Usually I like to have my microphone turned off to avoid unwanted feedback in my funky boombastic speakers. When I use skype, you guessed it, I want the mic turned on. Getting older and lazier every day I made this script and I thought I would share it with you. When I say "made this script" it sounds cool but I actually copy/pasted three stupid commands into a file. This is so simple I hesitated posting this but then I thought I'd be glad to find that post again if something happens. You never know. Well here it is:

#!/bin/sh
amixer set Mic 80% unmute > /dev/null
env LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l2convert.so skype
amixer set Mic 80% mute > /dev/null

As you can see this turns the mic off when I close skype, which is good for my lazy fingers and saves some power from my wireless mouse.

I saved this into a file, make it executable and call it from the openbox menu.