Archive for the ‘Hardware & Software’ Category

Downloading videos from YouTube and Google Video

Tuesday, September 5th, 2006 by Agro Rachmatullah

(Written on 12:21 PM 9/2/2006 GMT+7)

YouTube and Google Video are popular video hosting services. Anyone can upload a video file and those sites will convert it to flv format and make the file publicly viewable.

Usually people watch videos from those sites from a browser-embedded flash control, like the one below:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lawkc3jH3ws]

(A video showcasing XGL. Must see!)

However there is also a way to download the video file and play it locally. First, we need to know the YouTube/Google Video URL for the video. An example is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lawkc3jH3ws for the video above (if the video is embedded on another web page, view the source for the url). Then, go to http://kej.tw/flvretriever/ and submit the URL. You will then be given the location of the FLV file. Donwload the FLV file, and finally watch it using VLC media player (available for Linux and Windows).

Color fidelity etc

Tuesday, August 22nd, 2006 by Agro Rachmatullah

Word dump: astronomy - 4:35 PM 8/22/2006

The current theme of the word dump is astronomy:

Kanji Kana English
星学 せいがく astronomy
天文 てんもん astronomy
天文学 てんもんがく astronomy
天文家 てんもんか astronomer
てんもんがくしゃ astronomer
水星 すいせい Mercury (planet)
金星 きんせい Venus (planet)
ちきゅう the earth
火星 かせい Mars (planet)
木星 もくせい Jupiter (planet)
土星 どせい Saturn (planet)
天王星 てんのうせい Uranus (planet)
海王星 かいおうせい Neptune (planet)
めいおうせい Pluto (planet)
わくせい planet
ゆうせい planet
せいと star
ぎんが galaxy
せいうん nebula, galaxy
しょうわくせい asteroid
せいじょうたい asteroid
りゅうせい meteor
いんせい meteor
すいせい comet

I managed to gather 24 words. Now my word count is 1396.

The literal translation of the planet names is interesting. Mercury (水星) is “water star”, Venus (金星) is “gold star”, Mars (火星) is “fire star”, Jupiter (木星) is “tree star”, Saturn (土星) is “soil star”, Uranus (天王星) is “heaven king star”, and Neptune is (海王星) “sea king star”. I haven’t learned all the kanji needed for Earth and Pluto.

I’ve actually learned some astronomical words before this. Some are from grade 1 kanji (月 = moon, 日 = sun). Some others are from songs, like:

  • ほうきぼし = comet (from Younha’s Houkiboshi): “moshi atashi ga HOUKIBOSHI ni nareta naraba”
  • ながれぼし = meteor (from Momusu’s Furusato): “NAGAREBOSHI wo mitara… nani wo inorou ka na…”
  • たいよう = sun (from Momusu’s Ai Araba IT’S ALL RIGHT): “ai araba it’s all right… TAIYOU wa subete omitooshi sa

The next topical word dump will probably be relative time pointer (today, tomorrow, yesterday, etc).

Color fidelity - 12:13 AM 8/21/2006

I already knew the name of some colors in Japanese (黒, 白, 赤, 青, みどり, 黄色, 茶色, ピンク) and planned to memorize some more. Of course, first I needed to gather the name of the colors in English.

For that purpose I used the color selection widget in SharpDevelop 2’s form designer:

SD's color selection widget
SD’s color selection widget

From the many colors listed, I picked the ones I’ve heard before. Here are my selection:

Black     
White
Gray
Silver
Maroon
Brown
Chocolate
Tan
Orange
Gold
Beige
Olive
Yellow
Green
Lime
Aquamarine
Turquoise
Teal
Cyan
Azure
Blue
Indigo
Purple
Magenta/Fuchsia
Violet
Crimson
Red
Pink

Sadly, eventhough I’ve heard words like “maroon”, “tan”, “indigo”, and “magenta” before, I didn’t know how the colors looked. “gray” and “silver” would be identified by me as “gray” (with differnt shades). “maroon”, “brown”, and “chocolate” would be identified as “brown”. “tan” and “beige” were unidentified for me. “gold” would be identified as a shade of yellow. I would probably call “olive” as “yucky green” and “lime” as “light green”.

“Aquamarine”, “turquoise”, “teal”, “cyan”, and “azure” would be identified as “blue”. Likewise, “indigo”, “magenta/fuchsia”, and “violet” were all “purple”. “Crimson” would be identified as a shade of “red”. “Pink” is an oft-overheard color in the current society so I knew it pretty well.

To enhance my color identification, I made a program called Quizzer:

Quizzer

The program is made using C# and Windows Forms. It runs on .NET 2.0 and Mono 1.1.16.

Basically, the program will show a random color on the window and you need to name it. If the answer is correct, another color will be shown. If the answer is wrong, there will be a message box showing the correct name.

When you give an incorrect name (for example “blacj” for “black”), the program will increase the chance that the wrongly named color will be displayed again. If you misname it for another color (for example “gray” for “silver”), both colors’ chance to appear again will be increased.

When you correctly categorize a certain color over and over, eventually that color won’t be asked again.

With the help of the program, I can now identify most of the colors correctly. I still have difficulties with “maroon” vs. “brown”, “crimson” vs. “red”, and sometimes “turquoise” vs. “cyan”. “Azure” and “white” is impossibly difficult to identify (unless put besides each other) and I hopelessly make the mistake over and over. I usually cheat for “azure”/”white” by comparing it to the white color of the text box.

Identifying them in the program is one thing, seeing colors in the real word another. In the real word, I encounter more shades in between those colors so it often difficult to name the colors I see.

Some color names are also the name for elements (silver, gold), stones (aquamarine, turquoise), plants (orange, olive, lime), food (chocolate), and town (magenta, a town in Italy). The name maroon comes from the French word “marron” which means chestnut. Purple comes from Latin “purpura” which in turn comes from Greek “porphyra” which is a shellfish. The name fuchsia comes from a plant scientist Leonhard Fuchs.

The source and executable for Quizzer is here.

A long sought program: StarDict etc

Wednesday, August 16th, 2006 by Agro Rachmatullah

A long sought program: StarDict - 6:18 PM 8/15/2006

StarDict is a free (as in beer)/open source/libre/GPL offline dictionary written in GTK. It is only a frontend, so depending on the installed data it can be an English to English dictionary, Japanese to English dictionary, or anything else.

Everything needed to get StarDict up and running on Windows is on its website, http://stardict.sourceforge.net (it is actually cross-platform so a Linux version is also available). First, download install the GTK+ runtime environment linked from the front page. After that download and install the Windows version of StarDict. The last step is to download at least one dictionary from StarDict’s dictionary page.

I downloaded the tarballs of “Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English”, “Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary”, and “dictd_www.dict.org_gcide”. To install the dictionaries, just extract them to “dic” folder inside the StarDict installation folder (e.g. “C:\Program Files\StarDict\dic”).

Some screenshots:

StarDict searching dictionary
The dictionary can search for “dictionary”. I just had to confirm it.

Searching using wildcards
StarDict supports search using ? and *.

Fuzzy search
StarDict can do Fuzzy search (start the search term with “/”). This will search for a “closest” word (whatever that means). Very useful if we aren’t sure of the correct spelling for a word.

Because the data of “Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary” is available for StarDict, there is no reason to reinstall “Oxford Advanced Genie”, my previous dictionary program.

Word dump: random - 6:16 PM 8/15/2006

Here are 30 words I’ve gathered from various sources:

Kanji Kana English
明日 あす tomorrow
父さん とうさん father
とうさん (corporate) bankruptcy
大家さん おおやさん landlord, landlady
あい indigo
えにし fate
出合う であう to come across
出合い であい an encounter
メモリ memory
一人 いちにん one person
ロード road
ハッピー happy
エンド end
ストーリ story
セクシー sexy
アイランド island
ひとり alone
切り きり limits
おばあちゃん grandma
あまい naïve
きず wound
だれか someone
かまう to care about
とつげき assault
まつり festival
ぴったり exactly
しゃべる to talk
ついに finally
けってい decision
さいしゅう last

Now my word count is 1343.

Explorer’s useless thumbnail etc

Saturday, August 12th, 2006 by Agro Rachmatullah

Word Dump: サマーナイトタウン - 9:19 PM 8/12/2006

This word dump is from サマーナイトタウン by モーニング娘。 (Summer Night Town by Morning Musume). It’s Momusu’s 2nd single and the first one with an 8-member lineup.

Abe Natsumi in Summer Night Town

From left to right (just a guess): Yaguchi Mari, Iida Kaori, Nakazawa Yuko, Abe Natsumi, Ishiguro Aya, Fukuda Asuka, Ichii Sayaka

Kanji Kana English
  サマー summer
  ナイト night
  タウン town
  スマイル smile
見せる みせる to show
下手 へた poor
  だいきらい very dislikeable
  きせつ season
  なんか things like ..
  へん strange
  かんじ feeling
  すごす to spend
  ただ only
  やきもち jealousy
  むじゅん contradiction
  だらけ implying (negatively) that something is full of, e.g., mistakes
  うで arm
  とびこむ to dive
  すねる to sulk
見つめる みつめる to gaze at
  メイク make-up (abbr)
  どこでも anywhere
  いのり prayer
近づける ちかづける to put close
  とし age
近づく ちかづく to get closer
  クリック click
  しま island
  うかす to rise

Stats! Stats!

  • Previous “average new words/song”: 21.2
  • New words in this song: 29 (whoa, a lot! previous was 20)
  • New “average new words/song”: 22.5
  • Total words in word list: 1313

Because the word count has passed 1300, it’s now time for free word hunting. I will start by memorizing words I’ve encountered randomly (from TV shows, doramas, talks with 日本語-enabled people, etc). This free word hunting will continue until the word count reaches 1500.

Different place, different price - 10:17 PM 8/10/2006

My friend told me that buying an optical media (DVD-R etc) in Gejayan is cheaper than in CD House (near North MIPA). It is very much true. A Verbatim DVD-R (4,707,319,808 bytes) costs Rp. 4,500 in Gejayan but Rp. 7,500 in CD House. The Rp. 3,000 price difference is worth every cycle of my bike.

Explorer’s useless thumbnail - 8:37 PM 8/10/2006

This is a screenshot from a folder full of video files:

Black?

Explorer cleverly fetches the first frame for all files, so the result is darkness (well, except for the white one down there)! Thumbnail view, which ideally should help file identification visually, does nothing except to eat precious CPU cycles.

GNOME’s Nautilus is way ahead of time. I don’t know what algorithm it uses to select the frame for the thumbnail (random?), but rest assured it doesn’t just blindly select the first frame. The result is beautiful, and I would love to post it here. However it is impossible because after my partition was screwed I haven’t installed Ubuntu again. (Using the Live CD won’t do since the required codecs aren’t installed. Installing the codecs on the Live system isn’t possible since I haven’t downloaded the Dapper ones.)

(I think the screenshot deserves to be in http://explorer.istheshit.net.

Explorer’s self-mutilation - 8:14 PM 8/10/2006

Try doing this:

  • Open Windows Explorer
  • Make sure the “Task” pane on the left is on (turn off “Folders” or “Search” pane)
  • Go to a folder that contains an “avi” file and is in “Details” view mode (the system and hidden file thumbs.db shouldn’t be on the folder)
  • Select a file, then quickly press F2 to rename the file
  • Quickly append a new extension, for example changing “movie.avi” to “movie.avi.a”

If you’re fast enough, a message like this will pop out: “Cannot rename [filename]: It is being used by another person or program. Close any programs that might be using the file and try again.”

The hillarious thing about the message is that the “problematic” program seems to be no other than Explorer itself! When a video file is selected, Explorer will “open” the file and display its thumbnail on the left panel like so:

The modern yet problematic preview.

My guess is that the thumbnail generation process interferes the file renaming attempt. The weird thing is that if we rename it other than describe before (for example changing “movie.avi” to “movie2.avi”) the process never fails.

The workaround is obviously to wait a moment before renaming. However, this greatly slows down file management which kinda beats the purpose of a modern GUI file manager. Irritating!

I remember reporting some bugs to Microsoft a long time ago, but AFAIK there is no easily memorizable URL for it. Ubuntu has www.launchpad.net, Mozilla has bugzilla.mozilla.org, and Mono has bugzilla.ximian.com. Microsoft should have something like bugreport.microsoft.com.

Merging files in win32 etc

Wednesday, August 9th, 2006 by Agro Rachmatullah

Merging files in win32 - 8:34 PM 8/9/2006

To transfer a large file between computers using a removable media (flash disk, floppy disk, etc), we often need to split the file. There are many programs that does this (google “file splitter”).

However, to join/merge the files back we don’t need a special program. In Windows, just type:

copy /b [part1]+[part2]+…+[partn] [output]

For example:

copy /b movie.avi.1+movie.avi.2+movie.avi.3 movie.avi

Will merge the files “movie.avi.1″, “movie.avi.2″, and “movie.avi.3″ into “movie.avi”.

“/b” stands for binary mode, which if ommitted won’t guarantee that the parts’ content will be duplicated exactly into the result file. In simpler terms, don’t forget it or the result can be corrupted.

Word dump: モーニングコーヒー - 8:14 PM 8/9/2006

This word dump is from モーニングコーヒー by モーニング娘。 (Morning Coffee by Morning Musume).

Morning Coffee

Morning Coffee

The PV is just a bunch of girls standing and singing. Compared to later Momusu PVs, it’s obvious that they couldn’t dance yet.

Kanji Kana English
モーニング morning
コーヒー coffee
どきどき beat (fast)
二人 ふたり two people
もんげん curfew
おくる to take or escort (a person somewhere)
弱虫 よわむし coward
遠回り とおまわり detour
口づけ くちづけ kiss
できる to be able (in a position) to do
しかられる to be scolded (reproved)
かまわない do not care (mind)
ときめき throbbing
まもる to protect
やる to do
たより dependence
本気 ほんき seriousness
つれさる to take away
なぜか for some reason
こまらせる to embarrass

Obligatory statistics:

  • Previous “average new words/song”: 21.5
  • New words in this song: 20 (down from 24)
  • New “average new words/song”: 21.2
  • Total words in word list: 1284

My current plan is to stop harvesting words from songs after the word count reaches 1300. Instead I will choose my own words to memorize until my word count reaches 1500.

Copy-paste in Putty etc

Saturday, August 5th, 2006 by Agro Rachmatullah

A new era of UPT internet cafe - Just before posting

At last, after ages, some computers on the UPT internet cafe are starting to get a USB extension cable! I hope they plan to eventually stick it on all computers there.

Word dump: LOVE涙色 - 6:10 PM 8/5/2006

The current word dump is LOVE涙色 by 松浦亜弥 (LOVE Namida Iro by Matsuura Aya). I first knew the existence of this song while reading my friend’s Musume Monogatari (a manga about Momusu). I then heard it sung by Niigaki Risa and Tsuji Nozomi on H!P’s Wonderful Hearts.

I heard the original song by searching for the MP3. Later on I also watched Momusu’s 5th gen candidates singing this song for their audition.

Kanji Kana English
きっぱり clearly
とぼける to play dumb
何だか なんだか somehow
ふくざつ complexity
かんじょう feeling(s)
ぐるぐる turning round and round
あきっぽい fickle
せいかく personality
いじっぱり obstinacy
何となく なんとなく for some reason or another
とちゅう midway
何とか なんとか somehow
おだやか calm
なんども often
ほとんど mostly
まるあんき indiscriminate memorizing
やっぱ of course
何れくらい どれくらい how much
しんちょう height (of body)
のびる to grow (beard, body height)
やせる to lose weight
バイト work (de: Arbeit)
もどる to return
あまえる to fawn on

The stats:

  • Previous “average new words/song”: 20.67
  • New words in this song: 24 (last one was 23)
  • New “average new words/song”: 21.5
  • Total words in word list: 1264

Average new words is rising on and on…

Copy-paste in Putty - 10:37 PM 8/4/2006

Putty is a nice Windows SSH client.

Right clicking its title bar brings a pop-up menu but frustratingly the I didn’t find “copy” and “paste” there. (In gnome-terminal, copying and pasting can be done with Ctrl+Shift+C and Ctrl+Shift+V, respectively)

Accidently, I found that to copy a text from the console you just need to highlight it. To paste, right click anywhere in the console.

7th semester registration - 10:29 PM 8/4/2006

Registration just got simpler:

  • Go to Bank Mandiri with your student card and the required money. Trade the money for 2 receipts (green and yellow).
  • Go to the academic section of your faculty. Give the yellow receipt and fill a payment form. Get a new GMC by showing your old GMC.
  • Stick a photograph to the new GMC and get an official stamp at Gedung Pusat.

Filling KRS haven’t started yet. I’ve been told that KRS modification happens before classes start (lame) and classes start before KKN ends (again, lame).

Stone in the middle - 9:31 PM 8/2/2006

After applying a whole-surface label on my DVD-R, I noticed that there was somthing bumpy. Alas, a small stone was sandwidched between the label and the DVD-R top suface! I’m thinking of a way to safely do a mini surgery, and from now on I’ll make sure the top surface of a DVD-R (or CD-R) is clear before sticking a label into it.

Without a digital English-English dictionary etc

Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006 by Agro Rachmatullah

Word Dump: 好きすぎて バカみたい - 8:34 AM 8/2/2006

The current word dump is 好きすぎて バカみたい (Suki Sugite Baka Mitai) by DEF.DIVA (a H!P unit consisting of Abe Natsumi, Goto Maki, Ishikawa Rika, and Matsuura Aya).

Kanji Kana English
みたい -like
ララバイ lullaby
あこがれ yearning
そうしそうあい mutual love
ころ time
まける to lose
ずいぶん extremely
まえ before
こおる to freeze
レンジ stove
かいとう thaw
もどる to turn back
やり直す やりなおす to start over
ねむる to sleep
いじょう more than
めいわく trouble
くちょう tone
さいしょ first
おくり seeing off
下らない くだらない worthless
かえる to go home
うなずく to nod
おわかれ farewell

Stats:

  • Previous “average new words/song”: 19.5
  • New words in this song: 23 (same as previous one)
  • New “average new words/song”: 20.67
  • Total words in word list: 1240

Without a digital English-English dictionary - 8:37 PM 8/1/2006

When I reinstalled my Windows, I backed up Oxford Dictionary’s folder. However running the executable on the new Windows didn’t work because the program seemed to require a library which was unregistered. Therefore I’m now left without a digital dictionary.

PS: Previously I installed the Oxford dictionary (called “Oxford Advanced Genie) from a CD that wasn’t mine. The content is of course superb (you can even hear the sound of each word), however it isn’t free and the user interface is terrible.

OpenOffice.org Writer’s thesaurus isn’t always helpful. For example, giving the thesaurus “gourmet” as an input brings “epicure”, “gastronome”, “bon vivant”, “epicurean”, “foodie”, and “sensualist (general term)” as synomyms. “Sensualist” didn’t seem to fit the context (it was about food). “Foodie” is a term that is absolutely related to food, but what does it mean? A person that likes to eat a lot? No idea. The other words are complete aliens to me.

How about Wiktionary? The entry for “gourmet” is probably there but I can’t access it from home, obviously.

Somehow, I have the installer for linguist (probably copied off a friend). Since it can function as an English to Indonesian dictionary, I installed it. Searching for “gourmet” gives “ahli pencicip makanan”. Nice, but it seems to be a commercial program (which I somehow have illegally obtained) so I’m quite reluctant to use it.

So, currently my legal alternative is a good old printed dictionary (God bless the trees). I currently have “OXFORD Advanced Learner’s DICTIONARY” (4th edition, 1989) which I borrowed from my uncle. “gourmet” gives “person who enjoys and is exper in the choice of fine food, wines, etc”. Nice description.

Another alternative is a “SAT I” book I own. It has a 3500 word list. There, “gourmet” means “connoisseur of food and drink” and “connoisseur” (an alien word) means “person competent to act as a judge of art”. You can’t count on every word being on this book, but when it’s there, you get a nice definition and an example sentence.

Because a paper dictionary is quite a bother to use, I’m going to search for a freely available English to English dictionary database. Something like EDICT, where you can download the database and use any client to view it (or make your own).

Btw, I encountered the word “gourmet” while learning Japanese. In “Hello! Project DVD MAGAZINE volume 7″, the sentence “ゴルメレポーター。。。” popped on the screen:

gorume repootaa

Searching “ゴルメ” (gorume) in EDICT gives “gourmet”, an English word unknown to me (”レポーター” (repootaa) obviously means “reporter”). This is not the first time something like this happened. “curfew”, “stingy”, “sulk”, and “fickle” are some other English words I stumbled upon while learning Japanese. It’s interesting that learning Japanese reveals a lot of my English vocabulary deficiency.

Update: The solution is to use StarDict.

Bad handphone design - 10:41 PM 7/29/2006

On my phone (Samsung something) the disconnect button (the one with the red phone icon) is placed above the “3/def” button and below the “options” button. When writing an SMS, pressing that button will discard the message and bring you straight to the main screen. The message will be lost!

With that design, a user that accidentally presses the button will lose the message. Murphy’s law states that “when something bad can happen, it WILL happen”. It happened to me already around 2 or 3 times, and I was really pissed off when it happened.

I can envision 2 improvements:

  • When the “discard” button is pressed, prompt the user. This behavior can be found anywhere from Notepad (”The text in the “xyz” file has changed. Do you want to save the changes”) to Firefox (”You are about to close “x” open tabs. Are you sure you want to continue?”)
  • Go to the main menu directly, but save the message in the drafts folder. This “no need to save” behavior can be seen in some programs like Tomboy (a great GTK# note taking program).

It’s pretty simple, really. The principle is “don’t let users do disastrous things easily”. Things like this are now taught on a standard Computer Science course, “Human Computer Interaction” (but not if you get my lecturer since he didn’t have a clue what the course is all about).

Compressing a compressed video using AutoGK etc

Saturday, July 29th, 2006 by Agro Rachmatullah

Word dump: 大阪恋の歌 - 10:02 PM 7/28/2006

This word dump is from 大阪恋の歌 by モーニング娘。 (Osaka Koi no Uta by Morning Musume).

Osaka Koi no Uta

Osaka Koi no Uta

Kanji Kana English
とぎれる to be interrupted
マーク mark
はなればなれ separate
えんきょり long distance
むり impossible
ぎゅっと tight(ly)
じゅんじょう naivete
どうして why?
おわり the end
しかたない it can’t be helped
話し はなし conversation
すごい wonderful
とろける to be enchanted with
せりふ words
まったり laid-back (lifestyle)
かこけい past tense
じまん pride
おどろかす to surprise
ちょっとした trifling
いたずら prank
きょり distance
とおすぎる to be too far
もう already

The statistics:

  • Previous “average new words/song”: 16
  • New words in this song: 23
  • New “average new words/song”: 19.5
  • Total words in word list: 1217

Google Trends - 9:27 AM 7/28/2006

Google Trends (http://www.google.com/trends) is a cool service from Google. Basically, you separate several search terms with commas (for example “Ubuntu, Kubuntu”) and Google will then show a graph showing time vs search volume of each search term. By looking at the graph, we can get a rough idea which term is searched more often.

Here are some samples:

From TXT to HTML - 10:20 PM 7/27/2006

The file I use to write blogs ofline is “boab.txt”. However, since the content inside is really HTML, I renamed it to “boab.html”.

Now when Notepad++ opens it, syntax highlighting and auto tag closing will automatically be on. (previously I need to manually set the language to HTML from the “Language” menu)

Compressing a compressed video using AutoGK - 10:33 PM 7/24/2006

PVs lurking on my drive take quite a lot of space. Recompressing them will certainly free some space at the expense of quality. I currently don’t have a need for it, but because I was curious about the quality decline I tried compressing one of them to 20 MB and 10 MB.

So I fired AutoGK, an XviD/DivX encoding tool. I first found AutoGK when trying to encode an MPEG2 file to XviD/DivX (somehow MPEG2 files seek badly on my media players). The tutorial that came with the installation was very handy.

AutoGK

For the test I used “Ai Araba IT’S ALL RIGHT” which is around 111 MB. The procedure is basically to choose an input file, define the output file name, and choose the desired size. Because I didn’t want AutoGK to choose the output resolution, I clicked the “Advanced Settings” button and defined the image width myself (I chose the “fixed width” option and gave it the same value as the original file which was 640).

After some processor hums, the output file was created (along with some quite large temporary files in the “agk_tmp” folder). The output file sizes were 22.7 MB (quite close to the requested 20 MB) and 17.8 MB (10 MB is just not possible). Some images for comparison (original width is 640 px but I resized them to 450 px to fit on this blog’s layout):

Ai Araba IT'S ALL RIGHT
111 MB

Ai Araba IT'S ALL RIGHT
22.7 MB

Ai Araba IT'S ALL RIGHT
17.8 MB

Ai Araba IT'S ALL RIGHT
111 MB

Ai Araba IT'S ALL RIGHT
22.7 MB

Ai Araba IT'S ALL RIGHT
17.8 MB

The quality difference is significant but I’m still quite amazed that the 17.8 MB version is still intelligible. 6.5 MB is actually used for the audio stream, so if the audio bit rate is tuned down a smaller file size can be achieved (AutoGK can do it). Choosing a lower resolution will also make smaller file sizes possible.

What will the size of the image data be if the video consist of uncompressed bitmaps? The resolution is 640 px * 320 px. The duration is 4:44 and the frame rate is 30 fps. Using 24 bits per pixel, the size will be (4 + 44/60) min * 60 (sec / min) * 30 (frame / sec) * (640 * 320) (px / frame) * 24 (bit / px) = 41877504000 bit = 5234688000 byte (around 4.9 GB).

Murphy’s Law - 10:07 PM 7/22/2006

Murphy’s Law is a famous law in engineering that basically means “if something bad can happen, it WILL happen”. It is supposed to warn engineers not to dismiss potential breakdowns. However it can also be applied to daily life.

Example 1: My friend put a glass of tea near a laptop. What bad things could possibly happen? Well, the glass could be tipped off accidentaly. Murphy’s law states that it WILL happen (if not to him, to other people on the same situation). Well, it DID happen to my friend (eventhough the water splashed the laptop, luckily the laptop wasn’t broken). Moral: don’t put a glass near electronics because there is a possibility that the water will spill.

Example 2: I put a CD on my lap while doing other things. What bad things could possibly happen? The CD could fall. Murphy’s law states that it WILL happen (if not to me, to other people on the same situation). It happened to me. Moral: don’t put fragile stuffs on your lap.

Example 3: I ran towards a short solid fence to talk to someone across (actually to order food), and bumped myself to the fence. What bad things could possibly happen? Well, there could be some sharp stuffs on the fence. In my case, there was a nail and it hit me! Moral: don’t bump yourself to fences, walls, etc (what’s the use of it anyway?).

So, if there’s two way of doing something and it differs in safety, choose the safer one even though it might be slightly more inconvenient.

How to get CakePHP up and running on Windows etc

Wednesday, July 19th, 2006 by Agro Rachmatullah

Windows reinstall gone awfully wrong, contd. - 9:32 PM 7/16/2006

Luckily, Mas Sahal gave me permission to use hard disks on BID to transfer my data before repairing the partition. So on 13th I brought my hard disk there.

The day before, I had made a “free space” list of Mas Syafiq, Jay, and Hakim’s computer. I plugged my HD on Hakim’s comp because his comp’s case was opened. Jay’s HD had the most space but unfortunately other computers can’t access Jay’s HD using the Windows File and Printer Sharing protocol. Copying to Hakim’s HD was of course nonproblematic but copying to Mas Syafiq’s comp is. The speed is of course slower than a local copy and the network sometimes disconnects itself.

After enough copying to Hakim’s comp and Mas Syafiq’s comp I unplugged the HD and plugged it on Jay’s comp. I remembered half-installing Ubuntu on a partition some days before, so I reformatted the partition to NTFS for extra space.

The whole process was really time consuming. I was literally a pain in other’s *** that day, disturbing their workflow. When the last folder (”readings”) was being transferred, I visited LTI for a while before going back to BID.

When I was back there, Jay’s computer had been restarted and it was found out that it wasn’t bootable. It turned out that the partition I thought was populated by a half-done Ubuntu was already replaced by a fully functioning Mandriva. Since the boot loader was installed there, it dissapeared when I reformatted it.

Attempts to make the computer boot directly to the Windows partition failed. Therefore I decided to finish my hard disk trouble so that Mandriva can be installed back on Jay’s computer.

I plugged both my and Jay’s HD on Hakim’s computer. Then I proceded to delete partitions from the leftmost. However, before deleting all of them (”archive” and “transfer”), I noticed that my hard disk size is already detected properly. I could also create new partitions. So I left the the remaining partitions intact and hope that things would work out by just creating the need partitions.

After tranfering data back from Hakim and Jay’s hard disk, I plugged my HD to Mas Syafiq’s computer to get the remaining data. The process took a really long time and by the time BID will close the transfer wasn’t finished.

I asked Mas Syafiq the permission to borrow his HD, and he kindfully allowed me. So the task was finished at home.

Now I have a fresh Windows install and there seems to be no partition problems.

Running GTK# apps without Mono - 9:27 PM 7/16/2006

In my system, .NET 2.0 and Mono 1.1.16 is installed. I just found out that if the GTK# DLLs (gtk-sharp.dll, gdk-sharp.dll, glib-sharp.dll, atk-sharp.dll, pango-sharp.dll) are in the same folder as the executable, .NET will be able to run it.

As far as I remember, this isn’t the case with Mono 1.1.15. I found this “feature” by accidentally double clicking my GTK# app.

How did I get here??? - 10:54 PM 7/15/2006

Wordpress has a very cool feature which lets blog owners know what search keys people type to get to their blog.

To see this info, login into your Wordpress account and then from the “Dashboard” go to “Blog Stats”.

Here are the search keys that drive people here for the last 7 days…

Indonesian Grammar PDF
rpg games Create a character
when i reformat will my other partitions
nggak
pictures of grumpy dwarf
青空の涙
artikel pernikahan islami
jacoto kombilo
"moyo go studio" vs smartgo
folder option,task manager doesn't appea
mp3 resize free software
explorer² open source
mencegah untuk pacaran
JODOH dalam pandangan ISLAM
Windows UPDATE 8007007f
ubuntu earphone jack no sound
wordpress memory problem
w32.rontokbro@mm + removing
error 8007007f
speaker left/right change
masalah hubungan pacaran
Unable to load DLL (gtksharpglue).
media player classic dual core
breezy plane
I've regret zip
better archiver than 7-zip
making a life rpg
tatakau means
c# capitalize first word letter
Parts inside your printer are near the e
berpegangan tangan
mimpi basah dalam islam
JquickTrans doesnt work with SP2
Sekip Unit II
kanji 500 test gtk
mnemosyne flash card
Boab
breezy plane
adj-no

It’s interesting that a piece of writing I composed some time ago is visited a lot through a search engine.

How to get CakePHP up and running on Windows - 10:22 PM 7/15/2006

Cake is a PHP web development framework which employs the MVC model. I will describe how to set it up on a win32-based machine.

First install xampp (the lite version is fine) which consists of Apache, PHP, and MySQL. The install process just copies some files to a specified folder.

Next, run “setup_xampp.bat” located on the root xampp folder.

After that open “httpd.conf” located on “apache\conf” folder. Then uncomment the line that contains “mod_rewrite”. This is needed to enable Cake’s pretty URL such as “http://localhost/cake/users/view” instead of “http://localhost/cake/index.php/users/view”.

Afterwards, extract Cake somewhere in the “htdocs” folder. I usually put it in “htdocs\cake”.

The last step is to copy “database.php.default” in “app\config” of Cake’s folder to “database.php”. Then change the “$default” variable to suit your database settings. An example is:

class DATABASE_CONFIG
{
   var $default = array('driver' => 'mysql',
      'connect' => 'mysql_connect',
      'host' => 'localhost',
      'login' => 'root',
      'password' => '',
      'database' => 'test',
      'prefix' => '');
}

Which works with the default MySQL in xampp.

To see if things are working properly, run “xampp-control.exe” in xampp’s root folder and then start Apache and MySQL from there:

Starting Apache and MySQL

After that point your browser to “http://localhost/[cake's root folder]” for example “http://localhost/cake”.

Here’s some goodies:

Cake 1.1.5.3148
Cake 1.1.5.3148

Cake 1.1.6.3264
Cake 1.1.6.3264. Cleaner???

To learn how to use it, read “The Cake Blog Tutorial” in CakePHP Manual.

Windows reinstall gone awfully wrong etc

Saturday, July 15th, 2006 by Agro Rachmatullah

Windows reinstall gone awfully wrong - 11:00 PM 7/14/2006

On 11th I reinstalled Windows. As usual, the first step was to move important stuffs from drive C because I planned to reformat the drive. The things I copied, among others, was the Mnemosyne files (located on “C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\.mnemosyne”), my desktop (I actually didn’t show any icons on the desktop but I was too lazy to determine whether the files in it could be deleted), the YIC ladder code, and Moyo Go Studio (didn’t want to bring my hard disk to a friend that has a DVD drive to reinstall). For MGS, I also exported all related registry entries (just search for the term “moyo” and then intelligently pick the relevant ones).

Then I restarted the computer and booted into the SP2-slipstreamed Windows XP installation CD. Thing went fine up up to the partition list.

The setup asked for a partition to install Windows. I planned to use the first partition and reformat it before installing Windows. Since the partition is already formatted and I wasn’t sure wheter Windows will ask me to reformat it, I decided to delete the first partition (with the intention of later creating it and format it).

PS: It turns out that Windows will indeed ask to reformat an existing formatted partition. Therefore deleting and then recreating the partition is completely unnessesary.

When I then chose the empty space to install Windows, the setup said something along the lines of “Cannot create a partition because the maximum amount of partition has been reached”. The same message appeared when I explicitly pressed the button to create a partition on the empty space. Since I couldn’t continue the setup, I restarted the computer, hoping that this is just the installer’s stupidity and hoping that Ubuntu will be able to recreate the deleted partition. Of course an unexpected error on low level stuffs like this made me quite worried.

But the OS list didn’t appear. Instead I was greeted with a primitive GRUB console. Since I didn’t know GRUB, I tried booting into my shiny Dapper Desktop CD.

The CD booted fine but my NTFS and FAT32 partitions wasn’t listed on the desktop like last time. When I ran “gksudo gparted”, it displayed that my whole drive is unpartitioned! Hoping that gparted was wrong, I tried “fdisk -l /dev/hda” and it spat an error message along the lines of “Cannot access /dev/hda”. I was now really sure that all my data had been lost!

PS: It turns out that to do and fdisk you need administrative previledge. Try “sudo fdisk -l /dev/hda”

To do a final check, I rebooted back into the Windows installation CD. I was very relieved to see that my other partitions are still listed. So, there is hope that another Windows machine will be able to salvage my data.

I then went to Toni’s place. My partitions and the files inside are indeed readable. However Window’s disk management showed that my 80 GB hard disk became 100 GB!

My hard disk grows to 100 GB!

Creating a new partition can still not be done there. Partition magic even showed the same as Ubuntu’s gparted: my drive is unpartitioned. Using Toni’s drive as a transit for my data is impossible technically, so I went home…

To be continued…

Messy arithmetic - 8:32 PM 7/11/2006

For breakfast, I eat 3 loaves of bread. Nothing beats its cheap price and simplicity.

When I buy them, I try to find the one with the latest expiry date or equivalently the lastest production date. I went to Mirota Kampus today to replenish my stock, and I noticed that the bread produced at 9th expires at 13th. However the bread produced at 11th (+2 days) expires at 14th (+1 day). Bizzare.