day, what is really the goal? however, my true id always prefers the friction, almost as if it read a poster somewhere which stated "it is the journey, not the goal", and now is determined to exist according to this adage. It seems there is great inner strength borne of adversity, so much so that we often invoke self destructive actions designed to return to the frustrated state. It is perhaps ingrained in one to seek this volatility rather than the tranquility offered at either end of the spectrum.

Or maybe I'm just insane.

The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves

The title of this blog entry comes from a US Marine Corps motivational tactic which goes something like this; if you are not excited about getting up at 4am to run 5 miles in the rain, then perhaps you will become more motivated if we increase it to 10 miles. If 10 is still not enough, perhaps 15 will get you excited. It is a motivational strategy a poker player can learn from, or as some will tell you, a bad beat is an indication you are playing well. If this is true then I was playing extremely well last evening because I spent the entire night sulking at Bad Beat Central.

It started out innocently enough with me dishing out some of the sort of bad beatings I would later in the evening succumb to. One of the first hands I get involved in happens on a 10/25 cent no limit cash table (my stack is about $19) where I am in the small blind and it is checked to me so I raise the obligatory 5 times the big blind and instead of folding to my obviously superior hand both the big blind and the button decide to call. The flop comes Kd-7s-2d which compliments my 7d-4d fine since I have no problem betting into a big pair with middle pair and a flush draw so I do ($5 against a $4 pot) and the big blind drops out but the dealer decides he's had enough of my bluffing ways and he decides to go all in for like $11 at which point I call and we have a diamond flush draw with middle pair looking at Aces. Of course since only professionals play on the Poker Stars 10/25 cent no limit tables I endure a diatribe from my poor victim regarding the stupidity of such a call which I shrug off because (a) I don't consider myself or anyone playing a 10/25 cent no limit table as being an expert on No Limit Hold'Em and (b) if I am not mistaken the turn presented me with a coin flip decision made easier by the fact that the pot was already paying more than 2:1 which is about what a flush draw on the flop is worth. I river a flush and take down a pot big enough to force me to leave the table and return with my original $20 and about the same squirreled away from the table in my bankroll.

A couple of hands into my new table and I get 5s-9h in the big blind. Everybody checks around to me so 6 out of 6 players see a flop of 8c-Jc-3s. Again, everybody checks so I bet $1 figuring somebody's gotta steal it or at least show me the folks who think they're trapping, and I get 2 callers. I'm beginning to think my nine high is good enough when the turn produces a 4h, and again everybody just checks. I can't handle this sort of torture so I bet $2.50 and I get one caller. The river is a 5c and now I'm about as excited as one can get over the third high pair so I raise $3 and the calling station folds. I take down a ridiculously big pot for an incredibly poor hand. I've reached Nirvana and decide I'm never leaving this table. Never arrives about 45 minutes later after I've run my initial $25 up to $55 and I am as confident as a middle aged pot bellied vice laden smoker with a drinking problem can be. Its time to move up to the big boy tables.

I sign up for a 45 player (5 table) No Limit tournament with an $11.50 buy-in which pays around $150 for first place. I play conservatively and am basically in first place for the entire tournament. At the final table I start with around 14k but the blinds are 600/1200 and after a couple of rounds of no cards and after watching some Bozo to my left keep bluffin (finally he had to show down a hand or two; one hand was Q7 suited, another was Ace 4 off) until I am down to like 8k and he is up to 15k, I get Ac-2c on the button. Bozo raise $2400 and I decide I've had enough of his bluffin-ass so I go all in. When we turn over our hands it ends up Ac-2c vs Ah-9s. The flop produces 2d-7c-Kc so I pair my deuce and I'm feeling pretty good about taking down first place in this tournament (at this point we were the two largest stacks), however, because I'm about an 8:1 favorite at this point I start sensing disaster. It is just something that I have learned over the past several years. The turn yields an innocent enough 6s but of course he catches his nine on the river and so I'm back to square one in bankroll land after busting out 8th in a tournament that pays out to 7 places.

Two hours of grinding it out and I'm up $15 on the 10/25 cent cash tables I am sitting on a $35 stack at a table where the maximum buy-in is $25 and the next largest stack is $22. I'm moosing and muscling and all the other good things that go into making me forget about the bad beat suffered earlier. Eventually I'm dealt a decent hand; wired Kings, out of position so I raise to $1.25 (about 5 times the big blind) and I get called by one player so we see the flop together (I assume its some sort of bonding exercise). When 6c-4c-10c hits I say to myself, 'hmm clubs, they look familiar" and notice I am holding the Kh-Kc. Before I can estimate the odds of him holding an Ace of clubs he goes all in. Now I'm thinking if he does have an Ace his kicker can't be much (probably not a King, Queen or Jack) so at a 6 player table the odds of him having any Ace is around 50% but an Ace with a kicker he would be willing to sacrifice his stack for is a pretty low probability. He could have the pocket rockets in which case I'm screwed but I'm thinking the pocket Aces should be scared of the flop. I'm putting him on a flush or flush draw and the only issue is if he is holding the one card I'm worried about; the Ace of clubs. I call mainly because I only tend to fold Kings if I see an Ace on the board, and even then, in most cases I will pay to see an Ace. He turns over 10d-Qh and I still can't figure out what the hell he thought he had. I figure I'm about a 8:1 favorite again and then I get that feeling again. I convince myself I'm just being silly and remember laughing so loud I'm sure my neighbor was annoyed, but I remember laughing even louder when the Qd turned. It was almost as if he was being given the last futile dying hope just to prolong the torture. I remember watching as the Qs came on the river (of course it dropped in slow motion) and my stack went from a bunch to nothing on the turn of a card. I am now down to like $18.00 and my self confidence has been entirely drained. I am down $7 for the night after about 5 hours of effort.

Its usually not just the bad beat that kills you but rather the collateral damage it does to your psyche that ends up costing the most. I remember losing another big pot in an $11.50 buy-in tournament shortly thereafter when my A-h-Kh saw a flop of Ad-7h-4s and one person raised about $1,000 and I went all in for about $3,000 (yeah well I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer). We turn them over and he has pocket Aces. No luck involved in that one. My curtain call on a $1/$2 No Limit table was however, one for the ages. I had worked my stack back up to $35 when I get dealt the pocket eights. I'm allowed to limp in at which point I get the flop of my dreams; 8d-Kh-2c. My all-in is called by someone holding the Kd-5d. I can't blame him for drawing to the flush with the high pair, but at that point I think the odds are about 20:1 that I'm going home with $50 more than I started with. Alas the 2d turns and the Ad rivers and just like that I'm down to a $0 bankroll, whining about how this sort of crap never happens in real life. By now its about 2AM and I decide its time to turn off the 2008 WSOP final table which I have been watching in the background, and go to sleep. I see Peter Eastgate cringing as he realizes he has a one-out or he is basically gone and then I see him hit his 6d on the river (he ended up winning the 2008 WSOP) thereby confirming that one-outs do indeed happen in real life as well as on-line. I also realize mine cost me about $25 bucks while the the one I just watched cost Dennis Phillips like five million and I realize that sometimes it just takes a beating to someone else to improve your morale.

We Really Need to Legalize On-Line Poker

One of the rationale against the legalization of on-line poker is the belief that people will become gambling addicts and squander their life savings. It seems like an attempt to legislate morality. What it really is is an attempt to see the future and try to stop a perceived problem which doesn't yet exist in real-life. This is a strange concept. It reminds me of an old Barney Miller episode (Barney Miller was a comedy which aired in the 1970s about a Manhattan police department) where a guy in the holding cell is screaming they have the wrong person behind bars. It seems he was a psychic and he knew the guy he tackled in the middle of the street was going to steal a little old lady's purse so he decided to stop the crime before it took place. The Captain correctly warned him he should not assume he knows what another person will do. I only wish our government had as much common sense as Barney Miller.

This weekend I am home again, having to work on Saturday, and dealing with the after effects of my wife's dog's heart operation which cost me another seven grand I don't have. Since a quick trip to AC is out of the question I'm stuck home having to play on-line which really sucks because of the funds clearing problems we US players have to deal with until Barney Frank gets his legislation passed. I deposited $50 back in June (June 12th to be exact) on my Poker Stars account using eChecks which Poker Stars cleared immediately (which they usually do) and I then proceeded to lose it in about 3 nights so then, after grinding out like $5 in the free rolls (I think Poker Stars has the best free rolls on-line) and blowing that, I deposited another $25 around July 5th and ended up losing that after about a week of play at very low buy-in tables (like $1-$3 with an occasional $11 or $12 buy-in) so I go to make another deposit on July 19th and my account balance is now -$49.69. I look in my email and I have an email dated back July 12 informing me my June 12nd deposit had been declined by my bank (wtf, like a month later?) and they had deducted it from my account; and oh by the way, make sure to deposit $49.69 to cover the negative balance or we'll try to put it through again after 10 business days. Now I'm screwed. My bank accounts dry because of my wife's dog's heart operation. My on-line account is almost $50 in the red (and I'm looking at another bounced check charge in 5 days) and I have no money to buy my way out of it. I play in a bunch of free rolls and get like $2.50 paid back so now I'm only $47 in the red, but at this rate I'll be dead before my account balance is caught up. I need a stake.

Now it just so happens that my two youngest sons are quite good poker players (my older two don't play at all). My youngest and I had actually been sharing our bankrolls recently, so I gave him a call and was informed I had access to $20 of his bankroll on the condition I keep off the low buy-in tables I love so much. We agreed a 10/50 cent no limit cash table was acceptable as long as I sat down with $20 or more so off I went trying to make enough to get my account balance back in the black. Now the 10/50 cent tables have a lot better players than one might think. Since the buy-in range is between $5-$25 its a good idea to keep away from tables with stacks in the $40s and $50s since those players have been sitting there a while and are obviously playing well. I can usually average about $10/hour on these tables, though my son tends to do twice as well. After about 7 hours I have paid off my $50 and added twenty to my sons bankroll. I go to bed happy I can play on my own account again.

Unfortunately it has been a week or two of bad beats at the tables and apparently luck transcends the poker table because when I checked my account balance the next day it was now zero. It seems since one of my checks had pseudo bounced I was now on some sort of probation. My deposits were now subject to a 14 day waiting period so the $25 I had deposited last week was not cleared (even though eChecks sent me a confirmation a couple of days ago) and the additional $5 I had transferred to my account after I paid back the original $50 was evidently tied up in there somewhere, I guess until Poker Stars clears the $25 deposit which according to my account page says July 28th, so back to my son's bankroll I go. After another grueling 7-8 hour session I had my $25 deposit covered (so I assume I will see a deposit of $25 in my account this Wednesday, we will see) paid back and another $40 added to my son's bankroll.

I'm pretty sure the June eChecks check bounce had something to do with the recent problems we US players have had to deal with regarding depositing and cashing out. I have read this was due to some sort of asset freeze initiated by the NY State Attorney General's office but I have not seen any official release from Poker Stars yet though I have heard Full Tilt did notify their account holders that something bad had happened. I do remember following several blog posts and forums since at the time my account balance was zero and I was not allowed to deposit on Poker Stars for almost 2 weeks. While I still don't know what really happened during that blackout period what I do know is I hated being locked out and even worse worrying about what would happen if I ever did really try to cash out more than $10,000-$20,000 on-line. Should I report this pseudo criminal activity to the IRS and pay them or assume it is illegally gotten gains which I do not have to report (kind of like an arms dealer). I just really hate being in a position where I don't know what it means to comply with the law. I do know that the government views on-line poker as illegal, but I don't hear of anybody actually getting arrested for it and its not clear if this also covers free rolls. I know that the weekly bingo games at my local old age home are also considered technically illegal but no one would think the old folks would get arrested so I am in a bit of a quandary.

There is an old saying which goes something like this "do we have bad people in jail because of good laws or good people in jail because of bad laws?". I know that if poker players start getting put in jail because they play on-line it is a case of good people in jail because of bad laws and that's not a good thing. I sure do hope my government handles this properly. Please sign the Poker Player's Alliance petition if you are so inclined and have not already done so. You may find it here. You may find your local Congressman's and Senator's voting record here. Note you may also find their contact information on this site as well.

My friend who wants to play on-line but for now limits himself to free rolls for exactly this problem knows a squeeze play when he sees one. The basic problem as he sees it is the Senators are in a bind. They get a lot of contributions from their local gambling establishments. They may not get the same from Poker Stars being an entity currently registered to the Isle of Man so they vote with their wallets. They will continue to do so until our collective little wallets make as much noise as their large gambling establishments wallets do. I guess the government doesn't mind gambling as long as they are the house. In this case the house knows how to tax physical revenues. They are not quite as astute at taxing virtual revenue yet. Hopefully they will wise up and realize there is more potential in virtual gambling tax revenue if handled properly.