SpazBlog

DMCA C&D in one easy step

2007-05-01T15:36:00.000-04:00

Step 1: Post the AACS processing key (09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0)

Anybody want to make any guesses as to how long it'll take before I get my very own FREE brand new takedown request? Is my blog too small and insignificant to warrant a letter, or are they being spammed out based on the results of Google searches? Wait and see!

For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, apparently the above hex key allows you to decrypt any HD-DVD movie published to date so long as you also have the volume key (which are supposedly non-random and usually trivial, such as the name of a movie and date of release). Obviously, there are those that aren't too thrilled to see said key roaming free on the big truck.

iPhone: Not widescreen, not higher resolution

2007-01-09T23:06:00.000-05:00

Apple has finally announced the official detailed specs of the iPhone:

http://www.apple.com/iphone/technology/specs.html

The screen is 480x320, for an aspect ratio of just 1.5 (or 3:2), which is not widescreen. For reference, 4:3, normal TV and computer aspect ratio, is 1.33, and true widescreen is at least 16:9, or 1.77. Computer monitors are usually 16:10, or 1.6. So calling the iPhone "widescreen" is really stretching it. 3:2 just isn't widescreen. "wider" screen perhaps.

What's the impact of this? It's a bad solution either way. 4:3 content will be letterboxed along the top and bottom, and 16:9 video will be letterboxed along the top and bottom. NO standard video formats will play completely fullscreen!

The iPhone's resolution is also listed as 160dpi, which is (surprise), the exact same as the 5th gen iPod with its 320x240 screen at 160dpi.

While it's a bit dissapointing that the iPhone screen isn't higher resolution (in dpi) than the current iPod, 480x320 in a 3.5" screen is still nothing to scoff at.

I have played the Wii.

2006-11-12T03:01:00.000-05:00

About four hours standing in lines at Festival Arcadia (still open tomorrow if you're in Montreal and want a shot at the Wii) netted be a precious 8 minutes of gameplay of "The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princss" for the Nintendo Wii, both being scheduled to come out next week. It also provided my ample photo opportunities. But of course, neither myself nor my friend had remembered to bring a digital camera with us, so I dutifully attempted to wring every last bit of quality from my cellphone as possible. After a good deal of time adjusting my cellphone's exposure and lighting ramp for the environment, and knowing from prior experience that most of the photos wouldn't turn out, I began snapping furiously.

Luckily, despite the questionable quality of the phone's 0.3 megapixel camera, about a third of the photos turned out, with several being of excellent quality. Most of the photos of the Wii unit itself turned out brilliantly, and of the three videos that I took, one is at least "watchable" (although not pleasant). And so, I present to you, my Nintendo Wii media.

First off, a note, all these photos are from the same dungeon. While my game time was split up into a 3 minute and 5 minute session on two different units (the first unit had me as a wolf in a different dungeon), the second unit had a much larger screen and better display case, so all the photos are from this. For lack of a better term, I'm going to call it "The Forest Monkey Dungeon", which seems to be the second in the game after the "Wolf in Sewer" dungeon.

This first photo shows Link running across a bridge. Exciting, eh?

Let's get the other least interesting photo out of the way to begin with. This is simply Link running on grass. The tall grass in the bottom-right hand corner of the screen can be cut with a sword for items, as is normal in Zelda games.

This one is more interesting, at least. This shot is from the cutscene introducing a puzzle. Well, it isn't really a puzzle, because the game shows you how to solve it. Essentially, this dungeon involves rescuing monkeys, who then help you along the way. In this scene, the first monkey (which you free by whacking its cage with your sword) would like to free this second monkey. However, the second monkey is in a cage on top of a pillar that you can't reach. The monkey shows you the solution by rolling into the pillar, causing the cage to wobble. The player then rolls into the pillar two or three times until the cage is knocked off the top, freeing the monkey. It's a simple introduction to the use of a gameplay mechanic more than a puzzle.

Hurray! The player has freed the second monkey, and both monkeys now follow you around. In the gameplay I saw, they help mostly by giving you hints as to where to go, and occasionally providing access to unreachable areas by swinging you across gaps.

Up next, we have the highest quality photo of the game that I managed to take. Unfortunately, the only way to get this close to the screen (all previous shots were taking over the shoulders of the people in line in front of me) was to go to the side of the person playing, which accounts for the angle. However, it's still the sharpest shot. The bug standing behind Link is a bomb bug. These enemies turn into bombs when defeated, which can be used to blow things up. Much like the bomb plants in Ocarina of Time, the player doesn't have their own bombs yet, and so must rely on those that the level designers have placed for him.

And now, my shots of the actual console itself. These turned out amazingly well considering the difficult lighting environment for a cell phone camera. Essentially I turned the exposure as low as it would go, and set the light ramp for bright sunny environments. This helped with the blinding flourescent lights placed under the console. The end result is quite neat, and turned out way better than I thought they would.

But didn't I mention that I had taken a video as well? Yes, but don't expect much. The cell phone is a lot worse at recording videos than it is at taking photos. 25 seconds of footage (with sound) at the "max" resolution of 176x144 and 5FPS nets you about 475KB of video. That's right, about 150kbit for both the audio and video, compressed by an outdated cellphone in realtime. Don't say I didn't warn you, but at least you can sort of tell what's going on in the game.

The video file is in the 3gp format, which needs the QuickTime player to view. It also can't be embedded in a web page, it seems, so you'll have to download it yourself. It's under half a meg.

http://teknews.net/~guspaz/wii/11-11-06_1338.3gp

Now that all the media is out of the way, what are my impressions?

I had already planned to pick up a Wii on launch day (or as close to it as possible) with a copy of Twilight Princess. My fears at the awkwardness of the controls were unfounded. The wiimote and nunchuck were comfortable to hold (although I never had one in-hand for more than five minutes), and although I had virtually no time to get used to the controls or run through the training parts of the game, my experience with Ocarina of Time (I've been playing it on PC the last few weeks, previously I'd stuck to only 2D Zelda games) and the mass consumption of online media about the game permitted me to at least function without too much trouble. The controls felt fairly natural, and swinging the wiimote (which could be done with a quick shake instead of a full blown swing) seemed to fit fairly well.

I was standing up, which wasn't ideal, but I expect that sitting down will feel even more comfortable; several journalists have stated as much. I didn't really get to test out the pointing ability of the wiimote, where it acts like a laser pointer. The limit of that was when I took out the slingshot and aimed it at things, letting off a few random shots, just to try it out. Many people were having difficulty aiming with the wiimote at their hips, which is a stupid way to aim anything. Aiming the wiimote with your arm fully extended makes it much easier. It seemed to be fairly accurate, and there was a bit of a snap-on for targets (although that might have been imagined).

What about the game itself? Well, visually, I'd classify it as "good enough". The game is graphically a GameCube game, since it'll be released for both platforms with zero enhancements visually on the Wii. So, oddly enough, despite it being a launch title, THE launch title that will sell the console, it doesn't show off the Wii's visual or processing prowess in the slightest. Still, the visuals were good enough for me. My last console was a SNES, and the most advanced non-PC gaming device I own is a DS. The graphics in Twilight Princess looked nice, and I'm satisfied. To be frank, it's so much of an improvement over the N64 games (the only realistically styled home console Zelda games before this one) that the graphics don't really matter. Besides, I'm buying the Wii for the control scheme, virtual console, price, and all that other stuff, not graphics.

So, my overall experience? Very positive. I want one.

Now, for some general experience of the other games that I saw. I only barely caught glimpses of Ubisoft's "Rayman: Raving Rabids", a minigame oriented game for the PS2 and Wii. I saw a person playing it on the Wii, using the wiimote as a lightgun to fire plungers at cowboy rabbits in a western themed environment. It looked amusing, although I'm not sure if I'll pick it up. I'll need to try a demo myself first.

Wii Sports (which comes bundled with the Wii, a first since the N64) looked neat. Everybody who played baseball struck out on almost every swing, or hit foul balls when they did hit. Tennis looked fun, but without having tried it, I know now that the game is almost entirely automated, and you don't even control what way you hit the ball. I didn't really see the boxing close up, although I managed to sneak a glimpse from a distance.

I tried out Metroid Prime Hunters for DS, a game that came out ages ago (a DS launch game even, I think). I was really surprised by how well an FPS could be pulled off on the DS. It was much nicer, to me (a PC gamer) than using a console controller for the PS2/XBOX/360. Of course, it's a DS game. I probably won't buy it, as the game itself was confusing, and the architecture was extremely repetitive.

Swinging by the Ubisoft booth, my buddy took a turn at "Rainbow Six: Las Vegas", which is scheduled to come out later this month. The game looked quite fun, but my enthusiasm was dampened when I realized just how hard such a game would be for me. The initial trailers of the game looked really neat, but I'm horrible at tactical shooters on PC, so I'd be even worse at them on a console.

Another cool game we saw was "Gears of War" for the XBOX 360. The game came out just a few days ago, but I don't know anybody with a 360, so it was a first look for me. I even took a turn playing it for quite a while, as the Microsoft booth was horribly disorganized with no employees imposing time limits. The graphics (the game uses the Unreal 3 engine) were frankly amazing, and really show off the console's capabilities (we're told to expect even more as developers get more familiar with the hardware). I wasn't very good at the game, although it seemed like some practice could improve things. It was sort of a tactical shooter and halo mixed together. I snapped one photo of the game, but the LCD's high contrast setting washed out the bright spots. Suffice it to say that the visuals are more impressive than any PC or console game currently available.

I think that about wraps it up. Arcadia in general was a very unpleasant experience. We only went to see the Wii, and we achieved our primary objective. We were hoping to try out Red Steel for the Wii (another launch title), but were told by Ubisoft that the demo wasn't ready (finished) yet. The lineups were enormous, the event was overcrowded (the venue was simply too small, and two or three times the space was needed for the same number of attendees), the food prices were exorbitant (It cost me about $15 for three slices of pizza and a coke), and we had to line up for almost an hour just to LEAVE the event, since they had a mandatory coat check service. We were also almost deafened several times by announcers screaming into microphones and sound effects pumped through loudspeakers that were quite obviously way too loud. I've been to concerts that were deafeningly loud. This was way worse. I walked around with my hands clamped over my ears to stop it from HURTING.

Will I go back to Arcadia next year? Probably not. They won't have such a glut of unreleased content (as in, an entirely new console from Nintendo), and since this is their second event, I imagine the next one will be just as badly organized and managed as this one. But for us, and this one event, all the trouble was worth it just for those 8 minutes of Wii.

iPodDrop 1.5 released

2006-09-19T18:07:00.000-04:00

UPDATE: There was a typo in the URL before. The file downloaded fine, but didn't have a ".zip" extension. I've updated the URL.

Bet you didn't see that coming, eh? Another release of iPodDrop, and a BIG one at that!

There are three main changes/themes to this release, which I'll talk a bit about.

First, iPodDrop has been updated for iTunes 7 and the new iPod firmware that was released with it. This means that (at least if you use TV mode), you need iTunes 7 and the latest iPod firmware (currently 1.2 for the 5th gen iPod) to use this new version of iPodDrop. If you don't use TV mode, you should be fine with iTunes 6 and the old firmware.

Why the change? Because of Apple's new movie store! When Apple launched their new movie store, they decided that ALL videos sold through iTunes would change from 320x240 up to 640x480. Little problem though, the highest 4:3 resolution the iPod could decode was about 554x414. So how did Apple fix it? They released a new version of iTunes and the iPod firmware that supports higher resolution video decoding! As such, iPodDrop now targets a total resolution of up to 307200 pixels, instead of the old max of 230400 pixels! This means that most content downloaded off the internet should transcode without rescaling, and original DVDs should require significantly less scaling than before. So, higher quality TV output with iPodDrop! Hurray!

The second major change is a new version of ffmpeg as the core of iPodDrop. The version of ffmpeg used was something like a year and a half old, and a lot of fixes have gone into ffmpeg in the intervening time. As such, the new version of iPodDrop should be able to convert an even larger variety of videos, and will hopefully be significantly more stable. But with this comes another change... 160kbit audio is working once again! It turns out that the problem was that iPodDrop was outputting "main" profile AAC audio. The iPod has no trouble decoding it, and iTunes used to accept it just fine, but since it isn't officially supported, Apple updated iTunes to prevent you from using it. Well, the newer version of ffmpeg now supports the "low complexity" AAC that iTunes needs. So, higher quality audio output with iPodDrop! Hurray!

The third major change is a slew of DVD-related changes. iPodDrop can't do much automated detection of the various types of DVDs (although it can properly handle non-anamorphic non-interlaced DVDs without intervention). There's not terribly much that can be done about this without getting a lot more involved with the input files than iPodDrop is now. However, you should at least be ABLE to properly convert DVDs with iPodDrop, so I've made a bunch of additions. First, you can tell iPodDrop that the input file is an anamorphic DVD, so that it will get the aspect ratio correct. Second of all, you can tell iPodDrop to de-interlace the input video, if you have an interlaced DVD. Third, iPodDrop should be able to detect standard PAL DVDs on it's own as it can NTSC DVDs. And lastly, there's a new "sample" mode that will encode a 60 second sample instead of the full video, so that you can make sure you've got everything working right. So, iPodDrop can now convert most unencrypted DVDs properly! Hurray!

As you can see, a lot of major changes in this release. There are also some other more minor improvements, as you can see in the changelog, such as support for 4 thread SMP (if you have four virtual or real processors/cores). All in all, a real big improvement. However, due to the number of changes, and the scope of some of the changes (such as the ffmpeg upgrade, which involved changing the interface to ffmpeg to be able to talk to the new version), there is a bigger potential for bugs to sneak in. So, if you have any problems with the new version, or anything doesn't work that worked before, please get in touch with me and let me know, so I can fix it (note that the -ab160 option has been removed since iPodDrop now defaults to 160kbit).

You can download iPodDrop v1.5 here: iPodDrop v1.5 (2.7MB)

Finally, the changelog:

v1.5
- Upgraded version of ffmpeg. This should allow iPodDrop to read more formats, and fixes the 80kbit audio problem. This might break some things, please report bugs if you find something that worked before no longer works.
- Changed audio bitrate back to 160 since the newer version of ffmpeg fixed the issue
- Removed the -ab160 option as it is no longer required
- Added support for anamorphic DVDs via -anamorphicdvd option. It forces a 16:9 aspect ratio, which anamorphic DVDs need to be played back at. I don't have any anamorphic DVDs to test with, so I can't automate this, it needs to be specified manually.
- Added -smp4 option that uses 4 threads (-smp uses 2). This is useful if you have a four real or virtual cores/processors.
- Increased max TV resolution from 230400 pixels to 307200 pixels. You'll need iTunes 7 and the latest iPod firmware. For example, this means that iPodDrop can now output at 640x480 and other resolutions that multiply to 307200 pixels.
- Added -sample option to only encode 60 seconds of video, so you can see if the video is encoding properly without encoding the whole thing.
- Added -deinterlace option to de-interlace the input video. Probably mostly useful for DVDs.
- Added autodetection of PAL DVDs (720x576), previously iPodDrop would only autodetect NTSC (720x480).
- Added a warning if ffmpeg couldn't write an output file (this change is missing from the readme changelog)

And to satisfy the GPL requirements of ffmpeg, you can get the source of the build of ffmpeg used here: http://celticdruid.no-ip.com/source/

The source of iPodDrop is, as usual, included in the package. Creative Commons license, as specified in the source, etc.

Oh, and as a note, really high resolution non-4:3 files don't look right on the iPod screen unless it's outputting to a TV. When I transcoded a DVD for testing, the iPod screen only showed the center of the film zoomed in with the rest cut off. However, it displayed normally when the iPod displayed to a TV. The iPod displays 640x480 content on the screen just fine, however.

iPodDrop v1.4.1 released

2006-06-27T20:54:00.000-04:00

There was an insanely stupid bug in v1.4, where I left in some debugging code so it would never encode more than 30 seconds of video. I guess everybody was just so happy with v1.3 that they never bothered upgrading to v1.4 ;)

Anyhow, without further ado, I present v1.4.1:

http://teknews.net/~guspaz/iPodDrop_v1_4_1.zip

As I mentioned, the only change was the 30 second bug. And Apple still hasn't fixed the audio bitrate bug in iTunes, so there is no update on that situation either.

I'm being joe-jobbed

2006-05-22T16:27:00.000-04:00

It isn't a particularly bad joe job, since I'm not getting thousands of bounces per day. However, I'm still getting enough (A dozen or so day) that I need to feed them to gmail's spam filter, which means that by the time I get the bounce messages filtering as spam, I'll be unable to receive legitimate bounce messages from people I've tried to mail.

I've been using my gmail account for quite a while now. It was the first webmail service that had an interface that was "good enough" to be a viable alternative to regular mail clients like Thunderbird (And GMail Notifier is a must, especially since it can hijack mailto: links so that I can click mail addresses on web sites), and the storage allotment was way more than enough. I even have some of my other addresses redirecting to my gmail account to save me time. Unfortunately, now that I've had it long enough, and since my mail address has been published unprotected on various website by necessity, I'm getting more and more spam as time goes on. I'm up to about 25 to 50 spams per day, with only about 4 hams per day. So my spam-to-ham ratio is at about 10:1 right now, and it's always climbing.

Thank goodness Google's presumably Bayesian spam filter works so well, otherwise my inbox would be useless.

Amalgamation of software

2006-05-15T18:59:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I like to imagine things with aspects taken from other things.

How about software? Well, imagine the following program:

1) Take uTorrent, a rediculously efficient BitTorrent client.
2) Add in Hamachi's NAT/Firewall traversal and encryption
3) Sprinkle a bit of NetSelect's scoring system

What would you get? The fastest downloading BitTorrent client on the planet, that's what. Suddenly a vastly higher number of users would be able to accept incoming connections, dramatically increasing the number of users that can use their connections (and upstream) to their true potential. And instantly, peer connections become way smarter, leading to significantly lower overall internet traffic (They say that BitTorrent makes up 35% of all net traffic worldwide), and possibly higher download speeds for a lot of users.

Of course, since BitTorrent is an open protocol, and there are a ton of clients out there, Hamachi's contributions would be useless, and NetSelects would be almost meaningless. Oh well. One can dream. Personally I hope that the Hamachi guys license Hamachi in library form. Imagine being able to add the benefits of Hamachi's NAT/firewall traversal (and encryption, though that part isn't unique) to any networked app. For example, an IM client developer could license it and finally solve the problems that every IM client has with file transfers. Or an RTS game company could license it and quickly solve the problem of needing to forward ports to host games online.

Ugh. Sick.

2006-05-15T03:02:00.000-04:00

Today (Well, the 14th) is my birthday. And as often happens, I got sick. Nasty cold. Problem is, I really feel I need to go to work tomorrow, since I don't think the stuff I'm working on (documentation) is the sort of thing I could do alone at home without input from coworkers. And now it's 3AM, and I've been up fretting about what to do for too long. Even if I go to bed right now (and I think I will after typing this), I'm only going to get 7 hours of sleep if I wake up at 10AM (which gets me to work about as late as I feel I can get away with, noon).

I so wish I was writing test scripts again, then I could stay home sick and hack away at them without help. I guess I just have to plow through this documentation stuff so I can get back to writing code, which is much more fun. And something that I can do alone when I'm sick.

Anyhow, I'm going now to get insufficient sleep to help my sick condition. Night.

HAPPY BELATED UPTIME ROLLOVER!

2006-05-12T03:10:00.000-04:00

I looked at the uptime on my linux server today. It said 3 days. Huh, I said? I have processes that have been running longer than that, surely it didn't reboot...

It didn't. Apparently *nix uptime counters roll over at about 497 days (100 ticks per second in a 32-bit unsigned int) So that means that my box's uptime is now 500 days!

The box is hosted with ServerMatrix (AKA ThePlanet). It says something about their reliability when the uptime of your server rolls over. Last time I rebooted the box was for a kernel upgrade 500 days ago, and it seems that I haven't bothered to upgrade the kernel on the box in... 500 days ;)

Now if only they could figure out a way to replace the kernel without rebooting the box, you'd never have to reboot in Linux.

iPodDrop v1.4 released!

2006-05-07T04:09:00.000-04:00

It's that time again! A new version of iPodDrop is unleashed upon an unsuspecting world.

Get it here: http://teknews.net/~guspaz/iPodDrop_v1_4.zip

There are two big changes in this release. First, DVD aren't squished anymore. Second, it defaults to 80kbit audio now, to deal with a bug in iTunes.

Here's the full changelog:

- Added autodetection of DVDs. DVDs are encoded at 3:2 but need to be played back at 4:3.
- Added -nodvd option to disable autodetection of DVDs
- Added -dvd option to force detection of DVDs
- Changed audio bitrate from 160kbit to 80kbit due to a bug in iTunes
- Added -ab160 option to force 160kbit audio for when iTunes fixes their bug

Apple broke iTunes

2006-05-06T06:16:00.000-04:00

I figured out why the converted files weren't being accepted as valid by iTunes. NO files were being accepted as valid by iTunes.

It turns out that somewhere around iTunes 6.0.3, a bug snuck in that changed the maximum audio bitrate allowable in a video (to sync to an iPod) from 160kbit to 80kbit.

And so, any video file with an audio bitrate above 80 are rejected as unfit for the iPod. Interestingly, even when I copied a video file FROM my iPod and tried to send it back, it was rejected. So nothing has changed in the iPod, this can only be a bug.

My "fix" for iPodDrop v1.4 will simply be to encode audio at 80kbit instead of 160kbit. Yeah, the lower quality is a bitch, but it is the only possible solution until Apple updates iTunes.

Some time tommorow I'll fix up a build of 1.4 (which is essentially done with this last tweak), and try to figure out how to get a bug report to Apple. I'm not optimistic that a giant corporation will pay any attention to a regular user, but damnit, they broke something that worked before! Not BetterThanLastTime!

Update on school, iPodDrop

2006-05-06T04:30:00.000-04:00

First the iPodDrop news. Somebody posted that they were having trouble encoding DVDs for the iPod with iPodDrop. They had two problems. The first was that the output video was squished (incorrect aspect ratio), and the second was that iTunes would refuse to copy the resulting file to the iPod saying it was incompatible.

I've never tried to encode DVDs with iPodDrop (from decrypted VOB files), since I use it for downloaded content only. Nevertheless, it's something worth fixing, and I'm using my Spaceballs DVD to test.

The first problem seemed to be due to the fact that while DVDs are encoded at 720x480 (aspect ratio of 3:2), they are designed to be output at 4:3. My solution? When we get 720x480 input, assume that we've got a DVD, and override the aspect ratio to 4:3. Problem solved, no more squished video. A new -nodvd switch is added if you don't want this to happen, but the default should be more useful.

The second problem, why iTunes won't give it a pass, I don't know. So far I've ruled out bitrate and resolution as possible factors, things I have yet to look in to are framerate, audio, filename, etc. I'll keep at it and report back when I have a fix. When I do, I'll release v1.4 as a quick fix for just this issue.

As for my school update, my last exam, Cal 2, is over! This means that, oddly enough, I've somehow managed to complete a full academic year of university. Strange, huh? I now begin my summer vacation, which is two days long. Then, this Monday, I start my ninth month at NITI, which I'm really looking forward to. Pat told me to brush up on my C++ for possible dev work this time around, and while I haven't had a lot of time for that in general, a few of my System Software assignments involved writing a command shell in C++ under linux using system calls. So that's a bit of practice. My Perl is horribly rusty though, as I haven't touched Perl since I finished at NITI 8 months ago. I'm sure I can get back in the swing of things quickly enough, though. After all, there are a bunch of Perl scripts at NITI that I wrote, and looking at my own Perl code should help refresh my memory.

Cool proof-of-concept complete

2006-04-12T23:26:00.000-04:00

I solved the problem from my previous message.

I've just got a really neat proof-of-concept program working. Here's my problem. I like to stream large (150 to 400 MB) AVI files over HTTP. There are currently four ways to do this:

1) Use Divx Player, which can progressively download. It lets you start playing the file immediately, and downloads as it plays. Problem is it has a bad interface, is VERY buggy, and for some reason makes the hard drive grind like mad.

2) Use VLC. It can also progressively download AVI files and start playing right away, but it treats the AVI file like a stream, and uses a buffer. The downside here is that you can't seek. It is also super buggy, because if you pause for too long it won't be able to resume. You'd think that it would let you seek by just restarting a new HTTP connection at a different point in the file, but no. Also, you don't get a copy on your drive when you're done watching.

3) Use MediaPlayerClassic. This is the player I use. It downloads the entire file to a temp file before playing, which makes it useless.

4) Download the whole AVI file with a browser before playing.

None of these options are good! DivX player is the closest, but it is so horrible that I don't want to use it. The huge CPU usage and massive harddrive load alone makes it a poor choice. It also mangles the filename. The first char is always replaced by a lowercase b, and it doesn't know how to convert stuff like %20 into a valid char, so it just drops them.

For the longest time, I haven't understood why nobody did AVI streaming over HTTP properly. First, some background. AVI files have a header at the beginning of the file, then the main data, then the index at the end. it is this index at the end that causes problems, since strictly speaking you need the index to play the file. In reality, many modern media players can play partial files by figuring things out as they go along. And yet, for HTTP, they don't do this. Virtually every media player that supports HTTP acts like Media Player Classic; they download the whole file first.

Now, HTTP supports random access. You can specify the range you want to read in an HTTP request. Since you need to seek near the end of a file when a media player opens it, why don't the players just use the "Range:" header to grab the index?

This stupidity has haunted me for years. I just couldn't figure out why only the DivX people did this (I assume they do).

So, I had an idea. If a player wants to open an AVI file, it doesn't scan the whole thing. It just seeks to the end, reads the index, and then seeks to the beginning and begins playing. So, I decided to create a fake AVI file.

Now, I don't have detailed knowledge of how AVI files work. I just know the basic file structure. I don't have any idea how long the index is supposed to be.

Here is how my proof of concept hack works:

1) Make a HEAD request to the server to get the filesize.

2) Open the file and allocate the whole thing in advance. Just create an empty file that is the full size of the final file.

3) Do a GET request for the last 1% of the file. This should be enough to contain the header. In my 170MB test file, the index was slightly over 1MB in size (It was obvious what the index looked like since it had a different data structure from the rest of the file, and was easily spotted by looking at the raw data). So 1% seems to be big enough. Write out the last 1% into the right part of the existing empty file.

4) Once the last part of the file is downloaded, make a new HTTP request for the whole file (or the first 99% at least). Start writing to the beginning of the file.

So, what do we do with this? Well, wait for the hack to download a bit of the beginning of the file (I waited 10MB in first test), and open it in Media Player Classic. Start playing.

Why does this work? Well, MPC doesn't care about the middle of the file. It reads the index from the end, which I've already put there. Then it goes to the beginning and starts playing. And while it is playing, the middle of the file is still downloading. So, while only part of this fake AVI file is downloaded, it is always downloading.

As long as the download speed is faster than the media's bitrate, the media player never catches up to the part of the file being written.

What is the end result? Using my hack, I can watch an AVI file after only downloading a few megs of it. SUCCESS!

To me, this is really cool. It is such a simple, and poorly written hack (It's a proof of concept hack, after all), but it just works. I can use it in practice. With this hack, ANY media player can be used to play a progressive download.

What is the downside of this hack? There is no indication in the media player how much has downloaded so far. You can seek in the file just fine, as long as you don't seek to the part of the file that hasn't been downloaded yet. But, even that works OK. If you try to seek to an invalid part in MPC, it just shows a static frame, then you can seek back to part that has been downloaded.

But I don't care! I've got my hack, and I'm now going to use it to stream an AVI of a show that I haven't seen before that is sitting on my HTTP server in Texas :)

Small world

2006-04-12T19:50:00.000-04:00

So, I was looking at a random source file in Mozilla Firefox (I had the stupid idea of seeing how Firefox opens file to solve my problem, but I'll never find the right source file). And I noticed this:

* Contributor(s):
* Travis Bogard
* Pierre Phaneuf
* Peter Annema
* Dan Rosen

Any name there look familiar? ;)

Programming trouble

2006-04-11T23:47:00.000-04:00

I know that most of the programmers who read planit are of the linux variety, but there are a lot of REALLY smart people here, and I'm hoping that at least one of them has experience with windows programming :)

I'm trying to write to a file, but let other applications read it at the same time. The general idea is to create a file and start writing to it (downloading data as you go), and still have other programs able to open the file to read from the part that has already been downloaded.

What I'm trying to do so far is open the file in write-only mode, and set the fileshare permission to read. I've also tried opening in readwrite, and setting fileshare permission to readwrite, and all combinations of those two. I just can't get this to work.

I know this can be done, because I can read firefox's downloads-in-progress just fine. Does anybody have an idea as to how this can be done?

Adam's Axiom

2006-04-06T09:16:00.000-04:00

The bus you miss is always early, and the bus you catch is always late.

Err?

2006-04-03T19:44:00.000-04:00

So, I wanted to grab a SWF file off a web server. Save-page-as from Firefox wasn't really working perfectly. Out of habit, I opened up a console and used wget to grab the file. The file started downloading. All was good.

Then I realized that my laptop was running Windows XP. Wait a second, wget? On Windows XP? In PATH? I must have installed it a long time ago and forgotten about it. Thank goodness for cross-platform GNU tools. wget is awesome.

Somebody replied! A rarity indeed.

2006-03-21T21:48:00.000-05:00

sjwalters replied to my last post, so I'll reply here. Blogger's comment system sucks, so there doesn't seem to be much point replying to comments with more comments ;)

I dislike how sacred Japanese culture has become to some people. If it's made here in good ol' North America, it's just a Cartoon, a comic book, a nerd. If it comes from Japan, it's Anime, a manga, an "otaku".

It isn't that Japanese culture is sacred, per se. Animation in Japan has a very different style, and so we tend to use the word "Anime" to refer to animation from Japan. It differentiates the content. Manga is, again, the japanese word they use for all comics. Outside of Japan, it refers to the particular style. "Otaku" is actually a derogatory term in Japanese that certain rabid fans in North America have adopted as a badge of honour. They're a bit too crazy for me.

In North America WE don't take anime seriously? There are tonnes of tentacle death rape lovers here. Thousands. They have conventions all the time. They aren't even a tiny subset of the population, anime is becoming a ridiculously well known, and has a huge fanbase. You really shouldn't ever say anything in general about "we North Americans" as if you can just generalize everything with this one, big, homogenous group.

Also, saying in NA cartoons aren't taken seriously is sort of stupid. What is the longest running prime time comedy show airing in North America? The Simpsons, seventeen seasons and still running... crappily, but running. Cartoons are a powerhouse in NA. Look at Fox's sunday night lineup and count the cartoons.

Of course, you're right in that cartoons are more popular in Japan, but that's as profound a statement as saying the Japanese take McDonalds way less seriously than us good ol' NAers.

No, we don't. There are apparently not enough fans for localization companies to take it seriously. Let me know when high quality actors start voicing uncensored Anime targetted at the older demographic and then I'll say we're taking it seriously. Go watch anything done by Viz or Funimation and say that they are taking it seriously compared to the original performance.

Comedy shows are, by definition, not serious. We don't take them serious, we laugh at them. That is the point. There is no (OK, an unsupported statement. There is little) serious cartoons targetted at adults. Nothing as epic and emotion-invoking.

How profoundly incorrect is this statement? Let me count the ways. It's really hard to make any statement that is absolute and all encompassing. Saying "all" cartoons made in NA are targetted at children means I can prove you wrong with 1 contradictory example. Wondershowzen. Family Guy. The Simpsons. Futurama. Aqua Teen Hunger Force. All of the Adult Swim lineup on Cartoon Network. American Dad. The list is bloody endless. See how many times you're wrong?

Sorry, yes. Let me amend my statement to "Most non-comedy" instead of "all". Careless of me. But, notice that you only named comedy programs. Not one serious plot-driven show.

You would? I wouldn't, and it's not because of my burning hatred of all things anime. It's because I've never once, never in my life, seen anything dubbed that was dubbed such that I couldn't tell. It's always painfully obvious that the syllables aren't lining up, whether live action or cartoons. It sucks balls. It's one more barrier to suspension of disbelief, which I believe is an important aspect of enjoying a show.

The mouths already don't really match up in the original Japanese. It's sort of hard to match when a character might only have three mouth positions. English translations often try to match the mouth movements, and I would contend that they match up as well as the original Japanese do.

However, I was very impressed with the lip synching in "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within". I was amazed at how closely they matched, to the extent that for a while I thought they had re-rendered the movie for the English version. Only later did I realize that it was through modified script and actor timing that they managed to match up mouth shapes and movements so well. I'm hoping that "Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children"'s english version has a similar level of english voice synch, but I'm doubtful, since the budget is but a small fraction of TSW.

It would be hard for me to be so critical if I'd never watched any animes and was totally uninformed. But, by jove, I'd been forced into it. I've seen Cowboy Bebop, every goddamn session, FLCL which was actually not too bad but I'd have been happier watching Arrested Development, Dragon Ball Z, and Neon Genesis Evangelion.

It come down to selection. If the only anime I'd seen were DBZ and Inuyasha, I'd have a very different opinion than after adding on Fullmetal Alchemist and Bleach.

Part of what draws me to anime is the music. I've been known to play video games solely for the music. I download the soundtracks to videogames and anime. I enjoy them. I enjoy the intro and closing songs, even though I don't understand any of the words. They SOUND good, and so I like them. And darn it, a good orchestral score can make the difference between a crap show and a good show, or a good show and a great show.

Yeah, emotional music and a stirring plot can drive me to tears. And I like that. I like that a show can be so good as to make me feel for the characters. It is certainly more than I can say about a show like The Simpsons, which gives a quick laugh.

Anime

2006-03-21T11:43:00.000-05:00

Note: This started as a simple observation and then turned into a comprehensive review of three shows. So it is a bit long. The key point of this whole post is, Fullmetal Alchemist is an incredible epic and emotional show, and you should watch it.

It is sad when I, as someone who doesn't speak any Japanese and has only heard about a hundred hours of spoken Japanese, can tell when a Japanese person just plain sucks at talking. There's this one ending song to the anime series Bleach where the first few lines are in English, and the rest is in Japanese. And the singer's English sounds better than her Japanese despite the fact that she's Japanese.

Anyhow, I've almost finished watching all of Bleach up until the current episode. I'm in the mid sixties out of 72 right now. Before that, I watched the entire 51 episode series of Fullmetal Alchemist. So, I've sort of been thinking about anime of late.

The first obvious observation is that they take it damned seriously in Japan. They air cartoons during primetime, garnering huge audiences. It is so popular that voice actors are as popular there as movie stars are here. Bands create modified versions of their songs for anime opening and closing songs (which tend to change every season), limiting the number of verses and even cutting out bars from instrumental parts to make them fit (They obviously do this because of the huge exposure they get). Many anime shows have full orchestral soundtracks that are as good as any blockbuster movie in north america. And the voice acting is, of course, of excellent quality.

And yet, in North America, we don't take anime (or cartoons in general) seriously. Locally (being this continent) produced cartoons are all targetted at children (with the exception of movies). And when Anime is translated here, it is censored to be targetted towards children, and amateurish voice actors are used that destroy the characters by removing the emotion from the performances while turning every character into an angsty teenager. We don't air anime in prime-time, we air it censored on YTV in the afternoon.

This is why I don't watch dubbed (officially licensed and translated) versions of shows, but only the original Japanese with subtitles. Many fans of anime would find this to be reprehensible. There is an understanding between the fansubber groups (the groups of fans that translate anime shows). The fansub groups stop translating a show when it is licensed outside of Japan, and in exchange, the companies producing the shows let them translate shows unhindered (It is very rare for a fansub group to get a copyright takedown notice for an unlicensed show). The Japanese companies know that they getting the better end of the deal, because they build up an audience for the show before it even makes it overseas. These fans then procede to watch the show and buy lots of English DVDs.

My problem is that a lot of anime in north america is translated by companies like funimation and viz. These companies are the ones that get the amateur voice actors and censor everything to hell. If the English voiceacting performances were as good as the original performances, I would have no problem watching the dubs. In fact, I'd prefer it to the original Japanese, if I could get the same emotion in my native language. But since that doesn't happen, I stick to the original Japanese.

So, at this point, I've watched three series seriously in the original Japanese. They are Inuyasha, Fullmetal Alchemist, and Bleach. The first, Inuyasha, I stopped watching at about episode 30 (out of something like 150). The show was an endless stream of one-off episodes with very little plot connection. After 30 episodes, nothing had really changed, and they were still where they were after the first few episodes. I understand that when they stopped making the show (without concluding it), they were still in about the same place.

The second is Fullmetal Alchemist. The show is bloody amazing. It was relatively short, at only 51 episodes (30 minute blocks, usually about 20 minutes of content per episode), but had a full and seemingly complete pre-planned arc. The best thing about the show was that it easily qualified as epic. And by this, I mean an epic plot. The plot was coherant, consistent, emotional, and arresting. The show made me cry on more than one occasion, and laugh on many others. I'm desperately hoping that they make a second movie, as the show had a theatrical movie done in Japan in 2005.

The third is Bleach. Less epic, some big inconsistancies, but the story arcs seem to be planned in advance, and it remains extremely enjoyable. The subject matter is very interesting, the story moves at an acceptable pace, and I intend to continue watching it every week. It is really quite good. Certainly not on the same level as Fullmetal Alchemist (Which was obviously a much higher budget show), but still excellent. I understand that Bleach is currently one of the most popular anime shows right now.

Music is very important to me. In videogames, movies, shows, etc. So, I'd like to talk a bit about the music of the three shows.

Inuyasha would have to be the most original score of the three, although a better term might be the best use of themes. There are several melodies, themes, and styles, that are use in many of the musical pieces. The score is all orchestral, like many anime shows, and the use of well defined themes lends the show a sense of having very dramatic music. The score is quite good, but doesn't always play to emotion very well.

Fullmetal alchemist also uses a primarily orchestral score. The style is essentially that of a movie soundtrack. It isn't so much about themes and recurring melodies, but about evoking emotion in the viewer. There is certainly a lot of music for the show, with something like 100 unique pieces of music for the 51 episodes (not counting the movie's own soundtrack). The emotion evoked by the music was a big part of why the show was so succesfull in producing an emotional response in me. One of the few non-original pieces of music used (I assume it was non-original, it could easily be that the show's composer produced a song in russian, like Bleach's composer has produced english songs for that show) was a russian piece called "Bratja". The name translates to "Brothers", and it is naturally the theme representing the terrible struggle of the Elric brothers (the two main characters) to restore their original bodies. It is an orchestral piece with a combination of a boys choir and a single boy solo in parts. The piece is incredibly emotional, and just hearing it alone makes me sad. When combined with the particular scenes in the series, it brings me to tears each time it is used.

The budget for Bleach seems to be much smaller than the other two shows. There is less original content per episode, after the intro/opening, recap, closing, preview, and short bonus end segment are considered. There is less animation, with single frames being used more often by panning or only changing a bit. This is reflected in the musical score, which is more limited than the othe two shows. While the score in itself is excellent, there are a limited number of pieces that are used repeatedly as themes. It isn't an orchestral score, but a more electronic type of music. The music fits well, though, so it isn't a terrible problem. One could say that the score, while not outstanding, is sufficient, and good.

Now then, I should probably talk a bit about each show. If you're still reading at this point, you might actually want to watch one of these shows.

The first, Inuyasha, is about a half-demon half-human living in feudal Japan. A modern teenage girl falls through time and becomes rather attached to the half-demon, who is named Inuyasha. The series follows them and their gang of people that they gather in Inuyasha's quest to obtain a jewel that can make him full human. It is an action-adventure love story. Unfortunately, the plot never really goes anywher, and it ends up being a monster-of-the-week type of show, which is why I lost interest.

The second show is Fullmetal Alchemist. This one had a very unique and complete backstory. It takes place in a country much like nazi germany, with a technological level akin to that of the early 1900s. Instead of technology being the dominant force, in this world, alchemy was real. Alchemists transmute objects through the process of equivalent trade, with alchemy amounting basically to magic with limits. The alchemist draws a transmutation circle, puts an object into it, and transmutes it into something else. The show follows Edward and Alphonse Elric. The two boys lose their mother at an early age, and try to bring her back to life via human transmutation. Human transmutation is a horrible taboo, however, and for good reason. In the process of the failed transmutation, Ed loses an arm and a leg, and Al loses his entire body. It is only by sacrificing his arm that Ed manages to seal Al's soul to an empty suit of armour. The series follows the two brothers on their quest to restore their original bodies by obtaining an item known as the philosopher's stone. I haven't spoiled anything here, since this setup is only the first two episodes.

The third show is Bleach. It follows a teenager named Ichigo who can see ghosts. One day, while an evil spirit called a hollow is attacking his family, a Death God shows up to fight it. The death god are spirits that send ghosts to heaven and hell, and fight against hollows to free their souls and stop them from harming both ghosts and the living. During the battle, the death god is gravely injured, and tries to transfer part of her power to Ichigo so that he might save his family. She accidentally transfers all of her power into Ichigo, and so he must act as a substiture death god until she can recover. That about sums up the first episode. The show follows Ichigo's adventures as a death god, among other things.

If you are looking for an anime show to pick up, start with Fullmetal Alchemist. As I've said, it is incredibly good, albeit a bit short. If you still want an ongoing show after that, look into Bleach. There are currently 72 episodes with new ones still airing weekly.

As a note, I really do suggest you grab fansubs of the shows and not the official english translations (dubs). There really is an enormous difference between them, taking a show like Fullmetal Alchemist from incredibly amazing to make "An OK show". For Fullmetal Alchemist, I like the dubs done by "KickAssAnime", or KAA. For Bleach, the best is Lunar. Unfortunately, Lunar is a "professional" fansub group, so they stopped subbing when Bleach was licensed. There are still other lesser quality groups subbing the new episods.

LAN party time

2006-03-04T17:19:00.000-05:00

Some of you at NITI might remember when I left early on a Friday to head out to a 48-hour long LAN party in June or July. Well, it is time for the big LAN party of 2006. Except, this time I'm on staff, so I would be remiss if I didn't try to spread the word a bit ;)

Here is a picture of the 2004 LAN (2005 was cancelled due to renovations in the hall):

There were actually about twice as many gamers as seen in that picture, because the LAN area extended to the right into the cafeteria, and a little bit further back behind the camera. In 2004 there was live coverage from MusiquePlus and CanalZ (Now ZTélé) for most of the event (they were airing live updates all day every 15 minutes for two days or so), and the other stations like TVA and such also showed up to do a bit of coverage. There was also a televised tournament between the casts of the two big competing technology shows on the two channels ;)

I don't think we'll have the same degree of TV coverage as last time, because that is a one shot deal. There will probably still be some TV coverage this year though.

This year, LAN ETS is actually the Canadian Electronic Sports World Cup Qualifiers. Yeah, that's mouthful. What it means is that the winners of the related tournaments get a free plane ticket and hotel room in Paris to compete in the world finals. LAN ETS is the qualifiers for Team Canada this year, so the whole country will converge on LAN ETS to compete for it.

So if you're a gamer in Montreal, or elsewhere in Canada but fancy yourself a professional player, then head over to the LAN ETS site and register yourself. Link to the site on this banner below:

Applied to NITI

2006-03-01T15:18:00.000-05:00

After a phone conversation with my Co-Op co-ordinator, I got the go ahead to apply to NITI. Woohoo!

I have started that process rolling, I think, so hopefully I'll have some good news soon. *fingers crossed*

Craptacular day

2006-03-01T13:17:00.000-05:00

Today is going particularly crappy, so I'm going to vent here in my blog. Sorry. Maybe it'll make me feel better.

Coming back from my week off (reading week), things went really well. I got back my midterm for Political Science 204 (Essentially one discussion about what is wrong with the current government structure). I got the highest mark in the class, that felt pretty good. Next day, yesterday, I got back my midterm for COMP229, System Software (OS theory and how assemblers/linkers/loaders/etc work). Second highest mark in the class. A big surprise, but I was happy.

Now, today. I wake up a bit late, and miss the first bus. I arrive to class (Cal 2) 25 minutes late. They've started a new subject, integration of rational functions. I arrive in the middle of it and have no idea what is going on. The first full example I witness on the board takes up four pages in my notebook. Four pages. I'm totally lost.

Next, after class ends, I get to pick up my midterm and past assignment. The assignment was one that I ran out of time while doing, so I only answered about half the questions. Problem is, the Math department are cheap bastards and only mark 4 or 5 questions randomly on each assignment, even if there are 20 qusetions. So guess what? 4 of the 5 questions they mark are the ones I didn't do, and they gave me zero on the one I did do with no explanation of what I did wrong. Perhaps I could have got some marks if they'd ACTUALLY MARKED THE STUFF THAT I DID DO!

And then the midterm. The mark at face value wasn't too bad. 70%. That is significantly higher than my marks on the Cal 1 midterm or final. Except the last three questions on the midterm were based on eachother. At the beginning of those three questions, I made one very small mistake, confusing the graphs of sqrt(x) and x^2. IE, I drew the curve convex when it should have been concave (I think). This was a find-volume-of-rotated-function type thing. Fine, they say, they give me half marks on that one. Fair enough, stupid mistake, but whatever. Except then they bomb me on the other two because they're based on a false assumption. So one tiny mistake on the first question cancels out all the work on the other two. I probably would have scored in the mid 80s had it not been for the concavity of a one inch long line on the paper.

So, in a course that was going relatively well, I'm lost when it comes to the material, got zero on an assignment, and lost a huge number of marks on one simple mistake on the midterm. Great way to ruin a good week.

Oh, and while I really want to apply to NITI for the co-op work term, my co-op co-ordinator hasn't yet responded to the email that I sent three days ago. Nice.

Why is QoS only one way?

2006-02-28T09:39:00.000-05:00

I was thinking about VoIP, and the state of VoIP technology. I got to thinking about QoS on routers, used to ensure the integrity of the VoIP stream.

As far as I know, QoS on current broadband routers is one-way. They only manage OUTGOING bandwidth. This is true of current "gaming" QoS on routers, I'm uncertain if it also applies to VoIP, but it would follow.

The excuse given for not doing QoS on incoming bandwidth is that the router has no control over incoming bandwidth, since somebody else is sending it. But this is not true! The receiving router has complete control over how fast the remote computer sends data. This is the entire point of the TCP sliding window.

So, why doesn't the router doing QoS simply lower the window size slightly on incoming TCP connections until it has some spare bandwidth to receive the important data (VoIP)? Yes, this method doesn't work for UDP, but as far as I can tell, most consumer bandwidth use is going to be from stuff like HTTP, P2P, and other TCP-based protocols. Games don't produce much incoming bandwidth, and VoIP is the thing we're trying to maximize.

So, am I missing something? Is there a reason why routers don't alter the window sizes to control the speed of incoming data to make room for stuff like VoIP?

Andreas Katsulas passes away

2006-02-23T23:40:00.000-05:00

This one caught me by surprise. He died of lung cancer 10 days ago at the age of 59.

Science fiction fans will probably remember him best as G'Kar from Babylon 5. This does not bode well for the future of the Babylon license, as JMS is still occasionally putting out Babylon related movies and pilots. The most recent one was "Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers" in 2002. Althogh funding fell apart for another B5 movie "The Memory of Shadows", JMS was still hoping to make it sometime in 2006-2008.

Katsulas isn't the first B5 main cast member to pass away either. Richard Biggs, who played Dr. Franklin, passed away in 2004 in his fourties.

iPodDrop v1.3 released!

2006-02-22T20:42:00.000-05:00

Changelog is the same as listed in my previous post.

This release includes the sourcecode. I've licensed it under a Creative Commons license. Hopefully I didn't make any big licensing mistakes that give up rights to my firstborn child or something.

Get it here:

http://teknews.net/~guspaz/iPodDrop_v1_3.zip

I'm going to apply one additional condition. If you look at the source and say to yourself "This is stupid" about something, send me an email telling me what I did that was stupid. You don't have to propose a solution or anything, so this isn't going to take a lot of effort, just tell me what I did that was stupid, keeping in mind that I was lazy while writing this program.

SNES

2006-02-22T13:55:00.000-05:00

Well, my copy of Mario Kart for SNES (which I purchased on eBay) has just arrived.

My primary purpose for this purchase was to take the SNES to the upcomming LAN ETS (which I'll be helping out with this year). We're setting up a room for people to plug in their consoles, and I thought, what better console to bring than my old SNES? This got me thinking about the state of my SNES hardware. I also have fond memories of Mario Kart, so I thought it'd be a good game to pick up, with or without the LAN. I never owned a copy of the game, but borrowed it often enough.

I got my SNES some time between 1991 and 1993. I don't really remember exactly when. When I went downstairs to check out the status of my SNES, to my dismay, I found that one of the two controllers were missing. In fact, I've bled off a lot of games that I lent and were never returned. Only 3 of my original games are left. Of the others, I had Super Mario Allstars, Donkey Kong Country, a Super Gameboy, and the Super Game Genie. I think that is all. Of those, the Super Gameboy and the Super Game Genie were lent and never returned, I think the same is true of Super Mario Allstars, and I've got no idea what happened to Donkey Kong Country (I thought I still had it). On top of that, the missing controller which I think is just lost.

I've been considering using eBay and used game shops to try to rebuild my collection, for nostalgia sake as much as playing them. Mario Kart was my first purchase with that aim in mind. As I mentioned, I never owned it, but borrowed it often.

Unfortunately, my RCA cables for the SNES were damaged in a vacuuming accident many years ago, so I'm currently limited to the old RF converter. The cable is only damaged in one spot, however, so I think it is repairable if I slice it open.

I was hoping to have some two-player Mario Kart action going this weekend, but I'll have to pick up a second controller. A local hobby shop has them for $10, so I think I'll pick one up. Maybe they'll have some of my other missing accessories too.

iPodDrop v1.3

2006-02-22T02:14:00.000-05:00

Well, it has been quite a while since I posted about iPodDrop. I toyed around a bit with getting Explorer context menus working, but I've got a lot of other projects going, so I haven't really been in the mood to hack on it.

What I'm thinking of doing is just rolling the current build of v1.3 into a release. It's been so long since the last release that I might as well just release what I have now. The changelog is short, but the impact on the user interface is enormous. Here's the changelog:

- Hide ffmpeg output while encoding
- While encoding, show text-based progress bar, percentage, realtime multiplier, and estimated time until completion
- Tweaked aspect ratio detection to produce better guesses (This is purely cosmetic anyhow)

Short, yes. But the second change there is huge from a usability standpoint. ffmpeg doesn't show any sort of estimate, or even a percentage. The only progress indicator it provides is the number of seconds of content encoded. But since iPodDrop knows how long the video file is, it can compare the known length and the amount encoded to generate a percentage. And iPodDrop can also use that percentage to figure out roughly how long it will take to finish encoding. This is the coolest thing about it, I think, seeing the estimate.

So, yes, this is just a cosmetic change, and it isn't really super special. But it makes such a huge difference.

Here's a screenshot of v1.3 in action:

Image being hosted by my new website, suprfile.com ;)

As a comparison, here is a screenshot of v1.2 (click to zoom):

Yeah, all that ffmpeg output is interesting, but not very useful to the average user who just wants to know when their damned file is going to be done.

Anyhow, you'll notice that the ascii art used is a bit primitive. This is because .NET 1.1 only provides the most basic console functionality. No colours, no moving the cursor, none of that. However, you can use \r to move back to the beginning of the current line. Which is how I provide the status on the same line.

I'd like to have closed the bottom of that text dialog, and used some colours. Those sorts of features, unfortunately, require .NET 2.0. That's rare enough that I don't think it is a fair requirement for now. As for the reason why I'm using pipes and dashes instead of proper line chars, that has to do with how .NET doesn't use straight ASCII (Like most languages it has moved to 2-byte encoding), and how I didn't really want to research the proper way to output the line characters from the extended ascii set. I think the current method works well enough anyhow.

I'll probably release the source with v1.3 when I put it out. Which will probably be in a few days when I get around to it. I'll likely us the existing Creative Commons license I mentioned a while ago. The code really needs to be cleaned up and commented before I release it, but I'm not going to bother. The fact that people know that I was being lazy while coding it should help spare me from too much embarrassment ;)

I had the strangest dream...

2006-02-17T22:20:00.000-05:00

I had the strangest dream last night. I was in Tokyo. For some reason, everybody was convinced that if they could accrue a "critical mass" of meal worms in this temple, everybody would get their wish. Except when they reached the critical mass of meal worms, it formed a zombie elvis meal worm god. Emphasis on the meal worm god part (think blood god from Blade, but with meal worms). It started eating people, screaming "meal worm want eat". It was really wierd.

On that note, I'll probably be applying to NITI for a work term in a week or two :) I've got to work out some details with Concordia co-op before applying, which is why I have to wait. I thought that I was going to have to delay my work term by two semesters due to my missing prerequisites, but the co-op folks said it didn't matter.

The co-op people want to go over my CV with me before I apply to NITI. I'm not sure why NITI would need a CV, since the only real change from the last CV NITI has from me is, umm, working at NITI. Co-Op wants me to, though. They also want to make sure that the job I apply for would satisfy their requirements.

Computer alarms

2006-02-09T10:46:00.000-05:00

I'm in a class on a computer lab on the 9th floor of the Hall building right now. The computer next to mine is putting up a real racket. Sounds like the hard drive, though it could be a fan. It doesn't help that the school has removed not only the frontplate, but the front case door as well.

In an attempt to reduce the annoyance, I rotated the PC away from me by about 30 degrees. Apparently this set off some sort of silent anti-sanity alarm, as within a minute or two, two technicians had come to investigate. They chastized me for moving the PC (which I wouldn't have done if the crappy PC wasn't making so much damned noise), and set it back (Unfortunately restoring the annoying noise that rotating the PC had fixed by redirecting it away from me).

That wasn't all, as a few minutes after the left, two security guards came to investigate the alarm. They made a beeline for the PC I had moved, and fiddled with something in the back, apparently trying to turn off the alarm. They left, but came back a few minutes later. After some talk into a walkie-talkier, they apparently shut it off and left.

Why am I writing about this? Well, it simply seems like a pretty insane security measure for a pretty crappy broken computer. An alarm on a worthless broken PC in a computer lab that is protected by a door with a keycode lock accross the hall from the computer lab help desk on the 9th floor of a university building.

Not that the people who run the labs here are very bright. I mean, the boot process is braindead. You turn on the PC, and after an exceedingly long time at the POST screen, you're presented with the Windows boot loader. WinXP or Linux. Fine. You select Linux, and are presented with a SECOND boot loader, this time grub, that has as options, get ready for this, WinXP or Linux. Now, it seems to me like if you've selected Linux from the first boot menu, it is pretty safe to just go ahead and boot linux, rather than asking again. And, of course, if you select WinXP on the second boot loader, it simply sends you back to the first boot loader, where you must select WinXP again.

Somebody also thought it would be a good idea to set Fedora to do software updates over the internet on boot. Yes, I just love waiting five minutes for a PC to boot while it does a slow unabortable software update over the INTERNET. This couldn't have been done during idle time, of course not.

Speaking of idle time, the machines reboot if you don't do anything for 20 minutes. So if you have some work open and go to help somebody on their machine, you may well come back to find that your PC has decided to reboot itself. You'd better have saved.

I'd mention the fact that the mouse speed under Windows is set so high that it is virtually impossible to click anything, but I think you get the point. Considering that the school is blowing hundreds of millions of dollars of OUR money on buildings we are not allowed to use, you'd think they could afford to hire somebody who knows what a computer is, or perhaps keep the computers in working condition. I mean, take the price of the two newest buildings (One of them they can't even build yet due to holdups in city regulations), about $300 million, you could replace the PCs in this lab for $2000 EVERY DAY FOR TEN YEARS.

Pathing optimization

2006-02-09T10:24:00.000-05:00

Well, that title sounds a lot more interesting than the actual subject, doesn't it?

Over the past two semesters, I've been looking for the optimal path between Le Fauberg, where many of my classes are, and the Hall building, where the rest of them are. I seem to have found the best path to minimize time spent outside on cold days such as today.

The route I take adds a bit of walking time on. Classes in Le Fauberg are either in the sub-basement, the sub-sub-basement (three floors underground), or the third floor. First I make my way to the ground floor. I then take the back corridor to the other end of the mall (Yes, I have classes in a shopping mall. Concordia spent $150 million on a new building for our department, but only let graduate students use the 17 floor building, leaving us to have classes in the sub-sub-basement of a shopping mall). From there, I take the door into the Fauberg Tower, a building adjoining Le Fauberg. Accross the lobby is a street exit that is on the corner of the intersection of, I think, Sherbrooke and Guy. Crossing the intersection diagonally takes me to the entrance of the EV building, which is the width of a city block. I continue through that building until I hit the next street, MacKay, I think. Almost directly accross the street from there is the rear entrance of the LB (Library) building. On the other side of that building is a tunnel that leads under the street to the basement of the Hall building. Voila!

I used to take the escalators up from there. This semester, when I'm going from Le Fauberg to the Hall building, I'm heading up to a class on the 9th floor, 10 floors up from the basement. One day, I was quite tired, and decided not to take the escalators. It isn't exactly rare for half of the escalators to be stalled, and it is a long way up. Now, the alternative is the elevators. The Hall building's elevators are terrible. There are two of them, each about a third the size of the NITI building's elevator, and perhaps 1/2 to 2/3 the speed. They hold five or six people crammed in tight, and since there are mobs of people on each floor, they take forever to get anywhere. That day, I just didn't care.

I headed down the steps and into the Hall basement proper. There was a main hall that stretched the length of the building. I followed it down in hopes of locating the elevator shaft. Instead, as I moved down the hallway, I saw two different elevators on the wrong side of the corridor. One was obviously a service elevator, since it was large and required a key, but the other seemed to be a normal one.

This new elvator is now my preferred method of traveling up and down in the Hall building. For some reason, while there are dozens of people on the ground floor waiting for the normal elevators, there is virtually never ANYBODY using this elevator. It is about the same speed as the regular elevators, but since nobody ever uses it, you can go from the basement to the 9th floor without stopping.

I am not certain why nobody uses this elevator. Perhaps it is because nobody knows about it (it is off on the side of the building rather than the center). Perhaps it is because it makes odd noises as it ascends, and shakes if you move. Perhaps it is because it looks like it was installed in the building decades ago and hasn't been refinished since (It features an all-metal interior adorned with decades of scuff and scratch marks). Either way, for some reason this elevator remains unused, and by far the fastest way to travel.

Phonespell.org

2006-02-07T09:25:00.000-05:00

Somebody linked to phonespell.org from some forums I was browsing. I decided to enter my phone numbers and see what happened.

First, my cell phone. The only sensical one was "bier-856". Dictionary.com defines a bier as "the frame on which dead bodies were conveyed to the grave". Well, good to know that if I ever start a funeral home I'm all set. Too bad there wasn't another three in there, then I could have had "biere-56".

My home number, though, was a bit more interesting. For this one it actually managed to replace all the numbers with letters. And what words are equivalent to my home phone number? owl-milk.

SuprBowl ads

2006-02-05T23:41:00.000-05:00

Want to watch the US superbowl ads? Try here: http://video.google.com/superbowl.html

I'm frankly extremely happy about this. In previous years we've had to turn to horribly slow sites that forced us to use horrible players, register accounts, and had low quality. Some even started charging money to view them.

Thanks to Google Video, not only can I watch them in my browser with no account, but the google superbowl page has an option to watch them back-to-back, saving a load of time. Also, the page includes GoDaddy's banned ads.

The quality complaint is still there, though, as Google Video doesn't use overlay (It uses nearest neighbour resizing, which sucks), and Google Video uses an insane amount of CPU power (probably because it doesn't use overlay). Still, a small price to pay.

Februly

2006-02-04T00:57:00.000-05:00

It is February, right? And February is the coldest month of the year, right? Then why the hell is it RAINING? It isn't supposed to be 5 above for days in a row during coldest month of the yaer.

Shovel-think

2006-01-31T17:34:00.000-05:00

Well, I was outside, shoveling, and I got to thinking. I do that a lot while performing mundane tasks. The problem is that homework is a mundane task. Anyhow, I was thinking, and I realized that of the programming that I do on my own (As in, not for work or homework), it falls into three categories. Those are programs intended to be used by other people, programs I intend to use myself, and boredom programs. You can actually classify these three categories based on the amount of error handling, interestingly enough.

Boredom programs
These are essentially techdemos. I'll be sitting around one day, bored, and think of something cool to write. I'll work on it for a few hours, enough to get it in a working demonstrable state, and then abandon it forever. Virtually no forthought goes into these things, I just sit down and start typing code.

A good example is the C#-based multithreaded IRC server I wrote yesterday. I was sitting around, bored, and just started writing an IRC server. I think I spent about 5 or 6 hours on it last night, most of the time spent learning how to do things I wanted to do. By the end of the coding block, I had an IRC server that mIRC could connect to, join channels, and PM people. A very small subset of the IRC featureset, sure, but enough for casual use. Enough to connect a few copies of mIRC and actually use them.

Multithreading a network app in .NET is easy. In fact, any asynchronous socket work is more or less multithreaded by default. The way it works is through callbacks. When you listen for connections, you have a callback. When there is data waiting to be read, you have a callback. These callbacks are in seperate threads, managed by the framework. So if you are writing something like an HTTP server with no shared info between threads, it is insanely easy. Even if you do have shared data structures like my IRC server does, it doesn't much matter. All shared data in my app is done via hash tables, and a few simple checks handle data being removed before we try to do something with it.

Programs I intend to use myself

These are the types of programs where I'll think, hey, I need an app to do such and such. iPodDrop started out as such a program, and is in the process of moving to the third category. When started, the program had very little error checking. It had enough to handle cases that I was likely to encounter, but nothing to handle somebody doing something wrong. So, I might handle an unreadable file, but wouldn't bother handling funky framerates; I wouldn't pass iPodDrop a file with a framerate of 36. Of course, now that iPodDrop is moving to the third category, such checks are starting to show up to ensure better stability.

These types of apps are likely to get finished into a working state. Working, but not polished. They do what they're meant to do, and it doesn't have to be pretty.

Programs I intend others to use

A lot of my web work could be considered to be in this category. iPodDrop is moving into it. In this category, error checking is included to cover common scenarios, trying to make sure users can't do dumb stuff. I don't go overboard, I mean an "or die" for most MySQL calls in a web app is fine. Since web apps are stateless, the occasional error isn't going to bring down the system, if the MySQL server hiccups or something. But I would add error handling for any user input, certainly, or expected failures.

To be honest, I intended this post to be a lot longer and in-depth, but I started writing it 5 hours ago and got interrupted, and am only finishing it now.

GPLv3: I'm not alone

2006-01-26T10:47:00.000-05:00

In a previous post, I called the GPLv3 "idiotic". sfllaw replied in a comment that I shouldn't say such things without studying copyright law in greater detail.

I wasn't actually referring to the copyright part of the law though. I think he was confused by my earlier statement that I thought the GPLv2 was a bit too viral for my uses. My comment on GPLv3 was unrelated.

I actually dislike the GPLv3 not for the copyright provisions, but the policy choices the FSF has made. I haven't read through the thing, but am only going on what has been reported. The one I was talking about was how the GPLv3 forbids software from containing DRM of any kind. This, of course, really limits where you can use GPL'd software, and will drive a great many corporations AWAY from opensource (Hence my comments about the new GPL hurting opensource).

Apparently, Linus agrees, saying "I think it's insane" when referring to yet another stupid provision that requires people to make their private signing keys available. If I understand what he's referring to, he's right. If you make your private signing keys available because the GPLv3 requires it, ANYBODY can sign stuff with your key. That is worse than not having any keys at all, because it gives a false sense of security when Joe Viruswriter can sign whatever he wants with a GPLv3'd project's key. Great new way to sneak rootkits onto people's linux boxes.

Linus will thankfully not be using the GPLv3 for Linux. Thank goodness, because with the GPLv3, the FSF is trying to push their extremist views onto a world in which it doesn't work.

Stuff

2006-01-24T09:00:00.000-05:00

@Avery: Is publicly stating that your customers are giving you too much money really such a good business strategy? :)

It's been a while since my last post. Not much has changed. Apparently there was some sort of event yesterday, not sure what that was about. I think it had something to do with choosing colours. I hear that blue and red were quite popular. Such clashing colours, surely whatever they're painting can't match both of them? I can't think of any colour scheme that matches with both red and blue. I like orange myself, much more bright and cheerful.

I've been busy of late, and haven't had time to work on iPodDrop. I'm tempted to just release the current beta build in it's current state. It doesn't have the explorer context menus, but it does have the progress bar and time estimates, which is cosmetic and yet huge. I didn't have time to clean up the source and comment stuff, but I'll probably just release the source anyhow. Maybe seeing how bad the code is will inspire people to give advice so I can improve in the areas where I wasn't just lazy, but suck. I'm not a big fan of the GPL (A bit too viral, and the GPLv3 is just idiotic with useless anti-DRM crap that will hurt opensource), so I'll probably go Creative Commons:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Canada License.

I'll probably put an additional restriction on it, namely that if you look at the source and find anything stupid, you're required to notify me of it. You don't have to fix it, just tell me that I'm stupid. Surely telling somebody they're stupid isn't a big burden.

For the gamers among you who are in Montreal, it should be noted that Lan ETS 2006 signups are now open. It is scheduled for March 24th, with a planned size of 400 people. Last year Roch told me that he was hoping to break ATI-Revolution's record (something over 600 I think), which was the largest LAN party ever in Canada and 6th largest in North America. I guess they had to scale it back a bit. I don't think the ETS lobby renovations freed up as much space as Roch hoped it would.

I know.

2006-01-14T02:16:00.000-05:00

Han Solo. Frozen in carbonite. Made out of lego. At full scale. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. There is no question about it.

Of course, my mind is going because of the coolness factor.

And on a totally unrelated topic, one of my cooler christmas gifts was a red swingline stapler. Unfortunately, I don't have any TPS reports handy. I'll have to print some out to place the stapler on. And if the connection between red swingline staplers and TPS reports went right over your head, you really need to get your geek on ;)

Amazification.

2006-01-04T02:19:00.000-05:00

Ever seen something that just boggled the mind, amazed you so much you just sat there stunned? So incredible you made up a new word for a blog post?

Well, if you haven't, you will after listening to this (Use heaphones only, speakers won't work):

http://teknews.net/~guspaz/Cereni_-_Holophonic.mp3

They call it "Holophonic" sound. It is like HRTF, except instead of providing surroundsound, it provides full 3D sound. As in, they can make something sound like it is above or below. And the directional placement is the BEST I've EVER heard out of any HRTF or related trickery. Even when it comes to pure surround this is amazing, but when the sound starts moving above and below it just blows the mind. I've heard some other so-called Holophonic demos, and they paled in comparison to this one. Whereas other demos sort of sounded like they might be at a slight angle, this really feels like somebody is shaking a matchbox under your chair.

Closing your eyes when you listen to it enhances the effect. You can just imagine a person walking around you shaking the matchbox.

The site this comes from is http://www.holophonic.ch, but it is down due to the digg effect.

iPodDrop and the GPL

2006-01-01T21:13:00.000-05:00

wlach pointed out that according to the LGPL that ffmpeg is distributed under, I've got to distribute the source with it.

Except, ffmpeg is distributed with GPL'd components (which my binary has compiled in), which means that the copy of ffmpeg is covered by the GPL.

Now, my reading of the GPL is that a project that "contains" GPL'd binaries must itself become entirely covered by the GPL. However, I assume my reading to be incorrect, because I've seen tons of products that contain GPL'd code and non-GPL'd code, distributed together without the non-GPL'd code being affected (NITIX itself would be an example, or virtually any linux-based firmware). So that would mean that I should post the ffmpeg source, but am not required post my own source.

Here's ffmpeg: ffmpeg-0.4.9-pre1.7z (Pretty stupid to have to post unmodified source when the ffmpeg people host it). I'll bundle the source in v1.3 I guess.

Maybe I'll opensource iPodDrop itself later. I'd like to get the source in a more friendly state before that happens. Commenting the code some would be nice.

This means I don't qualify for SourceForge. I've run a SourceForge project before, in my experience it isn't worth the effort for small projects. Setting up and configuring an sf project isn't a simple affair, and for a very short program it isn't worth it. If I opensource it, I'll just distribute the source with it.

iPodDrop v1.2 released

2006-01-01T04:39:00.000-05:00

You're probably sick of hearing about this, so I'll keep it short. v1.2 (a huge update) is done, and you can grab it now:

Download iPodDrop v1.2

The changelog is the exact same as what I posted earlier, save for one extra item:

- iPodDrop now defaults to a video bitrate of 1024 kbit/s, and only uses 2048kbit if in TV mode.

Enjoy! Please comment!

Some more 1.2 progress

2005-12-31T18:24:00.000-05:00

A progress report on v1.2. It is pretty close to being done, I think, and could use some more testing before I let it go.

Here's an updated version of the changelog so far:

v1.2:

- Aspect ratio is now displayed as a fraction. IE, 4:3 instead of 1.333(...). It checks fractions with denominators up to 100.
- Added support for command line options/switches.
- Updated usage info.
- Added support for SMP (HyperThreading, dual core, dual processor) for the actual encoding via -smp switch.
- iPodDrop now targets the iPod screen rather than TV by default. Still maintains correct aspect ratio.
- Added new switch, -tv, that uses OLD default behaviour and tries to max out res.
- Added better handling of content with aspect ratios less than 4:3 (such as 1:1). iPodDrop now stretches them to 4:3 under the assumption that they are probably SVCD or some other such format.
- Added new switch, -allowtall, that allows aspect ratios less than 4:3 to remain unchanged.
- Bugfix to better handle relative paths in Windows
- Added logging. iPodDrop now logs how long it took to encode each file to encodes.txt in the log directory.

As you can see, there is some new stuff since the last post. v1.2 has turned into a rather large update compared to v1.1, and I'm pretty happy with it.

To respond to Avery's post (I'm not ignoring his changes in v1.2, just trying to avoid feature creep):

Right-click menus are definately a good idea. I'll try to slot them in for v1.3 or something. Probably I'll set them up the first time the program is run, and when I get an installer I can have it done there. The problem with this approach, of course, is that I have to specify filetypes to show the menu for. Since my app is an interface for ffmpeg, I don't really know what formats it supports. Certainly I can add all the common ones.

I've been thinking about a GUI for a while now. Originally I was trying to get this thing in a workable state as fast as possible, and for that, console was the way to go. However, the program DOES keep getting more and more sophisticated. I'd like to think that I've been influenced by NITI's autonomic background when I decided to make this program try to figure out the best default behaviors for everything. Most applications don't do anything without setting up many command-line switches, and the default behavior isn't very useful. iPodDrop tries to do as much as possible with no user input (beyond providing the filename), and if a user doesn't like the default behavior, THEN the switches allow them to tweak that.

But I'm getting off on a tangent again. GUIs. I don't really want to go the full GUI route quite yet. iPodDrop is actually my second media encoding app. The one I wrote about shortly after the iPod came out fizzled. I went too complex too fast without any planning (not that iPodDrop has much planning beyond features-planned-for-next-release) leading to a huge amount of work before the app could really do anything at all. (iPodDrop actually got a huge shortcut in the beginning by borrowing a bunch of functions from my old app, allowing a faster start). GUIs are a lot more work than a console app, so I have been avoiding writing a GUI.

There are two plans I've been formulating. The first involves what is printed to the console itself. I intend to simplify the console output by capturing all the FFMPEG output, and parsing it to produce a (text-based) progress bar and ETA. The program would still not be a GUI app, but would be much more friendly.

The second is sort of a launcher. A small GUI shell that calls iPodDrop. Perhaps it is kind of silly to write a front-end for a front-end, but the idea is to provide a standard Windows file browser dialog, possibly allowing dragging into the window too, and a few checkboxes/radio buttons that just set the command-line switches.

Even writing the frontend for iPodDrop, you'd still see the iPodDrop console after you hit "go", but the progress bar would be in the console window already. This is somewhat of a hybrid solution, but might be good enough.

An eventual possibility would be to take the whole shebang and convert it into a full GUI app. See, the beauty of going with the GUI shell first is that you can make iPodDrop a GUI app by shoving its code into the shell itself and doing something else where you normally do "Console.WriteLine()". Provide some sort of feedback where the console output used to be (Labels? Message boxes? Depends on context), turn the progress bar into a GUI element, and boom.

Right now it looks like what is likely to go into 1.3 is explorer context menus, and the hide-ffmpeg-and-show-progress-bar bit. The installer is still a possibility, and the GUI shell might make it in. Depends how long it takes to do the progress bar bit. My old GUI encoder had the progress bar and ETAs working with ffmpeg, but it was a bitch to do and was prone to crashing. Luckily iPodDrop waits for ffmpeg to finish while in a tight loop (Albeit with a sleep command so that it only loops a few times a second), which would make the progress bar a LOT easier.

You know what? I am afraid that one day if iPodDrop is in more general circulation, I'll be bombarded with questions better directed to the ffmpeg team. Hiding away ffmpeg's output to reduce complexity will only exacerbate that.

Damn it. Another long post when all I intended to do was post the changelog.

PS2 vs XBOX in Japan

2005-12-31T04:33:00.000-05:00

Most of you probably know how the XBOX never really took off in Japan. Well, I just saw some sales figures for the week before christmas, and it is quite striking.

The PS2? 97,475 units sold.
The Xbox? 141 units sold.

But, you might say, surely this is because the XBOX 360 is now out? Well sure, to a point. How many units did the 360 sell? 5,674.

Microsoft has failed again in Japan despite all their efforts to avoid the fate this time around. For the interested, here is the full list:

1) 597,628 - Nintendo DS
2) 161,332 - Sony PlayStation Portable
3) 97,475 - Sony PlayStation Two
4) 36,646 - Nintendo GameCube
5) 35,764 - Nintendo GameBoy Advance SP
6) 19,261 - Nintendo GameBoy Micro
7) 5,674 - Microsoft Xbox 360
8) 906 - Nintendo GameBoy Advance
9) 141 - Microsoft Xbox

News on v1.2 of iPodDrop

2005-12-30T04:58:00.000-05:00

EDIT: This post is WAY longer than I intended it to be. I'm tempted to just say "That was why scroll wheels were invented" when it comes to the amount of space this is going to take up on planit, but then that would be rude :P If anybody knows how I can do a "sanity barrier" type thing with Blogger where it only shows part of the blog post on planit and the rest via a link, let me know in the comments. And comment on the app while you're at it ;)

I know I said last post that it would probably be a long while before a v1.2 ever arrived, but, well, something came up and now I've been busy working on v1.2.

I remembered that one of my buddies actually bought a 60GB iPod with Video. So I suggested to him that he try my app. Problem is, while my app is designed to max out the res to play back on a TV, he didn't have the cables, and only wanted to watch stuff on the screen.

Well, I made him a custom hacked up build of v1.1 that encoded to 320x240 (changing the 240 based on aspect ratio, so 16:9 content would give 320x180 video). Also hardcoded ffmpeg to start up with 2 threads to take advantage of HyperThreading on his CPU.

It worked great. He's using it, and reports that not only is my app encoding 3x faster than the convert that the rest of the world seems to use (Videora iPod Converter, and this is odd because both my app and Videora use ffmpeg, albeit different builds compiled by different people), but my app also properly handles non-four-by-three aspect ratios (like 16:9). Videora just stretches everything to 4:3, ruining widescreen content, while my app properly calculates the correct res (The iPod can do letterboxing by itself).

Well, that hacked up build was working for him. Problem is, he had a suggestion. He wanted iPodDrop to keep a log file of what it was encoding, and how long it took. That seemed like it was something that would do well to be in my mainline build, but I didn't want to keep having to hack him up a custom version over and over again. My solution? Integrate optional support for the changes to his version into the mainline version ;)

The end result is that in the upcoming v1.2, you can enable SMP support with a commandline switch (Uses 2 threads to take advantage of HyperThreading, dual core, or dual procs), and you can tell the app to target an iPod screen rather than a TV screen.

I actually will probably make the iPod screen target the default behavior, since this feature now makes my app suitable not just for myself and the few others who use the iPod on a TV, but EVERYBODY who plays video on their iPod. The minority like myself can use a commandline switch to target a TV instead. The switches still work with shortcuts, so you can have switches and still drag and drop.

Here is the current-to-date changelog for v1.2, pretty much what I've described above:

- Aspect ratio is now displayed as a fraction. IE, 4:3 instead of 1.333(...). It checks fractions with denominators up to 100.
- Added support for command line options/switches.
- Updated usage info.
- Added support for SMP (HyperThreading, dual core, dual processor) for the actual encoding.
- Added ability to output for iPod screen resolution instead of TV resolution.

As you can see, I fixed aspect ratios while I was at it. I was tired of seeing stuff like 2.2222222222222222222222. Now that shows up as 20:9 like it should.

Other changes I'm thinking about for v1.2 are the log file suggestion, and also changing how the app treats content that is less wide than 4:3. Like 1:1. My guess is that 1:1 content is probably going to be 480x480 or 480x576, which would be SVCD res. And when you decode SVCD content, you squish it down to 480x360 for display (Like anamorphic content, sort of). The actual display isn't 1:1, it is just stored like that. So I think that if a ratio that is less wide than 4:3 is detected, the app should just squish that down to 4:3. I'd also provide an option to leave the ratio untouched, in case you somehow manage to get such content (I have a 480x480 video file that for some reason really is 1:1 for display).

I have to be careful about such options, because if you add special case options like that, you start destroying the point of the application, the ability to drag and drop (even onto shortcuts). I think that in this case, though, the default handling is more correct, and the switch would be available just in case you have very rare content, so that you can type out the command by hand (Or have a shortcut already handy?).

Anyhow, I haven't received any comments on any of my past blog posts about iPodDrop, so I'm assuming that nobody downloaded it. That means that my buddy Dan is now my first official regular user, which is quite exciting for an app that I originally wrote to be super simple for myself :) I'm truly surprised at how crappy Videora is, considering how most of the rest of the world seems to be doing. My app is super simple an doesn't have a fancy GUI, and yet it is still somehow faster, more correct, and easier than Videora. Maybe I should do up a website and try to spread the word some. Maybe somebody else might find the app handy.

To talk a bit about the point about this having started to be so simple... The first version of the app was something on the order of 125 or 150 lines. It did exactly what I wanted it to do. But then I noticed some areas that could use some improvement, and so version 1.1 clocked in at about 175 lines (lots more rewriting than new stuff). And now here I am with a partially completed beta 2, and it is up to 275 lines already. Most of it seems to be dedicated to the new handling of command line arguments, since I need to handle commandline switches now. This program is rapidly growing way beyond what I intended for it, and I'm sort of proud of how that happened. It is almost like my little program is growing up. Lots of the original internal simplicity is giving way to more complex logic to deal with situations that I wouldn't normally run in to, but somebody else might. I've tried to keep it simple on the outside, though ;)

If you have any suggestions for v1.2 or later, drop it in the comments, I'd be interested to hear what other people think about this little app. Oh, and sorry for the long post about a version that isn't even out yet, I'm just rather pleased with how much more useful v1.2 is than v1.1 already :)

New release of iPodDrop!

2005-12-29T03:16:00.000-05:00

OK, so maybe it isn't that exciting. But version 1.1 of iPodDrop is done.

Download link: http://teknews.net/~guspaz/iPodDrop_v1_1.zip

Here's the changelog ripped right from the readme file (Oh yeah, it has one of those now too):

V1.1:

- Code cleanup and refactoring. Doesn't affect users, but makes the code easier to work with.
- Encodes video 40% faster with similar quality due to changes to the ffmpeg command line parameters.
- Now waits for user to press a key when an error occurs.
- Added error checking for bitrate parameter.
- New icon! No more default crap. Now you get CUSTOM MADE crap!
- Filled in AssemblyInfo file. This covers stuff like version number, and the info in the Windows Explorer properties dialog like the desciption.
- Switched from a debug build to a release build, as if it matters.
- Included this readme file.
- Removed the shortcuts, since Windows doesn't support relative shortcuts
- Other things I'm probably forgetting. I'll write them down as I do them next time, promise.

So, no huge changes on my part, but the 40% boost in encoding speed is rather nice. With all the cleanup and refactoring, though, a heck of a lot of the code changed.

I haven't found a solution for the shortcuts yet (which have now been removed). Windows is stupid and doesn't support relative shortcuts at all. I looked in to batch files, but there is trouble getting the right working directory with that method. I suppose I could go with Windows Script, but that is something I'd rather not rely on. If I eventually do up an installer with NSIS or something, I can have it create absolute shortcuts.

I got most of what I wanted to get done in 1.1 into this release. Next release might go for some more error checking and possibly an installer. But this version is working pretty darned well, so I don't think the next version will be coming out anytime soon. I mean, I wanted to write an app to make it easier for me to get video onto my iPod for TV playback, and I've accomplished that. v1.1 added some stuff that makes it better for me, and some other stuff that I just ended up doing along the way. But unless a bug pops up that gets in my way, v1.1 is doing its thing just fine.

iPodDrop v1.0

2005-12-26T04:26:00.000-05:00

I am pleased to announce the release of iPodDrop v1.0, an extremely quickly written iPod video encoder utility that I've thrown together over the last four hours or so.

There isn't NEARLY as much error detection as there should be, and it is probably easy to mess it up. There are lots of places where it is making assumptions that could cause trouble if you do strange things to it. However, when used exactly as intended, it seems to work fine. I mean, it doesn't actually check that the output video is ipod compatible, it makes assumptions that you've fed it 16-bit video and such things. So normal MPEG-4 stuff downloaded off the net should encode fine, but if you tried to give it exotic content, it'd encode it to a format that the iPod might not support.

What it does is simply determine the resolution of the input video, sees if the resolution needs to be shrunk in order to be decoded by an iPod, if so figures out the highest resolution with as close an aspect ratio as possible that can be decoded on an iPod (the iPod's screen is 320x240, but it can output higher resolution to a TV), then runs ffmpeg with a bunch of hardcoded parameters that are known to produce working iPod video in the QuickTime format.

The application itself has two parameters, the video bitrate (optional, defaults to 2mbit), and the source filename. All other encoding parameters are hardcoded in (only one you'd be able to change anyhow is sound settings, which I've locked at 160kbit stereo AAC), because the goal of this program is to work with drag-and-drop.

That's right, just drag an AVI file (or another format ffmpeg can decode) onto the executable in Explorer and it just starts encoding "_ipod.mp4" in the same directory as the source file. It defaults to 2mbit, but I've provided a variety of shortcuts that you can drag/drop onto that use a few different bitrates.

The obvious intention behind this is to make it stupid-easy to make high quality iPod videos destined to be played back on a TV. All you have to do is drag and drop a video file onto it (The icon, I mean, since it is a console app) and it does it's thing.

Download v1.0 Here

EDIT: OK, none of the shortcuts will work for you, but you can look at them and make your own. I can't figure out how to make relative shortcuts in Windows, so when I release v1.1 I'll switch to relative paths in BATCH scripts. The app itself can work from any directory though, it is only the shortcuts for alternate bitrates that are broken (And again you can make your own, takes all of 30 seconds)

Yes, I do intend to introduce future versions. This version is barely tested and was done super-quick to get something working. I will probably tweak the encode parameters to get some more speed out of it (SMP support might be nice, might not need some of the slow settings used, need to implement a push-any-key-to-continue for exit conditions), and to fix any bugs I encounter while using it. For now, this version works in most cases, so should be a good first release for such a quickly written program. I just dragged two random files onto it (The "Doctor Who Christmas Invasion" special, and an episode of "American Dad", and both output files played back on the iPod just fine. It might even run on Mono under Linux. It isn't really using anything particularly special.

Now that I've got this thing working and usable, I am going to collapse into bed onto my new memory foam mattress topper.

Request For Comment

2005-12-26T01:07:00.000-05:00

I've been pondering on a method of scaling down video under a certain number of overall pixels while maintaining aspect ratio. I came up with this:

width = sqrt(pixels * aspect)
height = sqrt(pixels / aspect)

So far that seems to work rather nicely. Is this correct, or is there a better way?

Apple's poor planning

2005-12-25T23:46:00.000-05:00

I'm not too thrilled with Apple's accessory planning.

I buy an iPod with video. It costs me $400 after tax and student discount. Turns out that it comes with no accessories save for a USB2 cable. I must admit I was pretty pissed off. Here I am spending all this money, and there is no dock, no power adapter, no video cable, no nothing. And Apple charges ridiculous fees for said devices ($40 for a video cable when you can buy generic ones for $2).

Well, I got over it. The iPod charged off my laptop's USB2 port, and while slow (slower than a power adapter would be since the adapter charges at half the amperage), it worked. It was fine.

Well, today is Christmas. And my parents decided to buy me some iPod accessories. I got a dock and power adapter along with an stereo 3.5mm to stereo RCA cable. Unfortunately, I can't use the dock's S-VIDEO out, since my TV only has one S-VIDEO plug that is already in use by the satellite, but it allows me to set up a permanent installation with the existing composite video cable I made. I might eventually buy an S-VIDEO/Audio switch to allow the use of S-VIDEO, but the minor gain in quality over composite may not be worth the cost.

Now, here's where the problem occurs. See, Apple's power adapter is braindead. I open the packaging, and it doesn't come with a cable. It requires the use of my existing USB2 cable to charge the iPod. So I will constantly have to remove the wire from the dock/charger and plug it in to my iPod.

Of course, since I have a laptop, plugging the dock in to my laptop doesn't really make sense. But if somebody had a desktop, they'd run in to another problem: there is no way to hook up a power adapter and computer to the dock or iPod at the same time. To charge the iPod you would have to unplug your desktop from the dock and plug in the charger, and then reverse the process when you want to sync again. This, of course, totally defeats the purpose of a dock (simplicity and lack of cable-swapping).

I think that with only one cable, the best solution to my problem is to leave the iPod in the dock (next to the TV) normally, and hold my laptop next to the dock while syncing so as to only have to unplug the cable from the power adapter. Syncing doesn't take THAT long. Still, this is all a big hassle. DAMN YOU APPLE!

More on Hamachi's NAT traversal

2005-12-24T14:07:00.000-05:00

Last time I talked about Hamachi, I posted the method that people assumed Hamachi was using for NAT traversal. It seems that UDP punching, which is already used in other apps like Skype, isn't anything new. It also only gets about an 80% success rate for the reason that a comment to my last post suggested: Some firewalls and NAT devices don't like having their UDP streams redirected from the mediation server to eachother. This also, it turns out, is not the method that Hamachi uses (Hamachi gets something like a 95 to 97 percent success rate, not 80).

The latest hypothesis about how Hamachi does it is via synchronised connections. The idea is that the mediation server would be use to synchronize the two computers to have them send UDP packets to eachother as close to simultaneously as possible. Presumably the mediation server synchronizes the clients, the clients then send UDP packets to the mediation server, the mediation server figures out what kind of NAT is being used to determine what public UDP ports will be opened when the clients send data to eachother. The clients are then instructed to send UDP packets to eachother at exactly (or close enough) the same time to the ports that are expected to be open.

Each client sends a UDP packet, which results in (hopefully) the guessed port being opened in expectation of return data. Since the packets are sent at the same time, the port should be open by the time each packet eventually arrives at its destination.

This concept is similar the the STUN protocol, but a bit different.

The thing is, this is how people GUESS Hamachi does it. The author of Hamachi won't tell because his business model relies on keeping the protocol under wraps. It is unfortunate, since 97% effective NAT traversal would be a big improvement over current techniques, and would really benefit the public.

First multi-threading support for games appears

2005-12-24T13:41:00.000-05:00

The first support for SMP in modern games have started showing up as patches. Both Quake 4 and Call of Duty 2 now both sport patches that add support for multithreading.

FiringSquad has an article up that shows some pretty impressive performance increases in the graphics rendering subsystem. Their article is flawed, however. They're running timedemos of Quake 4, which only uses the graphics and sound subsystems. AI and physics aren't enabled in timedemos, and physics simulation can be one of the most CPU intensive tasks in modern games.

I'd rather have seen them post benchmarks taken with FRAPS in real-life situations. Less reproducible, perhaps, but timedemos are useless for testing CPU performance.

VPN software to end all VPN software

2005-12-16T17:21:00.000-05:00

Well, somebody has come up with something that I have to say is incredibly cool. It also seems to render all other VPN software obsolete. It is called Hamachi, and to sum it up it is free fully encrypted peer-to-peer VPN software that can create a connection between even two fully NAT'ted computers with no open ports.

The encryption is public/private key, and the peer-to-peer aspect means that there is no server involved (Computers on a Hamachi VPN send data directly to eachother). It gets past NAT by using UDP and a mediation server. The idea as I understand it is that the client sends bootstrap UDP packets to the mediation server, opening a port on the NAT router (which expects replies by UDP). The mediation server then reports to the second computer which outgoing port is open on the first computer, and the second computer can then send data directly to that port. Repeat for vice-versa and you instantly can get through almost any NAT router and many firewalls. The program then encapsulates the original TCP packets inside a UDP datagram. After all, there is zero need for a TCP transport layer, because if a packet is lost or mangled, the TCP data stream will perform the usual resending. In other words, it behaves exactly like TCP because the end point computers think they are using TCP. Of course you can also encapsulate UDP packets, that is just even simpler.

Now, that is certainly the coolest part of the software, how it can create a connection between two computers with no open ports. But there are other cool things. For one thing, when you set up a computer with Hamachi you actually get a permanent IP on the 5.x.x.x network. Technically they are internet IPs, but they have never been assigned, and probably never will be (I think IANA owns them). So effectively they are non-internet and non-LAN IPs. So all computers using Hamachi have their own permanent Hamachi IP.

Another cool thing is that even though everybody has "public" IPs on the Hamachi network, communication is totally private and solicited because you create LANs involving specific computers on Hamachi. You add a bunch of computers to a LAN and then they only send data to eachother, ignoring all data from foreign computers.

Also? Full public/private key encryption, with the public key being required to join a LAN.

And they made it dead simple, with almost no setup required. Heck, it even has an instant messenger like function that lists the computers on the various LANs you are part of, along with their online/offline status. Here's a great screenshot:

And get this: IT IS CROSS PLATFORM!! There are current Windows and Linux clients out, and a Mac OS X client is coming as soon as the Windows and Linux clients exit beta (They are apparently in very late almost-done beta).

I just can't get over how cool this is. I mean, I know that only people from NITI read this blog, but damn, why use TunnelVision when you've got Hamachi?

The guy apparently intends to introduce a shareware version that adds additional professional-level features that a business might require, such as running the software as a service. The core functionality, though, what I've described above, that is free. Because most people won't want this running as a service.

Seriously, check it out, this is the coolest VPN software I've ever seen: http://www.hamachi.cc.

Also the guy is in Vancouver.

EDIT: Oh, and another cool thing, when you run the software it behaves like a network card. It even creates a virtual NIC in Windows, so really Windows apps have no way of knowing that they are not over a LAN. It even shows up in Network Connections, though I guess under Linux it just shows up under ifconfig. Of course it is a NIC that only supports TCP/IP. No IPX.

EDIT2: Actually, it DOES work with IPX. My bad.

Aaargh! Spam!

2005-12-12T17:42:00.000-05:00

Over the last few days I've started getting massive amounts of spam to my novasearch.net address. I've had this address redirecting to my GMail account for some time now. All of a sudden, TONS of spam mail has been arriving at my GMail account via my mail server at novasearch.net. We're talking going from 10 or 20 emails per day to about 100.

The emails are sent in clusters a few minutes apart, and seem to be from a botnet. The funny thing is that I blocked out a botnet that was spamming the almost dead NovaSearch forums (I had a "test" forum set up they were spamming for some reason). I guess this is some sort of revenge?

Of course, why they were spamming the test post section of a dead forum that nobody uses is beyond me.

Need some advice

2005-12-09T02:56:00.000-05:00

I recently purchased a super cheap camcorder AV cable and rewired it to work with my iPod (to play video on the TV. The cable's ground and video pins needed to be reversed). Problem is, the base of the prong on the cable is ever so slightly wider than the plastic ring around the heaphone jack in the iPod. This means that when the AV cable's plug is fully inserted into the heaphone jack, its base comes in contact with the iPod's metal shell and causes video image quality issues (As in, it horribly blurs it beyond recognition).

I've been trying to think of a way to fix this, and I need some advice on how to fix this with things found around the home. One idea I had was to paint a very thin ring of nail polish onto the edge of the base of the connector, but I'm worried that it might scrape off over time and enter the iPod's innards. Another idea I had was super thin strips of electrical tape applied on top of the ring, but I think that'd be a bit thicker (and less neat) than I'd like.

Any suggestions? Some material I can find in the home that I can paint on that won't cause problems? Or advice for making super thin strips of electrical tape (We're talking 0.5 to 1 millimeter wide)?

Right now the problem can be solved by pulling the connector out of the ipod a hairs width, but this is really a kludge and prone to the slightest movement pushing the cable back in contact.

Cool stereographic effect

2005-12-09T01:43:00.000-05:00

This guy has taken a bunch of pictures of the same scene from two slightly different angles. He then swaps the two images several times a second to create a surprisingly effective stereographic effect without any sort of glasses or crosseyed tricks:

http://www.well.com/user/jimg/index.html

Warning: While the link itself is SFW, some of the sub pages are NSFW.

It works much better on some images than others, but on the ones that it works on, the image really looks 3D. It works by tricking the brain into thinking it is seeing both images, even though the images only switch a few times a second.

A strange side-effect is that the images even look 3D through one eye, which is just a strange feeling, when the image on the screen looks 3D, but the room you're sitting in doesn't (since one eye is closed).

Fun with Encarta

2005-12-07T00:58:00.000-05:00

I read on Digg that there was a new bot available for MSN Messenger that did natural-language parsing to tie in to the Encarta encyclopedia (Add it to your MSN list, encarta@conversagent.com) and I was surprised by one of its answers:

Guspaz says:
What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

Encarta® Instant Answers says:
What do you mean? An African or a European swallow?

Guspaz says:
African.

Encarta® Instant Answers says:
Based on recent scientific studies, the average cruising airspeed velocity of an unladen African Swallow is roughly 11 meters per second, or 24 miles an hour.

Guspaz says:
How do you know so much about swallows?

Encarta® Instant Answers says:
Well, you have to know these things when you're a good robot, you know.

Undaunted, I pressed further:

Guspaz says:
How do you know so much about swallows?

Encarta® Instant Answers says:
Well, you have to know these things when you're a good robot, you know.

OK, should we get back to the kind of questions I was designed to answer? :-) What is the largest country in the world? If you don't know, just ask me.

It also could maintain state between questions, which impressed me for some reason, even though it was a simple trick:

Guspaz says:
Who is the Prime Minister?

Encarta® Instant Answers says:
Which country or state would you like to know about?

Guspaz says:
Canada

Encarta® Instant Answers says:
Paul Martin (2003- ) is the Prime Minister of Canada.

I also tried to find a few more pop culture references:

Guspaz says:
What is the answer to life?

Encarta® Instant Answers says:
Forty-two.

Guspaz says:
What is the captial of Assyria?

Encarta® Instant Answers says:
It depends when. Assyria had successively four capitals: Ashur (or Qalat Sherqat), Calah (or Nimrud), the short-lived Dur Sharrukin (or Khorsabad), and Nineveh.
Any other question, bridgekeeper?

Guspaz says:
What is your favourite colour?

Encarta® Instant Answers says:
Hmm... Good question. You know what? I think I'm gonna say red.

Hopefully somebod will go and play with it to discover a few more, and post them either on planit or the comments here :)

Curses, foiled again!

2005-12-04T01:57:00.000-05:00

Visited NITI friday. I hoped to catch the co-ops before their semester ended, but it seems they went on a trip to Halifax just the day before. Also many people were working from home.

I seem to recall that Pat said they'll be back on the 13th and around until the 23rd, so I'll have to try to stop by again sometime during that window.

XBOX 360 grinding discs

2005-12-03T01:03:00.000-05:00

I just found this incredibly... stupid. It turns out that if you move the xbox 360 even slightly while it is turned on (tilting it, actually), it makes a VERY loud noise and gouges a big chunk out of the DVD in the drive, all the way around the disc.

You might actually want to tilt the unit, since it is designed to stand both on its side, and down flat.

Anyhow, check out the report here: http://www.llamma.com/xbox360/news/Xbox-360-Game-Disc-Scratched.htm

Watch the video. Yeah, it is WMV, but it is worth it. You won't believe how loud the noise is, or how little movement it takes to destroy a disc.

This isn't an isolated incident either. the guys at llamma.com only tried it out after it happened to them on another 360. I'm having trouble believing that Microsoft didn't pick this up in QA. I guess they decided that replacing a few scratched discs was cheaper than using a different DVD drive.

UPDATE: Microsoft has said that they WILL NOT replace scratched discs, because they burried a warning on page 11 of the manual that says "Remove the disc before moving the console or tilting it between horizontal and vertical positions".

This is broken.

2005-12-02T00:57:00.000-05:00

A software uninstaller on the Windows platform should be a simple affair, right? All the application needs to do is delete the files and registry keys, very simple. Well, when I tried to uninstall Call of Duty 2, it decided that not only did it need the usual bloated uninstaller that takes half a minute to load as it extracts temporary files, it decided it needed to VALIDATE the install before it could DELETE it. The process of validation took upwards of five minutes. So stupid. Somebody needs to be slapped.

Interview with a LAN party organizer

2005-11-28T03:45:00.000-05:00

I almost forgot. Back in June or July, I went to ATI-Revolution. It was a big (~600 ppl) LAN party on the south shore. Fifth biggest ever in North America, or so I understand.

Anyhow, while I was there I interviewed one of the organizers who has been big in the LAN scene in Montreal. He was doing sponsorships for ATIR. I transcribed the thing ages ago, but recently I finally finished editing it and went over it with him. So now I'm able to let other people read it.

It's a bit long, but I think there is a lot of interesting stuff in there about what it takes to put on such a huge LAN party:

http://teknews.net/roch.php

I am going to try to spread it around to some news sites like anandtech and tom's hardware (Tom's did a writeup of the LAN), but I'm probably going to do some security updates and performance tests before I do that.

Google Analytics

2005-11-28T03:29:00.000-05:00

When Google Analytics was first announced, I set it up on TekNews and promptly forgot about it.

Well, I logged into my account today to take a look. The results are pretty surprising. Since its launch, TekNews has had pretty stable traffic of about 800 to 1200 pageviews per day. It's been like that for over a year. I didn't really know who was viewing the site, or where from.

Turns out that most users are in the US, followed closely by Germany. And the city with the most users by far is Flemington, Australia. Second place goes to Madrid (Spain). It looks like overall most users are in Europe. I also seem to have all continents covered except Africa. And obviously Antarctica.

I'm still somewhat surprised that the number of users of TekNews hasn't really changed. I haven't really put any development into it for many months, save a quick new feature allowing independent selection of RSS refresh times when Slashdot put a 15 minute limit on their RSS feed. Despite this, people keep using it. I guess that is because the site runs itself; all of its RSS sources are still valid, and it just keeps pulling them and updating itself.

There isn't much that could use changing/fixing anyhow (Though of course there is always extra stuff you could add to a site). About the only thing that comes to mind is better detection of duplicate articles. Currently it assumes an article is the same if it has the same title, OR the same blurb, but not both. This is imperfect since sometimes they update both the title and blurb of an article and TekNews picks up a default. They're not that frequent though, only happening every few days, so I haven't really bothered.

Speaking of updating itself, TekNews has managed to gather 1,628 articles from its RSS sources, along with 21,172 news posts. All searchable, which was part of the original intention.

Interesting commute

2005-11-17T08:56:00.000-05:00

This morning started out pretty crummy. On tuesday/thursday, I normally take the 8:38AM downtown. This morning I missed it and had to take the one about 20 minutes later. I ran into Claudiu at the train station, who apparently normally takes the later train.

We were going over some system hardware stuff on the train. Bit shifting, binary operations, the like. In my sleep deprived state I stupidly confused AND and OR and tried to explain AND to Claudiu as outputting a one when either of the inputs are 1.

The guy sitting accross from us looked up from his magazine (WIRED, I think), and mentioned that I was describing OR. I was somewhat surprised that a stranger on the train would know anything about binary operations, but it turned out he was a senior programmer at GameLoft, Ubisoft's cell phone game division. We had quite an interesting, albeit short discussion about the use of assembly in modern programming, as well as cell phone development platforms.

He actually mentioned that Jamdat (their direct competitor) had written translators to translate code between J2ME, Symbian, and BREW. They write code in either Java or C++ for any of the three platforms, and their framework handles translation to the other two platforms, including a language port if required (C++ --> Java or Java --> C++). I'm surprised they are able to pull that off, but I guess they do.

He also mentioned something else I've read before, which is that J2ME's primary "advantage", write-once-run-everywhere, is totally nonexistant. Developers have to maintain seperate versions of their J2ME apps for every single cellphone, even from the same company. Oh, and J2ME isn't JIT compiled (with very few exceptions), so it's dog slow compared to BREW and Symbian apps too. But we already knew that ;)

Of course, the more practical information from the discussion was that Ubisoft and GameLoft hire a lot of people from Concordia, and take a lot of Concordia co-op students who are in their last year.

End of Waterloo co-op semester?

2005-11-16T01:18:00.000-05:00

When does the current waterloo co-op semester end? It's been a few months since I last visited NITI, so I think I'd like to swing by some time before Steve and Adrian leave.

Ad blocking

2005-11-15T11:31:00.000-05:00

Normally I don't block ads on web pages. The things pay for the sites I enjoy. I've relied on them to cover costs myself, and still get the occasional check from Google. But when a site puts up so many flash advertisements that are so processor intensive that Firefox locks up whenever I visit the page, well, the sympathy very quickly dissipates and AdBlock gets turned on.

Seriously, people. Google has proven that you don't need rich media ads to make a heck of a lot of money with advertisements. Do you really need sixteen animation-heavy flash ads on one page? It's called sign up for AdSense. You'll probably make more money, and your users will be a heck of a lot less annoyed.

Scholarship

2005-11-09T14:04:00.000-05:00

Turns out it was an entrance scholership for $2000. It was a very nice surprise, though I'm surprised they don't announce them before the semester starts as an incentive to attend the school.

Award?

2005-11-08T15:47:00.000-05:00

Apparently I've won some kind of award from Concordia. I got an email from the financial aid & awards office informing me that I should swing by to pick up the letter with the details tommorow. Some sort of mass-email that went out to all recipients of all awards.

Since I have done absolutely nothing noteworthy to date while at Concordia, I can only conclude that this is some sort of entrance scholarship. The odd thing is I would have imagined they'd tell you about those BEFORE you started school, in order to entice you to go there.

Oh well, whatever it is, it will be nice. That, along with the $3000 the Quebec government is going to give me for finishing a professional CEGEP program on time will help pay for university tuition, and I suppose my eventual laptop replacement, to happen in one or more years.

Interesting article on flash-based HDDs

2005-11-04T23:49:00.000-05:00

Was reading an interesting article on flash-based HDDs. It seems they're starting to gain some traction in the high-end enterprise market. Proponents are citing durability (No moving parts, obviously), speed (Higher speed flash is already way faster than HDDs by several times, and even lower end flash has almost nil seek times), and reliability.

It's that last one that interests me. Flash has a limited rewrite count before the chips fail. With HDDs, it's not so well defined. It seems that flash chips are up to about 1 million writes before they fail, which leads to four or five years in servers. Obviously it's way higher in consumer products due to lower disk activity. Still, it's not quite high enough. They're claiming that four or five years is already more reliable than most magnetic HDDs, but I'd give it a few years before I'd feel comfortable with that claim.

Another claim they're making is that flash capacity is going up about 35% per year, and prices down by 35% per year. Looks like moving entirely to flash for storage in a general purpose PC isn't so far off after all. The idea of hybrid drives is already floating around (Using flash as an enormous multi-gig cache on magnetic drives), and that's a bit more likely to happen before full-on flash drives become popular.

There are alreay some flash-based IDE hard drives (In 2.5" notebook drive form factor as a drop-in replacement for a magnetic drive, I'm not talking about a DOM here) on the market, but I don't think they come bigger than 16 gigs or so. They cost something like $100 to $150 per gig anyhow.

Still, I drool about the day when flash drives take over. Flash has significantly higher transfer rates than magnetic drives (with better future potential too), comparatively non-existant seek times, and way lower power consumption. The seek times mean that disk fragmentation becomes effectively meaningless, because there is no penalty for grabbing another fragment from elsewhere on the disk.

I imagine the disk defrag software vendors aren't too happy about that, though :P

The original article can be read here: http://www.tgdaily.com/2005/11/04/ssd_harddrives/

Sample parameters for ffmpeg

2005-10-30T02:02:00.000-05:00

Jay wanted sample parameters for ffmpeg to encode iPod compatible video, so here goes:

Right now, the latest thing I've encoded has the command line parameters:

ffmpeg.exe -i c:\input.avi -y -vcodec xvid -vtag mp4v -vprofile SP -4mv -b 1024 -acodec aac -ac 2 -ab 128 -f mp4 c:\test.mp4

Note that the output resolution (which is important) is NOT specified. This is because the content size I was encoding was within the ipod spec. If you want to be safe, you can scale down until the width is 320. To do this with an arbitrary size, do this:

Using our example size of 576x320.
1) Calculate the aspect ratio by dividing 576 by 320: 1.8
2) Divide 320 by 1.8: 178

OK, so to scale down to a width of 320 we'd use 320x178 for our widescreen content. note that if you get ~1.333 as your aspect ratio it is 4:3 and you can just encode at 320x240.

So how to specify size? The 's' parameter, like so:

ffmpeg.exe -i c:\input.avi -y -vcodec xvid -vtag mp4v -vprofile SP -4mv -b 1024 -acodec aac -ac 2 -ab 128 -f mp4 -s 320x178 c:\test.mp4

This will scale down the image. This video will work fine on the iPod. Keep in mind you can go out of spec a bit if you pick a resolution that has less than 230400 pixels. My video was 576x320 which actually has less pixels than that, so it worked fine to leave the resolution at that.

Update on iPod findings

2005-10-28T21:26:00.000-04:00

Well, I've been messing with video for the iPod. I was taking notes, and then turned them into a pseudo-blog-post. I did this because of the ffmpeg frontend that I'm writing, as previously mentioned. I need to figure out how to encode my own video that will play on the thing, and I need to figure out what the out-of-spec limits of the iPod are, and how it handles various situations. That sort of thing. Here they are:

iPod Video findings:

- The iPod defaults to widescreen mode where it letterboxes widescreen content. It does this for any widescreen aspect ratio, not just 16:9

- You can feed the iPod any size video with at most 230,400 pixels. The actual specs Apple gives of max 480x480 is dumbed down. BTW, 480x480=230,400

- The max 4:3 res that can be handled that has whole number sizes is 552x414. That's actually a bit less than 230,400 so it gives a nice little buffer in case of 1 or 2 pixel sizing errors.

- The iPod cannot handle anamorphic content (It crops), so if the player detects less wide than 4:3 (like 1:1) then just scale it to 4:3. If size is too big just scale down to 552x414

- 4:3 content: If greater than 552x414, scale down. If not, leave res as-is.

- Widescreen content: If less pixels than 230,400 leave as-is. If not, figure out how much it needs to be scaled down to stay under 230,400

Much video will NOT need to be scaled down. For example, my DVD rips of Babylon 5 are encoded at 576x320. This is only 184,200 pixels, so I can just transcode the format without touching the resolution, and the iPod will letterbox it.

Why would I want to encode at higher resolutions than 320xSomething since that is the iPod native screen size? Well, because the higher resolutions are going to look sharper than just scaling it. You get a bit of moire patterns though, but it's worth it. Also, the iPod Video can output to TV via S-Video or Composite with the right cables, and it might only output at 320x240 but it might output the actual res too. I didn't buy the cables so I can't experiment.

While the ipod supports up to 2.5mbit for MPEG-4, if you actually set the res to the admittedly outside spec res of 552x414 and then run at 2.5 megabits, you're probably going to be stressing the video decoder some. Since the screen is still only 320x240, there is NO point encoding video at that kind of bitrate. I'm doing my test videos all at 1mbit, and I can't really see any visible artifacts. In the darker bits I can sort of make out macroblocks, but in normal brightness I can see none. So maybe you would try 1.5mbit, but not really any higher. I've set 1.5mbit as the max bitrate in my frontend's iPod profile, and I'm trying to decide if the default should be .75 megabit or 1 megabit.

The problem with encoding video by hand with ffmpeg is that you're going to have to figure all this stuff out. I could write a human script to run through for people to figure out what resolution to use, but it's going to be annoying to run through and it'll involve some annoyingly long math for some situations. The frontend should be able to handle all these situations by itself by default. Oddly enough the few other iPod converters that I found (One of which was based on ffmpeg too, the other used it's own encoder) did not do any of this on their own. They just scale to 320x240, and don't even correct the aspect ratio. They just assume the content is 4:3 and directly scale from anything to 320x240.

So, encoding using my frontend should be as simple as to open file(s), select iPod as profile, select bitrate, select resolution (320x240 or automatic max) and hit encode. Audio settings are handled by the program, it selects an audio bitrate based on your video bitrate. Yeah, I could let the user select that too, but really there is no need, since that adds useless complexity. They can make their own profile if they want.

I haven't checked how different framerates are handled yet. My Babylon 5 stuff is 24FPS (Well, 23.98). Hopefully 30FPS (Well, 29.97) is handled properly too. I'll experiment further later.

EDIT: If you're wondering why I'm not worrying about h.264, that's because there is not really any benefits to using it on the iPod. It is more limited than MPEG-4 so has lower quality. It encodes several times slower. It's really only useful for lower-bitrate lower-quality videos, and iPods are huge (30GB minimum now). YAGNI.

Money goes out, stuff comes in

2005-10-28T16:05:00.000-04:00

I got me one of them new-fangled eye-pods. The one with the moving pictures. From those fruit people.

I've already been working on a nice ffmpeg GUI frontend, so now I'll actually be able to test the iPod profile I wrote.

I'll let you guys know when the frontend is done. It might run under linux/OSX, since it's written in C#, but Mono is pretty incomplete despite what they claim, so we'll see. Really it's target market is me, myself, and I, so that means primarily Windows.

Besides, OSX has the awesome ffmpegx, and linux folks are not the kind to use GUI frontends anyhow.

Technical Writing mark

2005-10-26T16:25:00.000-04:00

Just got the technical writing mark, %68. A bit lower than I expected, but apparently it's pretty decent for this course.

Midterms complete

2005-10-26T13:32:00.000-04:00

I've been meaning to post something for ages, but each time I see something and think "Gee, I should blog about that," it just slips my mind. So here I am, actualling posting something this time.

Well, midterm results are in and I didn't actually fail anything, which is good, I suppose. I did end up dropping Discrete, for lack of time. So far it looks like that is working out for the best; the same amount of time is being spent on courses, except now there is more to spend on cal.

So without further ado:

Calculus 1: %53
Linear Algebra (Vectors + Matrices): %82
System Hardware (Assembly programming): %90
Technical Writing: %50 to %100

%50 is a pass, so I technically passed Calculus. I'm not exactly thrilled with the mark, but it IS a pass, so I'll take it. The mark could have easily been 70 or higher had I simply remembered two very short very simple rules, but I blanked out. Not enough time spent studying, I guess.

As for technical writing, I don't yet know the mark (I'll find out in an hour or two), but I do know I passed. I'm going to guess %70 to %80, and I'll post an update when I find out.

Could be worse I suppose. Good news is I'm not failing anything so far, bad news is I still hate algebraic math like Calculus. I don't mind Linear that much, and assembly programming is great fun.

Reply to comments

2005-09-30T01:41:00.000-04:00

Man, Blogger's comment system sucks. I'll just post this as a new post rather than a comment, since Blogger doesn't even have a concept of replies.

You're right, commuting is a huge time commitment for me. I spent between 10 and 15 hours a week commuting (1 to 1.5 hours per direction, twice a day). 10 to 15 hours a week gets a lot of homework done when it is not wasted in a situation where doing most homework is impossible (Try doing calculus with one hand while standing on a bus :P)

Unfortunately moving closer to campus isn't really an option. The money just isn't there. I've saved up a decent chunk of change, but I'm paying for pretty much everything myself, so there is no budget for rent and other living-on-your-own costs.

I was hoping to get more time by taking the train. The idea didn't pan out. While the train gets me downtown faster, it also doesn't get me as close to the campus as the bus... and while I sometimes get seats on the bus, I NEVER get seats on the train. They've got some new double-decker trains going into service (They seem to be very similar to the GO trains) that have double the seating capacity, but I haven't seen any during my morning commutes.

Study groups are an interesting concept, and might be useful for Cal 1, Linear, and Discrete. I'm not certain how to find study groups, though.

I'm not dropping discrete because I'll never be able to do it, only because I don't have time to do it. Think of it this way; if I spend 10 to 15 hours a week commuting (Probably closer to 15 hours), dropping discrete would seem to roughly balance that out.

Man, up to 3 hours a day commuting. It really is a huge waste of time when you think about it.

I'm dying here

2005-09-29T01:58:00.000-04:00

I'm approaching the cusp of total breakdown; I simply don't have time to try to stay caught up in all my classes. The combination of both Calculus 1 and Discrete Math is not working out; I spend all the time trying to understand one of them, and by the time I do there isn't enough time to catch up in the other one.

In short there simply isn't enough time in the day for me to work through two courses of this difficulty; math does not come easy to me.

At this point I'm probably going to drop Discrete and take it again some other time in the future when I can handle it. The problem is that it fits prominently in the CS course progression, especially the co-op progression.

The co-op progression is fairly tightly locked up. I'm going to try to meet with some supposedly important person tommorow to find out if I can drop my course load from 5 per semester to 4 per semester, and throw out a core course, destroy my course progression, and still stay in the co-op program.

If I can, great. I'll just deal with the messed up progression in the future, perhaps by simply delaying the whole thing by one semester and shoving in easy courses around discrete for one semester.

If not, well, I'll have to drop out of co-op and go for a regular degree; much more flexibility there. Who knows, maybe I could get summer jobs at NITI again.

I know what you're going to say, "That's nothing, two low level math courses and you're already overwhelmed." I've never absorbed math as readily as most other people. It is depressing.

Ugh, stupid Blogger spell checker isn't working in Firefox again.

Slogging along

2005-09-24T02:34:00.000-04:00

Well, it has certainly been a while since my last update, hasn't it. Probably since I've been pretty consumed by school. I'm in week 3 of my first semester of university, and the homework load sort of caught me off-guard. I know, I know, I should have expected it, but I was good enough to sort of coast through CompSci in CEGEP and still get the highest mark in the program. That doesn't work when you hit math courses :P

My course load is, to be honest, pretty dull. I've got three math courses, a writing course, and a compsci course. And to be honest, I hate math. One of the reasons I shied away from Waterloo.

I'll give a bit of a rundown of my courses, and throw some Concordia course numbers at you guys to balance out all the Waterloo course numbers. They're meaningless to you guys, but isn't that half the fun?

COMP228: System Hardware
My only truely interesting course this semester. CEGEP stuff means I got to skip the "intro to computers" type shit, so this is as close to it as it gets. Starts with the basics; overall processor architechture, converting between bases, etc, and then moves into what seems to be the focus of the course; programming in assembly. I've been avoiding assembly, so this is my chance to get into it. I was following pretty well until we hit division and multiplication in assembly; x86 does some pretty unintuitive things with the registers that will take some getting used to. I'm certain I'll have no trouble with homework in this course, it's just the tests that I'm more worried about. I really don't like not having any reference material. I think it's pretty stupid, since it is obvious that in the real world you can use as much reference language as you want, which actually helps you more quickly get used to things so that you don't NEED that reference material anymore.

COMP238: Discrete Mathematics
I was originally worried about calculus, but it looks like this is going to be the bruiser; propositional logic and the like. It's not that complicated, there is just so much to remember. Ugh. I've got one assignment for this on the burner that is causing much mindbending. I hate equivalencies. I am told this is a filter course, so obviously I am determined to get through it to the more interesting stuff.

MATH203: Calculus 1
Not quite as bad as I imagined. It pretty much picks up where highschool Math 536 left off. Of course there is the minor problem that I took 536 over 3 years ago. A bit of review helped, both on my part and the professors, so I seem to have picked up the most important stuff again. I was always bad at trig though. We'll see, but I don't see this course as being much of an obstacle; I've also secured a tutor to ensure that this course isn't a problem.

MATH204: Linear Algebra
I'm finding myself surprised to be enjoying this course so far. For some reason I find it all very simple, after some initial difficulties the first week. There was some stuff to get over that mostly had to do with the long gap since 536, once I got past that it just came easy. I actually sort of find it interesting, and I really don't think it will be too much of a problem.

ENCS282: Technical Writing
ENCS being Engineering and Computer Science, since at Concordia those are the two departments that are merged into one faculty. An odd combination, but we have a kick ass lounge with leather couches that is as wide as a city block with great wifi. Anyhow, I digress. This course is a bit boring, but doesn't seem to be terribly difficult. The professor, at least, isn't dull, and the reading so far has been interesting enough.

Well, that's it. I mean, it isn't exactly a thrilling course load. I guess I have to get past this sort of stuff to get the interesting stuff. Hopefully I'll be able to keep my GPA high enough to stay in co-op and return to NITI in the spring. Or maybe Alcan. I understand they are the largest co-op employer at Concordia and fly the co-ops all over the world, changing locales every few days. It sounds a bit interesting. On the other hand, NITI is super great, so there's that ;)

That's pretty much it. My laptop died and is in the mail back to Nepean (Ottawa) for repairs. LCD connector died meaning the onboard LCD is dead but the rest of the notebook works fine with an external monitor. This is annoying as hell since I was using it to take notes, and I've really been suffering in the notetaking department since then (I just don't write fast enough to take good notes by hand). Hopefully I'll get it back the week after next. This is the second time I've had to RMA it since I got it in August 2004. I'm guessing I'll be buying another laptop within the next 6 to 12 months; while most of the notebook isn't really out of date, the GPU (video card) in the thing pales in comparison to even the midranged notebooks out now. It has a Mobility Radeon 9700, which was top of the line high end when I bought it. Now it is literally half the speed of the midrange GeForce Go 6600 and Mobility Radeon X700 in modern notebooks that cost $500 less than I paid.

I'll probably grab a dual-cored Yonah with something from the next gen (or the revision after that) when I get a replacement. Either midrange or mid-high. I won't be going high-end, because I don't want a huge beast of a notebook. I'm actually really dissapointed with the direction that notebook graphics are going. Instead of taking the same route as CPUs, where we now have specialized notebook CPUs (Pentium M) that are so good that they are starting to take over the desktop space, GPUs are actually converging with desktop parts. This means that while GPUs on the high end were once reasonably low power parts, modern notebooks essentially ship with slightly modified versions of the fastest cards; the GeForce Go 6800 Ultra actually beats out the desktop 6800 Ultra in a few benchmarks, and the mobile version of the 7800 is due out in a few weeks. So really the only way to get a decently small and power-light notebook is to go midrange, with a possible sneaking up into mid-high without getting too big.

Speaking of the Pentium M, people who follow processors have probably heard about Intel's roadmap by now; the NetBurst architechture (used in the P4) is going out the window, and the Pentium M is going to be used for everything from handhelds (They got it down to 5W) to notebooks, to desktops, and servers (Yes, Xeon is going Pentium M style). All they kept from NetBurst is the FSB, the rest is either Pentium M, or new. Of course, they're also going massively multicore. Pretty much everything next-gen is dual-core, with higher end stuff seeing quad-core and octo-core. Anyhow, I'm rambling now. This went from an update into a braindump.

Last day

2005-09-03T01:34:00.000-04:00

Probably should have blogged about this sooner, I tend to forget things as they leave my short term memory.

Pretty crazy day today. Last day at NITI after working there since January. The first four months were a co-op work term from John Abbott, the second four were a summer job, and with school starting that's it.

I started out the day running into Nikhil on the metro. It was a pretty strange coincidence, because I always board the second car at Lionel Groulx, and I had almost sat down when I realized that the person I was sitting down next to was my co-working Nikhil. We chatted a bit before seperating to head off to our respective parts of the office.

Spent the morning talking to Mich, trying to bring him up to speed on some stuff; he'll be taking over one of my two primary responsibilities. sjwalters isn't going to be back until the 6th, so I think I'll try to brief him when I swing by sometime next week to visit and say goodbye to all the people I missed this time around.

Headed off to Conordia at 1-ish for an orientation session. Most notable things? Beer and foosball. A fitting orientation indeed.

When I got back all that was left was to try to commit a few of the scripts that I had hacked together for my own use while at NITI; I figured somebody might find them useful so they should be stored permanently somewhere. I zipped up the 12MB of stuff in my home dir that actually mattered (Some pictures, videos, stuff that was downloaded off the net that I didn't have at home, etc) and emailed it to myself. Isn't GMail grand? ;)

The night was spent with sfllaw, who offered to take me out for a drink. We stopped by his place to drop off some purchases and made our way to a nearby microbrewery for a beer and a bite. The bites turned out to be extremely small, but also extremely tasty. The beer was quite interesting, something I've never had before, sort of a smooth citrus taste with little bitterness or carbonation. I liked it quite a bit and found it very easy to drink. We had a great discussion for what must have been a few hours, and then parted ways at about a quarter to 10. I really like the discussions I have with Simon, they're always quite interesting and touch on a large number of topics. For some reason, though, we always end up discussing Google. I guess Google is just up to a lot of stuff ;)

I don't have many of those types of conversations anymore, the long ones that are so interesting that you lose track of time. I used to have them with a friend I went to highschool with, but we don't see eachother all that often any more, so they are now only occasional. I'm leaving NITI now, though, so I guess such conversations with Simon will also become rare.

I always like riding the metro. There is just something "cool" about it, for one thing, and I just feel safer underground than I do elsewhere. On the way home from Simon's I started out at the Mont Royal metro stop, one I'd never been to before. The Montreal metro system is a bit unique in that for each metro stop in the whole system they had a different architect/artist design the stop. Because of this each stop is unique, and there were a whole bunch of stops on the orange line on the way home that I hadn't seen before. Some were quite interesting.

I grabbed a bit of a candied snack at the Couche-Tard that has taken up residence on the platform of Lionel Groulx. Would you believe they still sell those Popeye cigarette sticks? Of course they don't call them that anymore, but for 25 cents a box, they were a great deal. Also grabbed a packet of seseme snaps, but haven't eaten those yet. I mentioned that the bite at the brewery was rather small, and I'm useless at preparing food. I tend to prefer easy to consume items, since they are easier to prepare, despite my like of finer foods. I understand Simon is a bit of a gourmet, perhaps one day I'll be able to try one of his confections. Anyhow, I spied a bag of mini carrot sticks in the fridge, and not seeing anything else premade or easily consumable, I'm currently snacking on them. They're not really filling me up though, so I'm still rather hungry. I really can't cook ;)

Pastafarian

2005-09-01T03:10:00.000-04:00

I have decided to officially convert to Flying Spaghetti Monsterism. It is, in my opinion, the only religion that makes sense.

I've been reading Interdictor's blog from New Orleans. He's holed up in a datacenter in a highrise trying to tough it out. The place is a mess, with widespread looting going on, residents shooting at cops, COPS looting, and of course 80% of the city is flooded with up to 20 feet of water. Marshal law has been declared, and the police force is effectively out of commission with no way of communicating with eachother.

They've set up makeshift security patrols around the datacenter and armed them with guns. So far they're holding out and seem to have enough fuel to keep the generators going, along with food and water to last. They even managed to trade some data recovery and hosting services for 25 gallons of water when a company that had evacuated asked them to go into their offices and take their mission critical server back to the data center for protection.

And despite all this, despite the fact that the city of New Orleans is a lawless crime zone in ruins, somehow they've managed to keep their DNS hosting service up and running. Remind me to put them on the top of my list of DNS hosts if I ever need one.

Videogame music to invade Montreal

2005-08-31T12:43:00.000-04:00

I nearly had a heart attack when I read that the Videogame Pianist is planning to have three performances in Montreal in early november. I am going to try VERY hard to go to at least one of the performances, if not more.

To top it off, it has been confirmed that Video Games Live, an enormous videogame-themed orchestral concert, will probably be in Montreal in late november.

November is shaping up to be the Month of Videogame Music. Now all we need is a 'Dear Friends' concert in Montreal and we're set.

The Bank

2005-08-30T16:51:00.000-04:00

Headed over to the bank today. The RBC in Place Ville Marie. Discovered that while it is more pleasant temperature-wise to walk underground, it takes 2x to 3x the amount of time to do the walk than it does to just take the surface streets. Still, if the weather is really nasty going underground can limit the time spent outside rather nicely.

Tried to deposite two US cheques. Despite the fact that "US DOLLARS" was on the front of the cheque and highlighted with a yellow highlighter, the teller still tried to deposite it as if it were CAD. I had to point out it was USD, at which point she had to withdraw the amount and do it all again, a process that apparently involves three people clustered around the computer screen giving advice on what to do. Not exactly confidence-inspiring. Still, it was sort of my fault, because I normally point out that it is a US cheque, and this time I decided I didn't need to bother (I figured, it was highlighted).

While I was in there, some guy was getting quite upset, with his teller, and all the employees were laughing at him. Out loud. I mean all the employees. The manager, standing to the back, he was laughing. The other tellers, they were chuckling. I didn't really catch what was going on, but I guess the guy was pretty stupid. He was also not very happy that they were laughing at them, and said as much ;)

I finally got a cheque to send to ING Direct. Soon I will have a savings account that actually earns some interest. I think their current going rate is 2.6% or something, which is darned good for a regular savings account. I think I'll move $5000 or so into it and let that build up for a while.

After finishing, I honestly couldn't figure out how to get out of the bank. As far as I could see, there were only two exits, and the one I had come in had already been sealed off (I walked in at about 3:50, and they close at 4:00). I headed to the other door only to find it too was locked. One of the investor-type employees was on his way out, and had to unlock the door for me, which involved him crouching and the turning of knobs and inserting of keys at the bottom of the door. Sort of an amusing sight for a guy in a business suit.

The journey is nearing an end

2005-08-08T01:59:00.000-04:00

Ever since August rolled around, the thought has occurred to me that there are (many) less days at NITI ahead of me than there are behind me. Last time my stay at NITI was drawing to a close, when I was finishing my CEGEP work term, there was still the possibility of a summer job at NITI. However, this is it, the end. Come the end of august, I'll be leaving NITI. I think my last day is September 2nd.

What I regret most is that I'll be out of touch. NITI is a bit like a television show. For the past 7 months I have been watching this TV show, watching our product and company direction evolve. When my last day rolls along, it will be as if the TV show has been cancelled; I will no longer be able to follow the story of NITI. Some people might call me crazy, but I really enjoy the meetings about company direction, and I absolutely love reading the StateOfTheNits memos. It feels like all the hopes and plans that the company has will come to fruition after I'm gone, and I'm going to miss it all.

To use the television metaphor once again, I'll optimistically link NITI to the TV show Firefly. The show has been cancelled, but there is a major motion picture coming out soon that will continue the saga. I can only hope that the same is true in my case, and that I'm able to get another co-op term at NITI during my time at Concordia, next summer. At least then if I'm lucky enough to return I'll be able to catch up.

I regret not having spent more time socializing with my coworkers. My daily commute to and from NITI totals 2 hours (Now seems like a good time to repost the link to the map of my commute), and it has taken a bit of a toll on my admittedly tiny social life. While it has been nice to be able to burn through novels in half a week, catch up on music listening, and finish gameboy games, the bus ride is still an obstacle. And Concordia is almost right next to NITI, so for the next three years I'm going to be doing the exact same commute. Ah, if only there were a university in the west island ;)

I actually envy the co-ops from Waterloo. They have the fortune of living in apartments not far from NITI. Some of them might debate my use of the term "not far", but if you're on the metro system then the 20 to 30 minute commute you have would be a big improvement over my trek. These co-ops have the opportunity, despite being from cities hundreds of kilometers away, to get to know their fellow nitiots much better than I have.

I'll have to take benefits as they come; a few months ago, Damian was surprised to realize that Concordia was practically next door to NITI on the metro system. He remarked that whereas when Waterloo co-ops finish their terms they disappear back to Ontario, when my term is over I will still be nearby. I admit my insecurity and hope that people will actually want to see me once my summer term is over.

It would seem that I've gotten into another one of those moods where I just spill my heart out. It's a bit refreshing, to be honest.

Interesting fireplace

2005-08-06T01:16:00.000-04:00

I found this neat: A fireplace that produces it's own fuel.

Plug in a water line, the fireplace does the ol' electrolysis, burns the hydrogen, and tosses some of the oxygen for colour. Pretty neat, though it must require a ton of power, and the flame isn't terribly large.

Still, a fairly unique application of electrolysis, I think.

More info: http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/home/make-fire-from-water-116027.php

Update on metro station

2005-07-26T13:06:00.000-04:00

It turns out that the Lionel Groulx metro station was closed yesterday due to a bomb scare. Somebody spotted a motorcycle bag in the bushes outside the station so the police brought in the bomb robot and shut down the station for two hours. Huh? All the robot does is roll up to the bag and blow it up, right? It's called you take a long pole and POKE THE BAG. If you want to blow it up, but some explosives on the end of the pole. Do you really need two hours and a ROBOT to do this?

The US House of Representatives need to get a life.

2005-07-26T11:32:00.000-04:00

The House in the US is starting a federal investigation of Rockstar in the aftermath of Hot Coffeegate. Does anybody else find this ridiculous? For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, the latest GTA game shipped with a hidden (disabled) minigame involving characters in sexual positions. While fully clothed. It turns out that with a mod (a crack really) you can re-enable this minigame. So now they're being federally investigated to see if they deceived the ESRB (ratings board for video games).

Here are some reasons why this is insane: 1) The game was already rated M (17+). The new rating is A (18+). BIG STINKING DIFFERENCE! 2) The characters were fully clothed, there wasn't even any nudity. People can see nude sex scenes on movies on TV, but clothed characters in sexual positions in a videogame... 3) THE CONTENT WAS DISABLED! People had to use cracks to enable it, and on the PS2 version people needed special hardware attached to their PS2 (The GameShark) to fiddle with memory locations to enable it.

You'd think the US government has more important things to worry about than this. On a more serious note, one of the guys who pushed this into the spotlight in the first place is now going after The Sims 2 because it turns out that you can apply a crack to remove the "blur" from nude characters. I guess the guy never played with Barbie and Ken dolls when he was a kid. What an idiot, and what a waste of time and money. Glad MY tax dollars aren't being wasted by this crap.

Annoying morning

2005-07-25T12:21:00.000-04:00

Every morning I take a combination of busses and metros to work. I take the 202 down St. John's Blvd in Pointe-Claire right to the 211 bus stop, which I take to the Lionel Groulx metro stop, and from there the green line to McGill.

Not today. Everything went smoothly until the bus pulled up at Lionel Groulx, only to find the entire single entrance surrounded in excessive amounts of police tape (I never noticed that our police tape is orange, not yellow). There were half a dozen cruisers spread around the stop, and the police had blocked off Atwater (street) in front of the metro station.

I was none too pleased by this. I take the metro to work every morning, and have no bloody idea how to get to work by bus. I stood around a while at the metro stop, moving with the crowd closer and closer to the police blocking the entrance, in hopes of finding out what was going on. Luckily, someone ahead of me was asking the police officer what to do, and the officer was giving him directions to the next metro station along the line. I heard him say "Up the hill" and he pointed in the direction that some of the people getting off the bus had taken off in.

What an unpleasant walk! Uphill in the sun on a hot day in work clothes. Not fun. But eventually I got to the next station (Atwater), the entrance to which oddly enough led to a mall. I followed to girls in front of me who seemed to know where they were going, and eventually we ended up at the Atwater metro station. Ugh.

There was a message on the PA from the STM, in a male voice rather than the usual pre-recorded female voice. They didn't give a reason and I couldn't really hear it, they were only announcing that Lionel Groulx was closed. I still haven't found out what is going on, but I'm pretty certain it wasn't a bomb or anything, since the rest of the metro system seems to be unaffected. Trains at Atwater were going in both directions, so it looks like they were just going through Lionel Groulx without stopping. It also probably wasn't somebody jumping on the tracks or being pushed, for the same reason. If it had been a simple assault, the station wouldn't have been locked up so tight. That leaves rape, murder, possibly a shooting. Not pleasant, but that's my best guess.

Thanks for the memories

2005-07-20T15:58:00.000-04:00

1920 - 2005

We'll miss you Mr. Doohan.

Bang, you're dead!

2005-07-19T16:55:00.000-04:00

This is just too funny... If you remember, there was a recent article that detailed how the Canadian Armed Forces had run out of money and couldn't afford training ammunition that fired from regular weapons a black substance instead of bullets. The soldiers were forced to rent paintball guns and gear out of their own pockets. The armed forces stated that while this had a big impact on the physics of the firefights, this was still better than blanks because blanks gave no indication of who was hit.

Well, the British army just one-upped we Canadians. Due to a misprediction in required ammo, the British have run out of blanks, forcing soldiers during training exercises to yell "BANG! BANG!" instead.

Valve and EA: STOP OVERREACTING, PEOPLE!

2005-07-19T12:30:00.000-04:00

So the news has come out that Valve, best known for the Half-Life and Counter-Strike franchises, has chosen EA as their new publishers. While I, like most gamers and developers, am a tad displeased with EA, people need to get some perspective. Let's take a look:

1) Valve was in a position to dictate their terms

Valve had a blockbuster franchise that is guaranteed to make a bundle of cash. If a given publisher didn't like Valve's terms, there were likely dozens more lining up that would accept them. Valve could make any kind of deal they wanted.

2) EA likely has no control over the products

Publishers (such as EA) normally have control over products for a variety of reasons. With EA it's usually because they own the studio doing the work. With outside developers, it would be because EA fronted a lot of money and the contract gives them that control. When Valve dissolved their contract with Vivendi they were in a unique position. They had a product, Half-Life 2, which they had funded entirely themselves. They didn't owe anybody any money. They didn't need a publishers help to finance a game. For this reason, it is likely that any deal with EA simply lets EA publish the games, and doesn't give them any control.

3) Valve wants to push STEAM

One of the main disputes Valve had with Vivendi Universal was over STEAM. Valve wanted the freedom to publish their games both in stores and on STEAM with no restrictions on what they could do. Vivendi tried to stop them from publishing HL2 via STEAM entirely, and failing that, did manage to set a minimum cost ($5 less than retail) and delayed the release of the game until it was on store shelves. This displeased Valve to no end, and you can be certain that the contract they signed with EA gives Valve full control over what they publish on STEAM, when they publish it, and for how much.

4) You don't have to buy from EA

As of HL2's release, Valve has provided us with a direct-to-developer method of purchase. I purchased HL2 exclusively online, and all went smoothly. While XBox gamers will have to get Valve games via EA (The XBox has a hard drive, but a relatively small one), PC gamers have the choice of using STEAM and cutting EA out of the deal entirely

5) Either way, EA stands to make a lot of money

Think about it. Even if the contract between EA and Valve is strictly limited to "We provide the games, you put them on the shelves", EA makes a bundle of cash. While Valve no doubt negotiated a very favorable agreement with regards to how much of the profit EA gets vs how much VALVE gets, the fact is that even if EA only makes $10 in actual profit per copy sold, multiply $10 by tens of millions and either way they make money.

6) EA may choose to publish games over STEAM

Think about it. Valve has, despite it's flaws, the best online game delivery system in the industry. Valve has been saying since the beginning that they intend STEAM to be a delivery system for multiple developers and that they never intended to keep it to themselves. While they designed STEAM with independent developers in mind (Cutting out the middleman publishers and publishing a game via STEAM goes a long way for a small developer), there is no reason why EA can't use STEAM as a vehicle to publish their games. Part of their agreement with Valve may include the right to publish EA games on STEAM, a prospect that is positive for both EA and Valve.

So what is the point of this post? Simple. Even if you absolutely hate EA, you have nothing to worry about. Valve isn't going to change, and you will be able to continue purchasing Valve games without dealing with EA at all.

Commute

2005-07-18T16:52:00.000-04:00

I keep walking down the road and thinking to myself, gee, I should blog about XYZ. But of course I always forget what I was thinking about and never blog about it.

Here's about the only thing I remembered that I thought I should blog about: More tourists. I've started seeing them in little packs touring, of all things, MALLS. I was at the Tims in the Cathedral mall, and there were two groups going by, with the tour guides pointing at things and speaking in what I think was Italian and Spanish. Are Montreal malls REALLY that interesting?

Oh, and in response to John Cormie, here's my commute. 28.5km and it takes me 60 to 75 minutes. It's part on foot, part bus, and part metro (subway). The subway is obviously the part that goes under buildings and ignores the roads ;) You could say that Pat has me beat distance-wise, but since he goes by car his commute is shorter than mine time-wise.

Up the zigurat, lickety split!

2005-07-12T20:51:00.000-04:00

Those of you who are into science fiction are no doubt looking foward to this friday, when the US cable channel SciFi proves that it deserves it's status as science fiction juggernaut. SciFi has aquired or developped THE three biggest (budget/audience) north american science fiction shows. This friday in one three hour block, ALL THREE premier.

I'm going to talk a bit about where the new seasons of these three shows are going (I've been keeping up on statements made by the producers of the various shows). So consider this a ***SPOILER WARNING***. I won't summarize the last seasons of each show, I had done that last time I tried to post this but a power failure ended that ;)

Battlestar Galactica

Obviously President Adama is going to be off his feet for a while. Colonal Tigh will be taking over command of the fleet for a while, and it isn't exactly going to be a smooth ride. The President will fracture the the fleet into two halves following her coup. Lee Adama is placed under arrest for his part in the coup, but is allowed out of the brig to fly missions, since the Galactica is so pressed for pilots. Baltar is soon going to have Six out of his mind and will have to face life without the pressures she places upon him. Also, they plan to remake a classic episode from the original BSG. I won't say what happens, that'd be too big a spoiler, but if the word "pegasus" means anything to you you'll know what I'm talking about.

Stargate SG-1

Well, RDA is leaving the show, and will be present for the first three episodes to make a transition. He requested that the door be kept open for O'Neill, so we'll see him again as a guest star much like we did with General Hammond. SG-1 has some new castmembers; Ben Browder from Farscape will be taking command of SG-1, and Claudia Black, also from Farscape, will be reprising her roll as Vala for a while until Amanda tapping (Samantha carter) is able to return to the show (She was pregnant during the hiatus). SG-1 is going to face a new threat from the Ori, a race of ascended beings who force civilizations to join their religion, or face destruction. With the Goa'uld out of the way as the main badguys, along with the replicators, the Ori are going to take over as the main baddies.

Stargate Atlantis

Earth's new battleship, the Daedelus, arrives from Earth, bringing us some new cast members. Remember AD Skinner from The X-Files? He's the new commander of the Daedelus. The ship also features an Asgard navigator. Ford gets infected by the Wraith and is changed. He leaves and forms his own group of fighters addicted to a Wraith drug, and battles the Wraith. The Wraith are still around, but Atlantis is hidden from them.

I guess that about sums it up. I don't recall as much about Atlantis's new season as SG-1 or Galactica, but that should give you an idea of what is to come.

Tourists

2005-07-06T22:49:00.000-04:00

It's always so strange to see tourists while walking to work. They go by in double-decker tour buses, and in throngs holding digital cameras and camcorders.

Having been born and raised on the island of Montreal, it seems so strange to think of people actually taking a vacation here. When you live in a place your whole life everything seems so blasé that you can't imagine anybody wanting to vacation here when you're busy thinking about how to take a vacation AWAY from here.

Remind me to take some time to play the tourist this summer and visit some of the main attractions :)

Ach, mein eye!

2005-07-04T11:05:00.000-04:00

102 minutes. That's how long I had something stuck in my eye this morning. It might seem silly, but it was slowly driving me insane. Luckily it fixed itself shortly before I got to work.

InsaNiti

2005-07-01T04:16:00.000-04:00

I present to you my contribution to InsaNiti. I certainly can't draw as well as Bogdan, certainly not while drawing on a trackpad and determined not to use the line tool :) Either way, the concept should get through ;)

Click for larger version

Jazz + Booze?

2005-06-29T14:36:00.000-04:00

The bus passed the SAQ in Dorval today, just like every other day. But today I noticed that they had decorated the windows with images of distorted piano keyboards with wine glasses around them.

When I saw them, it said to me "In order to enjoy the jazz festival, you are required to drink heavily to the point that the keyboards are distorted."

It just seemed wrong somehow.

Grokster ruling prompts a sigh of relief

2005-06-27T13:33:00.000-04:00

The US supreme court finally got around to ruling on the Grokster case. I, for one, am relieved with the ruling.

They ruled that software makers could be held responsible IF their software was INTENDED for committing copyright infringement.

Why am I relieved? Well, because it could have been a lot worse. They could have ruled that developers could be held responsible for software that ENABLES copyright infringement. Instead they ruled that you can be held responsible, but only if your software is DESIGNED to commit copyright infringement. This lets BitTorrent off the hook entirely, because Bram Cohen obviously introduced it as a method of distributing large files, and he has gone so far as to say anybody who uses it for copyright infringement is stupid. BitTorrent is truly a case of software that enables copyright infringement without that being the intended goal. Indeed, BitTorrent is not promoted by Cohen as a method of infringement, unlike Grokster was.

On the other hand... This is a VERY slippery slope that the US is going down. They are holding software developers responsible for things that they didn't do. This is the same thing as holding the car manufacturers responsible for the speeding tickets of their customers; why make a car that can go 200 kilometers per hour if the law forbids actually driving that fast? Why make a P2P app for infringing copyright if the law forbids actually using it for that?

Obviously even though I believe that copyright infringement is beneficial to the industry in general and that they are idiots to oppose it like they do, I can't fault the logic of the supreme court. I find nothing wrong with this particular ruling. I'm just terribly worried about where things could go from here.

Google gets more high-res sat imagery

2005-06-27T00:18:00.000-04:00

Finally my house is available at the max zoom level

That's not actually my house, since Google just selects the middle of the street for any address on that street.

While it's nice that they finally got high-res imagery of the west island, I'm sort of pissed off that it's winter imagery. It really doesn't look very good, and because it's now high res, I would imagine that they probably won't do any better.

This imagery was added in during Googles recent addition of worldwide high-res imagery (for the most part, there are still bits missing). Looks like the west island got the short end of the stick and was grouped in with the rest of the world. Too bad, the rest of the island of Montreal looks nice.

More broken, and then not so much

2005-06-22T20:41:00.000-04:00

As of this morning the error dialog was gone, but the temperature/date/next train was still broken. Looks like they thought pushing OK would fix all their problems.

However when I was in the metro stop today at 6:30PM, it was fixed. So it looks like their response time is what, 3 days? Nice ;)

Still broken

2005-06-21T23:44:00.000-04:00

Leaving work today, I was in the metro station at 7:30PM. Surprisingly enough, the MetroVision system is STILL broken! The exact same error dialog is still on the screen. Funny how the MTC throws around hundreds of millions of dollars on useless endeavours such as adding new stops that barely anybody will use, or switching to easily hackable smartcards, but they can't pay a guy to take the time to push a button and make the dialog box go away!

Unfortunately I didn't have a chance to snap a shot of the broken screen tonight as I was running for a train. However, if it's still up tommorow morning I'll take some pictures.

As for now, here is the picture from 11AM this morning that I promisd:

Notice that while the time has correctly updated (and the video is still going), the date, temperature, and "next train" section is exactly the same as yesterday. It would seem that that is the section of the program that has crashed.

I'll continue keeping track of this. Let's see how high the response time of the MTC really is ;)

Salt in the wound

2005-06-21T11:07:00.000-04:00

As if yesterday's error dialog wasn't enough, it is even worse that when I was taking the metro to work today, getting off at the McGill metro stop at 11AM, the same error is still on the screen :P

Forget about paying 700 million dollars to add three new metro stops, or 126 million dollars to switch the passes over to smartcards, they need to pay a few thousand dollars and by some NITIX boxes ;)

I'll post a picture tonight when I get home and have a chance to upload it from my cellphone.

When will they learn?

2005-06-21T02:25:00.000-04:00

Seeing as how I work at a Linux company, I was rather amused to see this on the big screen in the metro (Montreal subway) station:

I knew my camera's crappy phone would be useful for something ;)

I finished work today at the usual time, 7ish, and then launched into a super-interesting discussion with sfllaw on a variety of technical subjects. Next thing I knew it, 4 hours had passed! I do love those kinds of discussions, where you are so interested and drawn in that the time flies and as soon as you know it it's not 7PM anymore, it's 11PM. These discussions are special and I really enjoy them.

Bad photoshop skills + company logo = fun

2005-06-18T05:45:00.000-04:00

It turns out that it's about the 5th birthday of All Your Base. As such, I couldn't help but take photoshop to the company logo to produce a tribute. Those of you familiar with the frontpage of the company site will undoubtedly recognize the source image. And so, I present to you my creation:

This is what happens when you try to use photoshop at 5:30AM.

Pickles

2005-06-13T02:43:00.000-04:00

Bick's has started making these mini dill pickles, and is billing them as a snackfood. I tried some, and it turns out they're super tasty. Sure, they're just dill pickles, but the small size makes them super addictive. Every time I open the bottle to have a few I find it hard to stop :P

Did I mention I love dill pickles? Olives too. I can be bribed with both.

Memorizing Pi

2005-06-11T04:33:00.000-04:00

Over the years I've started trying to memorize more and more of pi. Not that I'm putting much effort into it, mind you... Ever so often I'll just try to tack on another few digits into the brain. Here's how far I got tonight, hopefully it will stick for a while:

3.141592653589793238

Up to 18 digits I guess. If I can remember these new digits (Assuming I even remembered it correctly above), I guess the next step is to bump that up to 20?

I rarely actually need to calculate something that uses pi. Sometimes I'll need the area of a circle or something. In those instances, instea of typing 3.14 or using the Pi button on a calculator, I actually try to type in as much as I can remember. I mean, if I'm going to try to memorize some Pi, I might as well use it, right?

Now is the part where you tell me this is a waste of time ;)