There is such an easy way to take your MP3 files and burn them to your own custom music CD with Ubuntu, it is actually faster and easier than most programs on Windows.  The program I use is called K3B and it works perfectly.  To download it and use the program just follow these easy steps.

1. Open a Terminal Window
2. Type “sudo apt-get install k3b”
3. Click on your Applications -> Sound and Music
4. Click on K3B

The program now loads up, here is a screenshot:

Now just click on “New Audio CD Project”
Now you just browse to the files you want to put on your CD and Drag & Drop them into the bottom box like such:

When you have filled the CD with the songs you want click on the “Burn” button to the left near the bottom window (center area) and the program will automatically convert your MP3 files to WAVE files and create you an Audio CD that will play in almost all CD/DVD players.

Pretty simple huh?

-Dragon Blogger

As many of my blogger friends know I started this blog on August 23rd 2008, and today is Saturday September 27th 2008.  My blog has been in up and running 34 days so far and this is my 101st post.  This morning my blog finally jumped from a Google PageRank of 0 to PR2.  I am quite happy and excited to finally get a Google Pagerank # above 0, and am continuing to ensure my blog will stay on course to generate traffic and readers.

For everyone out there who stumbles across my blog I consider my blog successful for being only 34 days and I put hard work into making it more so.  I have several tips for new blogger’s and even bloggers looking to try something different.  Look at my “Blogging” category and read all of my posts on blog promotion, design, analytics and my methods for bringing my blog from 0 - an average of 176 viewers per day for the past week.

I have said this before and I will reprint it, the three most valuable social networking tools I find myself using every night are:

Entrecard - This is a must have for your blog, create a good appealing 125×125 ad, don’t use a generic one from Entrecard, it must say your blog’s name on it as well, don’t just have a picture without at least saying your blogs name on the logo.  Drop often and find people who have “Drop For Life” or “I will Drop You Back” on their sites, these people will return drops.  Join my Entrecard Generator, and use it.  It will open many quick links to Entrecard sites for easy drops.  (My generator is still being build, I add new links every few days)

SocialSpark - This is another must in my opinion, not only do you get the analytics, but you also get to browse other peoples blogs by category and link up with people in like genre’s.  Many people are helpful and I get alot of my viewership from SocialSpark people checking out my blog.

Zimbio - This is a really nice way to get your blog promoted, and to find nice articles and well written blogs.  I don’t get alot of traffic from Zimbio, but when you post your articles, you can easily get 90+ links on Google External Links from Zimbio.  I like the concept of Zimbio, the whole blogs turned into online magazine articles.  I am still trying to figure out how to leverage it to get more traffic flow, but I think Zimbio will be a more major player as more people start to use it.

Remember don’t get discouraged, it is easy to get euphoric when you see your blog have 200+ visits one day, and then get depressed when you see the next day it drops down to 20 visits.  You want to remember to have quality content posted, keep readers coming back with unique topics.   I also believe in some variety, there is benefit to specialized blogs, but if you make a technology blog and focus too specifically without somewhat reaching out to other topics once and a while, you will have such a restricted audience.

I advertise my blog over and over as 50% Internet & Technology (I consider posting about blogging, promoting analytics Technology), 25% Entertainment (My Heroes Reviews, TV Shows, Comics…etc), 15% Personal (Local reviews, social life…etc) and 10% Advertising (Paid Posts and Sponsorships).

This is a healthy mix in my opinion, as I try keep a little bit for everyone, but people who are interested in blogging, science, technology and politics will come back to read my latest on these topics.  Ironically, I have 101 posts, and my 5 most popular posts by far are:

1. Mozilla Songbird - Managing your iPOD with Ubuntu Hardy Heron
2. Dragon Bloggers Review of Heroes Season 3 Premiere - Part 1
3. Downloading YouTube Video’s to your iPOD Nano
4. Dragon Blogger Review of TNT Network’s Raising the Bar
5. Dragon Bloggers Review of Heroes Season 3 Premiere - Part 2

One of the Laptops in my household was converted to an Ubuntu Hardy Heron (8.04) version release machine. The Toshiba Satellite model laptop did not have any drivers for Windows XP, and the laptop which sold for around $500 at Fry’s electronics does not have enough video or memory to make a good Windows Vista machine, so I thought it would be an excellent candidate for a Windows replacement box. After researching various choices, Ubuntu is the best by far. It is the most mature and easily converted to Operating System for non-Windows folks and has a superior array of software and features compared to other Linux flavors out there.

As with any UNIX operating system, many printer’s do not have driver’s for UNIX and UNIX machines typically only print to a Post Script enabled printer. I have a Canon MF3110 Multifunction printer. I don’t need my Ubuntu OS to do anything but printing, but there are no native drivers for it.

I have found numerous articles that help configure software for windows which allows you to share your printer and act as a port forwarder, where you setup a proxy printer through redmon and it translates Post Script to your regular printer. These instructions worked to the letter when performing them on Windows XP but were lacking when trying to setup a share with my Windows Vista Machine. These instructions say to use an Apple Laserwriter which doesn’t have drivers on Windows Vista, and also doesn’t include the extra registry entries needed for Vista to print properly.

http://home.comcast.net/~heretrythis/hp3100/psemuxp.html

But, with a combination of the above web site, and this web site. I was able to garner all the information to get my printer up and running.

http://searchwindowsserver.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid68_gci1268897,00.html

So here are full blown instructions, including links to the 3 program files you need.

You will need GSView, GSMon and RedMon.

Many of the links to download these programs found in the above two websites are dead and no longer work. I found the website called filewatcher, which has links to any file for download and this site is excellent.
Either go to these 3 links directly, and if they don’t work, go to http://www.filewatcher.com directly and search for these 3 binary files manually. Click on any and all hyperlinks until you find the ones that are valid and let you save the file. (Files to search for: gsv46w32.exe, redmon17.zip, gs814w32.exe)

http://www.filewatcher.com/m/gs814w32.exe.7337472.0.0.html

ftp://mirror.cs.wisc.edu/pub/mirrors/ghost/ghostgum/redmon17.zip

http://www.filewatcher.com/m/gsv46w32.exe.1594368.0.0.html

• Install GhostScript and GSView right off the bat. I installed everything to C: drive for simplest instructions I didn’t want to have to configure any more than I already had to.

• Open a DOS window, and CD into the directory where GSview is installed. Make sure that the file “gsprint.exe” is located here. Type “notepad gsprint.cfg”, and create a file that looks like this:

-noquery

-color (optional - omit for B&W printers)

-printer
My Windows Printer

-ghostscript
“C:GSGS8.14BINGSWIN32C.EXE”

“My Windows Printer” is the name of your printer EXACTLY as it appears in Control Panel… Printers, and “C:GSGS8.14BINGSWIN32C.EXE” is the exact path and filename of the command-line executable for Ghostscript (your values for these two may be different - enter the correct values for your PC). Save this file, then run the following command:

• Install the RedMon application
• Create a New Printer, Select Local Port, Select Redirected Port, Set Port Name to RPT1: or anything similar. Note for Windows Vista, you must “Run As Administrator”->”Add Printer” you can’t select local port and a redirect port as a local admin.
• Select the HP LaserJet 1200 PS (This will also exist in Ubuntu and work fine, there is no Apple Laser Writer to select for Windows Vista)
• After creating the printer, edit the printer (again with “Run As Administrator”->”Properties”)
• Configure the RPT1: port with the following information.

Redirect to program: C:GSGSVIEWGSPRINT.EXE
Arguments for program: - (a single dash, no spaces)
Output: Program handles output
Run as user: [ ] (unchecked)

• Open REGEDIT32 (or just REGEDIT in Vista) and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersiondevices.

• In the right-hand pane, look for a REG_SZ value whose name is the printer you’re redirecting to (the same name you copied in Step 2),a value of something like winspool,Ne01:. Copy this information.

• Navigate to HKEY_USERS.DEFAULTSoftwareMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionDevices. Create a REG_SZ value with the same name and data. Note: This step is critical; without it, the redirector will not be able to see a printer to redirect output to. The key and its data should be recreated exactly.

• Close RegEdit.

• Share your printer and name the share something simple like “laserjet”

• Go ahead and test print with your new “HP LaserJet 1200 PS” printer, it should print out a test page fine.

• In Ubuntu, you must have SAMBA installed and smb:// mount the printer. For Windows Vista, unless you have guest account access, you must have a valid user account to connect as.

• You must have your firewall allow your Ubuntu or Unix Machine to connect to your Vista Machine.

These instructions should work for just about anyone running Vista or Windows XP (XP you can just do the instructions from this link and they work 100%, I already tested them 3 times)

http://home.comcast.net/~heretrythis/hp3100/psemuxp.html

If anyone has any problems or questions or needs assistance further, feel free to post a comment and leave me your email and I will respond to you.

Happy Printing

-Dragon Blogger