CoqSpot

The 409 � Convert Google Video FLV’s into AVI, MPG, etc…in LINUX

2006-03-30T00:02:00.000+02:00

Recently I've been browsing youtube.com for some 80' goodies and I must say they have a lot of them (here's my favourite). Nevertheless, watching the videos inside the browser in my case sucks because of lack of sunc between video and audio. Here's an nice link how to convert streaming flash used on youtube.com into something more usable:

ffmpeg -i video.flv -ab 56 -ar 22050 -b 500 -s 320x240 test.mpg

This results in MPEG file and if you want to convert it into AVI (like me, to be able to display it on my GP2X), you can use following:

mencoder file.mpg -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=msmpeg4:vpass=1 -oac copy -o movie.avi
mencoder file.mpg -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=msmpeg4:vpass=2 -oac copy -o movie.avi

This re-encodes MPEG into DivX 3 and GP2X can display it!

Crosscompiling for GP2X

2006-01-10T22:06:00.000+01:00

I was playing for some time with cross-compiling GNU utilities for my GP2X. I followed this interesting article on GP2X Wiki about preparing development environment based on OpenEmbedded. It is supposed to make it easier to compile packages for proper architectures of embedded devices called OpenEmbedded. It took some time to properly set it up (the project doesn't have `official' documentation, only a wiki), but I got it working properly, i.e. it produces packages (yet another packaging format - ipkg, `Itsy package') that can be installed and uninstalled easily. This means that various packages that can be found on `normal' (i.e. not embedded) systems, so now we can port... Emacs?! :-)

I have also managed to get terminal emulation via USB cable working, so that I can use minicom (or any other terminal emulation software, like Windoze's HyperTerm) to talk directly to a device present on GP2X. There is ready shell script that you need to run from GP2X, which creates (if it's not already there) proper device in /dev, loads USB Gadget kernel module and starts shell with stdin and stdout pointing to abovementioned device. Now, all you need to do on your workstation side is to load USB ACM modem module (which is called 'cdc-acm' on my system) unless hotplug subsystem didn't do it for you and start up properly configured minicom.

Here's 'USB shell start script' run from GP2X:

#!/bin/sh

rm -f *.txt

sync

mknod /dev/ttygs0 c 127 0

insmod /lib/modules/2.4.25/kernel/drivers/usb/gadget/net2272.o
insmod g_serial.o use_acm=1

sync

sleep 3

/bin/bash --login --noprofile -i -s < /dev/ttygs0 > /dev/ttygs0 2>&1 &

cd /usr/gp2x
./gp2xmenu

USB Gadget code is availabe here.

staring devving for GP2X Linux based console

2006-01-07T15:59:00.000+01:00

Since November 2005 I have a very nice device: GamePark's GP2X, Linux-based portable gaming device (if I'm quoting the official sources correctly). It is really cool device and although it is almost a prototype, it works great - because it can emulate lots of other gaming hardwares (SEGA Megadrive, ZX Spectrum or Commodore 64, to mention only couple of them). It is also great because it was created with homebrew developers in mind (no problems like those in PSP whatsoever).

Now I decided to do something more than just gaming and I'm thinking about developing for this console. So probably this writeup is the first installment in longer series :-).

I have decided that I should start with something easier than real development - with porting. I have built development environment using a very nice script from here that downloads, patches, compiles and installs necessary development environment.

Than I have decided that I want to have my favourite personal information manager, abook, on GP2X. Here's what I have used to get it configured correctly, using GNU's configure utility:

CC=/usr/local/devkitPro/devkitGP2X/bin/arm-linux-gcc LD=/usr/local/devkitPro/devkitGP2X/bin/arm-linux-ld AR=/usr/local/devkitPro/devkitGP2X/bin/arm-linux-ar ./configure --host=i686-pc-linux-gnu --target=arm-linux --prefix=/usr/local/devkitPro/devkitGP2X

Right now I don't have spare batteries to upload the application to GP2X and test it. I'll do it ASAP. There is other problem too: there is no terminal emulation software (ie. no "console" mode) on GP2X so I was planning to use the same "trick" that sterm, GP2X shell app is using: it is basically a wrapper based on SDL graphics library, together with simple keyboard emulation to interact with it.

UPDATE: after recompilation of sterm on my laptop (handy way to debug applications!) I tried to run abook to see how it works and I got error message, that the console is... too small to display abook: right now the window is 53x23 and the minimum is 70x20. This makes it more complicated... I have either to use smaller font (which is not too huge, 6x10) or to find different PIM program! :-(. The font file is in sterm generated from XFree's fonts and there is only one available that's smaller : 5x7 but I'm afraid it can be too tiny to read and still not small enough to fit 70 columns.

tbc.

SpeedTouch 330 USB ADSL modem & Linux

2005-12-30T19:58:00.000+01:00

Right now I'm in Poland and my parents are proud (sic!) subscribers to local ISP. In its cheapest option it is using simple USB based ADSL modem made by Thompson called SpeedTouch 330. It took me more than a week to get it working (christmas vacation or not, I can't stop h4ckIng!!! :-) so I thought I should put here some notes.

First thing: forget about Linux drivers that come on the CD - anyone with modern distribution using hotplug subsystem will not get it working because it comes with modem driver that sits in user- instead of kernelspace (at least I have tried to get it to worked and failed). Instead, I have used kernel driver (comes in standard 2.6.15 kernel). The modem need specially prepared firmware that is loaded bu hotplug subsystem. All information can be found here (Polish only),

Now it works all right... and I can ditch Windoze. V!

cornstarch and water video - c00l!

2005-11-18T10:44:00.000+01:00

Here's what I've found on youtube.com: amazing video of cornstarch mixed with water and than shaken - with vibrations applied from the generator. The initially liquid solution starts to behave really, ehm, trippy!

WPA configuration: slowly getting there

2005-11-04T12:30:00.000+01:00

Following up the previous post on WPA configuration I've been exploring the matter today and found out, that ipw2100 driver (version 1.1.3, the latest from the repository) does not work with LEAP authentication (the one that uses RADIUS to authenticate). As I'm not that good in Linux driver hacking (I tinkered with it for some time but I had to give up), I'll inquire the mailing list/bugzilla of ipw2100 project.

At least now I know what is happening! :-)

KiSS DP-1500 and real shuffle mode

2005-11-01T19:33:00.000+01:00

Today I got this `bright' idea how to implement real shuffle in my KiSS DP-1500 multimedia player (by default, the playback options are, well, limited: you can only play the objects as they come in the order, at least with the version of the software I'm using: EzLink NG).

If you telnet to the KiSS box and see the processes, you'll probably see something like that:

/ # Uid VmSize Stat Command
1 0 SW msh
2 0 SW [keventd]
3 0 SWN [ksoftirqd_CPU0]
4 0 RW [kswapd]
5 0 SW [bdflush]
6 0 SW [kupdated]
11 0 SW /bin/telnetd
20 0 SW /bin/cardmgr
184 0 SW /fileplayer.bin PC1 D:\mp3\_New Albums\Tiga_op_Lowlan
185 0 RW /fileplayer.bin PC1 D:\mp3\_New Albums\Tiga_op_Lowlan
186 0 SW /bin/lash
191 0 RW ps -aefwww

'fileplayer.bin' is a process that plays all the content, in this case regular files (mp3s, oggs, mpegs; as opposed to content streamed from the internet, like radio streams).

So, if you could find a version of so popular iTunes clones apps, that keep the database of all the files, and you were able to configure it so that is uses any media player (I've just checked that mine, called 'madman' cannot - it only works with XMMS), you would be able to implement shuffle and whatnot.

Official Alsa Wiki for Developers: WAVE Format

2005-10-29T19:14:00.000+02:00

After switching to new release of Ubuntu ("breezy"), I started having problems with the sound - it was "choppy". The solution: add 'srate=48000' to ~/.mplayer/config (or /etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf).

new kernel, problems with WPA

2005-10-24T21:42:00.000+02:00

As the kernel development is not stopping no matter what (good!), it came the right time to switch to the new 2.6.13.4 (didn't have balls to get for snapshot of 2.6.14 yet). All went ok, fglrx X11 driver didn't even need to be recompiled; I've managed to get the newest versions of ipw2100 driver (together with ieee80211 module, needed for its compilation). The whole reason was the new network setup at work. I still can't make it work, it's wireless, protected by WPA and with ipw2100 all that I had tried didn't work - I'm using wpasupplicant to get the encryption working and each time I'm getting some driver-related problems (like being unable to call ioctl's etc).

This is somewhat frustrating! :-)

Since today I've got also different network card, PCMCIA Cisco Aironet AIR-CB21AG-E-K9 (madwifi supported under Linux). I've spent most of today trying to get it work with my laptop, mainly with hotplug subsystem. It did not work too well :-(.

checkinstall and installwatch utilities

2005-10-12T23:45:00.000+02:00

I was looking through populicio.us website (presenting various useful statistics of famous del.icio.us social bookmarking system) and I have found those two: apparently, they make maintanance of locally installed packages easier (ie. packages that were not installed as a part of regular package system, like .deb for Debian or RPM for RedHat).

lufs package and Debian

2005-09-07T17:10:00.000+02:00

Following is the log of how I managed to install LUFS on Debian:

First of all, I've tried installing lufs packages provided with Debian by 'dpkg -i lufs-source lufs-utils' but it did not work - lufs-source package seems incomplete. So, I went to the LUFS website and downloaded the whole source (version 0.9.7).

The whole compilation went OK with small detail: when linking the module `lufs.ko', compiler complained about missing `kill_proc_info()' call, even though it was present in current kernel.

I like shortcuts so I've just commented out the call to this function. It works right now, I'm going to change it when I'll figure out how to compile modules (I'm obvoiusly not a Linux kernel developer :-).

hacking ATI FireGL drivers

2005-09-07T16:58:00.000+02:00

Maybe the title of this write-up is little overblown, because the whole `hacking' came down to simple substitution... but here's the whole story: I've compiled new version of kernel (2.6.13) on my development machine and as ATI drivers for FireGL cards come as kernel module, I had to recompile them too. First of all, my old version (8.14.3) did not compile with new kernel - I got those error messages:

dh_testdir
KERNEL_PATH= uname_r= ./make.sh --nohints
ATI module generator V 2.0
==========================
initializing...
cleaning...
patching 'highmem.h'...
assuming new VMA API since we do have kernel 2.6.x...
doing Makefile based build for kernel 2.6.x and higher
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/modules/fglrx'
make -C /usr/src/linux-2.6.13 SUBDIRS=/usr/src/modules/fglrx modules
make[2]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.13'
CC [M] /usr/src/modules/fglrx/agp3.o
CC [M] /usr/src/modules/fglrx/nvidia-agp.o
CC [M] /usr/src/modules/fglrx/agpgart_be.o
/usr/src/modules/fglrx/agpgart_be.c: In function `agp_find_supported_device':
/usr/src/modules/fglrx/agpgart_be.c:7136: error: structure has no member named `slot_na
me'
/usr/src/modules/fglrx/agpgart_be.c:7156: error: structure has no member named `slot_na
me'
/usr/src/modules/fglrx/agpgart_be.c:7161: error: structure has no member named `slot_na
me'
/usr/src/modules/fglrx/agpgart_be.c:7187: error: structure has no member named `slot_na
me'
/usr/src/modules/fglrx/agpgart_be.c:7207: error: structure has no member named `slot_na
me'
/usr/src/modules/fglrx/agpgart_be.c:7227: error: structure has no member named `slot_na
me'
/usr/src/modules/fglrx/agpgart_be.c:7232: error: structure has no member named `slot_na
me'
/usr/src/modules/fglrx/agpgart_be.c: In function `__fgl_agp_init':
/usr/src/modules/fglrx/agpgart_be.c:7613: warning: `pm_register' is deprecated (declare
d at include/linux/pm.h:107)
/usr/src/modules/fglrx/agpgart_be.c: In function `__fgl_agp_cleanup':
/usr/src/modules/fglrx/agpgart_be.c:7623: warning: `pm_unregister_all' is deprecated (d
eclared at include/linux/pm.h:117)
make[3]: *** [/usr/src/modules/fglrx/agpgart_be.o] Error 1
make[2]: *** [_module_/usr/src/modules/fglrx] Error 2
make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.13'
make[1]: *** [kmod_build] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/modules/fglrx'
build failed with return value 2

I suspected that something changed in new version of kernel, so I downloaded new version (8.20.16) and tried again. This time the error message was different, certain symbol ('verify_area') was not defined. Looking into the kernel sources I've found out that this system call was dropped and 'access_ok()' now replaces it. What I did was this simple hack:

--- firegl_public.c 2005-09-07 14:41:04.401948000 +0200
+++ firegl_public.c.orig 2005-09-07 14:37:22.548083000 +0200
@@ -1425,9 +1425,7 @@

int ATI_API_CALL __ke_verify_area(int type, const void * addr, unsigned long size)
{
- /* return verify_area(type, addr, size);
- */
- return verify_area(type, addr, size);
+ return access_ok(type,addr,size);
}

int ATI_API_CALL __ke_get_pci_device_info(__ke_pci_dev_t* dev, __ke_pci_device_info_t
*pinfo)

...or simple substitution of one function call to another (parameters looked the same). This works right now, and I'm getting usual number FPSs as before.

That's it! anyone interesting can try it out and if you know exactly what I did, please let me know :-).

Listal - A social DVD, book, music and games collection manager

2005-09-06T18:23:00.000+02:00

I've discovered this useful website today - gives nice opportunity to share your collection with other people... unless it's monitored by some authorities and, for users with lots of movies, special surveilance is undertaken!

The site is also using book/dvd information from amazon.com, they may be working together for data mining.

Yeah, conspiracy theories are plenty!

converting raw Video CD dumps into AVIs

2005-07-24T19:13:00.000+02:00

My KiSS DP-1500 is a nice piece of hardware (apart from occassional hiccups), but it cannot read & decode raw Video CD images. Because I really like films like Alien (Director's cut), I wanted to do something about it. As usual, MPlayer + mencoder duo come handy - I have even found nice GUI for mencoder called gmencoder which makes the whole process really easy (especially when you don't have half a day to get through zillions of mencoder options).

Right now I can report, that re-encoding is possible - I managed to get nice AVI encoded to MPEG4. The problem is still the scaling. gmencoder crashes when I turn on scaling to normal aspect ratio, which is 1.33333 with X and Y size (768 x 576); without scaling turned on, I'm getting X size 480 (I guess it's a default one).

Right now I'm not 100% sure what is the problem, I'm going to send the debug report to gmencoder developers (tried already to google for similar cases but could not find anything).

Update: I've mailed the author as seen on gmencoder's home page at sourceforge.net and got the reply that 'email is not valid'. Does it mean that the project is dead? I've forwarded the email to gmencoder's Debian maintainer, Ben Zores.

aquariusoft.org - Palm, Linux and Bluetooth

2005-07-19T22:07:00.000+02:00

I've got my Sony Clie back and (of course) I've already forgot how to get this thing synchronize via bluetooth. So, it took me some time to figure it out but here it is: generally, there are lots of articles available on the net how to get both PC and handheld device (I've looked at that one:
aquariusoft.org - Palm, Linux and Bluetooth. Some things that were different from the setup on those links: in HotSync options, I had to use raw IP address as primary PC name (otherwise the handheld tried to find the PC's name using DNS).

The transfer is pretty slow but I don't need to carry more cables around!

sound is back!

2005-07-11T00:23:00.000+02:00

I've spend last week trying to find out why the hell the sound was gone... the solution was so easy: line jack sense and headphone sense in alsamixer should be turned OFF (link). D'oh!

New kernel (2.6.12) & Beagle

2005-06-23T16:37:00.000+02:00

Lured by possbility to run desktop search engine on my laptop, I've decided to give Beagle a go. As it turned out, it required installation of new kernel (2.6.12), so I did that (no real problems with it). I have run into some difficulties: wireless card driver refused to compile cleanly because of earlier 'Software suspend' patch applied. Quick patch did the trick:

poppy:/usr/src/ipw2100-1.1.0# diff ipw2100.c ipw2100.c.orig
6404c6404
< #ifndef CONFIG_SOFTWARE_SUSPEND2_BUILTIN
---
> #ifdef CONFIG_SOFTWARE_SUSPEND2

(this at least worked for me!).

Beagle needed mono to run (the code is written in C#) and I had some problems with getting proper versions of packages. mono version 1.0.5 comes with standard Ubuntu distribution; version 1.1.7, available from Ubuntu backports is needed. My system couldn't decide which version was 'newer' and tried to get 1.0.5 of mono and 1.1.7 of mono-devel, which was not allowed. My quick and dirt hack for that was to uncomment entries in /etc/apt/sources.list for main Ubuntu repository, doing 'apt update' and downloading the needed packages.

In the end, I was able to get Beagle running. The search works ok, although it needs to be fine-tuned to search through mail contacts, IM conversations etc. I'll do it when I'm back from vacation.

This entry will also be updated by then.

Skinnable Swing Application

2005-06-15T13:52:00.000+02:00

Serendipity is a cool thing: while looking for some totally different, I've found this:
L2FProd.com V3, an API that makes it possible to apply Gnome/KDE/other skins to Swing application. More after trying it out!

Gmail account

2005-06-08T23:25:00.000+02:00

Well, I've jumped the Gmail bandwagon and created the account. Right now I'm looking at
Gmail Tools and I'll try to find out some interesting ways how to use it - GMail Hard Drive looks all right but is not working for me yet.

Update:
Mutt can access Gmail via POP3: use 'pops://pop.gmail.com' as a a mailbox name.

SharePoint and blogging

2005-06-07T17:58:00.000+02:00

I've spent some time looking for a webpart that would encapsulate weblog (to put it on my corporate SS site) but apparently, it does not exist. I've found numerous examples how to add a RSS feed to a webpart (and it works!). Pretty cool stuff. Now I can read Jabber News there! :-)

Algorithmic Audio

2005-06-06T13:58:00.000+02:00

[Via MAKE:blog] Algorithmic radio? well, if there's an algorithm, it's pretty weird. Can you dance to it? that depends on how much did you have to drink... but it's still interesting. Check it out!

MAKE: Blog: Algorithmic Audio

Mozilla Firefox - Smart Keywords

2005-06-05T15:30:00.000+02:00

In search for even better ways to use Firefox, I've found a page with some tips, including this one:
Mozilla Firefox - Smart Keywords. Right now, I can type 'imdb hillary swanson' in Firefox's address bar and it will query IMDb for me. The good thing is that you can do it with any search engine (that makes me wonder if I really need Google toolbar for Firefox right now...)

Universal Plug and Play

2005-05-30T00:28:00.000+02:00

I've been doing some reading on UPnP as a part of developing right file transfer in Jabber. The whole thing seems promising, but I don't know if it's going to be a 'silver bullet' that would resolve all the problems. It seems that it is possible to query DSL modem for its outside IP address, but the uses would need to set up the port forwarding to make the Target user able to connect to it. This port number would have to be set somewhere in Jabber client; it could be typed in by hand or received - again - from UPnP device, provided that it supports it (right now I'm not sure if it can).

I wanted to test it today with my DSL setup but apparently, UPnP is blocked on my device and, because of the fact that administation of it lies beyond my control, I can't try to enable it. I've sent the proper request though, and I hope that I will be able to check it out soon. There is a Java API for UPnP around, and I'm going to try it as soon as the issue with port blocking is resolved.

Exporting Global Address List from MS Exchange

2005-05-25T12:25:00.000+02:00

As we are using MS Exchange at work, I wanted to get the list of all contacts to my laptop/pda. I've figured out that if I have a read access to the Exchange server, I should be able to get the list of contacts and do something with them, preferrably convert to abook / mutt.
Full of hopes, I started googling for some Windows tools for querying Exchange server but apparently, it's not that easy. It may have something to do with the fact that Exchange uses some not open protocol. I've found some tools for some address conversion but most of them were supposed either to be used by Exchange admin or/and they cost money.

So, the solution I've chosen was most quick'n'dirty and simple as it gets: exporting address book to comma separated values formatted file. To get it into abook / mutt / pda I need to write some conversion program but it shouldn't be that hard. As exporting GAL is not possible, I saved my old Contacts folder, copied the GAL to the Contacts and exported it from there (when I write it, it dawns on me how Q'n'D 'solution' it is!!).

I wanted to have 2 separate addressbooks, with private and working addresses. The question was how to convince Mutt to use both of them. The solution was very easy: in .muttrc I had to call abook twice:

set query_command='abook --mutt-query %s;abook --datafile=/my/work/addressbook --mutt-query %s

BugMeNot extension for Firefox

2005-05-24T16:42:00.000+02:00

Clever use for a Firefox extension:
roachfiend.com � BugMeNot saves you even more time when it comes to registration that you don't want to make. Just right click and Firefox will do the rest!

Switch to Ubuntu

2005-05-24T15:37:00.000+02:00

OK, new is better so I've decided to drop Debian in favor of Ubuntu (which is not much of a drop as U derives directly from D). Other reason was that I've installed X.org x-window packages from Ubuntu (at time of this writing, Debian does not support them), and my repositories started to mix so the clean up would be good).

Looking at Ubuntu's support page, the results of switch from D to U varied; it wasn't always 100% successful event but I've decided to give it a go anyways. The whole process was quite simple. I've followed the documentation on Ubuntu's support page. The only strange thing that happened was kernel panic when I rebooted for the first time into Ubuntu; the culprit was HSF softmodem modules (after removing the package I was able to work all right).

I've had some problems with making X window work but it turned out to be font problem, after re-installation working was possible again.

Right now the screen looks better, thanks to gnome-settings-daemon running in the background. I don't want to have the full-blown gnome, as it is resource-hungry and comes with all this stuff I'll never use. Settings daemon makes sure that selected fonts are loaded at startup.

In general, I don't see too much improvement over Debian. Users were claiming that Ubuntu has the shorter release span (which should translate into more "cuttinng-edgeness", resulting in newer versions of packages being released) but so far, I've seen that I had to downgrade the packages from D to U more often than getting aby upgrades). All applications are working ok, I've had some problems with the sound though, as Ubuntu seems to use dynamic /dev filesystem and the devices are created when there's memory driver available for it). I didn't succeed to get sound recording working reliably with Skype client but it seems to be similar to something I've experienced earlier when the volume on a channel was turned down.

So, that's it. I hope that it will be working better now.

PDA dropped!

2005-05-20T09:47:00.000+02:00

Yeah, it is Freaky Friday, everything's messed up! I've just dropped my PDA and it didn't survive it too well: display stopped working. Now, I've returned it to the supplier for repair, so I think I will not see it back for at least a month, as the supplier is UK company...

ajax: a new approach to web applications

2005-05-16T16:22:00.000+02:00

AJAX, new technique for writing more responsive web applications (used by sites like GMail, Google Maps, Amazon's A9 and others) seems to be pretty hot at the moment. From what I understands, it's "charm" is due to the fact that some rendering is being done not at the HTTP server (as in usual web-surfing), but it's delegated to local AJAX "engine", a Javascript code running in hidden frame). The effect is pretty impressive, maybe it's time to implement it in some of our projects. Here are some resources to look up:

IM status on web pages

2005-05-16T15:15:00.000+02:00

Apparently, putting the icon indicating your status on various IM systems is very easy. For more popular IM systems, you can try Online Status Indicator . It's written in Java and apparently can run on any machine. I'm thinking about using it for out closed jabber server, on a page with all user names so that users can have an overall view who is online.

As for "not-so-popular" IM systems, at least outside Poland, I've found this new changes to Gadu Gadu, IM system most popular in Poland:

New change in GG to indicate if the user is on-line: link to this http://status.gadu-gadu.pl/users/status.asp?id=(id) where id is your GG's id. Here's my status:

New creepy gadget

2005-05-07T22:46:00.000+02:00

Hey, I want something like that too: Boing Boing: Barbie with a USB sticking out of her neck

KiSS Technologies DP-1500 -- updated

2005-05-06T16:16:00.000+02:00

Well, after some time spent with KiSS player, I may draw some conclussions:

I have no problems with playing music, both from MP3s and WebRadio. Pity that there is no indexing/quick search feature but this may not be 100% true (it may depend on PC-Link software that is used. Right now I'm using EzLink free version, it may be somewhere in PRO which I plan to buy soon),
playing movies is a lottery - sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Occassional hangs are very annoying, especially when there is no on/off switch anywhere (I suspect the Kiss engineers were very confident that user will not have to use it at all...). It is worth to note, though, that dolby digital encoded audio is working great (sounds just like on DVD).

I'm planning to upgrade the firmware to 2.9.1 and see if it helped. I have a non-official KiSS version of it from this website (I'm going to try it, even if it says it's prepared for DP-1000).

DVDs are played mostly without problems (recently I had some problems with Bergman's "The Seventh Seal", title menu didn't display properly after the disc was inserted, but pressing STOP and PLAY again helped).

Player is locked in region 2, I'll try to do something about that. Reading KiSS forum and Mpeg-Playcenter shows that you need to know the type of the drive used in the player. As I have a separate DVD player that's region-free, this can wait.

Just to report that upgrading the firmware went all right and the player apparently runs better. I can now access KML sites on the internet! (it's painfully slow but it works).

Boing Boing: Blind woman who sees with sound

2005-05-03T10:34:00.000+02:00

I've fount this interesting write-up: Boing Boing: Blind woman who sees with sound. Whole technology looks reaaly c00l: seeing by... hearing. Apart from the fact that this can be of a great help to blind people in the world, it is amazing for me, how this can work. The assumption, that the part of the brain responsible for seeing is not damaged and needs only to be stimulated - if not visually, then in some other way - makes me wonder: maybe it would be possible to do the similar thing with other senses: feeling by seeing? or by hearing? smelling by seeing? etc. etc. The number of combinations is plenty.

I wouldn't like to start a philosophical discussion here, but does it mean that our soul is just - a bunch of electrical impulses?

Rockin' with KiSS DP-1500

2005-04-27T00:16:00.000+02:00

As my KiSS DP-1500 networked DivX/MP3/Ogg player finally arrived, I tried to set it up. After doing some reading I decided to follow the advice and use regular cable in plase of wireless, as DP-1500 supports 802.11b standard only (11 MBit/s may be ok for audio but when it comes to our house movies, this would simply not suffice).

The physical setup itself wasn't that hard, I had some problems with software, though. PC-Link 1.30 that was shipped with the player looks really lame, so I decided to use EZ Link NG, freeware version of it (note: I did have some problems with getting regular EZ link to work (the player couldn't recoginze it on the network; no such problems with NG version).

So, now we have it all - may we have enough time to use it properly!!!

New sound setup

2005-04-18T01:04:00.000+02:00

One thing missing from the sound configuration was the ability to handle multiple sound streams. Until now, when 2 processes tried to produce sound, second needed to wait until the first unlocked the sound device. Googling for existing sound daemons (arts for KDE, esd for Gnome), I found out that I don't actually need a daemon, as ALSA provides a "plugin" for mixing the streams called dmix. Right now my .asoundrc file looks like that:

# 'dmix' plugin for easy mixing of sound streams
pcm.ossmix {
type dmix
ipc_key 1021
slave {
pcm "hw:0,0"
period_time 0
period_size 1024
buffer_size 8192
rate 48000
}
# bindings are cool. This says, that only the first
# two channels are to be used by dmix, which is enough for
# (most) oss apps and also lets multichannel chios work
# much faster:
bindings {
0 0 # from 0 -> to 0
1 1 # from 1 -> to 1
}
}

# redirect to ossmix
pcm.dsp0 {
type plug
slave.pcm "ossmix"
}

# redirect to ossmix
pcm.!default {
type plug
slave.pcm "ossmix"
}

ctl.mixer0 {
type hw
card 0
}

The applications that use sound devices need to be re-configured: XMMS uses ALSA as an output plugin with 'default' as audio device, I also switched play utility into aplay, one that comes with ALSA.

Mplayer settings: in /etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf I added the following:

ao_device="alsa:ossmix"

Quakeforge is not working properly by default. According to this excellent short howto, it needs to be reconfigured to use OSS sound plugin (add option set snd_output oss in /etc/quakeforge.conf). Then you need to do this trick, I guess to tell the kernel sound subsystem that Quakeforge needs to access the device exclusively:

echo "nq-glx 0 0 direct">/proc/asound/card0/pcm1p/oss

This means that quakeforge will take over the device (so that, eg. it will not be possible to listen to any MP3s) but I guess it is all right.

Some more info how to setup other applications, look here

PC100 vs PC66 memory

2005-04-16T17:08:00.000+02:00

I'm in the middle of memory expansion of our "media server" (an old Compaq EP 6300, discontinued and better forgotten altogher) which uses PC66 memory. This article: PC100 vs PC66 discusses the differenceds between those 2 types.

ROX filemanager

2005-04-15T00:34:00.000+02:00

I was looking for some decent filemanager for some time (not that I'm used to them, I mainly do everything from command line but...) so I've decided to give ROX a go. It's written in Python and there are more applications that come under the roof "ROX" (including session manager) but I was interested in file manager part only. It is pretty fast and looks all right (there are some icon themes available), but what I didn't like 100% is poor support for archives. There is additional application for ROX that handles archives, Archive but it is very simple (you can create/extract archives, there is no virtual FS in it for example; I'm guessing I need something extra for it).

Flickr font problem soved

2005-04-14T11:13:00.000+02:00

I'm a quiet fan of flickr, but I has some hard time trying to get it working properly on Linux/Firefox (Flickr uses flash and I couldn't see the fonts). Even Flickr blog was full of strange replies and it took me some time to find the right answer: according to this blog, Debian users need to install gsfonts-x11 package.

X.org X server running on my laptop

2005-04-10T01:05:00.000+02:00

Lured by cool-looking screenshots and promises that "fonts look much better", I switched to X.org (in place of xfree86) version of X window system on my laptop. Some points:

in order to spare myself the boring compilation/packaging of X.org debian packages (that are non-existent at the moment), I decided to use Ubuntu version of them. Later on, by mistake, I've upgraded all my packages to ubuntu (apt-get -t hoar upgrade), but system is stable, so we'll see how it works,
the main reason for this change, transparency is not working properly with DRI - Composite extension loads and DRI cannot (the order in /etc/xorg.conf file does not matter). I've found some postings on freedesktop mailing list discussing this problem, stating that is should be possible to have them both. This needs investigation.

I'm very thrilled by all this. Maybe the new X server will work with suspend to ram/disk better than old version? this needs to be checked as well.

faster bootup for linux

2005-04-09T16:12:00.000+02:00

This interesting article has some information on how to make linux machine boot up faster: random ramblings from some random dude : tech/ubuntu/fastBootMiniBoF-2004-12-09-13-45.html.

Nice tool that generates Gantt charts what's going on during the boot up time: Bootchart. Worth a try, I'll do it soon.

KiSS Technologies DP-1500

2005-04-07T15:56:00.000+02:00

I think I've decided: I want it! to play my movies and music, of course. I also found a good price (EUR 155.00) at Amazon.de but they only ship electronics to Germany and Austria! D'oh! I will try to get it from them anyways.

I also found interesting article on how to install a harddrive to other model, DP-500 (that means that you can have your files on the player itself, instead of getting it from the central server machine). I'm guessing that it may be possible to do it with DP-1500 (to save some bucks).

This all looks exciting. I'm hoping that the server machine after memory upgrade will be able to habdle that.

Faster downloads with FireFox

2005-04-07T15:46:00.000+02:00

Hey, looks like another good reason to switch to FirddeFox: FireFox on Steroids is an interesting article on how to increase the speed on the browser by tweaking couple of configuration variables (actually, editing 'about:config' page is very cool, IMHO).

greasemonkey: an idea for the script

2005-04-05T14:27:00.000+02:00

We all know greasemonkey, FireFox extension that can add DHTML to a webpage; so I was thinking if it would be possible to control/access cookies as well. Polish mobile provider Plus GSM has a SMS gate that you can use to send SMS for free; recently they limited it to only one (or so) SMS per day. The site leaves a cookie on your machine to find out when did you send the SMS last time. Removing the cookie by hand does the trick. But of course I'm lazy so I'd like to be done automatically.

Hop-over to FireFox

2005-04-05T00:36:00.000+02:00

"Regular" Mozilla browser starts to annoy me - sometimes I have problems with rendering correctly some websites (like eBay for example: two days ago I tried to change my e-mail contact address and, at some point, eBay required me to type in some number, generated to avoid bots as a GIF and it did not get displayed!). Besides, with all those extensions/plugins available more often for FireFox, it looks that it's "bleeding edge" software (like all my machine is!).

Fighting with CUPS

2005-04-05T00:00:00.000+02:00

Had this strange problem with CUPS on my laptop today: it just stopped working (instead, started to give me all those annoying NT_RESULT_BAD_NETWORK_NAME errors). The good thing is that I managed to finally figure out the correct format of smb:// URIs. It looks like that:

smb://windows_user:password@windows_workgroup/windows_machine/resource

Web interface to CUPS (running on port 631, usually) still gives me this strange error. But it works.

Also, fiddling with samba configuration did not solve the problem with bad network name.

More memory!

2005-04-01T17:08:00.000+02:00

Our media server need an upgrade: good ol' Compaq Deskpro is struggling with too much music and films to index with too little memory (96 MB is just not enough these days). The only place to buy the old DIMMs (SIMMs ? I never know, need to check) seems to be eBay... no local retailers had any of those in stock (this is an old crap, really).

Re-indexing my ZOE

2005-03-30T17:48:00.000+02:00

I imported all my mail to my new ZOE and, apparently, the easiest way to get the messages from one ZOE installation to another is simply copy the files under %ZOE%/Library/SZ/Mails. After that, though, you need to run re-indexation of the whole archive, not forgetting to increase the amount of memory for JVM, otherwise it complains:

java -Xms512m -Xmx1024m -jar zoe.jar rebuild {debug}

(For more info on Zoe see http://www.zoe.nu and http://zoe.omara.ca

First Entry

2005-03-30T02:15:00.000+02:00

So, here I am, proud blogger.com number 1174727 (together with something between 10 and 20k new bloggers today).

CoqSpot is mainly for technical-related stuff. Me, enjoy!