Mini-DV to divx using mencoder
I occasionally have footage to take off my MiniDV camera and need to convert it to a format that I can easily burn and archive. I am not much into mastering DVDs, just being able to play the file on my computer is good enough for now. I've been using kino to do this job before, but that is hard to script. So I decided to play a bit with mencoder. I have no idea what I am doing, so I tried to encode at the highest possible bitrate/quality I could get out of the DivX (mpeg4) encoder.
notes on vserver
[ this entry will be updated as I think of more stuff to add ] ssh & X forwarding For a while I was having issues with ssh X forwarding to my vserver. Finally found the problem. The problem is actually with X authentication against localhost, and setting localhost to the IP address of the machine in /etc/hosts solved that. Also someone recommended putting "X11UseLocalhost no" in /etc/ssh/sshd_config. raw access to block devices
fast kernel logging
As part of some driver work for a client I looked at some fast logging methods since logging via printk() to syslog sucks. Here are the hits I got: ULOG - it's what netfilter uses for logging packets. It relies on netlink for transport and a ulogd in user space to treat the logs. Apparently ULOG2 is in the works. DBUS - patch from Robert Love that adds a fast event notification mechanism to the kernel. It too relies on netlink for transport. It's mostly meant for events like "Your CPU is overheating", not packet logging. relayfs - a patch that adds a flexible buffering scheme for logging. Seems like the most flexible of the bunch.
Digital Rebel for sale... GONE
I sold my 3 month old Canon "Digital Rebel" 300D. Upgraded to a Nikon D70... and what a huge difference that was. I do find the pictures that are produced with the D70 sensor not as high in detail under some conditions, however I must say that overall they are at par. The "big difference" comes in the rest of the camera. The interface makes it far quicker to access control options and the camera itself is faster to react -- no more missing shots because my daughter wont sit still -- and I can just shoot freely without checking if the memory buffer is full (my Rebel sometimes became unoperational when it was saving data to compact flash).
OpenOffice resources
Today I wasted 2 hours at work trying to figure out how to convert a word document to OpenOffice and preserve the numbering in the document sections. Actually, the corporate template I was using had the first 3 section styles defined with numbering (Heading 1, Heading 2, etc), but the 4th heading did not have a number preceding it. OOo and I had words, in the end I gave up.
photo editing
I've been taking digital images for over a year (maybe), but using Gimp for many years for just about any image manipulation. It's a fantastic program... possibly the best piece of (desktop) software on Linux. Anyway the point of this entry was to point you to this page: LinuxArtist's 2d application list which has a list of several other nice image related software packages.
WRT54G
The Linksys WRT54G (and WRT54GS) make for very nice firewall since you can install any (Linux) software you wish on them. The platform consists of a MIPS processor running at 200MHz, 16M (or 24M) of RAM, and 4M (or 8M) of flash. Here are some articles: The Little Engine That Could by Robert X. Cringely Hacking the Linksys WRT54G - a slashdot article Here are more technical links: LinksysWrt54g at SeattleWireless WRT54G - LinkSys site Linux on the WRT54G
Digital Rebel
About a year ago I put my SLR away since I very much enjoyed the quick feedback of the Canon A70 digicam... what I missed was the control and lens variety that come with an SLR. I got a Canon Digital Rebel (aka EOS-300D) for birthday this year. Before I decided on it I read a plethora of reviews on line. Here are a few good ones: Digital Photography Review Digital Camera Review Steve's Digicams Imaging Resource
Open Office templates
I got frustrated with Open Office today. I was going to write a document and peeked for the first time into the templates that open office came with. Well, was I disappointed to find a whole 2 templates. :) But it turns out that my third google search found the answer; a few of them at that... GetOpenOffice.org - OpenOffice.org Templates OO Extras - Extras for OpenOffice.org OOo Docs - The OpenOffice Documentation Project
bash vi editing mode
bash comand line For a few years now I've been using vi editing mode for bash and anything that uses readline. Here is how I've set things up. In .bashrc I use the following to enable vi editing mode: set -o vi This allows me to type as usual and use ESC to get into vi command mode. Since ESC is so far away I frequently use control-[... unless I feel I need the exercise.