Ogg to Avi

I finally found the way (again).

I needed such a way so that I could upload youtube videos of my screencasts. For some reason Youtube did not like theora vids, even in .avi format (something about my 1 min, 1Mb vid exceeding limits).

All I had to do after all to convert it into the more popular format after capturing it with Istanbul is:

mencoder input_file.ogg -ovc lavc -nosound -o output_file.avi

Instructions found here

This post is in part here to jog my memory in case I forget once more in the future.

Just one more distro change

Every time that I change a GNU/Linux distro I claim that I’m going to keep it for a while but for some reason as soon as some thing start to break down things always start to look brighter on the other side. So this is how I ended up looking toward Ubuntu once more.

For those that do not follow my distro jumping story (and I blame you not), last thing I was trying out was Sabayon Linux, after getting totally pissed off with my Ubuntu 6.10 installation where the system was hanging all the time without reason. Sabayon’s initial install seemed more stable and I thought to install it. (never mind the fact that the true culprit was Nvidia crappy drivers)

Unfortunately for me, Sabayon was much less stable than it seemed initially. I blame it on the absolute bloatware format of the distro. It just includes so many applications for the same purpose, along with 4 different desktop environment and generally every conceivable package that you could think of that it seems inevitable that something will break as soon as you start upgrading things. If only they had an install option to install a more minimal system…

At some point I had gotten fed up with my CD drives disappearing, Kopete crashing (I eventually used Pidgin which is very very nice), randomly failing HDD (OK that still happens) and having to use legacy nvidia drivers in order to have beryl without system halts, I found myself buying a new external HDD (about time and I thought to myself,

Why not buy a cheap VGA to see if that will stop the system halting with newer Nvidia drivers? If nothing else, you can keep your old one to finally setup the extra server you wanted.

And so I did. I grabbed a Geforce 8500 for 90€ who I mistakenly assumed would be better than my 2.5 year old Geforce 6600 GT AGP. When I reached my place, it occurred to me that if I’m going to go to all the trouble of setting up a new VGA, I might as well go all the way and install Kubuntu Feisty 7.04 which will give me a chance to check out the new Compiz-Beryl Fusion as well. Who knows, maybe the new, “Better and more Stable” version would not overheat my Geforce 6600.

S’yeah, right. The first installation failed because I wanted to keep Sabayon as a second OS but the damn Kubuntu installer did not have support for LVM and insisted on formatting my old boot partition if I were to use it. I couldn’t be bothered at that point to play with Grub so I installed the system in my old 80Gb HDD after freeing up my old 25gb “Storage Space” (Hah!) but no luck. Since the primary HDD is the SATA one, installing it on the ATA drive did not make the system boot the new boot loader as the MBR kubuntu wrote on resided in the inactive drive.
So I bit the bullet and after backing up crucial files (Porn), critical settings (Porn playlists) and other stuff I did not want to lose (Porn links) from the home directory I deleted the Sabayon LVM and installed Kubuntu on the freed partition while formatting the boot sector and keeping my home directory intact. I assumed that K[tag]ubunt[/tag]u would just use my old KDE/Firefox settings and I was mostly right. Unfortunately there were quite a lot of setting that did not work “just right” so I ended up resetting the KDE settings (read: rename the .kde dir) and pasting the app setting I wanted to keep in it afterwards.

The initial problem was that I could not install the propriertary nvidia drivers as in the official documentation as Kubuntu does not include the necessary restricted-manager script. No problem, I fired up the package manager and requested the installation. As it was not installed on the menu, I had to use it from the console but no biggie.
I then installed [tag]compiz[/tag]-fusion and used my gf6000 to see how it went. As expected, it halted the system just as I finished setting it up. No problem then, I opened the box, installed the new VGA and tried to use it. Well I was quite surprised when the restricted-manager told me that I do not have a restricted card, the system recognized it as VESA and no matter what I did, Kubuntu just refused to acknowledge that I had a damn nvidia card inside. Checking on the compatibility list, I discovered that my card was not supported by Ubuntu. *Groan*. Now I had to find out another way to install the driver. I did not want to use Envy as it was supposedly not compatible with the official way, but in the end I gave up and used it because nothing else seemed to work.

Fortunately that helped and my new card started using acceleration. Woe to me when I discovered that it was actually much worse, performance-wise, than my old card 🙁
It was at this point that I swore and decided to just buy a good card. Shallow? Quite. But at least I had

an excuse to get myself a present for my good job performance and after all it might allow me to play a newer game. So, I returned the card, became 200€ poorer and got me a Geforce 8800 GTS who I knew was supported this time.

I took me a while to install it because I did not realize it required extra power but I happened to see the appropriate holes as I was getting “hammer and saw” thoughts.

new vgaOne envy run later (no restricted-manager still said I did not have a restricted card) I got my acceleration going. I set it up and playtested it for a while. Fortunately it did not hang the system anymore.

Now there are a few more details to iron out (like the system not booting up at 1280×1024 even though I put it in the X.org) or allowing me finally to change languages with double-shift (which does not work, again) and stuff like that but from initial experience I believe that, other than a strange slowness issue, Kubuntu is much much more stable than his predecessors and surely more stable than Sabayon 3.3. Time will tell if this will continue. For now I am contect to play around with my new accelerated desktop.

[coolplayer width=”355″ height=”288″ autoplay=”0″ loop=”0″ charset=”utf-8″ download=”1″ mediatype=””]
Compiz-Fusion Rulz
[/coolplayer]

I’m thinking of making a nice video with the new version but I need an editing software that is not too hard to use. i tried Cinerella but it seems to like to crash so I don’t know how much I can use it. If anyone can propose a good screen capture setup (so that it doesn’t start to flicker when too many 3d stuff are drawn) and video editing for [tag]linux[/tag], I’d love to hear it.

10 Firefox extensions for the workplace

I’ve been recently using my ff at work because I just can’t work with IE anymore. Seriously, I feel that I’m going 5 years backwards when I’m forced to use IE6 because of a design feature or some other silly reason. As a result, I’ve discovered and used a few extensions that although not necessary for the home user, make my job, much more comfortable.

I know that there are a lot of top <insert number here> firefox extension lists out there but I haven’t seen one that focuses on the workplace and to helping staff use their ff with the least set up. This is mainly why many of the ones I list here, have to do with synchronization of some kind. Coordinating your home ff to the one in your [tag]workplace[/tag] makes it very easy to later on move offices, upgrade your machine and generally have a uniform access without too much hassle.

The other part I’m focusing in, is allowing [tag]Firefox[/tag] to integrate better in a classic, strict windows environment, where almost no-one uses it, and thus everything is optimized for Internet Explorer. Switching browsers, enterring passwords etc are all things that get annoying if you need to do them all the time.

Generally, I have other extensions higher up on my necessary list. Extensions such as adblock and TabMixPlus are always installed first, just because they improve ff functionality so much more. Then some personal favorites like del.icio.us and forecastfox that I use regularly. These however, are in so many top 10 lists that they are just not worth mentioning once more and they’re pretty subjective for each person anyway.
The ones I’ve chosen to mention are generally not widely used and hopefully other workers will discover how useful they can be.

Note: Obviously, this list does not work very well in a Linux/Unix or Mac environment, but I believe you will still find many of these useful nevertheless.

So without further ado, here’s my home-made (or should I say work-brewed?) list of…

10 useful Firefox extensions for the workplace

IE TabIE Tab

This is an extremely practical [tag]extension[/tag] for use with an enterprise intranet, designed with Internet Explorer in mind. My company, like many out there, did not really take in mind the browser compatibility when designing the Intranet; afterall, there is a standard and approved browser for the enterprise and most people don’t know better, right? Well…not if you take into account IT professionals.
For me it’s doubly annoying to go to click on a link and figure out it doesn’t work or go to a page that informs me it’s compatible with “Netscape” (!? which millenia is this again?). Previously in those cases, the only solution was to copy the url, open an Explorer (which means a few extra clicks since to clear the desktop and find the shortcut), paste the url in the address bar and GO.

Now, enter the IE Tab. All I have to do is right click on the link and choose “Open Link in IE Tab” and voila.
Not only that, but if I’m already looking at a page and figure out that it’s not displaying correctly because it is IE “optimized” (AKA PoS) then I can just click on the little firefox icon on my statusbar and the tab will instantly be reloaded with the IE engine (and vice versa). Finally, the whole idea of IE in a tab makes the whole browsing experience so much more seamless as I don’t have to juggle multiple windows anymore, even for IE6.

Also, there is that very handy feature that checks where you log on and automatically chooses the engine based on some rules you’ve set up. So if you have a page that only works with IE, you don’t even need to right-click and choose. Just add the site to the rules and when you connect to it, firefox will automatically load the IE engine for this tab.

There are some other features as well, but I think that I need to talk about the rest now 🙂

AutoAuth

I am especially annoyed by having to enter the same proxy password again and again when I open firefox (or IE for that matter). Something that becomes more annoying when firefox loads my previous session of 6 tabs along with some externally synchronizing extensions, I’m left with 8 password dialogue windows that I have to press OK at (assuming I’m using a master password, otherwise I’ll also have to fill them in as well). Not only that but when ff tries to update add-ons, it can’t because the proxy password is not enterred.

I initially installed AutoAuth to avoid enterring my details on the multitude of sites I check in every day. I soon discovered that I now don’t have to manually approve authentication to the proxy anymore, or to any other internal authentication system for that matter. Just open the page and I’m in. In conjuction with a Master Password and the following extension for added security, this takes away just one more type & click need.

Master Password Timeout

This is an extension that serves for that extra security. Just in case you have not set your screensaver to lock your computer and/or you forgot to set it to activate after a short amount of time. Now you can be rest assured that people won’t be able to login to your profiles and change your passwords and steal your dataz from the intarwebs. At least not on the sites that you don’t have a cookie 😉

Password Hasher

I pretty much explained why this is great in a previous post, but as an added bonus, you now have your password synchronized everywhere (since you only need to remember the master key that is) . Also, if you want you can use the extenstions export-to-html feature to generate a page that you use to generate strong passwords for other places that firefox can’t reach, such as an internal oracle db (generally not a good idea for windows passwords since you don’t have a way to generate the password while logged out).

Google Browser Sync

Google Browser syncThis is a great tool to keep Firefox on your work and personal computer, well, synchronized 🙂 I don’t know how many people use it yet, but being able to have the same bookmarks on both, in a non-disruptive way, has become one of my favorite gimmicks. Not only that but as an added bonus I can have the same cookies, passwords and even open tabs on both as if it was the same computer. No more emailing links to yourself to read later or put them through del.icio.us.

When using this extension, keep in mind not to put intranet links on your bookmarks (if you don’t want them synced that is) as there isn’t a way to exclude specific bookmark folders (yet) . I personally use the next extension for this exact reason 🙂 Also I suggest you first clear out your bookmarks on the new machine so as not to mix things up. I originaly did the mistake of activating the sync after a few months where my home and work computer had a completely different set. I ended up horribly messing them up on both.

Plain Old Favorites

Plain old Favorites

As I mentioned before, it always irked me that after using the previous extension, my home bookmarks where getting messed up. This became even worse when at some point I sat on a third computer with an old bookmark set that ended up mixing things one more time.

I found this solution to be much more organized. Now I can keep all my intranet or job specific bookmark on the side where they do not affect anything. Not only that but if I need to use Explorer later on, I do not have to import anything back. All changes I make to the favorites are visible for both browsers. It’s even got the same editing menu as IE (not that that is a great thing but anyway)

The only problem I’ve seen until now is that the context menu does not allow me to open a favorite in an IE Tab. Hopefully the feature of IE Tabs to open the correct engine by a site filter comes to the rescue.

Gmail Manager

Gmail ManagerChecking external mail has become sort of a short and frequent litany for many people, especially ones that do not like to merge their personal mailbox with their work one. However, it doesn’t look very good to be seen checking your mail all the time so this is an appropriate workaround. Gmail is also the superior free mail account at this moment of time and the most extendable no less, so this extension has a lot of features that you might find useful.

As an aside, I also prefer to use this instead of having gmail open in a tab, mostly because I do not like being logged in to gtalk from there.

And since we’re on the subject of gmail…

Better Gmail

I will not go into a lot of praise or details on this extension since you can already find many such reviews if you look around the internets. However the point where I especially like to use this extension on the workplace because it gives me a quick way to send emails from “mailto” links on the intranet without having to copy the address -> open Gmail – go to “Compose” > and paste the address. Otherwise my default mail client pops-up which uses my business mail address that I do not want.

This is of course just the icing on the cake since this extension is absolutely great for anyone that prefers to use Gmail’s own control pannel (as opposed to downloading everything through pop).

Foxy Proxy

If you access the internet through a proxy, like most enterprise environments do , then you either have to put the proxy information by hand or use an proxy configuration script provided by your IT department. Most of the time the first is not enough and the second is either non-existent or difficult to find.

Foxy Proxy gives you much more flexibility than the simple firefox configuration. Now you can have as many proxies set up as you like and by using the filtering patterns you don’t even have to select a proxy to use every time. You just set the default proxy for the internet and create another entry for the direct access with a whitelist of all the internal urls. If your organization uses even more proxies (say for anonymous access etc) then it’s even better for you.

If you are tech-savvy enough you can even set your private tor and run it behind the firewall for personal anonymity.

Tidy Meebo

Lets face it, everyone uses instant messaging these days and having your MSN, ICQ or whathaveyou blocked by those pesky firewalls is annoying. So what better way to access your network than to log in through Meebo? Once you login, all you have to do is pop all your windows out, protect the meebo tab (so that you don’t close it by mistake) and the the window sit on the background as a normal IM client…Well, there are those annoying ff status bars and location bars that make the whole thing look fake aren’t there? This extension solves exactly that. 😉

Yes, I know that this extension is probably completely unnecessary but I like it and at the least some more people might discover meebo from it 😉

Runner ups

Ghostfox

For those that are afraid of people looking over their back etc. This little extensions attempts to hide firefox when your mouse moves away from it’s window and then recover it in an “embedded mode” after a secret mouse maneuver. Only really necessary in extreme situations.

Google Reader Watcher

Similary to the Gmail Manager, if you like to keep up to date on various news but don’t want to have a tab open all the time and/or check the page frequently, you can use this discreet extension to keep an eye on the new items and head there when there is something to look.

And generally the Google Reader functionality is, as always, googlicious.

Foxmarks

A lite alternative to the Google Browser Sync. If you’re only interested in syncing bookmarks I believe this is a better option and to tell you the truth, I still use both (got burnt one too many times by the Google sync). The feature I like most about it is that you can force your browser to discard it’s current bookmarks and just download the ones you have online. An excellent option for a new Firefox installation.

Extras

Now that you have some nice extensions to make your job a bit easier, you might be interested in these simple tips that I’ve found useful as well.

Theme

I find it generally a good idea to have Firefox not stand out too much from the general desktop. If you use a colourful theme like BlueIce, you just scream to anyone throwing a glance at your side that you’re browsing the net. Even if the only thing you’re doing is checking some information on the Technet. I’ve personally found out that a discreet and integrated theme goes a long way to avoid attention. To this end, I’ve used Outlook 2003 Silver to camouflage ff as IE and then turned on WinXP’s silver theme. Obviously if you don’t care about this, use the Nasa Night Launch theme with impunity 😉

Size

If a lot of people are moving behind you, as in an open area, then reducing the size of firefox to a small window might help reduce attention. I’ve found that the best place to place ff to is Outlook’s preview window while modifying the size to the same as the window, remove the navigation and bookmark toolbars, and ff is now almost completely invisible, unless you open a fancy website 😉

Epilogue

So, that’s basically it for my personal top ten 😉 I hope that some of these might be actually useful to anyone other than me.

Of course, if you have any more ideas for extensions that might come in handy, feel free to send me a link.

Embedded vids

Yes! With the help from the coolplayer author, I’ve managed to rid myself from Youtube. Now I can embed videos directly from the gallery. It seems it is just enough to put the video’s download link within the coolplayer tags and the plugin does the rest. Unfortunately the only way for me to get that link is to use mplayer’s embedded “Get url” option to get it and even then I must edit the final link and replace the garbage in the end and the file type (ex .mp4)

I’m not certain if Andor used another way to get the necessary link, but I don’t want bother him too much with questions. I’ll look around and see what I can find. For now, since I know the format of the link, I can just change the ID of the file and enter the correct extension and I’m done.

PonytailYou can see examples in my previous blogposts, let me know if you see any problems

Now all I need is some way to put the coolplayer vids on the side as floating, similar to aligned pictures like the one on the left. That would be just awesome.

Χέστηκα πάνω μου

Καθώς ανέβαζα ένα συμπιεσμένο αρχείο με φωτογραφιες για να κάνω την δουλειά μου γρήγορα, η gallery έφαγε ένα κόλλημα και στην επόμενη ανανέωση τα είχε παίξει! Storage Error στην μάπα!

Περιτό να ‘πω ότι έκλασα μέντες για μια στιγμή αλλα ευτυχώς το μήνυμα είναι σχετικά γνωστό οπότε η λύση ήταν έυκολη (αν και μιας και δεν δουλέβει απ’ευθείας πάλι είχα φοβίες)

Αυτά παθαίνεις όταν δεν έχεις κάνει Backup…

Gallery

I made a huge upgrade on the way the gallery is working. Specifically I just installed gallery which is a much better piece of software than a simple plugin can be (although I must say that the plugin served me quite faithfully until now). The best part is that it supports videos as well while the organization (using keywords and albums) is vastly superior.

So I’ve spent the last two days configuring and uploading stuff on the gallery but I still have a long way to go to finish with it. I also installed the WPG2 wordpress plugin to allow me to integrate the gallery to my site but unfortunately it may be a bit more challenging than I expected, seeing as the theme I’m using is quite heavily modified compared to the basic one.

Nevertheless, progress is being made, and you can find the initial gallery here

Right now I’m still trying to find out why Firefox refuses to play mp4 and avi files. On the mp4 files it just asks for the quicktime plugin and on the avi file it gives out a no video error (even though Konqueror does not seem to have any problem playing it). It can play flv files quite easily but my problem is converting those mp4 files to flvs in the first place. mencoder seems to eat out the sound and I have no idea how to use ffmpeg (nor the time to learn).
I would however appreciate anyone who can try to see the videos on the gallery and tell me what works for him and what doesn’t.
In my humble opinion, the flash ones are the best since they have the best interface and play everywhere. However the conversion tools of Dreamhost and YouTube seems to drop the quality quite a lot compared to the original version.

Now that I mentioned Dreamhost. I just cannot be happy enough that I made this choice of provider. The automated tools have made my life SO much easier and the Bandwidth and Storage limits provided are just amazing. I literally installed Gallery2 within 20 minutes, fully configured.

Anyway, enough talk for now. Time to get back to configuring.

Seamless Zoom

Here’s a practical example of how Beryl’s seamless zoom feature can help you prevent eye strain and allow you to see details more easily.

[youtube]SmwrZUWKGCA[/youtube]

I mostly used the GPG forums to zoom into some screenshots with text inside that was not always easy to room and also did a sample zooming on thumbnails in my hard drive. Easier than going to the options and increasing the icon size 😉

Beryl! Finally!

After many tries to get a 3D desktop working, I have finally managed it. It seems the problem lies squarely with the latest and “greatest” Nvidia drivers. I have no idea why, but whenever anything 3D was activated on my computer, the system would totaly hang after a few minutes (usually more before the first time) as if my card was overheating (which is pretty impossible. My card has never overheated and I’ve run much more 3D intensive stuff *coughsupremecommandercough*)

Initially I was trying to achieve this using Linux Mint which is a pretty sweet Ubuntu-based distro in itself. However ever since Ubuntu started randomly freezing, I though it must have been some kind of weird distro bug. In the past I had some lock-ups with Kubuntu so it seemed plausible at the time. Just in case, I decided the try Sabayon from the moment I heard about it. User friendly gentoo based distro? count me in (more on that in a later post).

After not having any random lock-ups in the liveCD, I decided to give it a try. 10 minutes into the installation, BAM. Freeze. No mouse, no keyboard, no Alt-F1 nothing, same thing as before. At this point I was seriously considering smashing something on something else but I held on. Instead I decided to start experimenting a little bit more.

Initially I tried with GLX instead of AIGLX. No help. Then fearing that beryl itself might be the culprit, I tried just running an OpenGL screensaver. No luck. After about 10 minutes it hang up. Not willing to give up, I disabled all desktop accelerationand fired up an another OpenGl Screensaver. 2 minutes in it, dead again (needless for me to explain what this has done to my poor /home partition)

So as a desperate measure, I decided to install the legacy nvidia drivers. I didn’t know how well they would work, so I installed them and rebooted today after I returned from work.

It works! YES! 2 hours later with full acceleration and various screenshot and screencast attempta later there has been no freeze! I cannot express how happy I currently am 🙂

Although the drivers are not that good, resulting in a but of a stutter at some points, the Geforce is more than capable of handling a 3D desktop. The result? See for yourself 🙂

Beryl in Blue screenshot

However I am seriously pissed at Nvidia for putting me through all this trouble with their crappy drivers. They have dropped the ball with Vista but did they have to drop it on GNU/Linux’s foot?

Anyway, here’s a screencast as well. I’m trying to upload it on YouTube as well but it doesn’t seem to like Ogg Theora.

EDIT: Fuck it! Here’s an embeded video. Done with the help of the coolplayer plugin.

EDIT: Video finally uploaded to youtube after I converted it into Mpeg with the help of mencoder. Find embedded video below.
[youtube]jdt7HjTydMQ[/youtube]