One of the first things that actually triggered my interest in Spotify was that although they did not have an official Linux client, they did seem to try and assure it worked well in Wine, even recommending using Wine to Linux users, with this page dedicated to assuring the experience is complete as possible (although it generally works out the box).

One of the most useful parts of that page is where they provide a nice, simple script to allow native Linux applications to call the Spotify client running under Wine with Spotify’s URIs that are used to share playlists, tracks, etc. They also provide instructions on how to get Firefox and Opera to call this script for those URIs (for example using an entry on about:config in Firefox).

This works great, until you try to use the URIs outside Firefox or Opera, say in Pidgin or a Chromium alpha, neither of which appear to provide their own methods for supporting custom URIs, instead they depend on either Gnome or ‘xdg-open’ (which in turn can ask Gnome). So I thought it might be a good idea simply to tell Gnome to use the script, and let everything else depend on Gnome; sadly I could find no graphical way of doing this, but after a bit of searching, I found this page, which revealed it was a simple as adding a few keys to GConf. So I adapted to method for the Spotify URI and script, and sure enough it works fine (certainly in both Chromium and Pidgin, on Ubuntu 9.04).

Below are the normal commands need to create aforementioned script:

echo '#!/bin/sh' > ~/.browser2spotify
echo 'exec wine "C:\Program Files\Spotify\spotify.exe" /uri "$@"' >> ~/.browser2spotify
chmod 755 ~/.browser2spotify

And here are the commands for adding the GConf keys, but be careful, tidles and variables didn’t appear to work here, so you will need to manually modify the address in the first command to reflect your username:

gconftool-2 -t string -s /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/spotify/command "/home/<your username here>/.browser2spotify %s"
gconftool-2 -s /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/spotify/needs_terminal false -t bool
gconftool-2 -s /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/spotify/enabled true -t bool

Fingers crossed, all applications that call on Gnome or ‘xdg-open’ for unknown URIs (such as the aforementioned Pidgin and Chromium), should now be able to call Spotify; in fact, Firefox too calls either Gnome or ‘xdg-open’, so this method can suffice for Firefox too.

Chromium alpha calling Spotify via 'xdg-open'

Tags: chrome, chromium, custom, gconf, gnome, Linux, pidgin, spotify, spotify uri, Ubuntu, uri, wine

Well perhaps hosting my blog at WordPress.com should be a bit more reliable. I’m now using my own paid hosting – should certainly be more reliable.

Anyway I’ve been attending six form since September and this has generally been going quite well, particularly Cisco’s Certified Networking Academy (Discovery) course; we’ve already completed the first (of four) semesters and should be getting certificates soon.

Additionally I recently rewrote the website for the BB compayny I attend using Drupal and so far this is going very well – now just to get everybody their logins.

Tags: bb, blog, Boys' Brigade, ccna, Cisco, Sixth Form

Well other crew members seem to be doing this…

So yeah, it’s my first time at the event, and I’m going to be helping with the crew, should be fun.

Just noticed the great full page ad on page 29 of LXF107, it would seem Ron’s been busy.

Tags: foss, free software, Linux, live, lrl, lrluk, lugradio, lugradio live, Open Source, wolverhampton, wolveslug

Well I’m now on study leave, with this week and the generally the next 4 weeks coming into school only for exams and revision sessions, with the only exception being BB camp at half term.We had our leavers prom on Thursday 8th (initial photos can be found here and here) and our ‘final’ day was Monday 12th.

Now all that’s required is to do well in English, Maths and to a less extent Geography (Science is already ‘in the bag’) to assure I get into Haybridge to do CCNA.

I’m not dead (in terms of posting), I just haven’t found the knack to find to write about that I feel people would be interested to read about. I’m going to give it ago anyway.

Recent things in my life that might be of some interest:

• In late November I started attending WolvesLUG meetings and all I can say is awsome… The people I have met there have been really friendly and welcoming (to what seems to be there youngest member, other than Rowan of course).
• I attend the 1st Lye company of the Boys’ Brigade, for which I do the website.
• I’m currently in the final few weeks of secondary school, with my final/real GCSE exams coming very soon. I hope to pursue a career that is in some shape or form Free/Open Source related (either programming, or server/network administration). I’ve received some helpful advice from people from the LUG. Currently I hope (grades dependent) to go to the only college that would provide a suitable course for my ambitions This college is Haybridge, who provide a CCNA course. If this fails I’ll probably look into courses with external course providers (such as Ubuntu Certified Professional, etc), rather than attend another college as most IT/Computing courses made avalible from colleges are too content creation/Microsoft focused to be of any use. For example, I’m currently taking a course called DiDA at GCSE, which is horrible, I’m currently writing a repot on my problems with it that should eventually be published here.

OK, I’ve re-setup my blog and I’m going to ‘attempt’ to remember to post on it now, though most of what I write will be probably random crud.