FFMpeg

Posted on September 19, 2008 by Arthur

Between all the ripping of my (legally) purchased DVDs and transcoding them to the proper format for my iPod I found out that most of the applications that I used have something in common (from Videora [free] to Mediacoder (open source). All these applications actually use FFMPEG under the hood: FFMPEG literally accepts many fileformats, open-sourced and runs on too many platforms (it’s highly portable, I guess). Trouble is, since it’s part of the other multi-platform media player (MPlayer) and, particularly, thanks to the legal minefield that is called transcoding, the binaries for FFMPEG are hard to find (well, you can’t miss it now!) (you can also fetch the sources and compile a binary yourself: you’d probably need to get the MingW compiler/environment).

Anyway, all videoconverter applications that I found had either crappy interfaces or they came with that ‘build-in’ Internet browser that allows the developer to push unneeded and unwanted ads to your desktop. So yeah, it shouldn’t be too hard to build your own fricking video converter. You only need to know and study FFMPEG’s commandline options after reading this (boring code after the fold).

Update: Slightly related: the BBC’s programming team released the very first version of their Dirac Video Compression codec.

Continue reading →

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Enrich

Posted on September 13, 2008 by Arthur

You can get out of your bunkers now: I hear that the first test run at the LHC was a smashing success. The actual smashing happens later this year, so you may want to keep an eye on any black holes originating from Europe. If you’re into big explosions and that (I’m looking at you Dr. Horrible), maybe you should consider a career in Quantum Physics.

This leaves me wondering about the current (and future) state of science in the US: the LHC was built and mostly funded by European countries. The lab has attracted over 1000 US scientists, who according to previous linked Globe and Mail article, ‘feel strongly that the United States is no longer a place to practise massive-scale experiments’. You may wonder if this has to do with the last 8 years of the Bush administration, where science didn’t seem to be of importance. That is, unless you count the president’s vision for ‘the moon and Mars’ as a scientific milestone.

Update 1: Some 500 kms south, another physics experiment seems to have stalled (via Three Quarks)

Update 2: BBC documentary ‘The Big Bang’.

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Point

Posted on September 8, 2008 by Arthur

Yesterday, leftovers from Hanna flew past the Maritimes, dumping a whole bunch of rain for almost a whole day: This lead to some troublesome driving Sunday and Monday morning (CBC). Generally, this year the weather hasn’t cooperated a lot: according to Saint Johners we had more rain (and fog) days than the previous years. Here’s hoping that the same is going to be true for upcoming Winter.

I read that the prime-minister has dissolved the parliament and called for an election, which is set on October 14th this year. Polls and surveys indicate that the Conservatives may get a majority, which wouldn’t surprise me: not everybody seems to be familiar with the name of the current Liberal leader, Stephane Dion. I’m a bit disappointed to see that leaders’ debates will not include the Green’s Elizabeth May. So much for democracy1.

Oh: talking about democracy. There’s a rumour circulating in the neighbourhood that raccoons are tumbling over garbage bins in their hunt for anything editable. If you see this gang of four-legged un-cutesy animals in action, please notify the authorities. Thank you, very much.

1 09/12/08: Looks like May will be allowed into the debates.
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Pod

Posted on September 7, 2008 by Arthur

I‘m a picky listener (and viewer) of news programs and the like, and the same is true for podcasts. I’m a fan of the CBC’s “The Current” (hosted by Tremonti) and unconsciously, that probably sets a standard. For example, I find the works of Laporte and AmberMac boring: the podcast Net@Night reminds of the stages of chewing chewing-gum. Interesting at first, boring at the end.

I discovered that Bill Maher’s weekly show ‘Real Time’ is converted into MP3 files and published into RSS feed (which you can find around here, or you can find it in the iTunes Podcast/TV Shows section). Some portions of the show don’t really translate well to ‘audio-only’ format, but if you’re a fan of Maher’s humour (and snide remarks), you shouldn’t miss his shows.

There are many ‘meta crawlers’ that crawl the ‘best podcasts’ around. Most of these crawlers appear to suggest that the quantity of downloads (or subscribers) somehow translates to quality. The only site I found worth revisiting is earideas, which crawls public stations, science magazines and several newspapers. Don’t expect to find news about the latest ‘gadgets’ and ‘Web 2.0’. A good start for finding podcasts is (you wouldn’t guess it), MetaFilter (or rather, AskMefi).

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Morething

Posted on September 6, 2008 by Arthur

Earlier, we were out in Saint John to check out a couple things for things that needed to be done for things in the house-thing. You know, things. So while we were trotting through town, we were surprised how thick the fog-thing was in Saint John. We ended up at Montana’s were I (duly) noted that they had crayons on their tables, so that customers can doodle things on their things while they wait for their food to be served up. How novel. Why not add paint, easel and brushes, so that you can finish up your Van Gogh while your waitress brings you the next coffee fill-up?

So, everybody and their cousins have reviewed Chrome (Google’s entry in the browser market) and you were eager to hear my opinion? I don’t have one: not today. However, while I read that Google used Webkit/KHTML as their renderer, I thought it more or less looked like Gecko. Windows-only. The pity (but then, I’m using both Firefox and Konqueror right now, so what’s the point anyway?)

From all the movies I saw this week, I thought the worst one was ‘The Happening’: currently it’s at a 5.4 rating at IMDB and this is deservedly so. This was Shyamalan’s ninth movie and I wonder if there’s some kind of correlation between the quality and quantity of his movies. I figured it out using simple math:

y = log0.5x

However, the bright side of the movie was Betty Buckley, who blew some ‘fresh air’ (irony strikes here) in the robotic acting of her fellow actors. She’s an award-winning Jazz singer, I hear.

There’s more good news here: I watched a couple of Hal Hartley movies and was surprised how much I liked ‘The Unbelievable Truth’. I’ve seen the movie before but the sharp (and absurd) dialogues keep making me laugh. Excellent use of repetition too.

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Span

Posted on August 29, 2008 by Arthur

We had a (brief) reunion earlier this week: Alfons joined us last weekend and left (surprisingly) a day earlier than we all expected: there was a slight misunderstanding in his flight schedule. Luckily, the airport isn’t too far of a drive.

He was kind enough to give away his iPod Touch: it is now the main focus of all my attention, which has left my KDE based-computer in the cold because there’s no real way to access the thing without jail-breaking it. This is my main gripe against the iPod: it’s a locked-up platform. Fair enough: the thing works as it promises and there goes nothing above watching The Matrix for the umpteenth time on a (what is it) 4″ screen. Additionally, there goes nothing above copying photos to the thing and having those in your pocket. Alfons also shared along his iPhone experiences (I didn’t bother asking him for his monthly charges) and I thought one of the best apps for it was the ‘Tim Hortons Finder’. Wait, no make that Shazam (which, I understand isn’t really free either).

Now mind me while I’m going to watch the Lord of the Rings.

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Oh Dear

Posted on August 18, 2008 by Arthur

I‘ve been playing PyChess on KDE (which is actually a GNOME application) and noticed that it’s not too bad of a chess engine (I think the other chess engine is GnuChess). It doesn’t like trading pieces for example but comes up with strong counter offensives so once in a while. Definitely better than Vista’s chess game: The very first time I played against that one, I beat it so hard that I think I heard the computer cry. No really.

Talking about trading or exchanging pieces: at one time we bought a ‘Gary Kasparov’ chess computer (I can’t remember the brand, but the last time I was in NL, it was still working, I think) and we were completely beaten by the thing, even on the lowest level. It took a while to adjust to the aggresssive gameplay, which I can only summarize as ‘Trade, Trade, Trade’ (We found out that this was apparently Kasparov’s gamestyle). We were only young then too, but it taught us to go on the offensive right from the start. Hundred years later (haha), I was invited to play chess in a cyber cafe in Truro, for a game against one of the regulars: he was absolutely shocked about my aggressive gameplay and asked if all Europeans played like that. I should have said ‘only the Europeans with a Kasparov chess computer game’.

And now for something completely different, the game that I played against PyChess right below the fold:

Continue reading →

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Going Underground

Posted on August 17, 2008 by Arthur

I made it a tradition to bring up VJ day on August 15th, but decided to let it go by and return to it today by including it to a Past The Bridge posting here. The song I had in mind, ‘Going Underground’ from The Jam, (after all) has themes that slightly intersect with nuclear destruction and war.

The usual 30 second sample lifts out the chorus of the song. If you’re interested in videos that describe the mood of those nuclear 80s, the video clip of ‘Going Underground’ can be found on YouTube. You can’t miss the references to nuclear war. Personally (besides awkward TV shows about ‘Russians invading Georgia’ [haha] and others), this song perfectly illustrates that peculiar ‘nuclear war is right around the corner’-feeling of the Eighties.

The Jam (despite their great hits that established them as ‘Angry Young Men’) had an ambiguous political background though (as this fine article at Wikipedia explains) which has dogged the band’s lead vocalist, Paul Weller, for years to come. In 1979, he had announced that the band was going to vote conservative in that year’s General Election, which (as you know) was the year that Thatcher took the oath of office. What followed were years of unrests, strikes, IRA attacks and a couple more millions of unemployed British people. Four years after their announcement, the band expressed their frustration with Britain’s political state in their song ‘Town called Malice’.

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Songs of the Unknown

Posted on August 17, 2008 by Arthur

With the Olympics in high-gear, the New York Times has a collection of national anthems of countries that won the gold medal in the last couple of days. I was briefly listening to the Dutch anthem and I noticed that the youtube recording included the first two verses of the song. Probably 95% of the Dutch don’t make it that far: if you know one of the 15 stanzas, that’s more than enough. People who served in the Dutch army, probably (still) remember the endless ceremonial requirements when this song was played. (The ‘Wilhelmus’ at Wikipedia).

Yesterday, I watched ‘Animal Farm’ on Google Video: this movie features live animals (I was going to say ‘live action’) and was filmed and distributed in 1999. The movie stays fairly close to Orwell’s famous novel, except for the happy-end, which was probably added because, you know, if you live in the US and are under the impression that your country was solely responsible for the end of the Cold War, well, there you go.

And to talk about US politics, I briefly read about the very first McCain vs. Obama debate in front of a religious (“Social Conservative”) audience. I was wondering what could help Obama’s slumping campaign, and then I was thinking, maybe he should just choose Clinton for the VP slot1. For some kind of reason, I think that’s the only way the Democrats can safely get into the White House.

1Update (08/21/08): It looks like David Gergen thinks the same

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Blueish

Posted on August 15, 2008 by Arthur

The last weeks were absurd so to say: first of all, my wife suffered from a (sort of) ear-infection which made her feel out of balance. This was also the week where we were exposed to the lows of the New Brunswick health care system. At one time, in Nova Scotia, I paid my dad’s medical bill with a debit card and I thought that was absurd.

Earlier this week was also the wedding anniversary and if I understand correctly, we passed the ‘seven year itch’, going for nine. I remember reading statistics from Stats Canada that said that marriages that lasted at least 7 years were marriages that least likely would end with break-up. I wonder if that statistic came with a bell-curve. Actually, everything is explained in bell-curves.

Today would have also been the birthday of my mom: I was thinking the other day how grief has slowly been replaced with cynicism. For some people this cynicism may unintentionally come over hard and hurtful. Cancer, in a way, is a cynical disease.

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Lunch

Posted on August 13, 2008 by Arthur

A few years ago, I visited England and found out that (some) churches provided free lunch concerts. For some kind of reason, I now have the impression that lunch is great time to go to church. Why go on Sundays? That’s so out of style.

All joking aside: I discovered that a church uptown had free (Summer) lunch concerts too and have been attending them as much as I could. Last week, for example, a trio of (classical trained) musicians filled the Church of St. Stephen and St. Andrew with baroque compositions: not my kind of music, but impressive and enjoyable. Today, I returned back to work with slightly mixed feelings: the Kidd family (3 daughters, father and wife) sang and played a mix of modern and semi-classical pieces. To throw it right out, the quintet was capable but needs better (musical) arrangement: At times, it felt like the violin was fighting with the piano for the crowd’s attention. I find that this happens when musicians love the music they play so much that they end up trying to ‘out volume’ the other musicians. There was a (self-composed) musical piece that (how can I say this nicely) more or less ended up sounding like a cacophony. Unintentionally (I’ve heard my share of intentional musical chaos). Sometimes subtlety is key and I missed this at crucial moments: I dare to say that the piano player should have toned down, since the violin player appeared to be the most talented musician of the family.

On the good side, (as I mentioned above) the violin player (Rachel) impressed and played some remarkable counterpoint (particularly on self-composed pieces ‘Barney’s Hill’ and ‘Celtic Hora’). The piano player (Richard) showed an affinity for rag, Scott Joplin-style. The Mrs. (Janet) sounded like she was classically trained (mezzo) and for a moment I was (silently) hoping to hear a German cabaret song being belched out. The other two family members didn’t really get too much time to present themselves and more or less served the two major musical instruments, the violin and piano.

I think the Summer lunch series are sponsored by the Saint John Community Arts Funding Program: Looking at the sizable crowd that attended today’s concert, it looks like there’s a general interest in local music.

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HAL

Posted on August 11, 2008 by Arthur

Today, three cruise ships stopped by in Saint John: the Carnival Victory, the Grandeur and the Maasdam.

I didn’t have time to try to get all three of them on one photo (I only had the 80mm on me) and my goal was just to make a snapshot of the HAL logo: The reason being family history I guess, (previously on xsamplex), or one might say, for sentimental reasons only. I noticed that there was a tighter security detail than a couple of weeks before: At that time, I was able to get a closer look at the ‘Grandeur of the Seas’ by walking right up to the ship’s bow via the parking lot at Pugsley A. Today, the parking lot was closed off and watched by two security guards, probably from Customs Canada.

The next HAL ship is slated to arrive September 4th (The Eurodam). As you can tell from the Saint John Cruiseship schedule, the Victory is here almost once a week. From what I understand, the most anticipated ship at this moment is coming in on September 20th: the Queen Elizabeth 2 enter Saint John port and will dock at Pugsley A.

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This. Means. War.

Posted on August 9, 2008 by Arthur

I guess, I should mention about the news today: I read that there’s a full war going on between Georgia and Russia, after Georgia sent troops into break-away and pro-Russia province South Ossetia. As a result, Putin ordered troops into Georgia to protect ‘Russian interests’. And this is the part I love: while most newsagencies have this conflict at the top of their pages, CNN carries John Edward’s extra-marital affair as the main headline. USA, USA!

The Olympic games have started and the official site is a kind of a bore. I hear the opening ceremony was fantastic, but honestly, am I supposed to care about the Games? I also noticed that if you look for Olympic Games on Google, the result page will show an up-to-date list of recently awarded Olympic Medals.

And if you’re a US citizen, the US Homeland Department wants you to know that if you’re visiting China, you may become a victim of Chinese spying programs. I’m probably not the only person who thinks this is a bit ironic: after all, recently the US government adopted a program that allows border agents to seize electronic hardware.

Update: Hilarious question at Yahoo’s about the Russian invasion in the state of Georgia.

Update 2: Even Google is wrong sometimes.

Update 3: 1930s (or so) Marital test (via Metafilter).

Update 4: Fox News host insist to talk about Edwards affair, instead of discussing Georgia conflict.

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