How To Start With Bitcoin

First off, let's start off on why you shouldn't start out with Bitcoin (or any crypto-currencies for that matter).

-You want to get rich

If you think that crypto-currencies are an easy investment right now, you are like many other people out there. That being said, there is nothing really special about Bitcoin that give it value, and it has probably a better chance of going down in value than up. The fact that you have heard of it on the evening news, like most stocks, means you are too late to make any big money.

-You want to do something illegal

See the next point that shows why this is a bad idea.

-You want to be anonymous

Bitcoin is actually the exact opposite of a private, anonymous currency. As far as the currency is concerned you name is a hash number, and that number is published EVERYWHERE for anyone to see anytime. Bitcoin could be described as something closer to a car title, where it takes the buyer's name and the seller's name to change possession, but unlike a title, you don't get a new clean one each time it changes possession. Every time currency changes hands it adds another line with the new owner. The only way that this could be considered an anonymous currency is that you don't have to associate your real name or information in order to use the currency. So that means it is your job to make sure that the site you are buying from isn't checking your computer for identifying information or adding cookies so that it can identify you later. It is built on trust. That being said, if you wanted to do something illegal with Bitcoin, chances are you would get caught. An expert might not get caught, but if the leader of the Silk Road got caught, chances are they can catch you too if they wanted.

-You want your money to be safe

Crypto-currencies are incredibly volatile and prone to theft. Before when Grandma downloaded Flappy Fish and infected your computer, you might have lost your old school ROM collection or old homework assignments. Now, if Grandma invites hackers in, they get your wallet and everything in it, if you keep your wallet on your computer, that is. There is no way to reverse the transaction and finding them will be difficult if they are professionals. What has happened is your "bank" is now sitting on your hard drive with nothing but "Norton Security Suite" to have your back. If you want your money to be safe, give it to a real bank. On top of that, even if you pay a service to keep your coins safe, they might double in price tomorrow, or be worth nothing. One of those two.

-You want to make normal shopping easier

There are more and more stores taking Bitcoin, but getting started with Bitcoin is kind of a pain, as you will see later.

-You want to start mining

Just don't. Please. Unless you are looking to have fun and lose money, just don't.

Now that I have explained all of that, I have no attachment to money and quite like the smell of it burning, so much that I decided to throw some away after Bitcoins.

Buying Bitcoins

Safest way to do Bitcoin? Coinbase.com

Sign up with your email and a password. Take note of the current conversion rate in the upper right hand corner.

In order to verify your bank account you have two options. You can give them the keys to the kingdom immediately and type in your online banking credentials (which is typically a no-no) or you can wait 3-4 days for them to verify a deposit from your account.

Actually want to buy something with those coins now before they change in price? Sorry, that’s not going to happen. If you don’t pay with your credit card they will make you wait, again. For a digital currency company, they sure are waiting till they have the green in their hands.

Add a credit card if you don’t want to wait the 4 DAYS to get Bitcoins (click enable instant buy)

Throwing away your hard earned money

So when my Bitcoins do come in, where can I spend them? The list on Bitcoin.com used to be pretty sad, but now http://usebitcoins.info/ is nice and pretty, even if it still is a list of no-name companies.

But wait, TigerDirect accepts Bitcoins! (I have 4 days, maybe I should hold out for Newegg?)

http://www.tigerdirect.com/bitcoin/?srkey=bitcoin

But for some reason you still need to give them your name, address, and current location of all your valuables.

Better solution? Egifter.com / gyft.com

Both vendors will sell you instant electronic gift cards for Bitcoins on the spot, all you need is an email address and you are set. (They sell Amazon Gift cards, hint hint.)

That being said, like most merchants, TigerDirect gives you a USD total and converts it on the fly to BTC. Be careful though, if you take more than 15 minutes on TigerDirect, you will be forced to start all over.

Upgrade to 13.04 Crashes on Blueman, or Bug #1016942

Setting up blueman (1.23-1) ...
reload: Unknown instance: 
invoke-rc.d: initscript dbus, action "reload" failed.
dpkg: error processing blueman (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 blueman

So I was upgrading my machine a few days ago after neglecting dist-upgrades for a while and realized that there was a new release out, 13.04 to be exact. I was running on Lubuntu 12.04 and enjoying it, but I was willing to take the plunge. My first mistake was I had left my system set for long term releases, so when I ran

$ sudo do-release-upgrade

my response was simply

Checking for a new ubuntu release  

No new release found  

after checking my /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades and finding that it had Prompt=lts all I had to do was change Prompt=lts to Prompt=normal and all was well.

For awhile.

During my update, I may or may not have pressed "ctrl-c" to break out of what I thought was a text editor, but was really something else that sent my break command to my release upgrade in progress. I had to reboot to come back to life. When I did, I was thankfully greeted with a login prompt, but no networking. I followed the commands from the previous post to get back on my feet, and then ran into this new issue. Upgrade crashes on blueman. So I run

$ sudo apt-get remove blueman

and

$ sudo dpkg --configure -a

$ sudo apt-get install -f

until I have everything installed and configured besides blueman and lubuntu-desktop . From here I was racking my head for days, until I came upon a nice little IRC log here. I had been going through the bug logs here and found the same error earlier, but nothing new. The IRC log recommended quite a few options, but the only one that did anything for me (and the only one I even tried for that matter) was

$ sudo service dbus restart

and then it worked like a charm! Whoever it was in that IRC chat, thanks!

Enabling Networking from Terminal in Lubuntu 12.04

I was running a "sudo do-release-upgrade" on my Lubuntu 12.01 laptop when durring a series of unfortunate events, I broke it. It rebooted and I was able to login, but no X session. Here is what I did to come back. I typed:

1. sudo ifconfig eth0 up (in order to logically enable the interface)
2. sudo ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.4 (to set the ip since dhcp wasn't working)
3. sudo ifup eth0 (this should have turned dhcp on for eth0)
4. vi dns.txt
5. enter "nameserver 4.2.2.2" and save and quit
6. cat dns.txt | sudo resolvconf -a eth0
7. And you should be live!

Lenovo G555: Blank Screen On Boot

My uncle recently provided me with a Lenovo G555 that had what sounded like an overheating issue. Computer turned itself off, waited a few hours, and it would come back to life. We told him the basics about laptop care (don't leave laptop on soft surfaces, if necessary you can turn it upside down to allow airflow, that kind of thing.) When it got to us, it had been dead 3 days with no signs of coming back. For those of you who don't know how this ends, it isn't coming back. You would press the power button, and the fan would spin up, hard drive and cd/dvd drive would make noise, the power and charging light would even come on. But nothing (not even a lit black screen) would come up on the LCD, the HDD and Wifi light wouldn't light up, and the keyboard presses didn't seem to do anything at all.

To ensure it wasn't anything else, we:
-Pulled out the battery, ran it on AC power
-Plugged it into an external monitor
-Pulled out the hard-drive
-Put in a bootable DVD
-Pulled out the RAM and installed each on its own

and finally examined the motherboard for any telling signs. And that there were.

From first sight there wasn't anything wrong.

Then I noticed some red looking stuff on the chip on the upper left hand corner (I had cleaned it before I took these pictures)

As you can see here, post rubbing alcohol, pre-screwdriver, something seems to have shorted here beside this capacitor.

Blurry picture post-screwdriver.

Capacitor after scraping off gunk with Flathead screwdriver

 Even after the cleaning there was no joy with this laptop, but from what I do know, some capacitors have a
shelf life, and if one has gone, others may as well without the fun show we see here (as well as they may be on the opposite side of the board) This laptop is fully dead. And at that point there's only one thing you can do: Check his pockets for loose change.

UPDATE 9/9/13:
After some research I found that a common issue with this computer is overheating that leads to warping of the motherboard and therefore the disconnection of the graphics chip. How did I find this? Lots of this laptop on Ebay with the same problem attributed to said problem as well as repair videos teaching re-flowing on this laptop. Just saying.

UPDATE 1/8/14
After thinking this one through a little more, I have decided that this is most likely an issue of overheating. Although there is what looks like a dead capacitor (if you didn't see it before, it was the middle black and silver square just to the left of the "large" black chip in the last photo. With all of the overheating symptoms that this computer problem started with, it seems more likely that the graphics chip is having issues than that one capacitor on the board dying. That being the case, when I get a chance, I plan to get a large toaster oven and follow the directions here to see if I can't fix this one. If I do, successfully or not, I will post my findings here. For more information on reflowing and this type of issue, look up the similar issue of the Xbox 360 RRoD (red ring of death). Many people will recommend terrible fixes including overheating the machine on purpose (bad idea, most things on the board don't like controlled heat.) and putting it in your oven after stripping it down (also bad idea, solder fumes are toxic, and you will want to cook food in there!), but there are good solutions, such as using a heat controlled hot air gun, using an electric skillet (that you won't use for food ever) or the toaster oven idea. Keep in mind that this is technically very difficult process and these methods are only given because your machine is ALREADY dead. You have very little to lose -- if you mess up, it's still dead. You could have it done professionally, but that would likely cost more than a new laptop or Xbox.

Logitech Quickcam STX Linux Driver

For anyone like me who is searching for the linux drivers for this webcam, look no further. There were at least 2 depreciated projects I went through before I got here, but lo and behold, this camera is supported out of box. Granted, that doesn't mean that it works with skype (it has been giving me trouble in both Lubuntu 12.04 and Windows XP), but you should be able to open VLC (not cheese, at least for me) and have it open right up from File > Open Capture Device, and then choosing /dev/video0. Hope that helps out both you and me for a later date. If someone got it working in Skype, let me know!

How to PrintScreen in Ubuntu(or Lubuntu)

In windows, it seems like PrintScreen is a basic, alongside the existence of dirt, rocks, and trees. But in Ubuntu (as far as I have experienced) is not so easy.

As my own Google search failed me, I will state the obvious to everyone else who didn't know like me.   There are 4 basic ways to do this

A) Gnome Screenshot Utility
B) The PrintScreen button
C) The shell (or terminal)
D) The GIMP

Gnome Screenshot

This one is pretty basic -- open your "start menu", go to accessories, then click "Take ScreenShot". That's it. From there you can play with the options.

PrintScreen Shortcut

This one isn't so simple, mostly because the functionality seems to be different than what one would normally guess. This is the one I wanted to use, as it is simple and I don't use Gnome. 

What I found was that PrintScreen works as expected, except that instead of copying to the clipboard the screen capture is saved to a .png file in your home directory ( /home/(your username) ). If you press Alt-PrintScreen, it should just capture the selected window at the time to that same place.

Shell

There seem to be quite a few options for this kind of thing, but the first and easiest I found was ImageMagick. Lots of places will give you a command like 

sleep 10; import -window root screenshot.png; gimp screenshot.png;

when you ask how to do this from terminal, but what they don't tell you is that most people probably don't have imagemagick installed already. For that you would need to 

sudo apt-get install imagemagick

to install. From there you can use that command which will (in order on the command) wait 10 seconds, capture from the "root window"(which is the whole screen), saves to screenshot.png, then opens up in gimp

If you run that command and get the "Import: command not found" issue, then you need to install/re-install imagemagick.

The GIMP

EDIT: This way of doing it is a way I found out much later, but now it is the only way I use.
Simply open up the GIMP (or if you don't have it under Graphics > GIMP Image Editor , simply run "sudo apt-get install gimp")

After GIMP loads, click File > Create > Screenshot. I'm sure you can figure it out from there.

Mini: Virus Aftermath Clean-Up (File Type Associations)

For Win 7 computers I found another resource for fixing file type associations in case a virus breaks them. If you are having this problem, what happens is you click on a link, but instead of opening the program the "Open file-type with what program" box pops up. You can trick it into opening the program you want by choosing it from the menu, but it is far from optimal. Solution? Well one is this. There is a post on SevenForums.com(which I am not very familiar with) which gives you a page of registry file downloads that will repair your default file type associations for Windows 7. I just downloaded the .exe and .lnk files, added them, and voila! Like a charm. Hope that helps!