Convert a VCD to CD

You might ask: can't you just listen instead of watching the video? Well, my car has CD player only and I listen to some of my CD converted from VCD in the car, thank to this guide. The key piece of software is VirtualDub and we make use of its Audio->Full Processing function. You could even choose the left or right channel, which is useful for Karaoke VCD. Why pay for 2 if you could convert 1 from another?

Watch video on mobile phone

I used a software called Fever link Super for converting video to the 3gp format to watch on my SE phone. Haven't used it for a long time since I have a small memory stick but I upgraded to a 4GB yesterday. I converted a RMVB video. Worked like a charm. Definitely deserved more love. Here is the latest version.

TRENDnet TEW-424UB 3.0R USB Wifi Adapter working on Ubuntu

No, it's not deja vu. I got a PCI Wifi card working on my brother's PC last week. It's more complicated for my desktop since I use a USB adapter. The additional piece of the puzzle is Ndiswrapper. Just follow this guide on how to install Ndiswrapper using the Windows (XP) driver files (I copied it straight from the included CD)

The weird part is that I was not able to use iwconfig to enter the Wifi setting successfully so I use the GUI instead and it worked. (Not the first time but after a reboot)

RealPlayer on Ubuntu Gutsy

Another example of user-unfriendliness of Linux: Remember I called RealPlayer a success from my experience with Feisty? I followed the same steps on my brother's PC, on which we install straight from the Gutsy Live CD, but it didn't work. The installer complained libstdc++5 is missing. Sounds like this version was included in Feisty but not Gutsy. At that time we couldn't get it connected to the internet so apt-get was out of the equation. Fortunately we were able to download the .deb package from here on another machine.

Another alternative (probably a better one anyway) is to bypass RealPlayer completely and install the codec and MPlayer plugin instead. Of course that would be easier if one has internet connection.

USB Modem on Ubuntu

Linux is notorious for diffcult to get USB Modem to work for dialup networking. (Built-in Modem on most notebook are so called Winmodem. It's used to be difficult to get them to work as well but much progress has been made thanks to http://www.linmodems.org/)

After much research and a little bit of experimentation, I got a Dynex DX-M300 USB modem working on Xubuntu. This modem is relatively cheap and easy to find online. Here are my steps:

1) Download the HSF driver from Linuxant. Choose the link for Ubuntu.

2) Install using dpkg (i.e. Method B on this page)

3) Open a terminal and run wvdialconf

4) Edit /etc/wvdial.conf and change Phone/Password/Username for your ISP

5) Run wvdial. It will dial the number and make the PPP connection for you. After it connects successfully, it will show the local and remote IP as well as the primary/secondary DNS server IP. Keep the terminal open.

6) Now you could surf web!

Notes:
1) For some reason the modem doesn't work after I boot the machine with it plugged in. In that case only the power light come on. I had to disconnect and reconnect. Then the MR light will also come on and it will work.

2) The free version of the Linuxant driver has its max speed limited to 14.4kbps. If you want to go full speed at 56k, you could buy a license from them for $20. (I haven't tried it)

3) If your modem is plugged into USB and is detected properly, lsusb should show:
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0572:1301 Conexant Systems (Rockwell), Inc.

Wine problem on Gutsy

We got an error when we follow WineHQ's suggestion on installing Wine thru apt-get. Basically it complains about the dependency on libaudio2 but it is not installable.

Solution? Open Synaptic Package Manager and follow
sdibias's reply on this thread

Netgear WG311v2 PCI Wifi working on Ubuntu

We repurposed my brother's old PC to a Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon-based Media Center. (It's free upgrade! What's not to like?) However, it is not for the faint hearted. Even though the current generation of Linux is much user friendlier than the past. You still couldn't expect everything just works out of the box. For example, we tried using just the GUI to config the Wifi adapter to connect to the AP without success. Finally we found this very useful guide. Basically, all that were required are:
1) run iwlist (see section 6.8) to find out details of your AP (most importantly, the MAC address)
2) run iwconfig (see section 3.3 for the specific options) The command must include:
- the "name" of the AP, i.e, the ESSID,
- the MAC address
- the "password" (if you use WEP. I haven't tried WPA)

My iwconfig command complains about the mode but it still works.

May your installation to be as smooth as ours.

MTP Device blues

If you read the sister blog BigMusicLand, you know I have been using subscription music service based on Microsoft's PlaysForSure for a while. And I have been a happy camper until 2 weeks ago: all of a sudden, both Windows Media Player and Yahoo Music Jukebox wouldn't recognize my Samsung Yepp player.

I figure there must be something wrong with the driver. So I thought: why don't I uninstall it from the Device manager, then plug my player in, let WinXP auto-detect and install the driver again?

Well, like most things on Windows, thing didn't go as planned. After uninstall the driver and plug my player in, Win XP said "Found new hardware" (MTP device) and trying to install driver. So I put in the original installation CD. Win XP seemed to try reading it for a while but eventually says "Cannot install this hardware"! I googled it and it seems to be a common problem plaging users of different brands (Creative, iRiver, Sandisk) of PlaysForSure players.

Anyway, I guess I'm one of the "lucky" users since I "fixed" it by updating my Windows Media Player (it went from version 10 to 11)

GeForce 6200 TV-Out problem fixed

I have been using a XFX GeForce 6200 card in my workstation for a while and was quite happy with it. Recently I've repurposed my workstation as a living room entertainment PC and this card had no problem supporting TV-Out to my ancient projection TV.

However, just like most gadgets of mine, good time doesn't last forever! This Sunday after I exit from playing a movie through Real Player full screen mode, the Windows XP Desktop all of a sudden "lost its edge" or you could think of it as overstretched and ran outside the "border of the screen" It's hard to describe but you get the idea. This sounds very minor but also very annoying. Suddenly I am not able to reach and select from the "File" menu or close windows using the "red cross" icon!

I know the solution will have something to do with adjusting the setting of the video card but I couldn't think of any suitable setting. Finally I get to the GeForce tab on the "Display" settings of control menu. I chose my first option, i.e. TV Output, and click the "Device Adjustment" button, which opens another Windows. Still, no setting seem appropriate. Anyway I tweak a little bit of this and that and then exit. Viola! I have "regained my edge"

I dunno how common this problem is but if you run into it, try my solution above.

Media laziness

I understand that it is common practice for media outlets to quote from other news agency. What irritates me is that analysis/opinions are supposed to be original yet I see them being mirrored among media all the time. Consider the following cases:
1) US Government wants to drive away illegal immigrants by sending warning letters to employers who hired workers with social security number (SSN) not matched in the government's database, i.e., the so-called "no match" letter. Lots of opinion pieces I read says such policy is unfair to workers. These articles usually include interviews of some "no match" employee and how much they are hurt but it was never mention whether they have valid SSNs or not. I'm no supporter of unfair practices to the working class or immigrants but it's only unfair if these employee are wrongfully accused. I am surprised most opinion pieces conveniently ignore this part.

2) IMO, sports talk show hosts have one of the best job in the world. Topics come by so easily. And better yet, you could simply repeat the same topics from shows broadcasted earlier in the day! I remember earlier in this NFL season (~ Week 3/4) every host talks about both the Patriots and the Colts were undefeated but the latter is so "under the radar." I don't know how a team could be under the radar if everybody is talking about them!

3) Earlier this year a Californian woman hitting 16 hole-in-one (golf) made the news. Every news article commented how amazing that was but no one bother to verify the fact, until Golf Digest did. It turned out no one had actually witness the balls going into the holes. None of those 16 occasions. Enuff said.

[Update: I came across this article about how blogs not only lazy in checking facts but also "adding" incorrect "twist" to the story along the way. That's even worse!]

MySQL + PHP + UTF-8 = ????

The title is not a question. It actually describes a common problem: i.e., when UTF-8 characters stored in MySQL is queried through PHP
they displayed as question marks on the web page. The solution (courtesy of Shawn Olson) is call this before any of your database manipulation code:

mysql_query("SET NAMES 'utf8'");

BTW, I host my site and MySQL database at GoDaddy and it supports UTF-8 "out of the box" without any special config.

How to implement a hyperlink that "Save File As Target"

This is useful for linking to media file when you want your user to download the whole file before playing instead of opening the media player and "progressive download", i.e, buffer some and play right away before download is completed. Most modern browser and media player work well together in this regards and the former is an option from
right-mouse-click but I got a requirement to do this from left-mouse-click from my dad (No, right-mouse-click is not user-friendly enough according to my "customer")! So I found this solution in PHP.

Barry Bonds Day

This is a good year to be a baseball fan in San Francisco (even though the Giants have one of the worst season in recent history) First, we had the All-star game in July. Second, Barry Bonds hit his record breaking 756 HR here at AT&T park on Aug 7th. Today Mayor Gavin "Handsome" Newsom hosted a celebration honoring Barry's historic achievement and gave him the key to the city.

Canon TWAIN Driver 6.7.0 for Windows 2000

I am trying to unload pictures from my TX1 to my Win2K PC. Win2K did not recognize it as a generic USB mass storage device (unlike XP or Ubuntu) so I had to look for a driver. I was not able to find it from Canon USA's website but I found it here. Not sure if I'm supposed to use it outside Asia but I'm Asian so I guess I qualified >:) (BTW, it asks what region I was in during installation and I picked US. No problem)

Install emacs

I am an Emacser. There, I said it! It is not included as part of Ubuntu (but vi is! How unfair!) In order to try the latest and greatest version (22), I had to download and compile the source myself. The instruction in INSTALL works, only after I researched how to get rid of the various error (need to apt-get build-essential and libncurses5-dev.) Now I have it running in character mode! The journey to windows mode will continue...

Create DVD on which videos are played sequentially

This is a followup to my previous post on DVD Authoring with tovid on Linux. One thing I really don't like is that after one video is played, it always jump back to the menu. My desired behavior is playing the next video instead unless it is the last one. (Here is one example: I create DVD for videos taken at classes. Each sub-menu on my DVD corresponds to a lesson and contains all videos from that lesson. )

To achieve the desired behavior, I have two choices:
1) group videos from a lesson together so that they will be played one after another but I lose the chapter markers.
2) edit the XML. Each of my video (the proper term is PGC) has a post-action, which is written as "call menu;" by tovid. I simply need to change them to "jump title X;" where X refers to the number of the next video.

My Ubuntu Experience: VCD/DVD Authoring

At first I thought about trying DeVeDe but I read that DeVeDe is incompatible with the MPlayer shipped with Ubuntu Feisty Fawn so I tried tovid instead.

I) Installation: follow the instructions from here.

II) Start the App: simply type tovidgui under any writable directory (e.g. your home)

[1. Layout]: you add videos here. The simplest VCD or DVD requires 1 menu and all videos could go under the menu. Name your source and destination files without spaces and underscores if you can.

[2. Encode]: just hit "Start encoding" and let it finish.

[3. Burn]: this is where I ran into trouble. If I simply hit "Start", both VCD and DVD failed.

VCD trouble: the cue and bin files were created successfully. However, when it tried burning them using cdrdao, nothing happened. I had to kill that process and repeat the cdrdao command in Terminal. Then it burned the VCD. However, I could only play the resulting disc on computer but not my VCD player. Your mileage may vary.

DVD trouble: again, the files were created successfully. However, when it executed dvdauthor, it does not like the titleset with -noask in the XML. So the solution is re-run the last command right after [2. Encode]: i.e., the makexml command, but take out the -noask option. This will generate a good XML. Then I could hit "Start" under [3. Burn] without problem.

(Link to the official Tovid GUI guide .)

My Ubuntu Experience: 1 Month Anniversary

I have been using Ubuntu on my desktop workstation for one monthly already! I still can't kick the habit of booting to Windows from time to time (See reasons mentioned later) but that's something I'm determine to avoid doing (Ever since I got Frethog and removed it, my anti-virus keeps finding worms, e.g. Winko/auto.exe, which seems to come from the usual suspect, judging by the fact that a number of posts analyzing these worms were written by Chinese experts. Anyway, I digressed)

Let me summarize a few more things I was able to do on Ubuntu successfully since last time:
1) Burn music CD from MP3: simply use Applications -> Sound & Video -> Serpentine. Works like a charm.

2) Remote Login to Windows. Yes I know there is RDP for Linux but my remote server runs TightVNC. There is no native TightVNC client on Linux but the Java Applet TightVNC Viewer does the job.

3) Mount Windows NTFS directories in Read/Write mode: they are mounted as Read-only by default. The easiest way to mount them as Read/Write is using NTFS Configuration Tool.

4) Mount remote directories in Read/Write mode: if you setup Windows to share a directory on the network, it is accessible using SMB on Linux. These are the steps to mount them permanently and read/writable (Note: VLC could only play remote files on the LAN this way)

Not so successful:
1) SlingPlayer on Wine (link to WineHQ): the sound gets choppy when I work on other windows and the video is grainy as the video tuning wizard refuse to run.

2) VMWare: I ran the free VMWare Converter to create an image of my existing Windows installation but VMWare Server had problem running this image (got a black screen after starting momentarily and then it just quit)

In any case, for day to day web browsing/blogging/e-mail/office app, Ubuntu has done a pretty good job. I heard some people commented that Ubuntu's "budding" relationship with Dell is not very dissimilar to that of Microsoft and IBM and other early PC clone manufacturer! I am not sure if that is a positive comment.

[Update: I ran into this bug (and the solution provided in the same link worked for me) for my SMB mount. An example of STOP_SERVICE line looks like this:
STOP_SERVICES="mysql samba-shares "
(modified from the mysql only line)
]

Baseball All Star Week in SF Part III: The Game

The MVP of the game, Ichiro Suzuki, led off.



Two local All Star, Barry Bonds and Dan Haren, faced off.



Ken Griffey Jr was about to drive Jose Reyes home from 2nd base to score the 1st run of the game.

Baseball All Star Week in SF Part II: Home Run Derby

Vladimir Guerrero, before hitting his winning home run in the final round.