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Burning files to a video DVD in Linux

2011-08-12T17:18:00.002-05:00

There are essentially two ways to store video files. The first is to burn them as files and the second is to convert them to a video DVD format and burn them that way. I am going to presume the reader knows enough about computers to realise what hardware is necessary. If this is not the case then it is best to learn more about computers before proceeding.

Installation of the software of choice varies depending on the installed distribution. Some distributions require the user satisfy dependencies where as others will handle the dependencies automatically.

The first method is the simplest. There are several programs which can be used for this purpose. Indeed the user can in the, worst case perform direct writes to the DVD burner. Programs such as K3B and Brasero are up to the task. My personal favourite is K3B because there are more options, such as verification of the burned DVD, and is slightly more user friendly.

Although it is possible to burn files from several different areas across file systems and networks, it is generally a good idea to gather the files into one place. This way it is possible to burn them as directories containing the video files. This is useful if there are a number of unrelated video files going on to a single DVD.

The second method is a bit more involved. It involves transcoding the videos to a form acceptable to DVD players, generating at least one menu (unless only one video is planned for the DVD), and finally generating an ISO image of a DVD containing the altered files. There are fewer alternatives for this method than the first. I have tried two and found the simplest to be a program called DeVeDe.

One of the dependencies is a program called mencoder. This is part of the mplayer program. The mencoder program may need to be installed separately. Other programs will use ffmpeg or transcode for the same purpose.

DeVeDe provides a good amount of compression by itself. It is possible to change the bitrates of the audio and video components of the video file. Most file formats will tell the program the original values for the video. Others will not. Generally it is a good idea not to use values larger than the original values because nothing will be gained by doing so.

The most common settings to change would be the quality settings (this affects the video) and the audio settings (stereo versus 5.1 Dolby). Trial and error on specific players is the only way to determine what the optimal settings are.

Depending on the computer used there are additional settings in the lower left (click the '+' sign) which will allow multi-core extensions to be used. In the same group of settings the user can determine how far along they want the creation of the disk to proceed.

Menu settings are in the middle near the bottom. They are pretty much self explanitory.

There is a lot of general advice. If the target display device is an old style 4:3 TV there are problems with the width of the subtitles in many anime videos. Specifically those which are referred to as 'hard subs' will often go from edge to edge. This is not a problem with the newer 16:9 TVs. The method to correct this is to use mencoder separately to resize the video and put black bars around the border before using DeVeDe. Currently most subtitles are 'soft subs'. This allows the user to manipulate the width of the subtitles. I suggest a width of 80% so the viewer will not lose part of the subtitle to the plastic at the edge of the screen. If the user is like myself (in need of strong corrective lenses) they may want to put a black border around the subtitles for easier reading. The form factor value is a floating point number in the range of 0 to 10. The larger the number the thicker the border. If there are multiple subtitle streams it is best to set the subtitle ID as an extra parameter in the advanced settings.

Some MKV files pose a problem for the July/August 2011 version of mencoder. Although the files will play more or less properly outside DeVeDe, they will not play properly within it. There are two major problems. The first is the subtitles stay on the screen until the next subtitle appears. The second is the audio and video get out of sync. The first is corrected by using the MKV demuxer instead of the default. The second is corrected by telling the encoder not to skip video frames and to correct the synchronisation every '0' seconds.

Here is a sample of what I use as extra parameters in the advanced options for encoding to a 4:3 TV using an MKV file as a source. These need to be done in order.

-sid 1 -subwidth 80 -ffactor 10 -noskip -mc 0 -demuxer mkv

An alternative would be to put the following configuration file into the '~/.mplayer/mencoder.conf' file...

# mencoder configuration file at ~/.mencoder/mencoder.conf

# Subtitle stuff. For 4:3 TV 80% of the screen. 10 pixels around subs.

subwidth=80

ffactor=10

# Uncomment the line below for proper display of MKV subs. Use this here if no menu is planned.

#demuxer=mkv

# Sync audio and video

skip=NO

mc=0

Apart from the demuxer line, the rest don't do any harm to the video.

An interesting bug/feature of Simply Burns (Mac)

2011-05-21T22:58:00.002-05:00

I was having trouble burning some files this afternoon. I thought I wasted four DVDs. It turns out it may be the way the filesystem wants to handle file names at the root level of the disk. By putting the problematic files into a folder and putting the folder at the root level of the disk, the problem was solved.

Must have software for shell users of OS X

2011-05-21T22:52:00.002-05:00

iTerm allows the user access to additional features not provided by the pre-installed Terminal program. Such as custom backgrounds, saved settings, middle mouse click copying, and other features available in Linux shells.

I've also found programs from MacPorts (or similar packages) to be quite useful when I need things done very fast. For example ncftp, unrar, and par2. There is also a problem with finding 7zip for the Mac. This can be installed from MacPorts.

Some people advocate gedit (a cross-platform text/program editor). I personally like Text Wrangler.

Something interesting about VirtualBox

2011-05-21T22:43:00.002-05:00

I'm not really an expert on most of the things I am testing out so I keep track of the things I learn here.

It seems as though there are at the moment four networking options avail to VMs in VirtualBox. The first is not to allow networking. This cuts off access to ALL networking programs. The second is a NAT. Essentially this allows the VM access to the network with its own pseudo-router serving up a Class B private address. The third is a bridged network. This allows the VM to aquire a DHCP generated IP address from an external router. I haven't really looked at the fourth setting.

To allow access to the CD/DVD burner the CD/DVD needs to be set to passthrough. Unfortunately I haven't been able to get it to work yet.

I tried a webcam recently and although it was recognised there was no video or audio on the screen.

FreeBSD 8.0 on an old IBM Thinkpad

2010-09-28T15:31:00.003-05:00

This one was some adventure...

I'm going to mention something out of order but it is best to do this first. If anyone wants to get graphics working on this machine they first need to realise xorg (the graphics program) does something nasty with the keyboard. This is not universal across all machines. It turns the numlock on. Not a big thing if you don't need the right side of your keyboard... After much research I found the solution is to install a program called numlockx from /usr/ports/X11. Installing a package from the ports is as easy as "make build" and if it completes successfully, "make install".

The next thing to do is to configure xorg from the root account. This is the sequence for that "Xorg -configure" then "cp /root/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf". Within that the following lines need to be added to the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file to enable the mouse and keyboard (NOTE: I am using single quotes instead of double quotes because the double quotes are used in the commands) 'hald_enable="YES"' and 'dbus_enable="YES"'.

Almost ready to to into xorg... There are still some things to do first. It is a good idea to enable the sequence in order to force quit xorg. Add this command to the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file... "setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp". Finally as a user add the following to the end of the .xinitrc file in the users home directory... "numlockx off".

Incidentally, configuring the sound follows the same procedure as outlined in a previous post.

Although going into Xorg is possible at this point most people prefer to install a more substantial window manager such as Gnome or KDE. These can be found in the /usr/ports directories. My personal preference is KDE. The procedure for KDE 3.x is given in the previous post I mentioned. To start KDE 4.x the following command is inserted into the first line of the users .xinitrc file... "exec /usr/local/kde4/bin/startkde".

At this point the GUI is ready to run. On this particular machine I found it took all day to install Firefox. OpenOffice was a memory hog and wouldn't install. The alternative was KOffice. That worked decently well. I wanted to install some other programs but there wasn't much I could do with a 10GB hard drive... I gave up on it as a lost cause and returned it to the recycling folks.

Adventures upgrading to OS X 10.6

2010-02-07T13:15:00.002-06:00

I discovered some interesting things about the Mac last month. My PC was down for a while until I replaced a hard drive and so I was motivated to do some needed upgrades to the operating system.

The first thing I found was some of the applications I was using ceased to function under Tiger (10.4). They needed Leopard (10.5) or Snow Leopard (10.6).

When I went out to get 10.6 for the machine I found Apple was selling two versions. There was a $200 version and a $30 version. Two friends and the folks at the newly opened Apple Store said I would have to upgrade using the $200 version because I was skipping from 10.4 to 10.6. I asked around to see what the difference in the two versions was. There was something vague about iLife (which I didn't use anyway since I think it's pretty useless). I asked Bill M. from Call-A.P.P.L.E. about this and he said just to use the $30 version. Anything missing would be handled through the update procedure. It turns out he was correct.

After installing 10.6 I found a feature which had been available in Linux for years. This is the use of multiple desktops. They call it "Open Spaces". This feature is immensely useful on newer machines. It helps organise what is happening on the computer. Apparently this has been available since 10.5 but since I skipped that version...

One of the third party programs I was using broke under 10.6. GIMP (a Photoshop alternative) stopped running. After tracking down the problem I came to the conclusion Apple took out the X-tools from 10.6. Guess what GIMP needs to run...

In the process of looking for useful software for the Mac I found a couple of sites which let the user compile *NIX programs from source. I don't have the links handy, only the names. The one I used is Mac Ports. The other is FINK. There is a third but again, I don't have the name handy. I decided to try and install the GIMP from Mac Ports and it failed. However I did manage to compile a news reader called PAN. The thing is it took a long time to satisfy dependencies before it was finished.

Understandably the Mac now has substantially less space on the hard drive.

Mint Linux

2010-02-07T12:59:00.002-06:00

I've been trying out Mint Linux (http://linuxmint.com/) for the last few months. It is a multimedia distro based on Ubuntu. My motivation is I would like to find a usable distro for the "average user". I tried version 7 and was impressed. Version 8 is less impressive but still functional. When the 64 bit version came out I gave it a try and was not impressed at all by the way it handled KDE. Granted both Mint and Ubuntu prefer the Gnome interface, I prefer KDE. Gnome works fine for those looking to give it a try.

As with most modern Linux distros Mint comes on a live disk (CD/DVD). This is to say it will run off the disk and not touch the hard drive on a computer unless the user chooses to do so. The option to install the operating system is available as an icon on the desktop. It's sort of a "try before you buy" situation. The thing the user needs to bear in mind is because it is running off of the disk it will be SLOW. Once installed on the hard drive it is much faster.

This particular disro has a fairly high "wow" factor. Particularly if the user has an interest in multimedia.

Access to OS X pages on personal machines

2008-11-15T18:24:00.000-06:00

Those who are considering enabling the web server on their OS X machines should be aware of the location of their web pages.

The system web page is located at /library/web server/documents. The users web page can be found in the sites folder in their home directory.

Access to the system web page is through the name or IP of the computer. The users pages are accessed by the name or IP of the computer followed by the “~/” and the users ID.

Tried out an interesting program

2008-05-17T00:06:00.002-05:00

I saw a presentation on Tuesday at the MUUG (http://www.muug.mb.ca). The topic was on Network Attached Storage. There were two products demonstrated but being a stereotypical Winnipegger I decided to try out the free one. The program is FreeNAS (http://www.freenas.org).

So, what the heck does FreeNAS do? It is in essence an easy way to gain access to massive (by todays standards) amounts of storage. It is a network file server. There are about a dozen access methods the administrator can enable. I've tested three of them to this point and they work. I've tried it from an OS X box where I can access everything easily. I tried it from my fathers XP box where it was less easy (because I know very little about XP - it also insisted on accessing the server by IP address rather than by name). Xubuntu on a PPC worked fairly well, but I wasn't willing to put a lot of time in to it. My Kubuntu (7.10) PC wasn't able to access CIFS (Windows networking) because I didn't have it set up properly, but everything else worked really well.

The setup was remarkably easy. Granted I had to do it a few times because I didn't read the instructions. Just boot from the live CD, install the full system to the hard drive, and set up an IP for the computer. From there login with another machine via HTTP. Configuration is a snap. The part which caught me was I was mounting the OS partition and not the data partition of the first hard drive. It took me four hours to figure that out. From there it was real easy to determine the configuration of the server. Once the server was configured and the partitions mounted it was time to enable the services. Again, very easy.

What I found most impressive was the low system requirements. First off it's because it runs on Free BSD (http://www.freebsd.org). Everything else is very small. Although I allocated 80MB to the system, I think I saw where I might be able to get it down to 32MB. Yes folks I wrote "MB" not "GB". In addition to being able to run on a minimal system there are other benefits to running a PC BSD system. It is perhaps the most stable PC operating system out there. It is very secure. It is very fast (perhaps the fastest there is). Here is the cool part... It bypasses the PCs BIOS and accesses the hard drives directly. This means older PCs are not limited as to the size of hard drive they can use. Finally, any storage drive, if connected properly, can be used on this machine. The administrator is not limited to four IDE devices.

As I can afford them I will be installing large hard drives into the old system I was using. It should prove useful.

I switched video cards

2008-03-26T11:27:00.002-05:00

I switched video cards recently. I found the Radeon drivers for Linux had been updated and no longer supported my Radeon 7000VE. The symptoms started when I updated my version of Ubuntu. It turns out I was able to get into text mode but no GUI. This was really strange since the card had worked before.

Going back turned out to be an option once. The second time I tried, the operating system wouldn't even install. I expect this sort of behaviour from Microsoft not Linux!

Well after trying several options to get my Linux running it turned out the best solution was to get a new video card. Why not... They are fairly cheap. If you have the money that is... It took me a month to save up the cash. All I can say is thank you to Joanne and Bill for sending me the Mac Mini last summer. I would have been stuck otherwise.

I settled on a GeForce FX5200. As a friend describes it... "A budget card but still nice". The card functions out of the box. There are 2D drivers for it which are nice and stable. I can do just about 90% of what I did with my Radeon 7000VE. Some programs such as WINE whined and partially functioned. Other programs such as Warsow complained there wasn't enough video RAM then decided not to work.

After a month of this my friend Dave C. told me how to install the 3D drivers. After previous problems I got smart and backed up my xorg.conf file. The first time around with KDE it didn't let me install anything. I tried installing the drivers directly from the NVidia site with no joy. They installed but I had the same problems as before. I couldn't get into graphics mode. Dave was perplexed. After a couple of days he came back and suggested I install the Gnome desktop and try it from there. No joy there either. Then he suggested I run some configuration program. This whined and said I was missing something. I installed the missing package and the configuration program worked. I had 3D. Of course I had to log out and restart the X Server.

WINE functioned again. Warsow worked. There were some additional effects on the screen. Not too shabby. I rebooted and guess what? No graphics mode. I backed up the xorg.conf again to a different file. Then I restored the 2D xorg.conf. The reboot worked and I had graphics again. I checked and there was the same problems I had with 2D before. I restored the 3D xorg.conf, logged out, and restarted the X Server. All the 3D stuff came back.

Since I don't use the 3D drivers all the time, I guess I can live with manually switching the configuration file as I need to use it. It would be nice if it worked properly though.

Reformatting an NTFS drive in OS X

2007-06-27T15:10:00.000-05:00

I was loaned a PC hard drive formatted to NTFS (which is notoriously difficult to remove) a little while ago. The owner had given it to a friend and both said there was nothing on the drive and there was nothing they could do with it. It so happened I was running out of room on the Mac so I went out and picked up an external box which has both Firewire and USB 2.0 on it. As soon as I plugged it in I found the three NTFS partitions. It complained I didn't have permission to do anything with it. Since there was indeed nothing useful on it I figured it would be smarter to reformat it in HFS+ (the standard Mac format).

Hunting for the instructions wasn't all that easy. I had to refer to a web page. There I found the command to perform all sorts of functions related to the hard drives was the "diskutil" command. To properly access it the user/administrator needs to go into the terminal and type the command. From there the program gives instructions on what works and how to do it. Fortunately for me it catches improperly phrased commands otherwise I would have lost the internal drive. To format an external drive use the following command as a guide...

diskutil filesystem_type new_name /dev/disk*

Within a couple of seconds, things are working like a charm.

Useful utility in Linux

2007-05-02T17:23:00.000-05:00

This may also work in other forms of *NIX. I haven't gotten it to work in FreeBSD though.

The "pstree" command lets the user see their processes in a tree format.

More FreeBSD stuff

2007-04-02T14:17:00.000-05:00

First off I wanted to configure my system to use the bash shell. I managed to do that in the last post. Having bash running I wanted to configure it with a bunch of aliases. I found the .profile file controls the text mode shell. Whereas the .bashrc file controls the shell in graphics mode. I have not found where I can set up the aliases for ssh. There are sample files on the net. If they are too hard to find then check out the link to Call-A.P.P.L.E. and take a look at the March or April issue. Do NOT use the .bash_profile file!

The other thing I wanted to do was to configure the sound to work with KDE. The quickest way to do so with the generic kernel under FreeBSD 6.X is to add the following line to the /boot/loader.conf file...

snd_driver_load="YES"

The next time the system reboots the appropriate files will be created and the sound will work. This may be an inelegant solution. If there is a better one, write me at Call-A.P.P.L.E.. It may take a while, but I'll eventually get the message.

Post install adventures with BSD

2007-03-24T21:12:00.000-05:00

Changing the shell:
I like the bash shell. I'm used to it. I run it with Linux. BSD uses a different shell by default. It might be csh or just plain sh. I'm not sure.

I tried the chsh (change shell) command and it wouldn't let me change any information. I did a "man chsh" to see what was up. It looks as though it was deprecated in favour of the chpass command. It's a more powerful command and potentially more dangerous. To change the shell the following command is used.

$ chpass -s bash username

Like the sudo command this needs to be followed up by entering the user password.

Changing the monitor resolution:
Thanks go out to the folks at http://www.bsdforums.org for having this tip on their web page.

As root, perform the following steps. Remember it is case sensitive.

$ Xorg -configure
$ cp /root/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf
$ xorgcfg -textmode

This was all I needed to convince it my monitor ran at 1024x768. Read the web page and heed the warnings about messing with the card.

Update:
The Screen section of the xorg.conf file needs to be updated so there is a DefaultDepth section and a mode line for the appropriate depth. The modes are the resolutions enclosed in quotes. For example:

mode "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"

Pressing the Ctrl and Alt keys and the "+" or "-" on the keypad should switch resolutions.

Setting KDE as the default window manager:
The default window manager is (I think) twm. It is really bare bones. To run any kind of application the user needs to type it into one of the three shell windows provided. If one is going to use a gui then why not use a powerful one. The tip for this one can be found on http://www.freebsd.org under the desktop environments page. Enter the following command from a shell prompt.

$ echo "exec startkde" > ~/.xinitrc

Setting up the panel:
This is a little more tricky. Once KDE is running use the right mouse button to select "Configure Desktop". From there hunt around for the location to change the function of the right mouse button. Change it to "Application Menu". From there it is possible to go in and change the settings for the panel to make it visible. Once visible, change the function of the left mouse button back to the way it was.

Misc:
Some applications normally visible with Linux need to be started from the command line. It is possible to add these to the application menu with a bit of effort. Firefox is a good example.

Reinstall fuse/Ubuntu

2006-12-13T19:30:00.000-06:00

I had a reinstall of Ubuntu recently. The update didn't work out too well. Anyhow I was having trouble with fuse. I made sure all the components were installed from the package manager. It still wouldn't work. From there I found issuing the command "sudo mknod -m 666 /dev/fuse c 10 229" would insure the /dev/fuse file was created.

Unfortunately that didn't solve the problem. I asked my friend Scott (one of the developers) if it was likely I missed something. He suggested checking to see if my user were part of the fuse group. It turns out the user had full access to fuse.

From there I did a bit more research and found the /dev/fuse file gets created as needed. Wasted effort earlier? who knows...

Then I decided to get nasty and look up the error message at google.ca/linux. There were two things to do. I first did "sudo modprobe fuse" followed by "sudo modprobe -l fuse" to be sure it was there. Still didn't quite solve the problem. Reading further, I found I had to issue the following command (and will have to do so for each update of fuse). "sudo chmod 4755 /usr/bin/fusermount". That did the trick.

Datatrain DC619 monitor under Linux

2006-11-02T15:47:00.000-06:00

I wanted to do more than 1280x960 on the machine and had a hard time getting it to work. I was editing the refresh rates as well as the mode lines (resolution) in the xorg.conf file. I remembered I had an old file where it said the monitor was made by someone else. It seems this monitor is really a Samsung 17GL.

Anyhow, I set up the monitor settings to that particular set and it works. Since the monitor is a widescreen model I figured I'd make the best use of it I could. Now I'm running 1680x1050 @ 60Hz.

Upgrading Ubuntu from Dapper to Edgy

2006-10-27T11:00:00.000-05:00

NOTE: After some problems, people have come to the conclusion it is better to acquire an "Edgy" CD and do a complete reinstall. For those who have been keeping up with the betas the problems have been minor if any. The rest of us have had to do things like reinstalling the xorg stuff as well as other files.

This page has the instructions. I didn't have any joy with #1 but #2 seems to be working out.

BTW, save your /boot/grub/menu.1st file and system stuff (advice from the page).

http://www.debianadmin.com/upgrade-ubuntu-dapper-to-ubuntu-edgy-eft.html

Amusing: How to date a (male) geek

2006-10-24T14:32:00.000-05:00

I guess the point of this is to figure out what you want and how to deal with extreme politeness.

Maybe I should add more as time goes on

How to date a geek
http://penguinpetes.com/b2evo/index.php?title=one_for_the_ladies_how_to_date_a_geek_gu&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

Geeks On: Valentine issue (wives of geeks speak out)
http://www.geekson.com/archives/archiveepisodes/2006/episode022406.htm

FUSE with Ubuntu

2006-10-22T12:14:00.000-05:00

I may have mentioned FUSE before. It is a program which is integrated into the newer Linux distros. This program allows users to mount directories on remote computers as if they were directories on the local machine. An interface program such as sshfs or ftpfs (there are about two dozen at this time) connects the local computer to the remote computer using various protocals depending on the servers installed on the remote machine. So far I've managed to mount both a Mac and Linux box on my local Linux machine.

The program is fast enough (over a 100 Mb network) to play MP3s. I haven't tried videos yet. I tried this before I replaced a 10 Mb NIC with a 100 Mb NIC. It was a pain. The connection was too slow.

With Fedora 5, I was able (barely) to compile the interface program and install it. This approach didn't work with Ubuntu. Under Ubuntu it's a matter of finding the appropriate selection in the package manager and install it. Ubuntu configures everything.

Something cool about E-mail addresses

2006-09-07T11:45:00.000-05:00

Apparently it is possible to enhance ones E-mail address with a comment. It is part of the definition of the address but is not universally implemented.

The method is to add a "+" sign after the name part of the address then the comment. For example president+you.are.such.a.goof@whitehouse.gov.

While useless on the face of it, there are potential useful things which may be done.

One thing which was suggested was when registering for things, include the name of the place when they ask for an address. This way the user knows who is selling their address to spammers.

The second thing was the potential to filter messages. For example the user could whitelist a series of codes sent as part of their E-mail addresses. When someones remote computer gets compromised the owner of the remote computer can be notified immediately and the code disabled/filtered as spam.

I've tried this with four servers and had a 50% success rate. It works with GMail and Shaw, but not Call-A.P.P.L.E. and Autobahn.

First impressions of Ubuntu (Dapper Drake)

2006-09-07T11:26:00.000-05:00

Over all this is quite an improvement over the previous version (Breezy Badger). The install was very fast. The base packages are on the CD. Other packages are downloaded from the net and installed in a fairly short time.

Once I got my head around the way things are done it was an easy transition from Fedora 5. The root account is disabled unless the user reboots into recovery mode. Any commands which need to be executed as root are done with the sudo command. FYI, it is the user password which needs to be supplied. Updates and new software installations are done through the GUI.

The only thing is I have a problem with not going through the text prompt first. There are problems with the GUI if the user or "/" hard drive is sitting at 100% usage.

Apart from that everything works. I even installed KDE and got it running. Since I was able to eliminate much of the programs I did not want (or at least found out why they needed to be there) compared with Fedora 5, the system operates much faster. In the end I installed a few additional bells and whistles so it operates at the speed of Fedora 2.

Overall I am satisfied (for the moment) with the change.

Content note

2006-07-20T03:47:00.000-05:00

I'm not a one dimensional person. I very much enjoy artwork. From time to time I will find a web page with cartoons. I enjoy the creative side of life as much as the next person. Look along the right side of the page for a list of cartoon pages I have found (or been sent).

A couple of people mentioned they can't post comments to this particular blog. The reason is because I'm using it as a notebook. The (now daily) stuff which is more serious and readers can send in their comments is located at the Call-A.P.P.L.E. site. Again this can be accessed on the right side of this page.

First impressions of Fedora 5

2006-06-10T16:54:00.000-05:00

Downloading the DVD version was tough. It stalled out twice at 99% complete. I eventually used the G3 to get it via Bittorrent. The install process took two hours. As before the Fedora/RedHat folks just don't get it. I do not have a Laptop. I do not want "chat". I'm not on dial-up/DSL. I do not have a Palm Pilot. I do not want a Personal Information Manager (PIM). So why do they install the stuff after I specifically make it a point to take it out? At least they fixed the problem with the power management software suspending programs.

The updates took longer than the installation but not as long as it took to download the DVD. The first time I ran the updates it looked as though it would take all night. I just shut it down and started again this afternoon. The key to doing updates is to do the critical ones first and then divide the remainder into multiple sessions. This way something gets installed.

It's interesting to see Windows isn't the only bloated operating system anymore. I have so much garbage running on my machine, it is far slower than it was with Fedora 2.

Again the default is Gnome for the Window manager. I used "switchdesk -kde" to change to something more familiar. They also defaulted to a graphic login. I edited "/etc/inittab" to fix the problem.

Before I get back to fixing things up... CHECK YOUR GEOGRAPHY PEOPLE! CANADA IS NOT PART OF THE UNITED STATES NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU WANT IT TO BE! FIX THE TIMEZONE AND LOCALE SETTINGS!

Changing shells in OS X

2006-05-18T02:58:00.000-05:00

I've been looking at the shell (text mode) program provided by Apple for OS X. Of course everybody knows it is in the main system directory under applications -> utilities -> terminal... There are several shells to choose from. Since I am familiar with Linux on the PC I chose to use the one they give us as a default there. Namely bash. Apple chooses tcsh as their default. Bash is a little more powerful than tcsh.

The way to access it is under applications -> utilities -> netinfo. Login as the administrator account to make the changes (under user) otherwise the whole system will be locked down. Even the chsh (change shell) command won't work. I went as far as editing the password files with no joy. This process worked for me.

Code samples

2006-04-28T12:46:00.000-05:00

I have a web page I keep for code samples. It is located at http://members.shaw.ca/digitalcivilization/samples.html.

Tech-TV spinoff

2006-04-17T14:36:00.000-05:00

It seems as though a bunch of disgruntled Tech-TV folks have started a web page. These people are fairly knowledgible and the show is very useful for newbies and moderate users. Even experienced "geeks" might find individual items of use.

http://twit.tv/

RAM drive in Linux

2006-04-08T13:26:00.000-05:00

Some Linux distros set up a RAM drive called /dev/shm. I find it takes up quite a bit of RAM. I decided to check if it was really needed. I edited the /etc/fstab file and commented out the line defining the device. I found the computer operates a little smoother (but not much).

I have yet to test it with VMWare. Since it is fairly memory intensive it should function better.

Downgrade for stability

2006-03-26T18:22:00.000-06:00

The G3 was down for a few weeks. I finally found the time to fix it. The problem was I tried using a third party piece of software to try to bring it up to a newer version of the operating system. It didn't work too well. I eventually went back to the version of OS X which was installed on the machine.

The reason I tried to install a newer version of OS X was the final patch in the 10.2 line caused instability in my machine. It would reboot every five or ten minutes. When I had installed the original 10.2 I noticed it was decently stable. It was the 10.2.8 patch which caused the problems. This last time around I installed the patches up to 10.2.6 (the patch before the last one). The stability problems are gone but unfortunately I lost Safari. There are a couple of other tweaks I need to perform but at least I have software running without reboots.

Oddly enough this pattern is repeated with M$ and Linux. Allowing an M$ box to autoupdate caused instability with an ME box I was running. My solution there was to reinstall ME and disable access to Microsoft.com. Normally this isn't a very smart thing to do. I eventually reinstalled again and completely disabled access of ME to the net. ME has never run so well. With Linux (specifically Fedora) the transition from Fedora 2 to Fedora 3 was nasty. Third party software wouldn't install. I tried compiling a couple of video players from source and standard C libraries weren't found. When I tried accessing the CD drives, they had been moved to a different location in the device list.

Sometimes it's a good idea to take one step back to get two steps ahead.

Reaction to a web page

2006-03-04T12:32:00.000-06:00

http://www.e.govt.nz/policy/open-source/open-source-legal/

This is apparently a legal opinion from the New Zealand government about open source. I took a quick look at it and have come to the conclusion the people writing this opinion aren't very bright or thorough. Specifically they don't compare the nature of open source software with commercial/closed source software.

There are a number of relevant points to consider with commercial software.

1) There is an upfront cost.
2) There may be hidden costs (eg. forced upgrades) in the future.
3) The software may not be compatable with some other piece of software.
4) There is no guarentee it will perform as advertised (or even work).
5) The end user can not modify the code if they find a bug.
6) Licenses are usually more restrictive than open source licenses.
a) Each machine using the software may have to be licensed separately.
b) Each site may have to be licensed separately.
c) When software becomes obsolete an upgrade is forced or must be purchased at additional cost.
d) Some licenses forbid transfer of license from one entity to another.
e) Home use (work from home) may not be covered with a commercial license.
7) In the case of development software, unlike open source software, distribution is usually limited to specific platforms (eg. no C# on anything but Windows).

In essence, with commercial software the end user is stuck with what they have purchased. If the vendor/author chooses not to accept customer suggestions (as is their right) the customer is out of luck. With open source the customer can make a change and must submit the change back to the author (the original program wasn't the property of the customer to begin with).

As to security... Tis to laugh. Updates are much slower in coming. Good guys have a harder time finding the problems. Bad guys don't care. If a program is well written there will be less security problems. Unfortunately with commercial software there is no reason for it to be well written.

Fragmentation is another problem. I have worked in offices where they had to purchase multiple (incompatible) word processors because none of them had all the features they wanted. Repeated requests to the companies fell on deaf ears.

In the end, there is a place for commercial software. The customer shouldn't be under the illusion it (or the various licenses) are any better than open source software or licenses. It's fine to express an opinion but government officials should examine all sides of an argument not just one. In this specific case one can only guess at their motivation. Maybe examination of their stock portfolio or vacations may be in order.

OS X stuff

2006-02-19T12:17:00.000-06:00

While my Linux box was out of commission I was using OS X 10.2 on a beige G3. It was nice but rather reminded me of Windows 95 in terms of stability (reboot after reboot). It is also tough finding some office programs to fit into a 160MB machine. NeoOffice is an OpenOffice spinoff. It requires 256MB for RAM.

I got a little tired of the reboots and figured I'd try and do something about it at Lowend Mac.com they talked about installing 10.3 and 10.4 with XPostFacto. They said it didn't like the internal video system. Fortunately the machine has some PCI slots and I happen to have a PC PCI video card. I installed XPostFacto and restarted. They were correct about not liking the internal video. I installed the video card, which was an earlier version by the same manufacturer, and the nachine didn't like that either. So my Mac is down for a while but my Linux box is back up.

Some people may say PC PCI cards might cause damage to the Mac or card. I've been reading on the net the cards may actually work. It's a try it and find out sort of thing. I actually confirmed this earlier while hunting for a USB 2.0 card. I found one at a local PC shop. It was a cheap card. What was said on the net was USB 1.1 was no problem. USB 2.0 was only available if the card adhered tightly to the USB 2.0 standard. Apparently Microsoft is more forgiving of sloppy work than OS X. The card only worked with a USB 1.1 device in the G3.

*NIX tip

2006-01-22T13:46:00.000-06:00

Sometimes when running a program to download files the settings will get lost. This happened a few times when grabbing a directory of files from Bittorrent (it's still legal in Canada). For the most part it was smart enough to realise it was a directory. This last time it couldn't deal with it. There was only two options. Start over in a different directory or download to the desktop (which is really the same thing). I used the terminal in OS X to create a symbolic link (ln -s) on the desktop to the data I had already downloaded. The program saw the link as the actual file and is happy.

Unfortunately I don't know where the new parts of the directory will be located. I suspect they should be located with the parts already downloaded.

Switching over to Mac for a while

2006-01-15T20:36:00.000-06:00

My Linux box blew a power supply. Man it's tough to live without all your favourite programs. While I'm getting if fixed I'm using a Mac as my work station. For the most part it's not a real difficult transition. I have some issues with the programs available for it.

I've tried two newsreaders. Hogwasher and MT-Newswasher. Both are fairly good. Unfortunately both make the assupmtion the server they are connecting to is stable. The server I use with my ISP tends to cut out. There is a free server I use but it is very tough to get in. As a result I have to sit in fromt of the Mac and constantly refresh the requests to connect to the servers.

Since my ISP is being very stupid about their NNTP servers (terrible completion rates and retention times) I am forced to run P2P software to download some free (fansub) video files. First off the activity is a) legal in Canada, b) encouraged by the fansubbers, c) sometimes encouraged by the owners of the copyright in the original country, d) physically easy to set up and maintain, e) cheap to run, f) fast enough for the people to get what they want ald leave without an impact on others. The edonkey network is OK if not a little slow. I haven't been able to get bittorrent to work properly so far (yes I did RTFM).

Given everything I've done today, edonkey is the clear winner.

Not exactly *NIX

2006-01-11T02:13:00.000-06:00

I was mucking around with XP in VMWare a couple of days ago. I found if the user goes to the start menu. Then to run. Finally enters "cmd" in the box... There's the DOS prompt.

Setting up servers (for newbies) in OS X

2006-01-10T22:45:00.000-06:00

A couple of days ago I talked about setting up the G3 as a server. Well I found out how to get some basic services running.

First make sure your LAN is running properly. Make sure your Mac is running properly. Make sure your "Local" machine is working properly. The Local machine is the machine with the client software.

Most of what needs to be accessed can be found in the "System Preferences" program in the Dock. You also need to be in an "administrator" account. Select "Network" from within "System Preferences". Change the method of assigning the I.P. address of the computer to "Manual". Pick an I.P. somewhere in your subnet in an area which isn't used by any other computer on the LAN and out of the range of addresses assigned by DHCP. Check your router for this information. If the information up to this point is confusing then it would be a good idea to read up on how networks function first.

Within "System Preferences", select the "Sharing" icon. From there look at the central portion of the window. One of the three tabs presents you with a series of check boxes. The straight forward ones are ftp (for transferring files), ssh (for remote control through a text screen), and web sharing (which is the Apache web server). Windows sharing is probably Samba. I haven't had an opportunity to try it out yet.

The first three servers work pretty much as expected. There are a couple of catches. The first is passwords are case sensitive and can not be very long without causing problems on the Mac. The rule of thumb is stick to around eight letters and numbers. The second thing relates to Apache. Files are stored in the users "Public" directory. They can be viewed in any web browser with "http://I.P. Address of the Mac/~User I.D./Web page Filename". Substitute the coloured text with appropriate values.

There is supposed to be a way to remotely shut down the Mac. I haven't been able to do it yet. Then again I didn't set up my test account with administrator priviliges.

*NIX tip for new OS X users - Terminal

2006-01-10T22:36:00.000-06:00

Most of *NIX folks like to use the command line/text mode to do things. In my case I find it's a lot faster to access programs from the command line than it is to go through and hunt many layers down through the GUI. The Mac really didn't have a text mode as far as I could tell, until they switched over from the classic System software to OS X.

Of course accessing the shell (which is called Terminal) is done through the Finder. Open up the primary hard drive. Locate the Utilities folder. Near the bottom is an icon labelled "Terminal". Do not confuse this with the one labelled "Console". Terminal is the program which gets the user into text mode.

It is possible to duplicate the program on the desktop or the dock (the menu bar with the icons). Most of the *NIX commands I have tried so far work.

Got a G3 a couple of days ago

2006-01-06T14:17:00.000-06:00

I'm setting it up as a server. It's fast enough to act as a backup workstation, but that's not what I need at the moment.

The machine is running OS X 10.2. System 9.2 runs really well but I don't know where to find server software for that OS. So, OS X is it for the moment.

I've found where some of the more interesting settings and utilities are located. Apple does insist on using different names for everything. ;-)

If I can get a complete day to myself where I'm not stressed out (these are becoming fewer), I should be able to get a few things going. I suspect it should be fairly easy to set up a server. I've already done it on a Linux PC and I hope the knowledge will transfer. If it works I might be able to start a business where I can sell used Macs as "drop in" servers.

Wallpapers in Linux

2005-12-31T23:40:00.000-06:00

Linux wall paper can be an image of almost any format. Since I use KDE, the tools I'm familiar with are in KDE. It is possible to have multiple desktops under Linux. From there it is possible to have individual images for each. Naturally this will eat up memory.

To locate the section which allows the user to set the wall paper, go to the "K menu" (same as the start menu for M$). Look for the control centre. From there select the "Appearence & Themes" item. From there it's the background option. Play around with it and have fun.

Icons on the KDE desktop

2005-12-31T23:34:00.000-06:00

Creating an icon on the KDE desktop is really easy. Right-click on a blank section of the desktop. Select "link to application". A dialog box with three tabs will appear. Only the first and third are necessary. The first lets the user select an icon and enter a description. The third allows for a further description as well as the program name, location, and parameters passed to the program. Basically this is the section where the user enters the command needed to run the program. Often it will be the same command needed to start it from the shell.

Something interesting about console DVD units

2005-12-28T12:28:00.000-06:00

A friend kept telling me cheap DVD units often contain computer DVD drives. Apparently they are not the same as the more expensive DVD drives. From what she says the cheaper units, containing the computer DVD drives, may not contain the circuitry to deal with zones. This means they are zoneless. The home user may be able to play a DVD bought outside their region.

I told this to another friend. He has a region four DVD (Australia). They had a movie which was not released to DVD in North America. He had a friend order it and ship it from Australia to Canada. Yesterday my friend went in to a lot of retail outlets to see if he could find something to play this DVD. The high end stores had something for over $100. For a single DVD, this wasn't appropriate. At one of the big box stores he found something for $35 (on sale). The sales person actually tried the DVD with the player. As soon as he gets the unit to the cash it rang in at $75. He said it was too much. I guess he's going to have to keep looking.

Public Domain/Free movies online

2005-12-28T11:55:00.000-06:00

The web site (linked below) archives a number of old movies for historical purposes. There are lots of movies on the site.

Internet Archive: Moving Images

Christmas music trivia

2005-12-24T01:02:00.000-06:00

I've always admired people who could draw. The same goes for musicians (I'm not bad but not great either). So, I suppose people could say I'm into animated cartoons. I pick up on trivia.

I heard on 20/20 tonight the author of the Peanuts theme (Linus and Lucy) was Vince Guaraldi and the movie it was from is "A Charlie Brown Christmas". If anybody likes the music they now know who to look for and the title of the song.

More *NIX info

2005-12-23T17:08:00.000-06:00

When working with a command line or shell it is possible to string multiple commands together on one line with a ";". For example "ls ; df" will execute the "ls" then the "df".

Another tip for *NIX users

2005-12-22T00:07:00.000-06:00

Occasionally commands can get too complex to enter on a command line. Perhaps the command is a very common one which is used frequently. Maybe there is a series of commands. The solution is a shell script. Enter all the commands into a text file. After exiting the file, perform a "chmod 700" on the file. This turns the text file into a shell script. Shell scripts can still be edited with a text editor.

It is best to set up the shell script so it can be invoked from any directory. Then the script can be moved to a location where it may be invoked from anywhere. This information is contained in the "PATH" environment variable.

Canadian election important for computer users

2005-12-20T13:39:00.000-06:00

The Liberal (the party in power) government introduced a bill in the last session (C60) which amends the copyright act. Having read the bill on the House of Commons web site, I have to wonder if any of these people "get it"...

The bill effectively ends all back up and fair use rights for material less than 40 years old (all those MP3s and videos become illegal over night and can result in jail and/or heavy fines). My MP (Member of Parliament) claimed it was to protect starving artists. Yet in the bill itself the only new thing the artist could do is to walk up to anybody and say "I don't want you using my work". The vast majority of the changes benefit the distributors/owners of the work (eg. the recording industry). There are heavy fines which get paid to the recording industry (the artist doesn't see a cent). The issue of what happens if someone walks down the street with a boombox playing a CD is addressed. They are in violation of the copyright laws.

Additionally, this bill makes experimentation/learning on ones own illegal if the person uses copyrighted work. For example, I am experimenting with burning video DVDs under Linux. If I create a video from clips (there was a 30 second rule of thumb for fair use) and an MP3, it would be illegal unless both the clips and the MP3 were more than 40 years old.

ISPs will have to "tattle tale" on their customers if the bill is reintroduced and passed. The hardware necessary for the ISPs to do this will increase the costs to the consumer and slow down the net.

Although my MP said this was a 100% Canadian bill, I noticed the authors used an American spell checker to correct the document. Therefore I suspect the bill was authored after influence was placed on the government by certain American institutions.

Presuming this is true, I can't imagine the Conservatives (aka Tories, Born Again Tories, BATs) having the backbone to reject anything coming from the States.

The disturbing thing is although the consumer went out and bought legal media contain a legal piece of work from a legal source, the right to use it can be removed at a whim of any number of people if this bill passes.

In Canada slightly more than half the people vote in federal elections. The MPs get elected by margins of 10% - 20%. Therefore if enough people went out and voted the results could be changed. Even if protest voters voted for someone else, it could scare the politicians into listening if the margin of victory were only 10 votes or someone unexpected gained position.

A *NIX tip for shell users

2005-12-17T20:15:00.000-06:00

When changing from one directory to another it is often useful to be able to return to the starting point. The command "pushd" acts just like the "cd" command except it remembers the directory in which it was invoked. The "popd" command is the other half of this pair of useful commands. It returns the user to the directory they were at before they issued the "pushd". It is possible to issue many "pushd" commands before issuing a "popd". In this situation the "popd" will return the user to the point where they issued the matching pushd.

Does hardware matter any more?

2005-12-16T22:38:00.000-06:00

Given the way some programs are being distributed the hardware doesn't matter. *NIX programs are typically distributed as source code. Whether the platform is a Mac with OS X or a PC with Linux, it doesn't matter. Here is a link to the article.

http://www.callapple.org/articles/callapple05121601.htm

Very interesting site with flash animations

2005-12-16T22:34:00.000-06:00

This site is run by two brothers as a commercial operation. New animations are free. They sell the archives. Be prepared to be amused and offended by the humor displayed by these two.

http://www.jibjab.com/Home.aspx

VMWare player updated

2005-12-16T15:23:00.000-06:00

Since this is the first post here on VMWare I think a bit of background is in order. VMWare is a program which lets the user run a number of virtual machines (the "VM" part of the name) on a single PC. The program is not cheap, but they do have a free 30 day trial. There are versions for M$, Linux/BSD, and Solaris. The user installs what ever operating system they want in a newly created virtual machine. Because it is running a guest operating system within a host operating system, it's best not to use a lightweight or older computer. Most computers within the last three years should be fine if they have enough RAM and hard drive space.

VMWare has decided to split off the player module and make it free to the public. They also have a number of free virtual machines the public can download (I'd like them to put up a BSD). Virtual machines created with the 30 day trial (at least the one I used a while ago) are compatable with the player. I have an older copy of Windows in a VM (yes I am a registered owner of Windows - the shame of it all). The effect of the last update was to improve the speed and sound. With another application running under my host operating system (FC 2), games and other applications are not as choppy as they were before the update.

The player can be found at the following link.
http://www.vmware.com/products/player/

Why Macintosh users should not call their machines Apples

2005-12-15T13:49:00.000-06:00

This is a strong opinion darn it!

As an old Apple// guy from the early 1980's I am constantly bothered by PC people and Mac newbies who claim to be having problems with their "Apples". It is really an annoying situation and Apple computers does nothing to discourage it.

Although Apple computers makes the Macintosh, they previously made a very different computer called the Apple// (pronounced Apple 2). This was a very popular machine up until Apple computers decided to cease production because it was competing with it's more expensive, proprietary, and closed arcitecture system called the Macintosh. Even today people are still using the Apple//. There are also active groups of people world wide. Searching for "apple2" in google will give some interesting results.

Next is the labelling of the product. Apple computers does not label their Macintosh line as "Apple". Although the Apple logo is there, none of them are labelled "Apple". They are all labelled with a variation of "Macintosh". On the other hand all Apple// computers produced by Apple computers are labelled "Apple".

Finally Apple// users having been there first tend to get rather annoyed when their favourite machine is confused with the machine which caused its premature death. There is not an Apple// user out there who won't correct the improper usage of the name. Feelings run so deep Apple computers is running scared from their old customers. They have (through their tech support department) gone so far as to say there never was an Apple//.

The need for user groups

2005-12-15T13:34:00.000-06:00

This is largely an opinion. There are a lot of people out there with computer problems. This is evidenced by a lot of the "Geek squad" type companies out there. The problem with companies like this and other "tech support" solutions is the user doesn't learn anything and has to phone the same people over and over. Sometimes paying large amounts of money for a simple fix.

How to and "dummies" books are OK but the information presented may not be exactly what the user needs. The more techincal books are fine for someone like myself but may not be suitable for everybody else.

User groups are generally open to the public. Sometimes they are free. In addition to coming up with a general solution, the user will learn there are often several solutions to a problem. Furthermore it helps the user take responsibility for their own system.

An interesting X-Mas video

2005-12-15T13:30:00.000-06:00

Hamish fired me the URL to a good video. It is so good I thought I'd share it with everybody.

http://members.cox.net/transam57/lights.wmv

Quick look at Open Office 2.0 and ODF

2005-12-14T22:56:00.000-06:00

I'm very impressed with what's been done with Open Office. There are a lot of improvements over the previous version. Here is a link to an article I wrote on the topic.

http://www.callapple.org/articles/callapple05121501.htm