How I Fixed Flash's Sound In Chrome

I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 9.10 (which is really fast, very nice looking, and all around great). Everything worked great out of the box for the most part. A few issues with the Wireless (it was picking an unsecured network instead of mine). One big problem, my sound in Flash did not work, which means I could not watch Bleach on YouTube!

It took a bit, I installed many different version of flash, moved files around, but atleast it did not work. Then I came across this thread, entry number 7. I brought up alsamixer (just type alsamixer in your terminal).

Arrowed over to Speaker (just use the right arrow key on your keyboard):

Do you see the MM, right above 64<>64 on the far right? Well, that is what is stopping your sound. That's right the speakers are muted!

Hit m (just type the letter m on your keyboard) to unmute:

See the OO, that means that you are no longer muted. Hit Esc to exit and return to the terminal.

I did this all while running Bleach in Chrome on YouTube and what happen?!? I heard sound; lovely sound!

All is well with my computer now (sad, but true).

Upgrade to Ubuntu 9.10

For few years now, I've been running Ubuntu on my Dell Vostro 1500. For about a year I've been using Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron). I have never really had any issues but I would like to run a much newer version of Eclipse. You see I am running Eclipse 3.2 and I would like to run Eclipse 3.5 so I can use newer plugins like the Orc plugin. To be able to run Eclipse 3.5, I will need to upgrade to Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala).

Upgrading to Karmic Koala from Hardy Heron, will require an upgrade from 8.04 to 8.10, then from 8.10 to 9.04, and finally from 9.04 to 9.10. I believe this will take about 3 1/2 hours. I am thinking that since I am running on a Vostro 1500 on the upgrade from 8.10 to 9.04 (Intrepid Ibex to Jaunty Jackalope) I will most likely either have to enable my Wireless again through Backports or just use a cable.

Why would my Wireless stop working? Well you see the drivers I need to run my Wireless are not Open Source and as such I will need to use Non-Open Source; Backport; drivers to be able to use it. If you have only used Windows or OS X this most likely sounds odd, but what it comes down to is Copy Rights. Ubuntu does not install Backports, you have to enable them by saying that you will agree to their Copy Rights and then they will be downloaded and installed.

I did a quick Google search to make sure that I will not have an issues with Karmic Koala on my Vostro and what I found sounds like I will not have any. In fact it sounds like the Koala runs a lot better than Hardy. Even more import and the reason for the whole upgrade Eclipse 3.5 is in Synaptic.

Trust the Code Not the Comment

One of the first things I learned while being a TA is that when code is not working do not read the comments, read the code. Why is this? The comments lie, more often than not when something is not working the comments will not say the same thing as the code. Why is this? Well the person with the issue in the code does not fully know how to get the code to work and thus will not document the non-working code correctly. If they did know how to get the code to work right they would not need to see a TA.

I find reading the code not the comments to continue to be true in the corporate world. More often then not the comments in the code do not tell the full story of what the code does or the comments are out of date or the comments are just flat out a lie. It is normally, best to just use the code as your guide to what the software is doing (or not doing). This is even true in OSS Projects. These projects are not written by software Gods and more often than not the person doing the documentation is not the same person that wrote the code.

When in doubt (and even when not in doubt) have the code be your guide and pay no attention to the comments. Now this is not to say do not write comments. I myself write comments all the time in my code (even for software that I write for myself). I normally trust my own comments and find them to be helpful for to speak on the reasons I write one line of code over another, but I write my comments in such away as to still let the code speak for it self. After all if the code cannot be read, then it should be rewritten in a readable way.

TAs and Samples of the Class

I got through Grad school at NIU by being a TA (and a GTA one semester). One thing I quickly learned was that the students that TAs see are by far not the cream-of-the-crop. If you think about it this would have to be true, if the student knew what they were doing they would not need to see the TA (unless they are smart and need some type of feedback about how smart they are). Now do no miss understand me, I not saying that see a TA makes you an idiot, but people that see TAs tend to be those that are having a hard time with the class.

One thing that most people that need to see TAs have in common is that they do not know how to figure out were their mistakes are. If these people could figure out where their mistake were they would stand a good chance of being able to find some help outside of asking a TA (e.g. Google). (This kind of thing contiues into the work place, with less apt people bugging compentent people for assistance.)

Every now-and-then, it does happen that a student will come in and say I am having such-and-such problem and I am very sure that the error is here. Most of the time these students are right, the TA can quickly assist them and explain to them what they do wrong and how to fix it. Normally this will be the last time that the TA has this student come in for office hours. More often than not a TA will see the same students coming in time-and-time-again saying that their program is not working and they have no clue why. The TA will have to read through all of the source code (or run it and see what is happening) to find what "looks" wrong. The TA will then either fix the issue for them and/or try to teach the student the solution to the problem. I normally did the later, I'd rather teach a person to fish than fish for the person.

Given that the students that see the TA are normally not the cream-of-the-crop, TAs tend to acquire the point-of-view that most of the students are idiots. The problem with this point-of-view is that it is very selective, the sampling is not repersentive of the whole.

4 out of 10

According to the Standish Group's just-released report, CHAOS Summary 2009; 32% of IT projects are on time, on budget, with the required business functions; 44% of IT projects are either late, over budget, and/or missing required business functions; the remaining IT projects (24%) are cancelled. This means in general a new IT has about a 4 in 10 shot of being a successful business project, which means that the odds are that it will most likely fail in some way. In fact out of 100 IT projects about 25 of them will be cut!

In fact it is even worst than it seems, these numbers are worst than last year's. Believe it or not, these are the lowest number in the last five years!

So what does this mean to you (assuming someone is reading this and that they work in IT)? Well, it means that most of the projects that you have work on in the resent pass have failed in some way. It also means that IT as a whole needs to improve their delivery of projects.

So what can IT do? We can try harder at understanding our business clients. The other day I saw a blog that got me thinking about how if you really want to understand your business clients you will have to become one, you will have to "Eat Your Own Dog Food". I read some where, that Amazon developers have to sometime every couple of years shadowing their business clients. I think this is a great idea, if you see how your business client really uses your software you will be better able to understand there needs and their pain points.

Now I do not think that sitting with your business clients every couple of years will allow IT projects to become more successful, but I think it would help.