Great Guitar Application: Guitarix

There is much to love about Linux, especially if you are a guitar player. Guitarix is a virtual guitar amplifier for Linux. Though at first glance it may appear complicated to use, it isn't. There is a guitarix forum, and a wiki to help with settings and controls and installation.

I'm not an expert with guitars, though I have played with them for years and even spent a year taking bass guitar lessons. The minute I heard there was a cool virtual guitar amplifier for Linux I knew I had to try it.To get started with guitarix I picked up a computer plug for around four bucks at Radio Shack that allowed me to plug my 1/4 guitar cord into my 1/8 microphone input jack on my computer (1/4 female to 1/8 male plug). My computer was already hooked up to an 80 watt stereo, so I was good to go once I installed guitarix from synaptic package manager.

First I tried out my bass guitar. I took a bit of adjusting to get that growling bass sound that I love so much, but soon I was thumping my bass along to Rush's Xanadu wishing for all the world I had the bass skills of Geddy Lee. Guitarix sounded great.

Next I plugged my Jay Turser electric guitar into guitarix. The array of sound effects and distortion available in guitarix is impressive, but I should start with the tuner. I love the tuner in guitarix. I have a digital tuner that works well on my guitars, but the guitarix tuner works better, and faster. After tuning my guitar I adjusted the sound for some nice sound effects, doing lots of experimenting--I think I could spend hours just playing with the sound effects. I couldn't help but think that the Rock musicians I listened to in the 70s would have given an arm, or rather a leg, to have amp like this. They probably spent thousands of dollars and did not have such an array of effects that comes with guitarix for free.

I have yet to try playing other music through guitarix while playing a guitar, but that is next on my list. I understand it can be done by using VLC and a special VLC plugin for guitarix. I have already installed the plugin via synaptic package manager, and VLC is installed as well.

From the information I have read, there are usb connectors and other ways to connect your guitar to guitarix that are preferred rather than my straightforward connection to the microphone input. But my way worked for me, and since I'm not playing professionally in a band, but rather just making a joyful noise, I'm satisfied with my setup for now. It allowed me to test out a very cool piece of Linux software.

There is so much great software available for Linux, and more showing up all the time. I'm at the place now where the need for MS Windows is non-existent in my life. And from time to time I come across yet another excellent piece of Linux software, so I can now add guitarix to the list.

If you like/use Linux, and play guitar, you really have to try out guitarix, it is another great thing about Linux.

Privacy And The Net

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For me, Google's new Privacy Policy set to take effect on March 1st has been a wake up call. The idea of them combining user information about me across all of their services is just too much. I'm not a "foil hat" kind of guy, not a luddite, there is no basement in my house filled with months of supplies for the coming apocalypse, yet alarm bells are going off in the back of my head.

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If a government was doing to our privacy what a handful of online companies are doing--we would be up in arms, screaming bloody murder, and readying ourselves for a revolution--we would not put up with that crap. We'd vote them out of office next election. Yet Internet companies are sticking their noses in our business and we thank them for it. Google, Facebook, even my beloved Amazon, they are getting to know us too well and it may be too late to collectively do anything about it.

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Like sleepers awaking from a strange dream we find ourselves finally realizing that great sums of information have been gathered about us. There are Internet companies that know our likes and dislikes, our interests and hobbies, our religious preferences, sexual preferences, politics, what books we read, music we listen to, and movies we watch. Added together they could probably describe you better than your mate, indeed, they may even know you better than yourself.

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Does privacy matter? Probably more to some people than others. You should ask yourself how much information would you want all of your friends, family, your boss, your co-workers, your preacher or your priest to know. Would you want your government to be intimate regarding every detail about you? Do any of these people or entities have the right to know so much about you? My answer is no.

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Here in America we take our personal rights and freedoms seriously. Yet through ignorance or apathy we give away vast amounts of information about ourselves through tracking cookies and shared ​information across web sites and through Internet purchases and uploading of files onto the web. Who should be allowed to retain all this information about us?

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I'm not sure what the ultimate answer is. In the short term I have divorced myself from using most Google products. Retaining a little information about me was one thing, wanting to retain everything possible about me across all their services was another. I've decided to diversify the Internet applications I use, from search engines to news sources, from photos to documents, the greater the variety of companies for each service the better. And I'm logging out of most services when finished with them. I'm tired of them tracking me. I will look at their ads, but they can quit looking at me.

Has Google Become Big Brother?

I've always liked Google. Their services are second to none. I've been perfectly happy with Gmail for years, and even this blog is made possible by Google, so why am I suddenly anxious about a company that has served me so well?

Google's new privacy policy has raised the ire of many users and even has some congressmen concerned. For me the issue is not that Google has tracked me and based ads upon my activities, because I considered this a trade off for their great Gmail and Google Search features. What has got me fired up is that Google is combining their tracking of users across all of their services and that is a substantial amount of services.

Even before this new privacy policy was announced I was becoming uneasy at just how much I depended upon Google. Not only did I have this blog, I also had Gmail, Picasa, Chrome/Chromium Browsers, Google Docs, I also used the Google Search Engine, Google+, and Youtube. If I used Google Books and Google Music the tracking information gained by Google would place them next to God as far as knowing me and my habits.

I don't believe Google is evil, but I'm somewhat astounded that they do not realize that even if they have the most noble of purposes with this massive info gathering into one place, that governments, hackers, and anyone with access to all this information can potentially misuse it--to put it mildly.

What is different now from before the new policy is its scope. The very reach of the thing is disconcerting. Google is a growing Internet monopoly. I've seen stats that suggest Google Search is used by more than 90% of those on the Internet. Google Chrome Browser is fast becoming the number one Internet browser. And has anyone ever been on Facebook and not seen several YouTube videos in their feed each day? And then there are Google Docs. How many users have come to depend upon that service? And again, Google's Picasa controls the photos of many users. And more recently we add Google+ social networking. Add all these together and you begin to see where privacy concerns can arise.

No one should have so much information about so many users across such a wide section of Internet based user applications. I didn't sweat it when Google was matching ads to my Gmail and Internet searches. But I decided that having Google combine all their information about me across so many different applications throughout the Internet was just too much, and I suspect I'm not alone in feeling this way.

Privacy matters to me. I'm not exactly a shy person, and I don't mind publicly expressing my thoughts as this blog and my Twitter account attest. But I'm not willing for my entire life and every aspect of my life on the Internet to be collected by "Big Brother" of any stripe. It's not that I'm into illegal activity, or that I'm obsessed with porn and trying to hide it, but I believe no one has the right to track me in such a broad way, to follow me around like some nosy hound sniffing out all my Internet activity and collecting it so that they can use it to collect ad money. I would rather pay Google a yearly fee for their services than have them collecting so much information about me that in the wrong hands could be seriously misused and abused.

My personal decision has been to divorce myself largely from Google. It is a painful parting as any divorce can be. I take no pleasure in it. But I feel my trust has been betrayed. I thought they were the "Don't Be Evil" company, and I've sang their praises for years, but their excuse that we can just log out every time we are done using their services is not sufficient. But when they say we can simply not use their services--I couldn't agree more. And I've taken their advice.

Google+ was the first to go. I never much warmed up to the service so it was an easy choice to shut down my account. Gmail was much harder, but there are other good email options. I will occasional still use Gmail, but not on the scale I was using it. Another painful choice was to drop the Google Search Engine. I've used it since I first heard it was first available, but I ultimately determined it would be only used as a backup to other search engines. Picasa had to go next, though I will keep a few pictures there, I'm opting to use another service. I have kept Chromium, though I will alternate with other Internet browsers and use a different search engine than the default. In short, I've stopped putting my eggs all in one Google basket.

I am not a "Google Hater". I will still selectively use their products, but I will not use them often, and the words "Log Out" are my new mantra. It did not need to come to this. Google could have self-regulated itself and with some discipline might have kept some separation between its services. To me Google is starting to look like an Internet monopoly, and even that would not have caused me so much concern had they not decided to combine every aspect of the way users interact with all their products and entered the unholy territory of stockpiling such information.

Diversify, Diversify, Diversify, that is my suggestion to Internet users. Do not put all your eggs in one basket, and hold these providers of Internet services accountable. Write to them, let them know your concerns. I wrote Google the same day I read their new privacy policy to express my concerns.


Does any of this matter? Well let's say you use Google services and you are involved in groups or message boards and you discuss health issues, political views, religious ideas, or anything else you would like to be kept private--does your privacy matter to you? Do you want such things collected on servers, stored on hard drives? As we have seen many times, the best security on the Internet can fail, and not everyone who has access to such material are angels. What a nightmare it would be for such collected information to fall into the wrong hands. Private health information could be used against us by employers and unscrupulous health insurance companies. In politically hostile environments your political views could be used against you by any government or person who disagrees with you. Discrimination because of race, religion, politics, disability, sexual preference, any private information based on Internet searches, visits to message boards, even private email or chat could be used against you were it in the wrong hands.

If we don't stand up for our rights and protect ourselves, who will? That is the question you must ask yourself regarding your privacy on the Internet. We can't take for granted that even supposedly good companies will avoid the temptation or the control of others when it comes to playing "Big Brother" with our personal information.

Why I Like Xfce

Anyone who has followed the news about Linux for the past year has seen plenty of drama with the Linux desktop. Good old reliable Gnome left its sane desktop behind and embraced Gnome 3 Shell. Ubuntu, not willing to allow Gnome to grab all the negative press, jumped into a completely new desktop called Unity. Before even these events KDE had moved from version 3 to 4 which ruffled the feathers of some of its users. Getting newbies to try and figure out Linux is always a challenge, but even long time Linux users have been confused by the desktop chaos of Linux lately.

I want to introduce you to some sanity, it is called the Xfce desktop. A humble little desktop that is somewhat lightweight, but plenty configurable. It is not particularly flashy, or boasting a myriad of new features, but you can count on it to work, to not to be buggy, to basically do what you need without a lot of flash or drama. I would describe it as the no drama desktop.

As you can see above, it is a traditional desktop. I have tweaked it a bit to make it more useful to me. I have it installed on Linux Mint 12. I removed the little dock on the bottom, dropped the panel from the top to the bottom, installed xfce goodies, and xfce power manager plug ins, all easy to do in Synaptic Package Manager. I added indicator weather from synaptic because the current weather applet is broke. Installed the good looking Faenza icons, and added some nice wallpaper. I fixed the background text on the desktop shortcuts using the instructions here:

http://xubuntu.wordpress.com/2007/08/27/howto-remove-the-borders-of-your-desktop-icon-text/

    http://xubuntu.wordpress.com/2007/08/27/howto-remove-the-borders-of-your-desktop-icon-text/

Out of the box Xfce works and works well, but it is worth noting that you have the freedom to configure Xfce as you wish, and that is saying much with the current trend of some Linux desktops removing that freedom every step of the way. 

  

While some other Linux desktops drive users away, Xfce provides a safe harbor in the storm. It does not go chasing after fads, does not go out of its way to appeal to those merely looking for more shiny, weird, bizarre, or "out there" desktop designs that require you to take a course in their operation before you can even use them. You can be as ignorant about Linux, or as much of a Linux geek as possible and still use and appreciate both the simplicity, usability, and configurability of Xfce.

To me the desktop is all important for the Linux user. It is what brings you into contact with your computer. It can get in your way, or it can stay out of your way and let you get your work done, and it allow you to simply enjoy an hour of surfing the web without interference. I could go on about Xfce but it doesn't need me to sell it. I would encourage you to give it a shot, if you don't like how it looks out of the box, change it to make it suit you, because that is the nice thing about Xfce, it doesn't ask much of you, and it does what you want a desktop to do--help you enjoy your operating system.

John Schlitt The Greater Cause

I'm a long time fan of John Schlitt. I was listening to his unique voice as far back as 1979 when I bought the Head East Live album. That was on 8-Track Tape folks, so it's been awhile.

In the early 80s I got interested in Christian Rock. I came across an album in my local Christian bookstore by a band named Petra. It had a star ship on the cover of the futuristic themed album, reminiscent of some of my other favorite Rock Bands, Boston and Journey, so I gave it a shot, and have never regretted it. Now this was before John Schlitt joined Petra, but it was not long afterward that John took up Petra's vocals, and I had no problem listening to that great familiar voice from Head East.

Petra was hands down my favorite Christian Rock band. They helped launch the entire Christian Rock scene leading the pack and making Christian Rock cool. I was listening to Christian Rock before it was cool.

In the 1990s Christian Rock thrived, and Petra was constantly putting out great albums, one of their most popular albums was Beyond Belief.

I've spent many hours over the years listening to Petra, loving both the sound and Bible-centered lyrics of their songs. But let's get to The Greater Cause.

Some time back I got on the John Schlitt mailing list, then followed him on Facebook and Twitter, curious to see where life would take him after Petra retired a few years ago. I had no idea that I would be joining with other fans to help him launch an album.

Last year John Schlitt set up a Kickstarter plan to gather pledges to fund a new album. I'd never heard of Kickstarter until John launched his pledge drive to gather funds for this new fan funded project. With the help of his fans John was able to get enough pledges to finance his album. I loved the idea, and hoped it would allow him the freedom to make the sort of album he wanted and would also please his fans. I've now listened to the album over and over, being among those lucky supporters who received an early download of his album just a few days after Christmas. It is an epic success in my view, and I predict it will sell very well this Spring when it is released to the public.

The Greater Cause is very much a Christian Rock album. It has a couple of mellow songs at the end that are a great conclusion to a solid Rock album. The first song is "Live It Loud" and it loudly grabs you and draws you right into the album. The beat is excellent, nice rhythm, and John's strong voice launches this first song. Very reminiscent of 1990s Petra, and I love it. Next comes "Take Me Home" very solid guitar licks start this song and and chant-like lyrics move this song along nicely. The third song on the album is "Love Won't Leave Me Alone" it has a wonderful rhythm and John's strong voice once again drives this one home with catchy lyrics. The next song is "One Of These Days" I really like the guitar and melody of this song, the whole song just flows well, then jumps up a notch to become harder hitting, very nice. The fifth song is "Faith & Freedom", a very powerful song that drives home the title theme of the song, it reminds you of the 'pull no punches' kind of songs we heard throughout the 90s from Petra, excellent song and one that stood out to me the first time I listened through all the songs on the album. The sixth song is "End of Fear", and this might be a good place to point out that this album does not skimp on music, neither are there any lame songs, usually on an album you expect one or two lame tracks, but not on The Greater Cause, all eleven tracks are winners. The "End of Fear" drops the intensity down a notch, probably a good place on the album to catch your breath, and still enjoy a smooth Rock song. "Where I Wanna Be"  is another smooth Rock song that carries you along with a great rhythm and gradually increases in tempo and intensity. The next song is "Hope That Saves The World" which takes us full on back into a harder Rock song, with a hard, steady beat. John's voice is authoritative and the song is very catchy, I really like this one. It reminds you of Who this is all about. Now we come to my favorite song on the album, and it is no easy choice with so many great songs. Number nine on this album is titled simply "Run". Great guitar licks start the song, John's powerful voice drives it forward, it is one of the hardest Rock songs which is one thing that appeals to me, but everything just seems to mesh perfectly on this song, my favorite. The last two mellow songs bring the album to a relaxing finale. "The Gift (Dorla's Song)" has a nice acoustic guitar beginning and the acoustic is great throughout the song, and John shows he can not only belt out Rock songs but carry a lovely tune on mellow ones. The last but not least song is "The Cross Remains" a perfect finish, once again reminding us of the One who gives meaning to any Christian song and every Christian life. Though a mellow song it has some highs and lows, going quiet at one time, then solid percussion driving the tune up and closer to a stronger Rock sound. It is a great finish to a wonderful album.
     I'm excited for those Christian Rock fans who are yet to hear this wonderful album. I can not imagine any way that the album could be better, it has exceeded all my expectations, which were none too low considering the talent of John Schlitt. You will be doing yourself a big favor by getting this album when it is released.
   OK John, I'm ready for the next album man, looking forward to getting that next notice of another Kickstarter album project by John Schlitt. I can already see this one is going to be a huge success. It is a great time to be alive when fans and their favorite artists can work together on projects that they both love. It's all for The Greater Cause.