Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Running Dropbox as a Virtual Machine

So I was finally able to run two instance of Dropbox on my computer.   I have my main one which I use for personal stuff, then my work one which is used at work.  I downloaded VirtualBox then installed lubuntu on it (making sure it had enough space to have all my work files in it) then I installed Dropbox there and synced it up.  From there I installed samba and shared the Dropbox folder on my network to my windows machine and now I can access my work files from home if I so choose.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

This project died before it began

Well I see no reason to continue this project anymore. I have been searching for about 1 week now everything relating to enlightened sound daemons and Windows, and have just come across a program that used to be Mac Only, Airfoil & Airfoil Speakers. I am at school right now so am not able to run the trial version, but if this program does what it says it can do, it is exactly what I needed and well worth the $25 cost. Airfoil originally was a program that was able to transmit audio from any program to an Airport Extreme, but now they have invented another program that essentially can emulate an Airport Extreme (Airfoil Speakers). So now any PC can transmit audio to any other PC that is running Airfoil Speakers. This sounds great and I will test it out tonight when I get home.

The Beginning

For those of you that don't know Pulse Audio is an open source Enlightened Sound Daemon
based off of a project called EsounD that began in 1999. I'm not going to go into much details about the programs since my own knowledge is very limited on these subjects, but what I am trying to accomplish involves the following:

1. Desktop computer running Windows XP connected to a router
2. Notebook computer running Windows Vista connected to the router wirelessly
3. (The main goal of the project) I want ANY sounds that are generated on my notebook to be played remotely on my Desktop computer's sound card, which are connected to my stereo system.

Now many people already know that a few alternatives to getting this to work already exist, but those are not sufficient for what I want to accomplish. I could simply purchase an Airport Extreme which would accomplish the main goal of mine of playing music from my laptop on my Stereo speakers, but I don't want to buy an Airport Extreme and I want all sounds to be played remotely. I could easily VNC or Remote Desktop into my desktop and accomplish it that way, but once again this is not what I want to do. Shoutcast/Icecast/Slimbox/ etc are not what I want to use either.

PulsesAudio works very well for Linux environments and I believe even comes standard with the latest releases, but being stubborn as I am I want this to work in Windows since I want my work to be advantageous to the general public.

My background in programming is extremely limited, but I have a knack for learning new things and I am very-well versed in computers in general.

I have to run to class now but this is the beginning and I will update on my status later.