Update: We got it going in Blender!

VitalBodies recently bought a 3dConnexions 3D SpacePilot controller to use in Blender to help with the learning curve of the Blender interface. We got the proprietary driver going (in Ubuntu and POSSIBLY in Blender) using the steps below. We have gotten the device going in Blender 2.49 using the Open Source version for this tutorial plus a recompiled (for 64-bit)  plugin. After following a long trail of wreckage (within many many forum threads) of people that did not get the 3dconnexion 3D controller going in Ubuntu or 64-bit Ubuntu, we decided to start this “how to” post to consolidate information and show how to actually get it going.

OPEN SOURCE SPACENAV:

VitalBodies would like to thank the Spacenav project for creating open source drivers! http://spacenav.sourceforge.net/

In order to get the Spacenav driver/daemon going and configure and test it in Ubuntu, you need to install the latest daemon, libspnav and spnavcfg which are different files each with their own readme file. spnavcfg requires GTK+ 2 and Xlib headers to be installed which in Debian and Ubuntu can be satisfied by installing libgtk2.0-dev.

Download and extract the spacenav files to the Downloads folder from here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/spacenav/files/

If you are new to Linux or Ubuntu you might find the instructions in the readme files rather brief so we are attempting to help bring more users to driver heaven – In short, you need to download the files and then install them with ./configure, make, and sudo make install.

All of the installation steps (./configure, make, and sudo make install) are done from the terminal: Applications > Accessories > Terminal.

NOTE: Command Line Reference: https://help.ubuntu.com/9.10/basic-commands/C/

NOTE: In Ubuntu Karmic the default place to download files when using Firefox is: home/user_name/Downloads.

NOTE: When you start the terminal in Ubuntu it usually defaults to your home/user_name directory.

NOTE: Be aware that the version numbers might change…

We started by installing libgtk2.0-dev first using synaptic: System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager > Search “libgtk2.0-dev” > Mark for installation > Apply > etc…

Next we needed to edit the libspnav-0.2.1/configure script using gedit:

cd

cd Downloads/libspnav-0.2.1

gedit configure

We changed this:

if [ "`uname -m`" = 'x86_64' ]; then
   libdir=lib64
fi

To this:

# if [ "`uname -m`" = 'x86_64' ]; then
#    libdir=lib64
# fi

libspnav Installation Commands:

cd Downloads
cp -R libspnav-0.2.1 /tmp/libspnav-0.2.1
cd
cd /tmp/libspnav-0.2.1
./configure
make
sudo make install

spnavcfg Installation Commands: (Requires GTK+ 2 and Xlib headers so install libgtk2.0-dev first using synaptic (see above))

cd
cd Downloads
cp -R spnavcfg-0.2.1 /tmp/spnavcfg-0.2.1
cd
cd /tmp/spnavcfg-0.2.1
./configure
make
sudo make install

spacenavd Installation Commands:

cd
cd Downloads
cp -R spacenavd-0.4 /tmp/spacenavd-0.4
cd
cd /tmp/spacenavd-0.4
./configure
make
sudo make install
sudo ./setup_init

Useful commands:

For starting, stopping and reading the log file: (Be sure not to start multiple instances of the driver)

gedit /var/log/spnavd.log
sudo /etc/init.d/spacenavd start
sudo /etc/init.d/spacenavd stop
spnavcfg

Running the spnavcfg command from the terminal brought up this:

Blender: In Blender you will need to copy the 3DxNdofBlender.plug file into the /home/user_name/.blender/plugins directory or wherever your plugs directory is located. If the plugin works for version you should be able to move the puck see the movement (like being able to fly around the cube). We had to be in the USER view port and the cursor needed to over that window. Top, side and front works also but once we moved we were automatically in user mode. Additionally the device has to be enabled and you can “check” that it is using the spnavcfg command from the terminal.

64-bit Plug File: For us to get the device to work using 64-bit Ubuntu and Blender we needed the proprietary plug file recompiled using 64-bit Ubuntu.  This was the final key that enabled us to get this working.

We want to thank RoboticGolem in the forums for helping us get this going! Thank you, thank you, thank you – it has been a long haul.

How do you recompile the driver?

In the blender plugin zip from 3dconnexion (3DxBlender2_47-Linux-i386.zip) there is a file called 3dcnxplug-lin.c

It says to use the command cc 3dcnxplug-lin.c -Iintern/ghost -Wall -lc -shared -fPIC -fvisibility=hidden -o 3DxNdofBlender.plug to compile it (more or less). It’ll fail unless you have the GHOST_Types.h file from the blender source (I just put it in the same directory).

cc 3dcnxplug-lin.c -Iintern/ghost -Wall -lc -shared -fPIC -fvisibility=hidden -o 3DxNdofBlender.plug

http://www.blender.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=78503

http://www.3dconnexion.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=18401

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=182325

(From the Daemon Readme)

1. About
Spacenavd, is a free software replacement user-space driver (daemon), for
3Dconnexion’s space-something 6dof input devices. It’s compatible with the
original 3dxsrv proprietary daemon provided by 3Dconnexion, and works
perfectly with any program that was written for the 3Dconnexion driver.

For more info on the spacenav project, visit: http://spacenav.sourceforge.net

2. Dependencies
In order to compile the spacenavd daemon, you’ll need the following:
* GNU C Compiler
* GNU make
* Xlib headers (optional)

You can compile the daemon without Xlib, but it won’t be compatible with
applications that where written for the original proprietary 3Dconnexion
driver (e.g. blender, maya, etc). The 3dxsrv compatibility interface needs to
go through the X window system.

3. Installation
If you have the dependencies installed, just run “./configure” and then
“make” to compile the daemon, and “make install”, to install it. The
default installation prefix is “/usr/local”. If you wish to install
somewhere else, you may pass –prefix=/whatever to the configure script.

4. Running spacenavd
If your system uses SysV init, then you may run the supplied “setup_init”
script, and everything should be set up to have spacenavd start automatically
during system startup. However, for now, you won’t have to reboot, just type
“/etc/init.d/spacenavd start” as root, to start the daemon immediately.

If your system uses BSD init (you can tell if you *don’t* have a series of
directories called rc0.d, rc1.d, and so on, in /etc), then you’ll have to
follow your init documentation and set this up yourself. You may be able to
use the provided init_script file as a starting point.

5. Configuration
The spacenavd daemon reads a number of options from the /etc/spnavrc file. If
that file doesn’t exist, then it uses default values for everything. You may
use the graphical spnavcfg program to interactively set any of these options.
The daemon should respond immediately to your changes, and also the
configuration file should be updated automatically.

6. Troubleshooting
If you’re having trouble running spacenavd, read the up to date FAQ on the
spacenav website: http://spacenav.sourceforge.net/faq.html

If you’re still having trouble, send a description of your problem to the
spacenav-users mailing list: spacenav-users@lists.sourceforge.net
along with a copy of your /var/log/spnavd.log and any other relevant
information.

7. License
This program is released under the terms of the GNU GPLv3, see COPYING for
details.

PROPRIETARY DRIVER: (We never did get the driver to work in Blender (but we think we know why – you have to recompile the plug file in a 64-bit Ubuntu – steps shown below) but we did get the driver working in Ubuntu see below – we ended up switching the open source version above but might just try to commercial driver again soon. Did you get it going?)

UBUNTU:

We downloaded and installed the proprietary driver 3dconnexion site: (As stated in their instructions)

The Blender page on 3dConnexion: http://www.3dconnexion.com/index.php?id=108

Plugin: http://www.3dconnexion.com/index.php?eID=sdl&ext=tx_iccsoftware&oid=27237638-d168-4cc6-bc67-4b1fe78de7c4&filename=3DxBlender2_47-Linux-i386.zip&ap1=PleaseSelect&ap2=&ap3=

We ran each of these commands using sudo:

sudo nautilus

Copy the 3dxware-linux-v1-2-11.tgz to /tmp

Copy and extract the install-3dxunix.sh file into /tmp using the terminal.

sudo tar xfz 3dxware-linux-v1-4-3.x86_64.tar.gz install-3dxunix.sh

Run the install script:

sudo ./install-3dxunix.sh

Then we had to install libmotif because the driver complained about not having the library libXm.so.3.

We used System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager > search ” libmotif” to find and install the libraries.

START THE DRIVER:

Run the driver from the command line:

sudo /etc/3DxWare/daemon/3dxsrv -d usb

Here is what we saw:

UN-INSTALL THE DRIVER: (If you need to un-install here is how)

sudo aptitude remove 3dxunix

Since the driver was installed with a script rather than as a package, the above command will NOT remove the driver. Anyone know how to remove it?

We have an answer from the comments related to this post:

“Delete it.
And delete the corresponding line in the /etc/inittab.”

We take that to mean delete the directory

/etc/3DxWare

And this lines of code (at least for us):

3d:2345:respawn:/etc/3DxWare/daemon/3dxsrv -d usb </dev/null >/dev/null 2>&1

One can use sudo nautilus to navigate the files and delete them and then gedit to edit the inittab.

You will also need to delete the plugin in the .blend/plugins folder also and un-install libmotif using synaptic.

BLENDER: (We did not get our SpacePilot going in Blender using the Proprietary driver and switched to the open source version)

The next step is to get the proprietary driver going with blender:

Download the blender build from http://www.blenderbuilds.com/

Unzip the build.

Copy the 3DxNdofBlender.plugin folder to the plugin directory which is usually in home/user_name/.blend/plugins if you are using the Blender install from the Ubuntu (can require View > Show Hidden Files).

Double-clicked blender and you should be set to go…

64-bit Plug File: For us to get the device to work using 64-bit Ubuntu and Blender we needed the proprietary plug file recompiled using 64-bit Ubuntu.  This was the final key that enabled us to get this working with the open source driver and now we just need to try it on the proprietary version.

We want to thank RoboticGolem in the forums for helping us learn about the need for a 64-bit driver! Thank you, thank you, thank you – it has been a long haul.

How do you recompile the driver?

In the blender plugin zip from 3dconnexion (3DxBlender2_47-Linux-i386.zip) there is a file called 3dcnxplug-lin.c

it says to use the command cc 3dcnxplug-lin.c -Iintern/ghost -Wall -lc -shared -fPIC -fvisibility=hidden -o 3DxNdofBlender.plug to compile it (more or less). It’ll fail unless you have the GHOST_Types.h file from the blender source (I just put it in the same directory).

cc 3dcnxplug-lin.c -Iintern/ghost -Wall -lc -shared -fPIC -fvisibility=hidden -o 3DxNdofBlender.plug

http://www.blender.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=78503

http://www.3dconnexion.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=18401

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=182325

BlenderBuilds.com: (Are they shutting down or is the 3Dconnexion taking over -shutting down is our best guess?)

http://www.blenderbuilds.com/2007/08/05/august-build-3dconnexion-with-a-prize/

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

http://www.arakhne.org/3dxware/index.html

Forum Article with readme files and other info: http://www.3dconnexion.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=18109#18109

Interesting insights on getting the Open Source version going: http://www.3dconnexion.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=13877#13877

POLL UPDATE: (Apparently they shut down our poll)

Add your vote to the poll we started: http://www.3dconnexion.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=18109

TERMINAL:

If you need to find your device this command is suggested:

lshal | less

Followed by the “/” and the first few letters of the name of the device.

 /Space

Then:

Enter

That gave us this:

usb_device.product = '3Dconnexion Space Pilot 3D Mouse'  (string)

There are number of Ubuntu (Linux) users and “would be” sellers that might want to stay within Ubuntu and not have to also have a Windows machine to bulk list on Ebay, their own shopping cart or Google base. Although there may be many ways to do this, we wanted to introduce a way that we found that is working for us. This took us quite a bit of time and research and we hope this article helps others.

In short, you have to have the right software that can do the job all the way to completion. We wanted to stay completely open source where possible and not use proprietary file formats. All of the software and resource below are free with the exception of web site hosting. We also decided to use a professional Joomla template that was not free, although there are free templates available.

Here is the software we found to be the most helpful: (OS = Open Source)

• Ubuntu (OS)
• Open Office Spreadsheet (OS and available on-line or within Ubuntu)
• GIMP (OS and available on-line or within Ubuntu)
• Joomla (OS and available on-line)
• VirtueMart (OS and available on-line)
• CSV Improved (CC BY-ND)
• Gedit (OS and available within Ubuntu)
• Firefox (OS and available on-line or within Ubuntu)

This article does not go into the zillions of details that are involved in setting up web sites, ebay, shopping carts and the like. Instead this article simply points the way and lets “would be” sellers that want to use open source software know there is indeed “a way” and what that way is. Again, this is not to say this is the only way.

Spreadsheets:
The key to this system is to create or move your listings into spreadsheet. This allows one to bulk upload (start, edit, update, end, etc) ones listings on Ebay, their shopping cart, Google Base and other venues. You will end up with one spreadsheet for Ebay, one for the shopping cart and CSV Improved will create a Google Base spreadsheet for you. The spreadsheets are each tailored specifically to the tasks they are to perform but the bulk of the information is the same for all of them.

Open Office Spreadsheet
In this article we are suggesting Open Office Spreadsheet as the tool of choice. There may be other editors that are just as nice but we know this one can do all the jobs that are needed.

Gedit
There can be occasions along the way where you might need to edit in “plain text” and Gedit can help us with that. Gedit is similar to the Notepad you find in Windows yet is more powerful than Notepad. This tool can be useful for converting text or code or something you have copied onto the clipboard into plain text also. For example, you can just paste into Gedit, re-select what you pasted, and click copy – now (like magic) what is stored in the clipboard is in plain text, ready to paste into a spreadsheet or XHTML code.

GIMP:
This is a great tool for editing and resizing images for your listings or creating logos and such.

Joomla:
Joomla is a CMS tool for creating web sites and managing content. CMS stands for Content Management System. On a web site you have lots of content to manage in the form of articles, images, artwork and possibly sound and video.

Joomla Template:
Joomla sites need to be styled with a template and there are many templates available. Be careful not to download “free” (as in pirated) commercial templates as they tend to have viruses and other bugs. It takes a lot of effort to set all this up and the last thing you need is your site hacked. Some templates can style both Joomla and VirtueMart. We chose to use a professional RocketTheme Template

Web Site Hosting:
Some web sites hosts like Dreamhost offer “one click installs” of Joomla and easy database management so installation is super is easy. We also like that our site is Green by going with DreamHost.

VirtueMart:
VirtueMart is a component for Joomla that adds a shopping cart into Joomla. This is nice in that you are not dealing with a cart and separate web site for the sake of simplicity, management and styling.

CSV Improved:
CSV Improved is an import export component for VirtueMart so you can import, manage and export your listings. You can even export your listings as a XML file. How to export a ready made XML file for Google Base using CSVI VirtueMart? Within Joomla: Components > CSVI VirtueMart > Export > CSVI Google Base Export XML > Choose the settings you need or leave them at the defaults > Export.

Click image for a larger version

Google Base:
Google Base is under going a name change to Google Merchant Services. When you upload your products to Google Base your products show up in the “shopping” tab (product search on Google) which is a free service offered by Google. Here is an example showing our product listings on Google: http://www.google.com/products?q=organic%20futon%20vitalbodies

Ebay:
Ebay tends to be very proprietary and can lead one down that path – to help avoid that fate you can use Ebay File Exchange rather than Turbo Lister which tends to only run on certain Operating Systems like Windows. If one learns Ebay File Exchange rather than Turbo Lister, they may only need to use Turbo Lister once to export their listings.  That is if they have a lot of listings already on ebay, otherwise one really does not need Turbo Lister at all. If you do have listing on ebay you need to manage, you must get the ebay item numbers to match up to the title and description within the spread sheet in Open Office. At the time we needed to download our listings we did not know about open source jAOLT that can also do the task that Turbo Lister does. I have not tried jAOLT but it is well worth a look and frees you from needing a Windows machine to run Turbo Lister to get your spread sheet started.
Additionally, if you leave Turbo Lister behind and switch to Ebay File Exchange you are are much more ready to load your own web sites cart with your spreadsheet and add your products to Google Base. This frees you from Windows, IE, Wine and Turbo Lister at the very least. We were able to do just that, using Open Office, Ebay File Exchange, Joomla, VirtueMart, and CSV Improved and the other software listed here. Consider keeping the item titles at 55 characters or less so they are compatible with Ebay.

Firefox:
I mention Firefox because I know it works throughout the whole process. Epiphany is nice for double checking web pages as it uses the Webkit engine to display web pages and Webkit which can pass the acid3 test for CSS.

Additional Learning: Some of the learning curve took a considerable amount of time to figure out so I wrote a few blog posts to help others flatten that curve.

Using File Exchange And Turbo Lister With Ebay Listings In Ubuntu:
http://www.vitalbodies.com/blog/2009…ngs-in-ubuntu/

You have to know a few tricks to get Open Office to play nice:
http://www.vitalbodies.com/blog/2009…file-exchange/

All in all, there are forums for each of the programs or web sites and the details-upon-details involved go far beyond this article but I am happy to share that there is “a way” to make bulk listing happen and stay in Ubuntu and Linux.

Here is another graphic I created to help simplify what needs to be learned:

Joomla is one of the leading open source CMS (content management systems) used on the internet to create powerful modular web sites.

VirtueMart is the leading open source shopping cart solutions that integrates within Joomla as a componet.

CSV Improved is the leading the way to allow VirtueMart shop owners to Import and Export products in mass via a CSV or spread sheet.

VitalBodies create a the graphic above for CSV Improved as a thank you for all the hard work and dedication in making CSV happen right within the Joomla control panel. Adding products within the familar Joomla control panel is much easier than doing everything at the MySQL level.

Visit – CSV Improved – VirtueMart – Joomla!

We recently got a new w700 Thinkpad.

Wow, this is one radical notebook.

Some of the more exotic features:

WACOM Digitizer Pad on select models
Huey Pro integrated Color Calibration Sensor in palm rest on select models

Ubuntu works out of the box easy on this system which is awesome – this Notebook was super easy to get going.

We have not figured out how to get the tablet or color sensor going yet but have yet to try – do you know?
Here are a few brief hints:
To adjust the screen brightness:
Try Fn END to dim the screen down a notch.
Meaning the function key and then the End key.
Fn Home for brighter.

They have memory for this notebook on Amazon (which was surprising) and this beast takes up to 8GB:
4GB Memory Upgrade RAM For Lenovo ThinkPad W700 Series

Keyboard light switch (fn +pgup)

Info on the W700:

ThinkWiki: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:W700

Watcom How To: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=6546012&postcount=1

We also bought a new Lenovo d10 Thinkstation and that work out of the box easy also in Ubuntu!

Larger Version: http://www.vitalbodies.com/site/uploads/images/graphics/MakeHuman_Boxes_V1_1920x1080_2.png

MakeHuman(TM) is an open source (so it’s completely free), innovative and professional software for the modelling of 3-Dimensional humanoid characters. Features that make this software unique include a new, highly intuitive GUI and a high quality mesh, optimized to work in subdivision surface mode (for example, Zbrush). Using MakeHuman, a photorealistic character can be modeled in less than 2 minutes; MakeHuman is released under an Open Source Licence (GPL3.0) , and is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

To get the nightly builds to automatically update on your system add these lines to your software sources:

System > Administration > Software Sources > Other Software > Add

For 32-bit:

http://download.tuxfamily.org/makehuman/deb/i386/

For 64-bit:

http://download.tuxfamily.org/makehuman/deb/amd64/

Installing MakeHuman: (The deb name for nightly builds is “makehuman”. The deb name for alpha releases is “makehuman-alpha”.)

Nightly builds: The developer version(s) for people who are actually building or testing the software (makehuman).
makehuman-alpha: What is needed to get the current alpha version.
Stable version: Not available yet – software is still in alpha.
Current non-developer version (end user): makehuman-alpha

In the Terminal (Applications > Terminal) paste this command and hit enter for the end user version:

apt-get install makehuman-alpha

In the Terminal (Applications > Terminal) paste this command and hit enter for the developer version:

apt-get install makehuman-nightly

Note: The makehuman-nightly and makehuman-alpha debs are mutually exclusive, so installing one on the system will remove the other.

Add missing folders:

You will need to add these folders to usr/local/makehuman to make the program work: (at the time of this post these folders were needed)

models (This allows SAVE to function properly)

exports (This allows EXPORT to function properly)

Create folders in your home folder for your saved work and exported models:

Note: Alpha 5 with do this automatically.

mkdir ~/models
mkdir ~/exports

cd /usr/local/makehuman
sudo ln -sf /home/replace-with-user-name/models models
sudo ln -sf /home/replace-with-user-name/exports exports

For the nightly version:

cd /usr/share/makehuman
sudo ln -sf /home/replace-with-user-name/models models
sudo ln -sf /home/replace-with-user-name/exports exports

Start MakeHuman:

In the Terminal (Applications > Terminal) paste this command and hit enter:

cd /usr/local/makehuman && ./makehuman

For the nightly version:

cd /usr/share/makehuman && ./makehuman

AQSIS: Make sure you completely remove AQSIS 1.2 and install AQSIS 1.6 or newer in the System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager  so that make human renders properly.

Check what version you have:

aqsl -version

Where to find the newest version: (You will need libaqsis and aqsis in that order)

http://sourceforge.net/projects/aqsis/files/

Once downloaded you can install them with a right click and then – Open with Gdebi Package installer – or the like.

Shaders: If you need to recompile the shaders (because the renders do not look correct) to the newest version of AQSIS once you have installed that version paste this in the terminal and hit Enter:

cd /usr/local/makehuman/data/shaders/renderman

Then:

sudo aqsl hair.sl
sudo aqsl lightmap.sl
sudo aqsl onlyci.sl
sudo aqsl scatteringtexture.sl
sudo aqsl shadowspot.sl
sudo aqsl skin.sl

I was able to get them recompiled using this method.

The other way that is suggested to to delete the 6 .sl files in the  /usr/local/makehuman/data/shaders/renderman folder and restart MakeHuman.

OTHER NOTES: You should be able to render (in color) and export a mesh with the current Makehuman-alpha version (Alpha4) or later.

Resources:

MakeHuman Site: http://www.makehuman.org

MakeHuman Forums: http://www.makehuman.org/forum/

MakeHuman Docs: http://sites.google.com/site/makehumandocs/Home

To Export MakeHuman To Blender: http://sites.google.com/site/makehumandocs/blender-export-and-mhx

MakeHuman Blog: http://makehuman.blogspot.com/

-

VitalBodies would like to thank the MakeHuman team (and Joel Palmius, aka joepal on MH forums for the deb files for Ubuntu) for all of your efforts!

VitalBodies recently made the transition from listing items on ebay one by one, to using File Exchange to do bulk uploading and editing of listings. Not being familiar with Spreadsheet programs like OpenOffice, spread sheets or File Exchange presented a rather steep learning curve. In fact, the learning curve was so steep at some points it seemed more like a brick wall with no way to pass through. With a LOT of help from the kind staff at Ebay (thank you Cheyenne V) we were able to create a file of some of our listings that would at least upload. Where the next set of problems began is that upon opening the file and making the most simple change (like changing the shipping weight of an item) and saving the file, it would no longer upload.

An unknown Error has occurred try again later.

Our CSV (at the time) was the default comma separated spread sheet that used the quote (“) as the text delimiter and Unicode (UTF-8) character set. Within OpenOffice the spread sheet looked perfect. When the staff at ebaY would examine the file in Excel the spread sheet look perfect to them also. Their main comment was always “you just need to make sure the zip code column is set to custom rather than number so that it will preserve zip codes that start with a zero. When we do that the file uploads fine.

So around and around we went, trying to upload, and having the file fail, and then sending the file back to ebaY, and them sending it back again saying it was fine.

Finally angelesbrotherscycles in the forums said:

Here’s 2 annoying things about your situation:

1) OpenOffice apparently will always double quote everything. The double quotes are fine – except that….

2) File Exchange seems to not like double quotes in the first line – probably because they mean something special for setting defaults.

Open the file you’re going to upload in something other than OpenOffice, remove the double quotes (you can find / replace the ” character with nothing), and try uploading.

We tried that and could not get the problem to go away but it was clear they were onto something. If you opened the spreadsheet in a text editor there were lots more ” than the file ebaY would send back out of Excel.

One other clue that was pointed out is that OpenOffice does not open a CSV, instead it seems to import it. Thus you have to select (every time) your delimiters.

Unfortunately though we had hit our limit, we had been trying for so so long. Plus we do not know OpenOffice all that well and the intricate ins and outs of File Exchange.

Then came Keith’s Online Sales to the rescue!

Keith agreed to look over our file and see if he could get it to upload. After some time and effort the file would upload yet would get a 100% failure rate with parsing errors.

This was a break through, because at least the file would upload!

He took the file even further and got it to upload with a 100% success rate!

Wow, what a HUGE break through! We were so excited!

Next we just needed to test the file on our own and make sure we could OPEN, EDIT and SAVE the file without breaking it again.

With careful instruction we were able to.

The trick was to make the file TAB delimited with no text delimiter at all.

The fields that needed to be TEXT (like the title and description) had to have the ” added manually in the field within the spreadsheet like this: “Futon Mattress TWIN 3″” Pure Virgin Wool Organic Cotton “.

Note how the 3″ (three inches) has to have a second ” and the whole text phrase has to be within “”.

Obviously you have to have all the required headers and such as required by ebaY, but we had already been down that road earlier and our file was compliant.

As a thank you VitalBodies made Keith some new fun logos and graphics for his ebay store:

VitalBodies bought a RocketTheme template for a job for a customer web site, only later to find out that you need to buy a special program (Adobe Fireworks) just to edit the graphics. VitalBodies uses all open source software so that did not sit all that well. In order to edit the logo and other graphics we needed a work around so we wrote this guide for us and all RocketTheme users. RocketTheme produces very nice templates for open source Joomla!.

CSS:
The first step is to find the logo and the basic things that relate to the logo like the CSS.

NOTE: If you right click on the logo on your new RT site you will not be able to access the logo as there is a blank image in front of that logo.

Instead log into the Joomla panel and go to EXTENSIONS > TEMPLATE MANAGER.
Click on your template.
The click on the EDIT CSS button.
On most RT templates there will be a CSS for the main document.
On Mynxx for example that is template.css.
Click the radio button and choose EDIT.

On most templates, right at the top you can see the size of the logo.
So for example in Mynxx:
/* This is the Main template logo, Edit this to match the width and height of your new logo image */
#logo {width: 260px;height: 44px;}

Remember that size.
It is easiest to make your logo the same size and not mess with the CSS.
If you create your own logo and make it a bit larger or smaller you will need to change this size.
If you change the height you might even need to change the height of the HEADER. That is advanced to some degree so you might want to avoid that if you are not sure.

And if you scroll down a bit farther looking for the word logo:
#logo {float: left;margin-left: 10px;position: relative;}
#logo:hover {text-decoration: none;}
.logo-text {position: absolute;right: 3px;top: 15px;text-transform: uppercase;font-size: 13px;}

Click CANCEL.
And then CANCEL again.

LOGO:
Next let’s find the actual logo itself using FTP.
FTP into Joomla on your site and navigate to the TEMPLATES directory.
Double click your template (in my case it was rt_mynxx_j15)
From here on out, your on your own, as it depends on the template where they store the logo and how many there actually are.
In Mynxx for example I found logo.png in a directory called IMAGES in subdirectories called LIGHT and DARK.
Download the the logo graphic(s) and remember where you got them from and where you downloaded them to.

FONTS:
If you downloaded the RT sources for your template, you received a font or fonts.
If you want to use them, you will need to load them into your Operating System.
For Ubuntu Heron, Ibex and Jackalope check out this blog post I wrote:
http://www.vitalbodies.com/blog/2008/07/01/installing-fonts-in-ubuntu/

EDITING THE LOGO:
Open the logo.png (or what ever yours is called) in GIMP, INKSCAPE or both or your favorite open source program for creating graphics.

In Ubuntu Heron, Ibex and Jackalope, these programs are free and super easy to install.
See this blog post I wrote for how to install literally hundreds of free programs that come with Ubuntu and many that do not:
http://www.vitalbodies.com/blog/2008/07/18/how-to-install-programs-in-ubuntu-hardy-heron/

You can also just start with a new document in your favorite open source graphic program and simply make the graphic the same size and your set to go.

I like to open the original graphic and study it:
Does it have a transparent background?
Are the letters light or dark of in the middle range somewhere?
Is the text centered or way off to one side?
High or low, bold or subtle?
Etc.
This gives a nice starting point.

In GIMP I like to check the IMAGE > MODE and see if the image is Indexed, or RGB or Grayscale.
If you want to change the original image you might want to change the mode to RGB if you want more or different colors.

As the creative types we are, we do not have to do what the RT people did, but you at least know they did the math (so to say) and worked out the bugs as far as what works for the template.

UPLOAD THE LOGO:
Once you have created and saved your new master piece logo you just need to FTP in to Joomla again (rename the original) and upload your new logo.
Some of you might need to change the CSS if you made the image larger or smaller than the original.

DISCLAIMER:
This is a brief tutorial (not exhaustive), use at your own risk and yes, there are likely to be typos…
Back up and all that other safety stuff and have fun!

FUN:
Did you use this guide to make a new logo? Show it off here, by adding it to a reply.

Here is what we created:

An additional note is that the little images for the variation chooser are located in the your_site.com/images/stories/styles folder if you decide to change them to match your site.

FILE EXCHANGE:

VitalBodies spent far more time than we would have liked, trying to get our listings out of ebay and into a spreadsheet for editing.

To help save other people some grief this blog post has been, or is being written.

We want to use File Exchange from now on rather than listing items one by one using the ever changing forms on ebay.

Oddly, you can edit and add listings with File Exchange, but you can not download your existing listings.

You can download REPORTS and get TEMPLATES but that is different.

You can even grab data from your Ebay stores RSS feeds or LISTING FEEDS but you still will not get all the data and the descriptions will be limited to 500 characters with no html .

Is that counter intuitive or what? SO how do you get your listings?

TURBO LISTER:

UPDATE: Rather than turbo lister you might give jAOLTa try: http://code.google.com/p/jaolt/

You might have to use Turbo Lister to get your listings and then export the listings to File Exchange (CSV).

From all that we can tell, Turbo Lister for Ebay does not work “out of the box easy” in Ubuntu even with WINE.

We think that it can work. Some have done it in earlier versions of WINE and Ubuntu: http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-336264.html

But that is a lot of work for a one time download of ones listings. The work might be worth doing if you plan to use Turbo Lister a lot though.

We were able to download and install Turbo Lister into WINE but the program would not run.

You might use a Windows machine to download and install Turbo Lister and then download your Active listings.
Once you have your listings you can edit them in OpenOffice Calc/Spreadsheet. We suggest you export to FILE EXCHANGE (CSV) format.
Once you have your listings in CSV/File Exchange Format (or OpenOffice), you can email or transfer the file to your Ubuntu or Linux machine.

And, once we had the listings in OpenOffice in Ubuntu we did not need use Turbo Lister any longer, but will be using FILE EXCHANGE from now on.

Download Turbo Lister: http://ebay.com/turbo_lister/index.html
Quick Start Guide: http://pages.ebay.com/turbolister/Turbo_Lister_ListingActivity_QSG1.pdf

Once you have downloaded and installed Turbo Lister you are ready to begin.

IMPORT: File > Import Items > From Ebay Listings > Active Listings > Import

Click for a larger image

Once items are imported to Turbo Lister you then:

Select All The Listings: Click on the top item in the ACTIVE LISTING TABS then hold the SHIFT key down and click the last listing (To select all the listings) .

Export The Listing: File >  Export Selected Items > File Exchange Format (CSV file) > Export

Click for a full sized image

At one point in trying to export our listings we ran into the problem of the Export Selected Items being grayed out.We went onto the forums and got this explanation:

“The export from Turbo Lister won’t work if you are trying to export synchronized listings. You have to export the listings from the Inventory section, after importing from eBay or copying and pasting the synchronized listings.”

Just by chance and shifting to a different computer, we got the listings downloaded before we received the explanation.

OPENOFFICE:

To import the data VitalBodies used these settings: (Note: The text delimiter is only a quotation mark.)

UPDATE: We now use TAB and no text delimiter. Be sure to see our other crucial  post called Getting OpenOffice To Play Nice With Ebay File Exchange as this post could save you weeks of frustration.

Click image for a larger view.

OTHER RESOURCES:

JAOLT: Rather than turbo lister you might give Jaolt a try: http://code.google.com/p/jaolt/

http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/turbo-lister-troubleshooting.html

OpenOffice Basics:

If you’re TOTALLY new to OpenOffice then here are a few small tips:
You can reduce the size of the VIEW of the spread sheet by double clicking the 100% on the status bar. This can be essential for getting the spreadsheet to be more manageable at first so it is not totally overwhelming.

You can resize the columns width and rows height also under FORMAT to make it easier to see your data.

You can hide huge columns, like the description, to work on everything else and you will not lose that data by doing so. Format > Column > Hide. Then format > column > Show to make it visible again.
I would not do any sorting with this hidden though.

Be REALLY careful with DATA > SORT…. You need to make sure everything is selected except the header row. Select ALL (ctrl a) and then ctrl click on the top header row to de-select it. Otherwise you can mistakenly sort one or more columns ONLY and the others will stay the same. That can mess up all your data big time! For example, if you leave the item numbers unselected and sort only the titles, then titles will no longer match the items!

Back up the original down load and make a copy of it. ONLY work on the copy, never on the original. You may need to original to make sure everything matches up correctly on the copy that you changed or to bring your listing back to the way they were if you mess them up.

VitalBodies would like to thank keiths-online-sales-uk for helping us in the forums!

…And friends and family!

The other day while trying to get onto the Internet with Internet Explorer 7 (while using Windows XP Professional), IE would start to come up and then a gray box would appear that says “Internet Explorer needs to shut down.”  It would give me the option of reporting this to Microsoft or not but did not tell me what was the problem.
The other computer in the room was able to get on the Internet with the same connection with no problem so I figured it was my machine and not the Internet provider.  After a few times of this, I tried to make a “new connection” which did not work either.  I did some investigating in the help section of the Internet Options (found in the Control panel) and found that sometimes when this happens, it is because of “add-ons” which are usually ActiveX add ons that you may or may not have allowed to be put on to your machine.
The suggestion (in the help file) was to try to bring up Internet Explores without the add-ons.  If this worked then you had a place to start to find the problem.

To be able to do this I needed to right click on the desktop Icon for Internet Explorer and find the option to start Internet Explorer with out the add-ons.  (This option was not on my quick launch bar icon, only on the icon on my desktop, which was put there when I first installed the program.)

I decided to try this and it worked.  It came up with a bar across the top under the links bar, that stated it was running without the add-ons.

So I invested further and found that I could go to Tools > Options > Programs tab, and click on the “manage add-ons” button.

This brings up a long list of things that have been added on to my machine, most were for ActiveX.

The list tells you what it is called and who put it there.  I had some from Microsoft and Lenovo, which is the maker of my machine.  There were also a few names I didn’t recognized.  I had the option to disable them also.  There is also the option in enable them if you decide you want them to work again.  After experimenting with the ones that were not labeled from MS or Lenovo, I found the one that would let me bring up the Internet with it disabled.  It was used by an old program (Pricechecker) I had downloaded some time ago and rarely used so I uninstalled the old program.  I checked back then and the add-on had been removed also. Internet Explorer has worked fine since.

Written by a guest writer…

If you have a large drawing like a house drawn to scale, but need to print that on normal size paper, (like Letter size) there are a few steps you need to take.

EDIT > Current Drawing Preferences > Paper > Paper Format > (Set your paper size and paper orientation)

FILE > Print Preview.

Choose the scale that works for your drawing

From the TOOLS Toolbar: Scale 1″ = 256″ (in our case we needed 1″ = 256″)
From the TOOLS Toolbar: Fit to page
Magnification Toolbar: AUTO ZOOM
From the TOOLS Toolbar: Toggle black and white.

For more help see HELP > Manual

Note: At least this is how we got this to work in Ubuntu Jackalope.