My Trail of Random Tech Tidbits

How to fix blank/default icons on Windows 7 Task Bar (oops!)

2011-12-30T14:11:00.000-08:00

My office is in the process of converting from Windows XP to Windows 7 and I am one of the early testers. One problem I ran into was that Acrobat PDF files would open-up but without the proper Acrobat icon on the Task Bar. Normally you could simply right-click on the Task Bar icon, then right-click again on the program name ("Adobe Acrobat') and then click on 'Change Icon' to fix it. But because of the way Acrobat installed the 'Change Icon' link was greyed-out.

When I tried googling this situation I found lots of varied suggestions, none of which seemed to apply. What seems to have worked, fortunately, was the following procedure which I believe triggered an update/refresh of the cached icon-image for Acrobat.

PROCEDURE

located original 'acrobat.exe' in C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 9.0\Acrobat
(I noted that it had the correct icon but it was missing from Task Bar once opened)
created a shortcut to the .EXE
(the shortcut also had the correct icon)
opening the shortcut showed the correct icon!
At this point I temporarily pinned the app to the Task Bar.
I tried opening some PDFs and found that they opened in the pinned app and with the correct icon
I unpinned the app from the Task Bar
I opened some PDFs again and now the icon is correct

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UPDATE: And just like that it's gone... I thought I had fixed it this morning but now it's broken again.

Convert phone contacts to Gmail

2011-12-21T16:43:00.000-08:00

I just helped a co-worker convert all her built-in phone contacts to Gmail contacts, in preparation for getting a new phone. (This was on an older Android smartphone.) The trick is sort of counter-intuitive -- you need to disable the built-in contacts rather than the Gmail!

FYI - Here's where I found the solution (though it's not written as clearly as I'm about to do it):
http://www.samsunggalaxysforum.com/samsung-galaxy-s-how-to/copy-move-contacts-from-phone-to-gmail/msg2462/#msg2462

PROCEDURE

(this might not be necessary?) Open your Contacts app, click the menu button > More > Import/Export Contacts > Export to SD card. This creates a .VCF file in the root-folder
again click the menu button > Display Options, and disable the view of all built-in Phone contacts. Only leave your Gmail account selected. Don't freak-out when the Contacts list goes blank :-)
again click the menu button > More > Import/Export Contacts > Import from SD card > Import from VCF

At this point all the contacts should re-appear and now they'll be marked (the tiny icon to the right of each entry) as both 'G' and 'P' for Gmail and Phone. Login to your Gmail account, click on the drop-down next to the big MAIL link (in the top-left) and select Contacts. Everything on the phone should now be there!
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Quick fix for secure erase of used SSD

2011-10-19T17:41:00.000-07:00

I just bought a Corsair Force3 SSD on-sale at Fry's. I saved money coming and going, in fact, as there was a mail-in rebate and the drive had been returned by someone else -- so it was discounted another $15. These particular drives use the new 'SandForce' SSD controller which have lots of reliability problems so they probably need to offer the rebates to move them off the shelves... Now, why did I bother buying one??

CHECKING THE FIRMWARE
The first thing I checked was the firmware on the drive. 'Fortunately' it was not running the current v1.3.2 which tells me any problems the original purchaser had might have been fixed by this firmware upgrade. I proceeded to install the new firmware and had no problems. Now all that remained was to do a secure-erase, to ensure I got the correct 'New Drive' performance. (The write-speed on SSDs gradually drops as they get full and the 'free space' becomes fragmented. Since the physical memory 'sectors' are remapped 'logical sectors' you can't use a traditional OS or application defragger.)

TRYING TO PERFORM A SECURE ERASE
Most of the online instructions said to download the Parted Magic ISO, boot from it, then select the 'Erase this drive' option in the GUI. You also need to select the 'Internal' mode (which tells the drive to do it's built-in erase command) rather than 'External' mode (which manually rewrites the entire drive and just adds wear to an SSD). I knew that Parted Magic just relies on the same Gparted and 'hdparm' commands on my beloved Ubuntu, so I decided to just use an Ubuntu boot-drive I already had setup.

Here's where the problem came in, and the fix:

INPUT/OUTPUT ERROR
For whatever reason the Ubuntu flash-boot and/or the BIOS locked the drive. I was able to run the basic-query hdparm command successfully,
> sudo hdparm -i /dev/sda

But when I tried to run the advanced query,
> sudo hdparm -I /dev/sda

or when I tried to trigger the internal secure-erase command,
> sudo hdparm --security-erase NULL /dev/sda

I got an error message re "Input/Output Error"

THE FIX
After much googling I finally found one discussion (on the Intel SSD forums) which made passing reference to either hot-swapping the drive or sleeping/waking the machine. From my Ubuntu 10.10 flash-drive boot, I was able to click the 'Suspend' command, then power-on again, and the hdparm command now worked.
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Why my next computer will be Windows, not Linux

2011-09-25T08:39:00.000-07:00

For those of you who have been following my blog (anyone?!) it may be surprising to hear that I'm abandoning Linux. It is not a decision I am making lightly. But after several years dealing with the limitation of Linux (specifically, Ubuntu) I have realized that the Windows 'ecosystem' really is better for me. Let me explain...

Multimedia support
I use my computers as my primary source of video, both TV shows, movies, and my extensive collection of home videos. On Linux the playback of high-definition video has always been problematic, requiring never-ending experimentation with replacement video-drivers (the proprietary vendor 'blobs' versus the open-source drivers). The h.264 hardware-acceleration still doesn't work properly with ATI videocards, even with extensive manual revision of the installed drivers.

On Windows, this multimedia support is trivial, as Microsoft has created a well-organized system (DirectX) that all the manufacturers use.

Multi-user support
Linux is inherently a multi-user OS yet the graphical interface is poorly tested. My wife and I share our Linux workstation, taking turns as the current login, and we can attest to these problems first-hand. Whenever one of us connects a flash-drive, the other user gets non-sensical error messages. This is a known problem with a longstanding Launchpad bug; never fixed. When we switch from user-to-user (using the longstanding 'fast-user-switch' feature) the login screen always flashes the name of the current user, then corrects itself... 'always' except for the occasional crash! Clearly this feature has not been properly tested. The first issue is cosmetic, the second is clearly more, but neither has ever been fixed.

RAID support
One of the reasons I was initially thrilled with Linux was the ability to setup a software-based RAID mirror and get improved read-performance (as well as piece of mind). I used this on my combined boot/data drive(s). But now I am switching to using a single SSD for my boot/OS drive and a separate pair of mirrored data drives. This combination has always been supported under Windows so Linux has no advantage. Plus, on Linux, there was no built-in GUI for checking the state of the RAID array. I managed to find an old unsupported utility to do it but I have no idea if it would actually warn me of a failure. On Windows, I'm quite sure this GUI is available and supported.

Printer and Scanner support
I have had non-stop problems with both my printer and scanner under Linux. From kernel rev to kernel rev the support for my peripherals has come and gone, unpredictably. This has been true for my Canon inkjet, my Brother laserjet, and my Epson scanner. In theory I appreciate the use of generic hardware drivers -- the use of shared drivers means that they are better tested than individual/per-device drivers. But that advantage is moot if they don't correctly work on your hardware.

To add insult to injury, everything prints slower, especially the Brother laser. It's like there's an extra layer of translation taking place during the print-file generation? Printing even a single page will require a 20 second delay, whereas the printing from Windows is instantaneous.

I also have a 'pro-sumer' Epson scanner with 'ICE' support for correcting scratches in photos. But this feature is only usable through the Windows driver, there is no support for it through the generic scanner driver.

USB wake from sleep
By default, Windows lets you wake a machine from sleep-mode by moving your mouse and/or typing on the keyboard; Linux does not. It is possible to configure Linux to do the same but it can't be set as the default?! Instead, the best you can do is add a startup script to manually change the power settings at boot. And the configuration of this script varies from distribution to distribution, and even from release to release (as the startup processor changes or is replaced). On Ubuntu there is a Launchpad request for either a change in the default behavior, a GUI to easily edit it, or even just a way to make a permanent change in the configuration. It has languished for years without action.

Windows-only apps
I have also tried resolutely to only use native Linux apps. Some are actually better than their Windows equivalents, e.g. MP3 music managers. But I continue to run into unsolvable situations where the only functional option is the Windows version. My scanner, as I already mentioned, can only use it's ICE scratch-recovery with the native Windows driver. My Oregon Scientific weather station is only recognized under Windows; some other models have Linux drivers but not mine. The only Newsgroup Binary Reader with bandwidth control is on Windows. Quicken is still the best checkbook app. Outlook is still the best email/organizer app. Yes, for many years now I've been using Evolution in place of Outlook... And I have a handful of unresolved bugs (filed with Gnome.org) to prove that Outlook works better.

For the past couple of years I've resorted to running these Windows apps in a Virtualbox VM. In general this has been a satisfactory workaround. But I've long suspected that the majority of my system crashes were related to this VM sub-system. Surely it's better to run a single OS?

Conclusion
All these experiences have made me appreciate the relative pro's and con's of open-source software like Linux versus for-pay software like Windows. Obviously, no one in the Linux developer community is concerned enough about the various glitches to which I am subjected to try and do something about it. I still love the freedom of Linux and plan to continue using it on my personal single-user workstation. But, much as I hate Microsoft, I am forced to admit that the nominal cost of their Windows is a small price to pay for a 'sane' OS.
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My plan for US economic recovery

2011-09-25T08:24:00.000-07:00

The Democrats and Republicans keep arguing about the economy and taxes but without really connecting the two. Because of the seeming disconnect I think it's necessary to go back to 'first principles', to sort of start over.

The first and most important fact, which I don't think the politicians ever mention, is that work creates wealth. If you pay me to do something -- anything! -- for you, the profit I earn on my labor is newly-created wealth. If, in turn, I then use this new wealth to pay YOU to do something for ME then you have now created wealth! Even though the physical cash is a 'zero sum' game, we both end-up wealthier for having traded services. (The same is true for selling goods.) This is the reason GDP is so important. It is supposed to be the measurement of all economic activity in our society and, all other things considered, the more activity the better. (This is also the reason that the Federal Reserve has been aggressively lowering interest rates, to try and promote economic activity of ANY KIND.)

The problem is what happens with this new wealth.

Is it put back into the economy to pay for still-more goods and services, hence still more wealth? Or is it put into savings accounts, effectively removing it from the 'active' side of the economy? Obviously, we need to have some reasonable amount of savings so that there is money available for investment. But, as Alan Greenspan correctly noted in his (post-Fed Chairmanship) autobiography, there has been a worldwide glut in savings for the past two decades. The proof: a steady decline in the interest rates available to savers.

So, for Republicans to claim we need to continue reducing taxes on the rich is clearly false. There is already far more than enough savings available for startups and capital investments. Instead, the tax policies of the past decade (cough*Bush*cough) have simply allowed the ultra-rich to redirect a significant amount of wealth into their savings -- and away from more productive uses in the hands of workers.

This isn't class warfare. It's simple economics.

The solution, I feel, is a new corporate tax based on executive pay. Ideally this would be implemented as part of a general tax SIMPLIFICATION plan. History has shown that stockholders are unable to influence or control executive compensation, so I think the government needs to weigh in.

Herewith, the new 'TOVAR POLICY' (though I don't think I'm really the 1st to say this):
Any corporation who's executives earn more than 20x the median income (of it's employees) must pay an additional corporate tax.

If an executive committee really thinks their CEO is responsible for such a large share of their profits, they'll need to pay for it. My hope, of course, is that they'll choose instead to lower executive compensation, or give raises to their employees! The point being: a larger percentage of the wealth generated by the company should go to the employees and stockholders, where it will be returned to the economy, and less to the handful of ultra-rich executives who can't possibly spend it all.
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Home Theater Acoustics 101

2011-09-16T16:20:00.000-07:00

Excellent intro to room acoustics!

Home Theater.com - Acoustics 101

Really, I should call it an excellent summary as it has all the most-urgent things to do.

Using CHNTPW to fix weird bug in Windows 7

2011-08-27T07:33:00.000-07:00

I just spent a good many hours trying to fix a Windows 7 machine with a ‘broken’ login. The user hadn’t changed their password (nor had it expired) but suddenly the computer insisted their password was wrong. My first thought was just to reset (hack) the password.

I had previously used the ‘chntpw’ tool to manually tweak the built-in SAM password database on Windows XP – but did it work on Windows 7, too? I carry a flash-drive on my key-chain which boots Ubuntu 10.10 so I started there. ‘Chntpw’ is in the 10.10 repository (the ‘Universe’ alternate) and I successfully installed it, then ran it against the Win7 machine’s hard-drive and SAM file. It said it had 'successfully' blanked the user’s password but Windows still reported ‘invalid password’. I also tried resetting to a new password; same result.

I then tried one of the official Windows 7 repair techniques. I booted the install disc, then selected Repair > Recovery Console. Once I had the command-line open I tried the following command which was supposed to activate the built-in Administrator account,

> net user administrator /active:yes

Unfortunately, even though this was using a ‘legit’ Microsoft process it still didn’t work; there was no Administrator login option.

At this point, I thought maybe there was a newer version of ‘chntpw’ so I booted a newer Ubuntu 11.04 LiveCD. But there was no version of ‘chntpw’ in its Universe repository. Instead I had to download the .deb from Launchpad (just google “ubuntu 11.04 chntpw”). Unfortunately, attempts to both blank and also reset the user password still failed.

Finally, I tried unlocking the Administrator account with chntpw and it finally worked! I still couldn’t login as the regular user-account but I was able to click on Switch User > Other User > manually enter ‘administrator’ (sans password) and it logged me in.
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Now, here's the weird bug part:

From the administator login I was able to successfully reset the user's password and login as them. I immediately saw a weird error message, something about "user profile directory c:\windows\system32\config\Desktop not found." The user's Desktop folder is not supposed to be under C:\Windows?! Also, the system loaded a generic desktop. I switched back to the Administrator login and searched the C:\Users folder. The user's original Desktop folder was right where it was supposed to be, and I noticed something unusual: There was a copy of the files off a Norton Antivirus install CD filling the Desktop. I also saw the AUTORUN.INF and, on a suspicion, I deleted it. Voila! The user's account now worked properly.

So, apparently there is an unpatched Microsoft bug wherein Windows will try to 'obey' an AUTORUN file in the user-profile directory.

Unacknowledged problems with Intel SATA?

2011-07-13T15:08:00.000-07:00

For a long time I've had to deal with ongoing 'flakiness' problems with the hard-drives in our Dell laptops. Recently, it got so bad that I decided I had to do something about it! The only clue I had was the large number of 'device timeout' errors in the Windows XP Event Viewer. I had previously been told (by multiple co-workers) that the messages were false/cosmetic. They were easy to check for by applying a filter to the System event-log for either source= 'atapi' or source= 'iastor'.

DRIVER UPDATE 'FIXES' ERROR, SOMETIMES

The first thing I figured-out was that some of the errors were cosmetic but only on our newer E-series laptops (the E6400 and E6410). They had always ever been setup with the older/generic version of the Intel SATA driver, 'iastor' v8.8. Once I upgraded these machines to the newer v9.6 the errors went away.

I also figured-out a relatively reliable way of testing for the error. Without explicitly testing for it, I was seeing the 'timeout' errors every 1-4 weeks under normal usage. If I left a machine logged-in and running overnight, however, it almost always reported new errors in the middle of the night.

PROOF OF LEGITIMATE HARDWARE PROBLEM

Most importantly, I was able to now demonstrate that these errors were NOT cosmetic on any of our Latitude D630 laptops. I spent about a MONTH swapping HDs between different machines, reimaging them, using the latest Intel SATA driver versus the older/default, even re-installing in AHCI vs ATA mode. The results were conclusive: the timeout errors were from the motherboard. And, the problem only occurred on the machines I had purchased between January 2008 and October 2008, i.e., it really seemed to indicate a bad batch.

Unfortunately, by this point, most of my D630s were out-of-warranty; most by just a few months. Dell was willing to replace the motherboards on all the in-warranty machines, of course, but I had a real argument with them about the rest. I pointed out how the problem seemed to be a manufacturing defect and that it had taken me a LONG time to prove. They ended-up granting me an additional 60 day 'grace' period on the warranties. So 7 of the 13 affected laptops are going to be repaired.
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CONSPIRACY THEORY

All of this got me thinking: Why do any of these machines show a SATA 'timeout' at all? I heard that the latest 'Sandy Bridge' chipset had been recalled because of an obvious defect in the SATA-2 controller. But is there a larger problem with Intel's chipsets? Why does the error occur on E-series laptops if you use an older revision of the Intel driver? Is it really a cosmetic error, or is it a universal problem which the newer version of the driver simply ignores?
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Comparing old JVC KW-XR810 to new KW-HDR720

2011-06-09T15:25:00.000-07:00

I have the JVC KW-XR810 double-DIN receiver in my car and love it. But it still has it's limitations. Most of all I miss having more EQ frequencies to play with, plus I'd like to have HD Radio. (Though I suspect HD Radio is slowly dying.)

Now JVC has introduced a new KW-HDR720 receiver which is the 'mid-range' model in their line-up of double-DIN radios. Both units are very similar and JVC has not made it easy to compare the detailed features of both units. So I have painstakingly reviewed both User Manuals and present my findings below.

older XR810 ($300 at Crutchfield)

includes Bluetooth adapter
supports HD Radio but not included
parametric EQ has 3 bands each with 3 frequency settings
subwoofer level can only be adjusted by digging through Menu settings
supports Sirius satellite radio
supports Bluetooth profiles: HFP 1.5, OPP 1.1, PBAP 1.0, A2DP 1.2, AVRCP 1.3
separate High-Pass and Low-Pass crossovers for mains vs subwoofer
dedicated 'Phone' button
'full-dot' LCD

newer KDR720 ($220 at Crutchfield)

supports Bluetooth adapter but not included
includes HD Radio
parametric EQ has 3 bands each with 4 frequency settings
subwoofer level adjustable directly from EQ window
no support for Sirius satellite radio
User Manual has no details about Bluetooth profiles
no separate High-Pass crossover for mains; just 'on/off' ?
dedicated 'Tag' button for HD Radio which doubles as 'Phone' when used with bluetooth
old-style 'segmented' LCD lettering

They also have the 'low-end' KW-XR610 model which is the same as the XR-810 minus the $100 USB bluetooth adapter; the KDR720 uses a different adapter.

I'm happy to see the additional EQ frequencies but wish they'd included even more. Also, I'd like to know if the bluetooth support has been improved. My current setup (XR810 paired with HTC Hero running Android 2.3.3) has inconsistent phonebook support and also is missing any audio display functionality (which I think requires AVRCP 1.4).
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UPDATE: Ha! No sooner had I written-up all this then I noticed the following PDF on the JVC product web-page. It shows that the KDR720 has the same level of bluetooth audio support (as the XR810) but not the phonebook support. It also looks to have superior radio-tuner performance, in general (not just with HD).
Comparison Chart of JVC Car Audio receivers
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Is Sprint coverage getting worse?

2011-05-27T10:43:00.000-07:00

In the past month I've noticed that I lose 3G data service in lots of places, and more importantly in places where I used to have plenty of coverage. I decided to google "is sprint coverage getting worse" and learned that I am not alone. In the past couple of months there have been lots of similar discussion threads, e.g.
howardforums.com/showthread.php/1717175-Just-me-or-is-4G-coverage-getting-worse
sprintusers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=218830

The really significant one seems to be this detailed post on the Sprint Community forum,
community.sprint.com/baw/thread/66975

My initial suspicion had been that Sprint was preparing to announce their "new 4G service" here in San Diego, and that they were re-purposing existing 3G towers for the effort. Now I'm not so sure. Even in areas with existing 4G service, the coverage map has dramatically shrunk recently. The discussion on Sprint Community is too long for me to read right now but the gist seems to be that Sprint never really had full 3G coverage -- instead they were paying for 'seamless' roaming on other networks (cough*Verizon*cough) and now they're not.

I was already thinking of switching to T-Mobile for their better selection of Android phones and existing '4G' coverage. This is now yet another reason to do so.
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Considering NAS and DLNA servers

2011-05-15T18:36:00.000-07:00

SWITCH TO NAS BASED FILE-SHARES?
My current network consists of a 24/7 Ubuntu workstation (with a dual 1 TB RAID) and Win7 HTPC (also with dual 1 TB). I am also seeding a bunch of torrents (mostly Ubuntu distros) and hosting the Squeezebox server for the Logitech Radio in our kitchen.

I am considering scrapping the Ubuntu workstation and reinstalling it with Win7 and an SSD. I would like to save on our electricity bill and improve the file-sharing and backup. So I am investigating Network Attached Storage (NAS) options. So far the Netgear ReadyNAS seems like the best option as it's a Linux-based OS with add-ons for all the major services. Right off the bat it has Tivo and DLNA support, and there are also plug-ins for the Transmission bittorrent app as well as for the Squeezebox server. The ReadyNAS Ultra 2 has a single-core Intel Atom while the Ultra 2 Plus has dual-core.

The one thing the ReadyNAS wouldn't be able to do is host my new weather station (really just a Oregon Scientific RMS300A three-source temperature and humidity monitor).
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SWITCH TO DLNA BASED VIDEO-STREAMING?
I am also debating the usefulness of DLNA. One of my friends has a new Samsung plasma HDTV with DLNA support and such a thing should -- in theory -- negate the need for an HTPC (and XBMC). The problem seems to be the limited codec and encoding support in DLNA. I assume this was on purpose, to prevent people from downloading ripped content and directly playing it on DLNA players.

Fortunately there's a workaround -- a DLNA server with transcoding! Windows 7 includes Windows Media Center which already includes a DLNA server, but unless the original files are already in DLNA-compatible formats you won't be able to play them on something like the Samsung TV. I also already own the Nero 9 Suite which includes the Nero Home DLNA server, but again I don't think that includes transcoding.

Instead, I have found the following two options for DLNA transcoding:

Mezzmo, $30
www.conceiva.com

iSedora, $17 (single-device) / $48 (multi-device)
www.isedora.com

At this point the whole investigation is moot since I'm not about to scrap my primary workstation! Since it's running Ubuntu 10.10, though, it'll eventually lose support/updates and that will certainly force my hand.
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How to make ATI 785G (4200) pass DD and DTS through HDMI

2011-04-16T21:24:00.001-07:00

I just replaced my WinXP-based HTPC with a new Windows 7 Premium system. The new PC has an ATI 785G motherboard with the 4200 IGP video card. I have the HDMI output connected to my Denon receiver and everything seemed to be working ok.

When I tried playing a movie in XBMC, however, all I could get was stereo. I went into the System > System > Audio settings and set Output=HDMI and enabled both 'Dolby Digital capable' and 'DTS capable'. But then the movie went silent and stuttered badly. I tried the same test with Media Player Classic - Homecinema and got the same result. What did I have to do to get surround-sound?!

After much research I finally determined the following:

The ATI 785G chipset supports DD and DTS passthrough on HDMI but not with the standard ATI drivers! (It does not ever, however, support HD audio-passthrough, e.g. from Bluray)
The standard ATI drivers create both an "ATI HDMI" audio device and a virtual Realtek SPDIF device. Deleting the latter doesn't help, nor is it recreated.
The audio chip on the motherboard is from Realtek and they provide their own alternate (better!) driver, www.realtek.com.tw/downloads
You can download the improved driver at their web-site under High Definition > ATI HDMI Audio Device

Once I installed this alternate driver I was able to go into the Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Manage Audio Devices > Realtek HDMI > Properties. Under the 'Custom' tab there's a new option for "Allow AC3/DTS/WMA output (Reboot required)". Enabling this, then rebooting, finally fixed the problem!
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UPDATE 9/14/11 - I started having problems where the audio-link wouldn't sync-up (i.e., no sound) even though the Windows volume-control said it was working. So I uninstalled the Realtek HDMI driver, then updated to the latest ATI Catalyst 11.08 driver. Everything seems to be working now, and without the 'unofficial' fix!

New recommendation re printers for Ubuntu

2011-04-12T18:31:00.001-07:00

I just heard that the forthcoming Ubuntu 11.04 will included automatic support for Epson printers! This is very exciting. Epson now joins HP and Brother in having good Linux/Ubuntu support. I have had too many problems with HP, however, to ever recommend their scanners or inkjets to people. I currently have a Brother fax/laser setup and it's working fine, if slow. (Not sure if there's a software problem or not, i.e., it might be trying to print at an overly-high resolution?)

As for recommending Ubuntu itself, I'm still on the fence. I continue to love Ubuntu and prefer it over Windows 7 for my personal work. But I continue to have weird hardware compatibility problems which come-and-go with different kernel updates, and my sound and fast-user-switch continue to fail. So I'm no longer so enthusiastic in my Ubuntu recommendations.

I've also been using Windows 7 a lot and haven't had any problems with it. Which is good, since you have to pay for it!
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Configure XBMC 10 to use Media Player Classic

2011-03-22T13:44:00.000-07:00

I use XBMC on a regular basis for my home-theatre PC and in general I love it. Some of it's only limitations revolve around hardware acceleration. First of all, on my current Windows XP setup there is none! I have a new Windows 7 based machine in the works, however, and even then I find it limited. Specifically, there is no deinterlacing of my Sony camcorder recordings which are 1080i AVCHD. So I set about configuring XBMC to selectively use Media Player Classic - Home Cinema edition (MPC-HC) for only those video files which required it.

MPC-HC is a DirectX-based video player which has both it's own built-in 'MPC' decoder as well as access to any installed DirectX codec, e.g. Windows 7's DTV decoder.

Along the way I found a lot of gotchas in XBMC's support for external players, so I decided to write it up as this new post.
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NOTES

You can't simply edit the original configuration file in-place
If not done correctly the configuration file will make MPC-HC the default player
I haven't been able to make this work on Windows XP without MPC-HC becoming the default player -- regardless of the rules I specify.
The 'rule name' check also applies to the folder name, i.e., a 1080p mkv located in a folder called 'converted from 1080i' will still playback with MPC-HC!
The formatting is completely unforgiving (and arbitrary)! For instance, you MUST MUST MUST include the extra / character at the end of each new rule you add.

GENERAL PROCEDURE To setup XBMC v10 on Windows 7, so that it uses MPC-HC to playback 1080i and .m2ts (AVCHD) files:

Locate the 'playercorefactory.xml' in the folder,
<programs>\XBMC\system
Copy it to your personal folder,
<users>\AppData\Roaming\XBMC\Userdata
Edit the new .xml to add the 2 sections below

*** Add this to the '<players>' section (edit the .exe path as necessary)

<player name="MPC-HC" type="ExternalPlayer" audio="true" video="true">
<filename>C:\Program Files\Media Player Classic - Home Cinema\mpc-hc.exe</filename>
<args>"{1}" /fullscreen /close</args>
<hidexbmc>true</hidexbmc>
<hideconsole>true</hideconsole>
<warpcursor>none</warpcursor>
</player>

*** Add this to the '<rules>' section

<rules action="prepend">
<rule filetypes="m2ts" player="MPC-HC"/>
<rule name="1080i" player="MPC-HC"/>

FINAL NOTE - Make sure it's inserted before the final </rules> and </playercorefactory> commands!
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UPDATE: I found that I had to specify <hidexbmc>True else it interfered with MPC-HC. I've updated the example to use this setting.
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How I went about moving and updating my ‘trapped’ Wordpress site

2011-02-13T20:37:00.000-08:00

As the volunteer web-editor for a local non-profit, I decided to replace our old-style SHTML site with a new Wordpress CMS-based site. I didn't want to replace the current/live site, however, until I had a complete replacement (and the approval of the management). So I created the new Wordpress site as a temporary sub-site of our existing site. Unfortunately, because of the provider, Aplus.net’s, stupid install script the new site was ‘trapped’ – I could neither update the Wordpress software nor could I reconfigure any plugins. The primary reason for this was that Aplus.net had set it up as a (partly) shared install, i.e., some of the system files were in a shared read-only folder somewhere (not in my personal folders).

In order to remedy this I had to do the following:

make a backup of the new Wordpress sub-site
create a new properly-working copy in the new location
merge the two copies into a proper replacement site
confirm that I could update and configure everything properly

There were lots of instructions online about how to go about moving a Wordpress site but none seemed to apply to my situation -- un-trapping a script-created site!

MY FIRST UNSUCCESSFUL ATTEMPT

I initially tried installing an up-to-date copy of Wordpress as a new install, and confirmed that it worked properly by installing all the same plugins and theme as before. I also restored the ‘wp-content’ files from my original site. I then used the Tools > Import function to restore the “WXR” (.XML) file I’d exported from the original site. Unfortunately, this only restored the Pages but none of the theme or widget settings. As a last attempt I dumped the new site's MySQL database and restored it from a tweaked copy of the original DB (where I’d done a search-and-replace for all the URLs). For whatever reason this caused the whole setup to reset to defaults. Fail.

HOW I SUCCEEDED

Deleted all the files in the new location and started over.
Copied all the install files from a matched version of WordPress (v3.0.1 downloaded from their Release Archive).
Manually updated only the wp-config.php.
Copied all the files from the old site. I had to rename the script-created folder, 'wordpress-content', to match the standard folder-name, 'wp-content'
Used the phpMyAdmin technique to download the SQL DB from the initial site in uncompressed text format.
Manually fixed all the URL and folder references using search-and-replace:
kobsd.org/wp >> kobsd.com
kobsd.org >> kobsd.com
wp/wordpress-content >> wp-content
wordpress-content >> wp-content
Went into phpMyAdmin on the new site, dumped all the tables and restored the edited SQL file.
Finally, I tested the Wordpress auto-update as well as installing/configuring new plugins, and it all works properly!

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My struggles with Wordpress and Aplus.net

2011-02-13T20:28:00.000-08:00

I am the volunteer web-master for a local non-profit. The web-site I inherited was a mess of hand-coded HTML and SHTML and was a nightmare to update. For the past 3 years I’ve limited myself to correcting and updating the text, and I’ve made copious notes about which HTML editors work or don’t work.

Now I’ve decided to re-do the site using a modern CMS and in particular I’ve chosen Wordpress. I thought this would be an easy process since Wordpress is extremely popular and our hosting provider, Aplus.net, includes an auto-install script in their Control Panel. Boy was I wrong about that ‘easy’ part! Yes, I was able to get the initial site setup in minutes but then I quickly started running into roadblocks – of the arbitrary kind put up by Aplus.net!

First, their install script only installed Wordpress 3.0.1 circa July 2010. I tried to update to the latest v3.0.5 using the built-in updater but I got an error message about access-rights. I asked Aplus.net about this and they said they didn’t support updates by users. Period. No other explanation, support ticket = Closed. I had to submit another request to ask if they were taking responsibility for installing Wordpress security updates and they said yes. (And then closed that ticket, too.) Needless to say, they haven’t updated anything.

Since I was still just experimenting with the software I decided to give the security updates a pass, for the moment. But then I discovered that I could not install new plugins either?! This time I picked-up the phone and called Aplus.net, and this time they were able to modify my installation to allow new plugins. So far, so good? No, because they also broke the site admin login! Yet another call to Aplus.net and finally everything seemed to be working.

THEN I realized that I couldn’t configure the plugins?! The 'wp-plugins' folder was apparently marked read-only even though it was in my personal site, not a shared folder. As if to stress the absurdity of the situation Aplus.net now said they could not ‘support’ third-party software. At this point I resolved to do a manual installation (and to find us another hosting provider).

Well... Yes, Wordpress is renowned for its ease of installation. Unfortunately, that’s dependent on your hosting provider providing accurate and up-to-date information about your account configuration. I tried to use Aplus.net's online knowledgebase but their article re MySQL configuration had the wrong server-host information. Again, I was forced to call Aplus.net and – to their credit – they were immediately able to point me to the Control Panel > MySQL Database Manager which listed the correct server-host. They also clarified that they use a custom MySQL port (3306). Finally, I was able to get a new manual install of WordPress to complete successfully.
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How The Financial World Will End (Maybe)

2010-10-18T20:21:00.001-07:00

I was just reading a bunch of very interesting posts over at Gonza Lolira's blog including one about How Hyperinflation Will Happen. I don't know that I buy any of his specific guesses for what the trigger event(s) will be but I do agree with this basic premise:

U.S. Treasuries are a bubble market
When the bubble pops there will be a rush to something/anything more tangible, e.g. commodities
This will trigger a new bubble in commodities

I also agree with the first part of his prediction:

This new bubble will trigger inflation in energy and production prices
Energy costs will trigger inflation in food and manufacturing

The questionable part, however, is that Mr Lolira thinks that the new bubble will be so massive as to constitute hyper-inflation, i.e., where price increases feed on themselves. Curiously, he also says that this inflation will not affect things like houses which instead will continue to decline in price. I think this is based on historical precedent?
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Comparison of new/old HTC Hero on Sprint

2010-08-20T17:14:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: Last week Sprint introduced the Sanyo Zio and LG Optimus phones, instead of the HTC Legend (as anticipated below...)
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I was one of the first people to get the HTC Hero on Sprint last year. Now, a year later, the phone is starting to look a little 'long in the tooth'. The update from Android 1.5 to 2.1 really caused a big slowdown in the phone's performance, and the bluetooth feature causes the other radio (Mobile/Internet via Sprint) to lock-up.

So I was very excited to read about the new HTC Legend and the rumor that Sprint was going to start carrying it as "the Hero2". Come this October I'll be eligible for the discounted upgrade pricing so hopefully it'll be available by then?

The following is a quick review of the improvements I see listed on the HTC web-site:

Slightly faster (600 MHz vs 528)
More RAM (384 MB vs 288)
Slightly lighter (128g vs 135)
Better screen (AMOLED vs TFT) – same size, 3.2”
Proximity sensor (allows ring to quiet-down when you pickup phone, auto-screensaver when you talk)
Micro-USB plug instead of Mini-USB
Single ‘big’ call button instead of two little buttons
FM radio tuner
Fancy metal case! oooh...
Definitely going to get a (HTC supported!) Android 2.2 upgrade

Note - this is a relatively entry-level phone, not comparable to the Sprint EVO 4G or anything fast (1+ GHz processor) like that.

Here are the respective product pages from HTC, where I did the comparison:
old Hero, www.htc.com/www/product/hero/
new "Hero2", www.htc.com/www/product/legend/
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Troubleshooting ATT DSL

2010-07-24T20:59:00.000-07:00

There's been a lot of news lately about hacks of home/SOHO routers like Linksys and D-Link. Even though my router-and-firmware combo is on the 'ok' list (D-Link DIR-628 v2.22) I decided to upgrade it to the latest v2.24 firmware. Unfortunately this set off a series of mishaps that took me hours to resolve.

The instructions from D-Link warned that the upgrade would erase the configuration but that you could make a backup beforehand, then restore it afterwards. The upgrade itself went fine as did the restore of the configuration. But then my Internet connection would freeze after only a couple of minutes. I tried power-cycling both the router and the AT&T modem (a Westell modem/router) but the problem only got worse. Finally, I could no longer get the router to login anymore and so I called AT&T Tech Support.

They wanted to 'upsell' me to their 'Advanced Support Plus' department, i.e., paid support! I resisted this since I assumed the problem was on their end. The regular technician was very polite and tried resetting my password for me, but to no avail. Finally I acquiesced to paying for the advanced support, but then it was too late -- they'd closed for the night. At this point, the technician asked, "Did you say that the 'Internet' LED on your modem was lit?" Yes, it was. That was the turning point! I'd been assuming it was an 'activity' indicator when in fact it was a logged-in indicator, i.e., the modem was doing the PPPoE login instead of my router.

When I first received the service I had assumed that the built-in router was a NAT device. So I'd disabled the auto-login and switched the modem to 'Bridge' mode -- just act as a pure modem-to-ethernet device. At some point in the evening's testing the modem had done a full reset? Probably, AT&T had triggered this when they saw the link trying/failing to connect. Once we realized what had happened we were easily able to switch the modem back to bridge mode and I was back online.
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The next day, unfortunately, the connection had failed again. I decided there must be some change in the way my D-Link router was performing the PPPoE login that was incompatible with AT&T's DSLAM. Or, maybe the modem just really really wanted to be the router :-)

At this point I decided to test my other assumption, that the built-in router was performing NAT. It wasn't! I switched the Westell device back to it's original router/PPPoE configuration and programmed it with my new/updated login. I also had to reconfigure my router to use a different IP range. But then I was successfully able to open a Bittorrent app and get full two-way communication, so it was clear I wasn't double-NAT'd.

In the long run this goes to show the value of relying on a vendor's default configuration as much as possible. I should have tried to use my router with AT&T's default modem configuration instead of assuming I had to work around it. If I had I never would have had any of these problems.
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UPDATE 8/15/10 - I take it back: I am double-NAT'd and I am not able to get 2-way Bittorrent connections...
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Suggested printers for Linux (and Ubuntu)

2010-02-18T19:34:00.001-08:00

Another quick post re Ubuntu. My love/hate relationship continues with Ubuntu! Even though I've continued to use my Canon MP620 printer (because the printer itself seems really solid) I also continue to be dissatisfied with Canon's linux drivers, or lack thereof.

So what's an Ubuntu-phile supposed to do? HP is clearly the best supported as HP has excellent drivers available, but I've really turned against HP after just ONE TOO MANY poorly designed units. (I think the last straw was a mid-level inkjet printer which started to refuse to print because it's 'user convenience' paper-upside-down detector failed and the failure-mode was to deny any further printing!)

There is an online database of printers with Linux support but it's maintained by user contributions so it's less than authoritative,
www.linuxprinting.org/printer_list.cgi

But I eventually learned (and from a single offhand comment in a single post in a long discussion of printers on the Ubuntu forums, whew!) that Brother has Linux drivers available! And, in fact, the 3rd-party Linux Printing database confirms that there is a huge list of Brother printers that have been reported to work perfectly out-of-the-box.

So, my next printer will probably be a Brother.
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Where can I recycle non-rechargeable batteries?

2010-02-18T19:27:00.000-08:00

I've been wanting to blog about this for months but I haven't come up with any good solution. Now, I'm just tired of thinking about it so I'd post something.

For several glorious years I was able to take my generic alkaline batteries to IKEA for recycling. But apparently they ran afoul of some federal regulation re transportation of dangerous chemicals like those in batteries.
www.phmsa.dot.gov/hazmat/regs/rulemaking/final

So IKEA stopped rather than spend more on their recycling program.
www.ikea.com/us/en/store/costa_mesa/environment

I've since learned that Europe mandates that all battery resellers must offer recycling, as well. In the US we have something similar but it only covers rechargeable batteries. I suppose this was meant to encourage people to buy the more expensive rechargeable models, but I also suspect it had more than a little to do with keeping resellers' costs down (and profits up).
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2/14/11 UPDATE: The announcement on IKEA's web-site is no longer there. Instead -- and just to prove I didn't make the whole thing up! :-) -- here's another blog that mentioned the same incident, Sincerely Sustainable.

Also, I have since learned that the local Waste Management Corp will recycle non-rechargeable batteries! Their web-page re Household Hazardous Materials does not include batteries but their Recycling Center accepts them, i.e., they're not really considered 'hazardous'? Also, this service is only supposed to be available for residents of East County?
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OFFICIAL SAN DIEGO 'PLAN'

Also, and I don't think I blogged about this earlier, there is an official City of San Diego plan for recycling batteries but it's preposterous. Basically, it's illegal to throw away batteries but your only (free) legal alternative is to make an appointment at the city's Hazardous Waste Dropoff. This is the building outside the Miramar dump. Sounds good, right? Well, they're only open from 9am to 3pm on Saturday and you need to make an appointment first?!

Now, let's try to do some math here: There are 3M people living in San Diego and assuming there are 6 people per household (which I think is too high but the math is easier) then there are half-million households needing to drop off their waste/batteries. The drop-off is only open for 6 hours per week, times "50" weeks per year, equals 300 total hours for 500,000 groups to do their drop-off. Even if just ONE PERCENT of the households try to comply with this rule that leaves them each less than 4 minutes to do their drop-off. And that's if everything is perfectly choreographed. If ten percent of households tried to recycle properly then they'd each have 30 seconds to make their dropoff. Hmm....
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Update on Canon MP620 and Ubuntu 9.10

2009-11-03T21:54:00.001-08:00

To be perfectly honest, I'm seriously considering dumping Ubuntu. Much as I love it, I just KEEP HAVING stupid problems -- USB devices working/then not working, and now my printer failed again.

Fortunately, after JUST a couple hours of "having fun" with my Canon linux drivers I've managed to get everything working again. I've previously (Dec 2008) blogged on this and this is now an update,
http://technicaltony.blogspot.com/2008/12/installing-canon-mp620-on-ubuntu.html
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Ever since my 9.04 > 9.10 upgrade I'd lost the ability to print from the rear-tray (as have many others apparently). What a ridiculous problem to be having.

Here was the solution:

1. download and install the latest Printer Definition file (PPD)
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=210977
Download and extract 'ppdMP620-630en-1.5.tar.gz'

2. Follow the included README instructions and copy the PPD file to the system's PPD folder,
> sudo cp canonmp620-630en.ppd /usr/share/ppd/

3. Copy the CONF file to the system's Canon library,
> sudo cp cifmp610.conf /usr/lib/bjlib/

4. download and install the latest "IJ Common" DEB,
http://support-sg.canon-asia.com/contents/SG/EN/0100159004.html
> sudo dpkg -i cnijfilter-common_3.00-1_i386.deb

*** Don't forget there are other DEBs required as explained in my original post ...

5. Delete the existing printer object from System > Administration > Printing

6. Reboot! Not sure if that's totally necessary but it works. This ensures that the new drivers are loaded, and the printer should be auto-detected at login.

If you now check the Properties of the recreated printer it should say:
Make and Model: Canon MP620-MP630

WARNING! INCOMPATIBLE MEDIA TYPES!

Again, this is probably something that would never happen under Windows...

The final step -- for printing photos, at least -- is to select Media Type: Glossy Photo Paper. If you try the other options, e.g. "Photo Paper Pro", the computer will say it's processing and the printer will momentarily say it's receiving and then.... Nothing. The print job will be unceremoniously canceled without any warning or error.
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Obama's next State Of The Union

2009-11-01T23:00:00.000-08:00

I just had a quick thought:
President Obama's next State Of The Union speech is going to be crazy popular!

At least, it will be VERY widely watched, probably the most in history. I'm thinking of the domestic audience but this will probably be true internationally, too.

Think of all the drama surrounding him now:
- The country has been teetering on the verge of a new Great Depression
- He's on the verge of 'reform' of the byzantine American health insurance system
- The Right Wing absolutely viscerally hates him
- And he's widely acknowledged, even by his detractors, as a great speaker.

I'll have to get out the popcorn, and my score card! Now, when is this all scheduled? His first State Of The Union speech was in February 2009, just after he'd taken office, so he hadn't had a chance to really dig in yet.
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Using AHCI to install XP on new computers

2009-10-16T07:57:00.000-07:00

I have a retail copy of Windows XP Home (Service Pack 2) which I use to run my home-made Home Theatre PC (HTPC). With my latest build I ran into a new problem -- it wouldn't install! Instead I kept getting a BSOD. Eventually I realized that the new motherboard probably wasn't recognized by the old (circa 2005?) OS. Fortunately, there was a solution, though it took me a while to make it work.

I knew that my new motherboard AND my new SATA drives were configured for the newer 'AHCI' drive-mode. The existing SATA drivers on my XP-SP2 disc didn't support AHCI. So my first thought was to use the F6 boot-option to include the new drivers. But despite attempts to load various versions of the 'Intel Storage Matrix Manager' drivers it continued to either hang or BSOD.

Ultimately the solution was to slipstream the drivers into the CD image. While I was at it, I also added the SP3 update. (Actually, the first thing I tried was slipstreaming SP3 in the hopes that it included the AHCI support; it didn't.) I already knew how to slipstream SP3 but had no idea how to added the Intel drivers. Fortunately, this web page explained how to use a nifty utility called 'nLite" which automated it.
www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows/resolving-setup-did-not-find-any-hard-disk-drives-during-windows-xp-installation/

So, in summary, what did not work:
- using WinXP Service Pack 3
- using F6 with Intel drivers on a floppy

What did work:
- using nLite to slipstream both SP3 and the Intel drivers onto a new CD
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Bad news is 'good' for prenatal DS test?

2009-10-01T07:25:00.001-07:00

Last June 2008 I mentioned a new prenatal test for Down Syndrome that could potentially eliminate new DS births. Now, the newspaper says that the company, Sequenom, probably faked the research tests.
http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/sep/30/sense-anxiety-sends-sequenom-stock-down-39

The CEO, CFO, and two VPs of Research have all been fired, and the company stock has dropped by nearly half. They still insist the test works but admit that they need to start from scratch in proving it. So that's at least another few years before it ever comes to market (if at all).

I'm not sure how to feel about this, still. Yes, I think it's a good idea to have such a test. But I also know that over 90% of expectant parents choose to abort if/when they learn that their unborn child has DS. Hopefully, continuing research will find a way to significantly offset the negative effects of DS and then there won't be so much concern about it. Wouldn't it be wonderful if DS could simply be considered a treatable condition, like diabetes?
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Turning the defamatory tables on Glenn Beck

2009-09-12T12:38:00.000-07:00

Glenn Beck is the latest right-wing demagogue to attack the 'left' and has been particularly nasty in comparing Barack Obama with Adolf Hitler, as well as other assorted absurdities. As with most of these right-wing attacks, it doesn't matter if there's any truth to the attack -- it's merely mud-slinging. Now, someone has turned the tables on him by using the Internet to sling mud back at him.

My new favorite web-site is glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com. No one seriously thinks he ever did any such thing but the site is starting to turn up in web searches for his name, potentially casting a defamatory pall over him. Frankly, I think he deserves it. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

A further irony is that his success is entirely dependent on his abuse of the First Amendment, to protect his hate speech. Now this web-site is practicing a similar form of hate speech but he's suing them, claiming that it's not protected.

Here's a short discussion of the case from Political Irony.com
http://politicalirony.com/2009/09/08/did-glenn-beck-murder-httpglennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990-com/
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TV schedule for UCSD Thornton hospital

2009-08-19T11:25:00.000-07:00

For some reason I can't seem to find a valid TV schedule for the hospital here. I've been staying here with my mom for the past week and I'm starting to watch more and more TV, so I'd like to know what's on. Currently, I'm stuck just channel surfing.

I've tried doing some Internet searches but the best I've been able to come up with are some old (but still cached) hits for a "erctv" page on the campus' UCSD.edu web-site, now gone. Here's the channel listing I found, and which seems to be correct:

CH NAME	CH NAME
07 NBC	37 ESPN
08 CBS	38 ESPN2
09 IND	39 TLC
10 ABC	40 HBO Family
11 PBS	41 HBO West
12 XEWT (Tijuana)	43 HBO
13 HDH Info	44 MTVU
18 SRTV	45 Comedy Central
19 All College TV	46 TBS
20 ERC TV	47 WGN
21 CW	48 Cartoon Network
22 UCSD TV	49 BET
23 FOX	50 MTV2
24 History	51 VH1
25 Univision	52 Food Network
26 MyNetworkTV (primetime only)	53 Travel Channel
27 FX	54 E!
28 Lifetime	55 Spike
29 Nickelodeon	56 AMC
30 MTV	58 SciFi
31 CNN	59 Discovery
32 Headline News	60 Fox Sports
33 TNT	61 Current TV
34 Fox News	62 USA
35 BBC	63 Sundance
36 A&E

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Cleaning up the Obama-rhea of the No We Can't crowd

2009-08-18T20:37:00.000-07:00

We need a new 'meme' to describe the rabid anti-Obama crowd. I got the idea from reading Roger Ebert's excellent blog entry regarding memes and the anti healthcare reform crowd,
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/08/death_panels_an_excellent_phra.html

The general idea is that certain phrases are so perfectly self-encapsulated as to gain a life of their own, independent of whether or not they actually mean anything. The latest example is "Death Panels" which will probably live on and define the argument forever. I really think we need to counter it with a comparable meme to describe and undermine the wackos who are pushing "Panels". And it probably goes without saying that it needs to be a meme with the name "Obama" as part of it. Hmm...

Clearly, there is a die-hard group of people who believe that President Obama is the anti-christ and who vehemently and reflexively oppose anything he supports. I suspect there's unacknowledged racism at work here but I don't know if there's any point trying to pin that on them. Still, my first idea for a meme to describe them is "The Obama Lynch Mob". Or, if that's too blunt, maybe call them "The Obama Mob"

Alternatively, maybe we should label the reaction rather than the people? Maybe "Obama Vomit" or "Obama (Gag) Reflex" ? Even better: "Obama-rhea" oooh yeah, that's juicy! (eww) On second thought, though, diarrhea is something that's justified, as if his policies are so unhealthy as to be automatically rejected by the Body Politic (gotta love this analogy though :- )

Obama-spite. Whiners. Gotta think of another analogy... Something tantamount to children and temper tantrums? How about "Anti-Hope Tantrum"? Or, the "No We Can't" crowd? Since these people frequently claim that Obama is part of 'secret' conspiracy maybe they should be diagnosed with "Obama-noia".
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End The Federal Budget Shellgame!

2009-08-13T09:09:00.000-07:00

Here's a modest proposal:
Forbid federal agencies from 'purchasing' each others' debts!

The BIG BIG BIG one is the so-called Social Security "Lockbox". All those trillions of dollars of 'savings' have really just been used to prop-up our deficit spending, through the SSA 'purchasing' Treasury bills. Instead, I propose they be required to only purchase home loans. In this way, the "lockbox" would actually own tangible assets and would also provide a steady market for home mortgages.
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Another great parody - about 'public' health insurance

2009-06-29T21:24:00.000-07:00

I know, I know, this is turning into a lazy-man's blog but this Salon.com parody is just so spot on,
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/06/30/police/

Obama has said, if he had the chance to do it all from scratch he'd setup a single-payer system of healthcare. So why is he caving-in to the entrenched private insurers who are doing such a terrible job? Would anyone seriously question the need for universal -- publicly paid-for -- police service?

Here's something unique I can add to the discussion: Fire protection used to be privately funded, but everyone now agrees that it is better as a public service. How is medicine any different?

UPDATE: I wanted to make sure I wasn't blowing smoke about the private fire depts. I found some other recent articles making the same comparison,
http://open.salon.com/blog/bill_beck/2009/06/21/better_burnt_than_red
http://theamericanscene.com/2007/10/26/private-firefighters

Great parody of anti-Gay Marriage 'arguments'

2009-06-12T17:27:00.000-07:00

Substitute 'Freckled' for 'Gay' and it sounds ridiculous. (No offense to my freckled wife! P.S. I didn't notice anything about this lady's outfit.)

Modern Day Snake Oil

2009-06-03T21:50:00.000-07:00

My mother is suffering from cancer, unfortunately, and now this otherwise rational and intelligent woman is succumbing to the modern-day equivalent of snake-oil salesmen, hoping to find a cure in the field of "Alternative Medicine." Today my mom went to a 'doctor' who sold her $500 in dietary supplements that -- apparently -- are all going to cure her cancer! I'm glad she invited me along for her 'appointment' as I got a first-hand look at how the scam works.

CON MEN ARE ALL ALIKE

First of all, the guy showed-up in practically a full surgical outfit even though we were only meeting in a small strip-mall office suite. Very 'professional' looking! He then proceeded to talk-up a STORM full of medical and biological terminology. It was impossible to consider or evaluate any of his statements because he JUST KEPT TALKING. Regardless of the forum, I can tell when I'm being manipulated in this way. I started-out wanting to like him (even as I knew I wasn't likely going to agree with him) and, in fact, he seemed very earnest and honest, like he really believed his own schtick. But after TWO HOURS I had to bite my tongue lest I threaten to report him for fraud.

Note -- He was VERY careful not to say that any of these treatments would cure her cancer! So there was nothing I could report him for. (dangle...) In this way he was obviously very practiced at his sales pitch. He also gave several anecdotes of people he had cured -- but without mentioning if they were also receiving traditional cancer treatments.

I'm not actually saying he was a con man. He may very well have believed all that crap he spouted. But if that's the case he needs to realize that the high-pressure sales pitch is only going to work on gullible or overly-polite people, while alienating everyone else.

TRY PULLING *MY* FINGER, DUDE!

Since my mom has an ACTUAL VERIFIABLE ILLNESS, I had assumed we were merely there to discuss and recommend possible treatments. But, no, he also gave my mom an on-the-spot 'examination'. His entire diagnostic technique consisted of -- and I kid you not, you can't make this stuff up -- PULLING HER FINGER. How unscientific is this?? Oh, let me count the ways! He would ask my mom's "body" if it "wanted" a particular supplement, then pull her finger, and based on the resistance he claimed to feel, would tell my mom if it was a good treatment or not. Even assuming he believed all this (which I doubt) my mom could vary her response for both conscious and unconscious reasons, and he could vary the strength of his 'test' pull in the same way. As I watched this charade I started imagining tricks I could play on him, such as swapping his 'test vials' so that they were all the same -- hence impossible to use for a valid test. I knew that his 'results' would not change if I did.

The worst part for me, actually, was when I thought of a dastardly joke we could play on him, and then I had trouble not laughing. Since the 'doctor' insisting on pulling her finger, what if I could've planted a gag Fart Maker? Every time he pulled your finger --- pffft. "Sorry!" I wonder how long he could continue under those conditions :-)

MORE TRICKS OF THE TRADE

I noticed that he did a good job of 'eliminating' several 'unnecessary' treatments. In other words, he made a good show of not trying to sell her every possible pill. I also noticed that he correctly 'diagnosed' all the various ailments my mom had already mentioned to him. Kinda reminded me of TV fake John Edwards' use of undercover agents to interview the crowd before each show, to find-out what secret they were hoping he could divine.

For each ailment he would quickly explain a highly technical reason why this or that biochemical was 'off' and how this or that supplement would fix it. Of course, the human body is far more complicated than that. As my cousin once told me, "If your body needs more zinc, you can't just eat more of it. Your digestive tract will simply 'pass' most of it." In the same vein (ha ha) I have recently read several articles about once-promising drug treatments which, for reasons unknown, failed to work outside the lab. And that's for legitimate pharmaceuticals, not fly-by-night 'homeopathic' remedies that make no actual medical claims.

DOCTOR QUACK'S BACKGROUND

I had to wonder if this guy was even a legitimate doctor. His wall was festooned with certificates and degrees, and so I set about to make a study of them. Here's a quick summary:

1974 - BS from a christian college in Texas
1976 - MD from Baylor Medical in Houston
1977 - license in Oregon
1980-1 - certificate of appreciation for "Management" of a Texas hospital or something
1983 - license in Wyoming
2003 - license in CA from "Medical Board of CA"

There were various others which I've forgotten, but the one that really got my attention was the 2nd. Is it possible to get a medical degree in just 2 years? When I got home afterwards I googled "Baylor" as "Medical Board of CA", just to make sure they were real. I also looked him up on both the CA and TX medical boards' web-sites, and everything looked legit (and there were no actions against him).

WHY I'M NOT WORRIED ABOUT HER (MUCH...)

So maybe he really does believe all that crap he spouted? I hope so. Fortunately, my mom also has a team of doctors at UCSD who claim to be open to alternative medicine -- but still want to review her supplements, just "to make sure none will react" with her ACTUAL treatment. According to doctor snake-oil, "none of these treatments interact with each other." In other words, they're probably all placebos! Wasn't there such an expose a few years ago about the "supplements" industry?

P.S. I can't entirely blame the cancer for her loss of reason. She was already under the thrall of her "bio-energetisist" whom I've learned she pays several thousand dollars a year for monthly treatments. But at least he also performs a legitimate service -- physical therapy -- as part of his fee.

P.P.S. Despite my harsh negative view of this 'doctor', I'm not doctrinarily opposed to Alternative Medicine. I just want it to prove it works! Is that so much to ask? Maybe the foods we eat, and the plastics we use, really do cause cancer through some as-yet-unknown mechanism. I have no doubt that today's "modern" medicine will seem like medieval torture in the near future. But that doesn't excuse all the unscientific unverifiable unBELIEVABLE claims of all those supplements my mom just paid top-dollar for. (dangle dangle...)

WSJ bags on home ownership as an 'investment'

2009-05-27T22:54:00.000-07:00

Even the supposed cheerleaders of the 'mainstream' economic-view are now starting to dish on homeownership. They point out that homes-as-investment have only returned at most 2.2% (after accounting for inflation) over the past decade.
http://finance.yahoo.com/real-estate/article/107122/Is-Your-Home-a-Good-Investment?

I'm just sayin' ....

How I tuned the dirt removal filter, part 2

2009-05-15T17:15:00.000-07:00

HOW THE DE-SPOT FILTER WORKS
=====================

The De-Spot filter uses several parameters to identify what is dirt and what is not. In general it works by looking for groups of pixels on an individual frame that don't exist on the preceding, or subsequent, frame. Here are the primary settings (or, at least, the only ones I used!):

p1 = sensitivity to detect new spots
p2 = sensitivity to find size/edges of spots
mthres = sensitivity to identifying dirt spots vs non-dirt spots in-motion
minpts = minimum spot-size
pwidth = maximum spot width
pheight = maximum spot height

The three 'sensitivity' settings are actually kinda misnamed as higher settings don't necessarily mean More Sensitive. P1 and P2 are the minimum 'difference' to trigger a spot detection, so higher values make it LESS likely that they'll detect a spot (or, in the case of P2, detect all of it). MTHRES is the amount of 'motion' required for a spot to be ignored, i.e., low values make the filter skip a lot of spots! The default setting for MTHRES is very cautious, 16, and misses a lot of dirt.

FYI - The function for detecting motion is called Motion Estimation (ME) and is the most important element of the filter!

KEEPING NOTES
============================

I eventually realized that I needed to keep detailed notes about specific spots/problems for specific Despot settings, and added the following section (all commented-out) to my AVS script:

------------
# FRAME # - NOTES
# 11 - hair standing-up from back of head @ mthres=43 p=24,8
# 15 - tear, requires mthres>=43 @ p=16,12
# 24 - hair 'aimed' at baby's head
# 36 - fingerprint next to (same size as) baby's head, requires p=64,8
# at p=64,6 it's only half removed, at p=64,4 it's totally missed
# 40 - round dirt
# 55 - ME error on ear @ mthres=43 p=36,12 or 56,12

# ME NOTES
# mthresh >= 20 to catch dirt at frame 77
# mthresh >= 25 to catch dirt at frame 81
# pwidth >= 120 to catch dirt at frame 112
# Motion-Estimation errors at frames 158, 179, 200, 221
# minpts >= 80 fixes half the error at frame 158
# minpts >= 110 fixes error at frame 158, 221
# minpts >= 140 fixes error at frame 200; still has error at 179
------------

TUNING THE FILTER
===============================

Here's the 'general' procedure I followed:

First I observed what kind of results I obtained from the default settings in De-Spot. The settings for p1, p2, and mthres are relatively insensitive, i.e., they miss a lot of obvious dirt.
Starting with MTHRES (detect motion) I increased the value until it detected all the legitimate dirt. At this point, however, it was also making a lot of mistakes, e.g. detecting eyes and ears as 'dirt'.
Within that opening scene (the dirtiest, btw) I varied the P1 and P2 settings to see if I could eliminate any of the false positives.
I increased the maximum allowed dirt-size, pwidth and pheight, so that the filter wouldn't ignore the bigger clods of dirt.
Finally I increased the minimum dirt-size, minpts, to try and eliminate false-positives on eyes/ears while still detecting actual dirt (which was usually quite large).

Rinse, Repeat! Actually, I spent most of my time varying MTHRES and P1/P2.
_______________

Here's an example of the ME error on the eye of a bouncing baby (my aunt, btw)

FINAL OUTPUT
=========================

I quickly realized that I couldn't fix everything in the whole video with just one group of settings. So I used VirtualDub to chop-up the original video into scenes, or even sub-scenes, and created custom AVS scripts for each. I also took the opportunity to adjust the brightness and contrast on several of the scenes, to try and make them easier to see.

Finally, for each scene, I output it to the FFDSHOW video codec set to MJPEG '100%' quality. I was then able to load all the clips together in Nero Vision and create a much nicer DVD than I originally received.

How to remove dirt from old film transfers, part 1

2009-05-14T16:56:00.000-07:00

BACKGROUND
=====================

I just finished a very exciting project: My mom located a really old family film from when she was a child back during the Great Depression! The film is absolutely one-of-a-kind and had become sort of a legend to me, as I'd heard that it existed but no one knew what had happened to it. Well, my mom found it several months ago and I secretly had it transferred to digital, in preparation for Mother's Day. This was not my first foray into the realm of digital film transfers and I wanted to do the best possible transfer of this priceless recording. And because it was on 16mm film I was hopeful that it would have significantly better picture quality than the less-old 8mm films I'd previously converted.

Now, there are lots of shops offering film-to-DVD transfer. But I've spent literally years searching for someone who could perform film-to-BluRay transfers, i.e., to capture the full picture quality, in high-definition. I finally located this shop:

Video Conversion Experts
1010 W Chandler Heights Rd, Ste 2
Chandler, AZ 85248

www.videoconversionexperts.com
(800) 575-6202

For my little 11-minute film it cost $200 to transfer it to digital (at high-resolution) and create both a Bluray and DVD version. If I'd known all the work I was going to put into fixing the file I could've saved myself about half the cost and just requested the raw files; this is what ended-up happening anyways.

(Actually, I just checked and they charge MORE for just giving you the raw files. Apparently they're charging you for the resulting picture quality rather than the amount of work required on their part.)

THE ORIGINAL TRANSFER
=====================

Alas, the film showed all the classic signs of old age. First of all, whoever owned the camera (which was surely a luxury back in the 1930's) didn't do a very good job with the settings. Most of the scenes were either over-exposed or under-exposed. And one segment of Christmas 1936 was out of focus for the entire time. Even worse, the film did not have the high-resolution of detail that I'd hoped for.

Most upsetting, however, was the amount of dirt on the film, especially in the first 30 seconds or so. I'd assumed that the film-transfer machines were capable of detecting and 'deleting' these problems. Instead, removing this dirt from the image was what inspired me to fix the entire film.

Actually, I wanted to fix the transfer and the DVD, as the version they sent me was accidentally recorded in "2-hr" mode (only 5 Mbps, or half the max) and with noticeable distortion. Since it was such a short piece of film there was no reason not to have recorded it at maximum quality, 10 Mbps or "1-hr" mode in their parlance. They also billed me unnecessarily for audio transfer (there was none). Rather than ask for a refund I asked them to just send me the original raw high-definition files. They described them as "HD-AVI" and so I was curious to see what they meant by that. Basically, their film-transfer machine outputs 1920x1080i HDV (M-JPEG). I did some quick tests and found that the compression was set at 85%, a reasonable setting but one that I ignored during my subsequent editing.

THE SOFTWARE I USED
=====================

VirtualDub 1.8.8
www.virtualdub.org
AviSynth 2.5.6
www.avisynth.org
De-Spot filter for Avisynth
avisynth.org.ru/despot/despot.html
FFDshow
www.videohelp.com/tools/ffdshow

VirtualDub is a general-purpose video editor and can be used as-is without any installation. AviSynth is a frame-server which has to be installed, and then the De-Spot filter operates as a a DLL which has to be copied into AviSynth's 'Plugin' sub-folder. Finally, I installed FFDshow and set it's MJPEG filter to record at 100% quality (effectively loss-less).

Note - All of these programs are open-source software, i.e., they cost nothing to use!

The one commercial program I used was Nero Vision (from the Nero Ultra Suite) to create a new DVD with menu and soundtrack.

THE GENERAL PROCEDURE
=====================

The first thing I did was identify what format everything was recorded-in. I then used VirtualDub to demux the original AVI (separate the audio and video streams). Even with 85% quality/compression the resulting video file was 6 GB (for 11 minutes!). Finally, I setup an initial AVS script, both to trim the black segments on left/right (the film had an aspect ratio of 4:3 whereas the 'high definition' transfer was done at 16:9 widescreen) and also to start experimenting with the Despot settings.

Here's what my AVS script looked like for the first segment:
(subsequent segments were similar with only slight adjustments to the Despot parameters)

------------
# REMOVE DIRT FROM 1ST SCENE (FRAME 1-64)

AVIsource("16mm_HDAVI.avi")

# SelectEven() to reduce frame-rate by half
SelectEven()
# Crop(Left-Pos,Top-Pos,Right-Size,Bottom-Size)
Crop(250,0,1440,0)

# run 'despot' plugin for old film
LoadPlugin("c:\program files\avisynth 2.5\plugins\despot.dll")
ConvertToYV12()

## Default settings for p1, p2, and mthres
#DeSpot(p1=24, p2=12, mthres=16, sign=1, minpts=10, interlaced=false)
# p1=sensitivity for detecting new dirt spots
# p2=sensitivity for finding the edges of dirt spots
# mthres=sensitivity for differentiating dirt spots from spots in-motion
# include 'show=1' for diagnostic mode

DeSpot(p1=64, p2=8, pwidth=540, pheight=300, minpts=80, mthres=43, show=1)
ConvertToRGB24
------------

I was then able to open the .AVS file directly in Virtualdub and immediately see the effect. Note the use of 'show=1' in the Despot parameters -- this produced a very cool diagnostic effect! Instead of showing the final result, the diagnostic mode shows you a colored-in version where you can see which parts of the image look like 'dirt' but are being left-alone because of Motion Estimation (shown in gray) versus which parts will actually be removed (shown in purple).

One question I had was about removing the duplicate frames. The original file was 1080i 29.97 fps and every other frame was a duplicate (which interfered with detecting dirt on individual frames!). I used the 'SelectEven' command in my script and this removed the duplicates while also reducing the frame-rate to 14.985. Most importantly, it didn't seem to reduce the resolution. I had read that M-JPEG was recorded in interlaced format and so I was afraid that SelectEven might result in a 1920x540 image; it didn't.

Whew! This is by far my longest blog entry to-date. So I think I'll take a break, make this a two-parter. In my next blog entry I'll detail the method I used to tune the de-spot filter. It was as much an art as a science!

There is no Social Security Trust Fund

2009-05-13T10:32:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick follow-up to my previous blog re non-existent Social Security Trust Fund. A recent Atlantic Monthly article pointed-out that the "trust fund" actually consists of nothing more than a filing cabinet full of (worthless) Treasury Bonds.

Which led me to this 2005 story in USA Today,
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-04-05-trust-fund_x.htm

I understand that the government faces a difficult situation:
How do you 'bank' or otherwise invest the excess income (which is really just a loan) from Social Security? 'Investing' in the government's own bonds, however, seems misleading -- if not illegal or even treasonous!

I wish there were a way of forcing the federal government to:

Stop buying Treasury bonds
Remove the SS overpayments from the federal budget, i.e., so they weren't being used to paper-over deficit spending

Maybe they could use the SS money to buy gold or oil reserves, or something else that would represent a long-term (>20 years) investment?

Tirade against Federal Budget and Bank Bail-outs

2009-03-10T19:31:00.000-07:00

I'm so tired of hearing all this pointless drivel about the economy and the banks and new Stimulus bill. The basic fact that never seems to get stated is this:
The banks lost our money.

So what do we do about it? So far it looks like the only politically expedient solution is to 'print' more money, devaluing our remaining money in the process. But there are other solutions and there's also more back-story to how we got here.

The really important issue that's being ignored is the so-called -- and NON EXISTENT -- Social Security Trust Fund. For decades now the government has been using the excess income from social security withholding to paper-over our deficit spending. Now that money is going to come due and IT'S GONE. Printing more money could 'fix' this problem, too, but only if we stop cost of living adjustments (COLA) and thereby screw all the people who are expecting SS to support them.

Frankly, part of me isn't sympathetic. I mean, all the baby boomers who are about to get screwed by SS are the same people who've been benefiting from artificially low government deficits -- yes, LOW, because otherwise the deficit would have swelled long ago, and taxes would have had to have been raised. So why should I now have to pay all those 'back taxes' ?

Back to the first issue re banks, why isn't anyone talking about a 'windfall profits' tax on real-estate speculators? These are the people who sold houses at the top of the housing bubble (in 2005/06) but did not turn around and reinvest those funds in another house. This is where all "the bank's" money went! It should be easy enough to find these people based on their tax returns. I don't mean to be punitive, in fact, I congratulate them on their financial acumen (and luck). But isn't this the very definition of "windfall profits", i.e., profit at the unreasonable expense of others?

Since the FDIC is totally gonna run out of money I say we recover some of that lost money and directly funnel it back to the original 'owners' via FDIC bailouts of personal savings.
.

Why Renting Beats Buying A House

2009-03-09T18:21:00.001-07:00

Did I write this while I was asleep? It sounds exactly like something I would say :-)
http://realestate.yahoo.com/promo/5-reasons-renting-still-beats-buying.html

Basic premise: Home prices never change!
When accounted for inflation and expenses the (financial) value of owning a home is a wash. So treating it like an investment is foolish. For hundreds of years home prices have been a constant-function of the cost of owning them, no more, no less. And the housing bubble of the past 8 years was totally predictable, and has yet to finish deflating.

The author also makes note of this Atlantic article which envisions less future-need for home ownership,
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200903/meltdown-geography
.

Circuit City Liquidated at Full Price, amazing!

2009-03-03T19:23:00.001-08:00

My hat goes off to the company that liquidated the old Circuit City stores. I've been dropping by every couple of weeks, waiting to find a deal on any of several pieces of equipment. And when I heard that this was the last week I thought My Time had finally come. I'd even prepared for this by signing-up for a new VISA card, one that included extended warranty coverage -- i.e., I could get an extended warranty regardless of where I bought something.

But I just went by my local Circuit City and almost everything is already gone! And the few remaining pieces are still full price?! By "full" I mean typical street price, not the fictitious "suggested retail" price. And half the remaining stuff is demo units, too. Who's buying this stuff? Must be P.T. Barnum's friends....
.

More fuel for anti-Mortgage Deduction fire

2009-02-26T15:26:00.000-08:00

Apparently I'm not the only person who's still worked-up about this. Yesterday's NY Times had an essay calling for the gradual elimination of the mortgage deduction,
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/killing-or-maiming-a-sacred-cow-home-mortgage-deductions/
.

The Mortgage Interest Deduction has to go!

2009-02-14T17:14:00.001-08:00

I have been waiting for years, literally, to buy a house. My wife and I even made offers on a couple of houses back in 2003 (we were outbid, no surprise) before deciding "this market is a bubble" and waiting it out. Now, we're house hunting again and I've been consumed with the idea that prices got oh so high in part because of the home-mortgage interest deduction. In general, I think the deduction has been 'priced-in' to the cost of houses so it doesn't really save anyone money. But when I tried searching for the history of the deduction I found that the issue was much more complicated than just that.

A great source of information is this 2006 NY Times article,
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/05/magazine/305deduction.1.html?pagewanted=print

Basically, there has been an allowed deduction for 'interest' since the beginning of time (or, at least, the introduction of the American income tax). Until 1986 you could even deduct your credit card interest. Surprisingly, the mortgage deduction is only used by 1/3rd of homeowners? The presumption is that most people don't itemize their deductions, hence they can't claim their interest payments.

Much as I disagreed with him on most issues, I gave kudos to GW Bush for pushing 'tax simplification'. The panel he empaneled even proposed doing-away with the deduction but GW refused to support it, knowing what a political hot-potato it was.

In 2005 there was a widely discussed Slate.com editorial supporting the idea,
http://www.slate.com/id/2130017/
Clearly, there's already been a lot of discussion about the why's so I'll just let those links speak for themselves.

The one thing I wanted to add to the discussion was this suggestion:
Gradually phase-out the deduction at a rate linked to inflation.

In other words, existing homeowners would continue to receive the same deduction they originally expected (and no doubt factored into their purchasing decision). But the deduction would go away as the time-cost of their money also reduced their mortgage cost. So these existing homeowners wouldn't 'get ahead' like they'd expected. The whole point of this (beside 'tax simplification') is that new buyers like myself would get better prices on houses.
.

Finally, a dual-cpu HD video player

2009-01-14T07:45:00.000-08:00

The new DivX v7 is the first video player (that I know of) to support dual-core CPUs. This is a major development as all previous software was unable to coordinate both halves of a now-typical dual-core. So you had to have a really fast CPU to play high-definition videos especially if they were encoded in the new h.264 format. Now, with DivX 7 you can manage it with a much slower dual-core, i.e., with older machines.

Unfortunately, this is only available on Windows (not Linux).

I've done some quick testing and so far the program lives-up to it's claims! I was able to play a 1080p h.264 clip on a dual-core AMD Turion 1.7 GHz, which is about a 3 year-old model. With all previous programs this processor could only play it at half-speed. Now, it can just barely play it at full-speed, and only if the video is full-screen (not windowed) and without anything else displayed on screen such as the mouse pointer.

One problem, however, is that it does not appear to include any deinterlacing. So even though it's fast enough to play 1080i AVCHD clips they look terrible because of the interlacing artifacts.
.

Further info on playing AVCHD

2009-01-05T11:09:00.000-08:00

I've had a chance to test this on several computers now and can make the following clarifications and improvements to the suggested procedure.

NOTES

You need at least a ~2.4 GHz processor. It doesn't playback correctly on my 1.9 GHz whereas it plays-back with spare cpu cycles on my 2.7 GHz AMD X2, as well as on a 2.7 GHz Intel Core2.
The existing 0.9.4 version (in the standard repository) plays AVCHD just as good as the newer "1.0~git" nightly. So there's no need to go through uninstalling, adding the 'nightly' repository etc. But you may still need to reset the configuration files.
The UI on the 1.0 version has a lot of bugs, so it's preferable to use 0.9.4 in that regard.

TWEAKS
There are 3 changes you should make in the configuration:

in Tools > Preferences, under Instances, enable "Allow only one instance".
Click on Show Settings:All (radio button in bottom-left). Under Input/Codecs > Other > FFmpeg,
set "Skip loop filter for h.264" = ALL
under Video > Filters, on the right-side screen, scroll down the page to the second listing (for Video Output Filter Modules) and enable "Deinterlacing video filter"

That last change re deinterlacing will cause VLC to default to "Discard" mode which uses the least CPU. If you have CPU cycles to spare, of course, you could then go down into the Filters > Deinterlace settings and select a better mode.
.

Playing AVCHD on Ubuntu Linux

2008-12-31T15:54:00.000-08:00

Have I finally managed it? Can I finally watch my Sony HD camcorder recordings on my Ubuntu home computer?? Still need to try this on my main system (which is faster) but I can finally play them without crashing! Here's how I did it:

PROCEDURE

Tested on an Athlon X2 dual-1.9Ghz machine running Ubuntu 8.10
I uninstalled all existing 'vlc' components (which were v0.9.4) through Synaptic
I also had to delete the ~/.config/VLC configuration files
Per the instructions on the Videolan.org site I added their "Intrepid/Nightly" repository to Synaptic,
http://nightlies.videolan.org/#debian
I installed the latest version, v1.0.0~git20081127-4 (according to Synaptic)
I then disabled the Videolan repository since this copy seems to be working!
Finally, I disabled the FFmpeg "h.264 Loop Filter" in VLC
(which improves playback speed but at the cost of some picture quality)
http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=42328

My Sony's AVCHD clips are 1440x1080i and this computer (using one 1.9 GHz cpu-core at 100%) can't quite play it back without dropping frames. BUT it doesn't crash anymore, which every other video player (including previous versions of VLC) would do! So now I'm hopeful that my other system will be fast enough...

P.S. I'm being very specific about uninstalling all the original 0.9.4 modules, as well as deleting the hidden config folder, because both of those elements caused errors otherwise!
.

Excellent economics essays

2008-12-19T16:58:00.000-08:00

Nothing personal to contribute today, just wanted to add to the Google scores of the following essays which I think do an excellent job of explaining our country's current (and increasing) economic problems:

Common economic mis-beliefs
http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/articles/2008/10/01/toscano/771bailoutswontwork100108.txt
from Rich Toscano's blog, "Nerd's Eye View", on Voice Of San Diego.

Human nature and the inevitability of financial bubbles
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200812/blodget-wall-street
from disgraced (but still so suave and well-spoken!...) tech-stock analyst, Henry Blodgett

'Gaming' in prices (aka bubbles) for any variable-return investment
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200812/financial-bubbles
from the same Dec '08 issue of The Atlantic
.

Installing Canon MP620 on Ubuntu

2008-12-11T23:42:00.000-08:00

There's been a lot of pain making my new Canon printer work with Linux. Here's the simplified procedure I finally developed. This is only to make it print! I'm not trying to use the scanner yet.

(These instructions and files were culled from the posts and files at http://mp610.blogspot.com )

PROCEDURE

1. download the two updated DEBs and one PPD (see below for locations),
- cnijfilter-common_2.80-1_i386.deb
- cnijfilter-mp610series_2.80-1_i386.deb
- canonmp610en.ppd

2. install 'libcupsys2' through Synaptic (needed for Canon DEBs)

3. install the Canon drivers,
> sudo dpkg -i cnijfilter-common_2.80-1_i386.deb
> sudo dpkg -i cnijfilter-mp610series_2.80-1_i386.deb

4. install the printer using the newer PPD, canonmp610en.ppd

5. In the printer Properties > Print Options, set Paper Feed = Cassette

DOWNLOAD LOCATIONS

- I got the DEBs from the Canon Asia web-site,
. http://support-asia.canon-asia.com
- I selected Multifunction > Pixma > MP610 > Drivers and then downloaded these 2 packages,
- "Common (Debian)"
- "IJ Printer Driver (Debian)"

- The PPD came from this same blog's SF project,
. http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=210977
- Finally, I downloaded 'ppdMP610en-1.3.tar.gz' (English) and unpacked it
____________

UPDATE (11/3/09)
I've added a new post re new driver versions and Ubuntu 9.10 support,
http://technicaltony.blogspot.com/2009/11/update-on-canon-mp620-and-ubuntu-910.html
____________

I learned a new French word today (I think...)

2008-11-19T14:42:00.000-08:00

I knew there was some kind of foreign-ey expression using "ne" (sic) that related to the change in a woman's maiden name vs married name. And I had occasion today to write an email about renaming my co-worker's network accounts, so I tried to use it. But I wasn't sure if I'd written the expression correctly (I hadn't). It literally took me FOREVER to figure-out a useful search in Google, mostly because I was searching for the wrong word -- it's really spelled "nee" (not "ne").

I had originally written "Please rename accounts for Mary Uglyname ne Smith" (the names have been changed to protect the innocent). But now I've learned that "nee" means "born" in French and so I should have written "Mary Smith nee Uglyname."

P.S. Another quick lesson? Inserting (sic) is supposed to mean, "Yes, I know that preceding word is misspelled!" Or, at least I think that's what it means...

P.P.S. I threw that misused "literally" in there just to mess with my wife :-)
.

Follow-up re credit default swaps (CDSes)

2008-10-09T09:19:00.000-07:00

My favorite economics and business show, Marketplace on NPR, has a great blog video on the continuing financial crisis,
http://www.publicradio.org/columns/marketplace/offair/2008/10/untangling_credit_default_swap.html

They don't say anything about any criminal behavior but I'm sure that's to-follow. Instead, they seem to be saying that the issue is the lack of reporting requirements, i.e., companies can essentially be gambling enormous sums of money but not need to tell investors that they're doing it. Obviously, a company that reports 'good' earnings but also has to admit that they're doing a lot of CDS 'gambling' won't be viewed as favorably by the market.

Ultimately, I still stand by my earlier post (April 2008) about "The Credit Default Swap scam" -- there's got to be a lot of fraud taking place, same as in other aspects of high finance!

Follow-up re switches at my old job

2008-09-19T09:33:00.000-07:00

In my previous post re LAN traffic at the University of Venice, I just realized a mistake I'd made. (Funny how time plays with your memory.) The entire university was NOT one giant collision domain! When I first started working there the university was spread-out in temporary offices all around the city; a new campus was under construction. So, many of the departments were linked by routers and ISDN lines. The problematic LAN was limited to the departments/buildings that were directly linked to the main computer center. Still, this was enough users that those departments' Novell servers showed enormous statistics for lost packets.

And, of course, my primary point still remains -- that switches rendered moot the old argument about NIC design.

The forgotten historical effect of switches

2008-09-14T17:46:00.000-07:00

I had a funny little chain of thoughts the other day. I was thinking about how my office's Ghost software (which we use to do disk imaging across the network) uses an old-style packet driver for the network boot disk. Most of my younger counterparts have never seen anything like it, but these drivers used to be quite common. I can remember configuring them for the various DOS-era networking clients waay back in the 1990's. Thinking about this also reminded me about how much effort used to go into designing networks so as to minimize collisions.

I used to work for the University of Venice (Italy!) and their entire campus was setup as ONE big collision domain -- every building was tied directly together and everyone had trouble with lost connections... imagine :-) At the end of my stay there, I suggested to the IT Center that they install a switch at the central hub. At the time, this was considered an extravagance. I explained to them how I'd been going around to all their Novell servers, upgrading the LAN drivers to make them more resilient to ethernet traffic. I think they subsequently used my suggestion ("Our American consultant said...") to justify the expense and I'm sure it was well worth it. Now, of course, switches are The Standard and it's hard to find an old-style dumb hub, and consequently there's no cost premium for it. (P.S. I'm assuming my reader already knows the difference between a hub and a switch?)

Well, the final thought I had was about the problems we used to deal with on hubs. First of all, there was a lot of research into how many workstations you could group together before you started getting more collisions than proper traffic. At the time, 17 workstations was considered the ideal maximum, above that number the percentage of collisions (and rebroadcast attempts) started to climb rapidly. One vendor that seemed prescient about this was 3Com. At first, they were pilloried for the design of their NICs because the hw didn't do any collision detection. Instead they relied on their sw driver to detect it. As long as there were relatively few collisions, this design was MUCH MUCH faster. But on a traditional hub-driven LAN the 3Com cards ended-up CAUSING more collisions since they didn't 'back off' as quickly.

Nowadays, every NIC vendor uses the 3Com-type model since switches have eliminated collisions. So the whole 17-workstation-max, avoid-bad-LAN-client-3Com-NICs advice is just so much ancient history.

Is Rock music Male?

2008-09-01T07:49:00.000-07:00

I had to work late the other night and I passed the time by blasting Boston's classic debut album at full-volume. When it was over I realized how much connection I'd felt to the music and the thought occurred to me that I'd been enjoying 'guy' music. But was there such a thing? Could any kind of popular music really be classified as male or female? There are plenty of great female rockers and most of my favorite singers are female. So it seemed silly to classify Rock by gender. Yet the feeling remained, that Rock Music was male. Could I justify that feeling? I could probably Google the idea and find a bunch of dissertations with long complicated explanations. But I'm sure I can write something comparable in an hour (or three) ...

First of all I had to figure-out what I meant by Rock Music. I've always heard that Rock was invented in the 50's with the introduction of "Black" musical themes to "White" pop music. But I've never felt any real connection to that early music. So I think it was more of a transitional style, as musicians experimented and slowly evolved a more 'pure' form of this new music. I may piss-off the piano players out there but I think a modern definition of Rock has to have the electric guitar. And more specifically the kind of anthem and power-chord driven music that was popularized in the late 60's and 70's, what is now considered Classic Rock. But I don't want to use a historical period as my definition! Instead I'm looking for some timeless quality to use in categorizing this 'male' music I'm pursuing.

Can I clarify my definition by considering which bands and songs I consider 'pure'? And does popularity factor into it? Certainly, Led Zeppelin was and is extremely popular. The aforementioned Boston was very popular, though it has since waned. But what about Heart, which is led by the Wilson sisters? Even though they're clearly considered Classic Rock I can't say that I've ever experienced that ethereal-level of connection with their music. So, again, the existing genre of Classic Rock isn't necessarily the definition of 'guy' music I'm searching.

What about grouping by musicians, especially singers? The singers that initially come to mind are hyper-masculine guys like Robert Plant or the singer from Boston. But I have no idea who Boston's singer is! Honestly, I've never had a strong connection to the actual singers. I mean, if I paid attention to lyrics I'd be a Country music fan, right? heh heh. And as much as I associate with the instrumentals I don't think the individual performances are what inspired my sense of connection.

Maybe I'm mistaking Music I Like for music that's male like me? I'm obviously going to connect most with the songs I like most, duh. But that seems like too simplistic and circular an argument. And the singers I actually like for their singing are usually women, like Aretha Franklin (who's R&B) or Tift Merritt (Country).

At last, I think I have a real clue. The music I'm considering Rock is music with a 'testosterone' edge to it -- aggressive, forceful, even sexual. This definition would make Rock 'male' but it wouldn't preclude women from enjoying or creating it since they have testosterone, too. I want to make clear that I don't mean the music has to be angry or violent, though. I don't think it's fair to blame that on testosterone. Again, there are probably doctoral dissertations that describe what constitutes Male, or what effect testosterone has on people, but for my purposes I just mean an energetic, impatient Joy For Life.

So now I have a working definition. Unfortunately it would then follow that Anything Teenage Boys Like is pure Rock, right? Maybe... Most of the stuff that kids listen to today is just noise to me. And a lot of it is 'urban' music with even more overt "Black" influence. Again, not stuff I've ever felt any connection to. My definition seems to be slipping away...

Ultimately, I think that it's not possible to say that Rock is male. Instead, I think that one of the elements of Classic music -- of any genre -- is that sense of testosterone. And that there are probably innumerable other elements that help make the Classics so classic. My favorite bands growing-up were XTC (not so manly) and The Police (manly, hence all the female fans). Rather than a 'male' sense of connection, both bands shared a cleverness, an understated sophistication in their arrangements and instrumentation. But now I really am going to leave it to PhDs to define these additional elements of great music!

Finally a good CD ripper for Linux

2008-08-10T11:32:00.000-07:00

I had about given-up on finding a good CD-to-MP3 ripper for Ubuntu. All the 'official' programs had serious shortcomings, e.g. the included Sound Juicer didn't support MP3 out-of-the-box and even after I'd reconfigured it I somehow continued to receive OGG format instead. Very frustrating, especially considering the multiple options available under Windows. I even tried using Musicmatch Jukebox inside a Windows virtual-machine (VirtualBox) but it couldn't read the CD because Ubuntu wouldn't mount it??

One of the early recommendations had been for 'Grip' and I initially dismissed it because it seemed too clumsy to use. Eventually, I received feedback on the Ubuntu forums telling me to check all the settings again because -- clumsy though it was -- it should only be a one-time effort to configure. And they were right!

Basically, Grip seems to default to the absolute lowest-common denominator, i.e., no ID3 tags, no mixed upper/lower-case, and no spaces. But all those feature can be re-enabled and it has a very flexible naming-method with lots of variables to choose from. So, I eventually went back and was able to configure it exactly as I wanted.

I now have it configured to rip my CDs to a folder labeled as
Genre \ Artist - Disc \ Artist - Track# - Song Title

HOW TO INSTALL AND CONFIGURE GRIP ON UBUNTU 'HARDY'

go into Synaptic and install 'grip'
In the 'Grip' software, under Config > CD,
set Device = /dev/scd0
(optional?) under Rip > Ripper,
set Rip file format = /home/music/%G/%A - %d/%n.wav
under Encode > Encoder
set Encoder = lame
set Encoder Command-line = -h -V 3 -b %b %w %m
set Encode File Format = /home/music/%G/%A - %d/%A - %t - %n.%x
under Encode > Options,
set M3U file format = /home/music/%G/%A - %d/%A - %d.m3u
set Encoding bitrate = 160
under ID3,
enable both "Add ID3" and "Add ID3v2"
under Config > Misc,
checkbox ('enable') both "Do not lowercase" and "Do not change spaces"
set Characters To Not Strip = ()'-

NOTE - this Encoder Command-line uses VBR Quality = '3' (which is slightly better than the default '4') resulting in files with a bit-rate in the 180-200 kbps range, and with a minimum bitrate set by Grip (default is 160 kbps)

And again, more Ubuntu breakage

2008-08-05T22:50:00.000-07:00

I seem to have 'fixed' it now but I wanted to report still more breakage in my Ubuntu 8.04 setup. The Last Straw was when the Fast User Switcher stopped detecting that I was already logged-in and started to reset my login each time. In other words, my wife would switch from my login to hers but then when I'd try to switch back it would crash all my programs.

The solution seems to have been removing the official Nvidia driver?! We are now running the very generic 'nv' (or is it 'nvidia'? who cares...) video driver.

Still more Ubuntu breakage

2008-08-01T17:55:00.001-07:00

Just to follow-up on yesterday's rant, today has a new symptom. I've barely used the computer this past week so I can't imagine what I might have done to cause it.

I was starting to grow suspicious because my office Ubuntu setup had downloaded two updates while my home PC had not. Just now, under my wife's login, I saw the Update Manager prompting her/us to download. When I switched back to my own login, the prompt went away.

Did I do something to indicate I did not want to receive automatic updates? Or, did this version of Ubuntu just spontaneously stop offering them...

Nothing nice to say about new Ubuntu

2008-07-31T20:11:00.000-07:00

I take back everything nice I said about Ubuntu! I upgraded from 7.10 to 8.04.1 about a month ago and it's been one breakage after another. I thought I was being smart, waiting for the 8.04.1 "Service Pack" to come out before upgrading. Maybe a clean install would've worked fine but my upgrade has been so bad I'm seriously considering rolling-back to my 7.10 backup.

Since upgrading:

The Alternate CD updater rewrote my repository and update lists, then crashed without any message, leaving my system in an unstable state. After hours of experimenting I finally managed to get the update restarted and through to completion.
After the update none of my drives were accessible?! Apparently the new version uses a new naming scheme for drives but the update failed to update my 'fstab' configuration file. Fortunately I had another computer handy and was able to track down the required changes.
The Ubuntu-supported Nvidia video driver no longer works so I've had to switch to the official Nvidia driver. I'd previously learned (the hard way) that you can't trust this driver to work through a kernel upgrade. And, in just the past month, I've already had to uninstall it temporarily, apply a new kernel update, then reinstall it. PITA...
I had previously installed the now-included User Switcher. Needless to say, the update broke it, so my wife has to use a workaround. I was able to fix it once but now I can't remember how I did it; my latest attempts have failed.
I had previously installed the latest version of HPLIP (Hewlett-Packard Linux Printing). Ubuntu tried to install an older version alongside it, causing neither to work. I eventually uninstalled both, then reinstalled the newer version.
I spent DAYS trying to find a way to rip my CDs to MP3. WTF? The built-in 'Sound Juicer' used to work but refused to let me select MP3 anymore. I eventually tracked-down the needed change but... even though MP3 was selected it still did OGG format instead. WTF WTF?! Eventually, I settled for an old program, 'Grip', which does the basic task but fails to record any ID3 info.
Amidst all the printer mayhem, the VirtualBox printer support is malfunctioning again. I can get it to print but then I have to reboot the machine in order to get HPLIP working again.
My installed version of Crossover 6.1, which admittedly is not current anymore, stopped working. Fortunately the Ubuntu forums quickly yielded the solution: There was a new security lock-out in Ubuntu 8.04 which had to be partially disabled in order to allow Crossover to work.
Finally, my DVD drive no longer reads DVD data discs. I think my initial problem was an old flaky drive but even the new drive is having problems. I've managed to find a multi-step manual procedure to get discs to load, but it should all be automatic! In fact, as a test, I booted from a flash drive with generic 8.04.1 and the drive seemed to work fine. So something in my configuration is causing the problem.

Unfortunately, for now, I think I'm just going to give-up on making things work any better. And I'm certainly going to stop recommending Ubuntu to people.

What's the deal with poor TV concert-sound?

2008-07-05T15:00:00.000-07:00

Something unusual happened last night, something significantly rare that I felt compelled to mention it. I was watching the 4th of July celebrations on PBS and the concert sound-mix was excellent?! I've grown inured (though still not happy) to the fact that almost all live music on TV has a shitty mix. I'm pretty sure it's because they want to make sure it still sounds decent even on a cheap TV with cheap speakers. They do something similar with studio recordings where they double-check that it still sounds good on a set of cheap car speakers. But I don't think they 'dumb down' the mix the way they do on TV, i.e., entire instruments will simply be missing.

Even the DVDs of concerts will exhibit this. If the band wasn't sufficiently mike'd then they might be stuck making the best of a bad collection of line recordings. But for a concert that's being recorded for resale you'd think they'd have avoided this predictable issue.

Here are 2 recent examples of this dumbing-down:

The Steve Miller Band - Live in Someplace (sorry, I forget). It's a recent recording and a great performance, but several times I saw someone playing a guitar rhythm or some kind of percussion and it simply was not there in the mix.
Tift Merrit - Live at Austin City Limits. You rarely hear Tift's rhythm guitar, or even her piano backing. In this instance I suspect they only had 1 line for both the piano and organ, not realizing that she and the organist sometimes play at the same time. And since the organ is much louder than the piano (see my review of her San Diego performance two months ago) they probably had to drop the level to keep it from drowning the mix; sorry piano! And I was particularly excited about this DVD because it included a DTS soundtrack (which is higher-quality than Dolby Digital) so I assumed it would have a higher-quality mix, too.

Lastly, the other disappointing thing is that I'm still hearing these dumbed-down mixes on digital surround-sound broadcasts on HDTV. I suppose someone with an HDTV might still have cheap speakers but isn't the likelihood a lot higher than the viewer will have a proper sound system (like me) ?

DS research piggybacks on Alzheimer's

2008-06-22T07:59:00.000-07:00

Maybe I was unduly negative in my last post re prospects for DS research. What I forgot to take into account is the fact that a lot of research into Alzheimers seems to impact research into DS, too. And there's no shortage of people with -- or likely to develop -- Alzheimers. "Thank you", Baby Boomers?

There seems to be a lot of similarity in brain chemistry between people with DS and people with Alzheimers. Many of the medicines being tested on people with DS were originally developed to treat Alzheimers. So hopefully this means that the current population of people with DS -- who will probably be the last? -- will continue to receive new treatments.

New prenatal test spells doom for people with Down Syndrome

2008-06-06T18:10:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's business news made me terribly sad, but also admittedly happy.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/biotech/20080605-9999-1b5sequenom.html

You see, I have a child with Down Syndrome (DS) and I'm glad my wife and I didn't know beforehand. We had the typical amount of prenatal testing and nothing serious was found. Now this new test from Sequenom may dramatically reduce the number of children born with DS. In the abstract I think this would be great. But I also think it will negatively affect the prospects for people who already have DS. As the population of people with DS declines so will the potential ROI on any new drugs/treatments. Am I being unduly negative here?

The Police concert speaker problems

2008-05-27T07:27:00.001-07:00

I had the good fortune to see The Police in concert again last night, here in San Diego. I'd previously seen them about a year ago up in Los Angeles. What a difference a year makes! As always, they played fantastic but last night's concert really fell flat compared to a year ago. The problem was the sound system -- they were practically unhearable. I think the problem is their speakers.

I'm pretty sure they're touring with their own complete PA setup, speakers and amplifiers. So the sound problems are probably their own fault rather than the venues; fyi - Cricket Amphitheater still sucks! I think The Police are trying to make it through the end of their concert schedule without replacing any of their speakers, even though they're totally worn-out. It's kind of a rip-off, if you ask me. Theirs has been by-far the most successful concert of the year so I know they can afford to replace $100k of speakers.

I try not to let technical problems like this bother me. But seriously, the sound system was completely overloaded and distorted throughout the entire performance. The audience was forced to 'intuit' the notes and with only partial success. Many MANY times I saw the band hit the chorus of a song and then stare in wonder as the audience failed to react -- because we couldn't hear any change in the song! I'm sure things like this also demoralize a band and bring down their performance level.

On another (funny) side-note: You know how the stereotypical concert experience used to be for everyone to hold their lighters up, sort of create a field of 'candlelight' ? Well people don't smoke like they used to. Instead, the new candlelight is created by everyone holding their cellphone-cameras aloft, creating a field of LCD-display-candlelight (and visible only to the audience behind them).

Do great artists have to pay their 'dues' first?

2008-05-23T06:53:00.000-07:00

Here's a goofy chain of thoughts: My wife and I like to record new TV shows but delay watching them until the season is over. This allows us to watch them as fast (or slow) as we want. We learned to appreciate this after the first season of Veronica Mars, which was so great we ended-up watching the last 3 episodes in one giant late-night push -- we just HAD TO KNOW what happened next! Well, the latest series to get this treatment is the short-lived Bionic Woman on NBC. It got canned after just 8 episodes?

Anyways, so we're watching one of the few Bionic Woman episodes and in one scene the hero gets caught pretending to be a Picasso expert. The person they're trying to fool asks them, "What's your favorite piece by Picasso," and the hero's flummoxed, has no answer. At the time, I couldn't think of a favorite either. But now, a day later, I woke-up thinking about it (isn't the mind a strange thing?).

Several years ago I had the good fortune to be in Barcelona, Spain, where Picasso grew-up and where there's a museum dedicated to him. Most of his really famous artwork is elsewhere now, and this hometown museum primarily has his childhood artwork (though I think "Guernica" was also there? Maybe it was just on traveling exhibit). One early painting of his absolutely stood-out for me. He was just 14 and an art student, and he must have been studying the classic Realist painters. He painted a deathbed scene that was just stunning. Besides being absolutely photo-realistic (How??) it also immediately captures the emotion of the room, and all the people in the scene are absolutely alive with tension and grief.

So now -- confident that *I* could have fooled the bad guy (from Bionic Woman) -- I started thinking about what 'Genius' means in the Arts. Up until that point in his life, Picasso was still just an art student. I think he was regarded as a child prodigy (rightly) but no one knew if he would ever blossom into a great artist. By demonstrating such mastery of the existing paradigm, Realism, I think it allowed him carte blanche to experiment, eventually leading him to invent Cubism -- a sort of anti-Realism! I'm sure my analysis is infantile but it's my blog, so there.

I can think of at least one other example of this phenomenon, where a new artist demonstrated a mastery of the prevailing 'form' before branching-off into the creation of the new: The Beatles. My wife was surprised to learn (after college? 'cha! Where have you been???) that the Beatles recorded both the 50's-type "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" fluff AND the elaborate and philosophical later songs. She really didn't know they were the same band, and without knowing their history I could see why.

The Beatles recorded FIVE albums in their first THREE years! They basically paid their dues to their record-industry masters, and demonstrated a clear mastery of the prevailing teeny-bopper Lite Pop style. Then, when they were safely insulated from criticism, they sprang Sgt Pepper's on us. If I'm not mistaken this is widely considered the first Concept Album (or at least the first hugely successful one).

Managing videos on my new camcorder

2008-05-05T07:02:00.000-07:00

Last week I bought a new Sony HDR-CX7 high-definition camcorder. It records to Memory Stick flash-drive and includes a docking station that both charges it and allows direct download via USB cable.The videos are stored to the memory card in the folder, /avchd/bdmv/stream/ *.mts
The problem is figuring-out how to move the files onto the computer without the camera freaking.

If I simply copy, then delete the files, they will still appear in the playlist and give an error if you try to play them. If I delete all the other data files under /avchd then the camera asks you to re-initialize the memory card. I've yet to find a way to remove the .mts files without requiring extra steps on the camera afterwards.

By comparison, with my Nikon digital camera I simply copy the .jpg files and then delete them. The camera recovers from the unexpected disappearance of the files without complaint.

P.S. Kudos to Sony on their docking station's USB interface -- the memory card is easily recognized by Ubuntu Linux. This is in stark contrast to my LG 'Muziq' phone, which has a USB interface but tries to present as both a memory card and a modem, interfering with Linux recognizing the card. It's a cool idea, to be able to use the phone as a modem, but it's only supported in Windows, blech!

I emailed Tift Merritt

2008-05-03T23:07:00.000-07:00

Ha! I bought my wife the concert DVD for Tift Merritt, from her previous tour. But then I realized that it didn't include my favorite song, Late Night Pilgrim, from that same previous album. I checked her web-site, www.tiftmerritt.com, and found a Contact Us email. So I wrote to her and teased her, "What have you got against 'Late Night Pilgrim'?" I pointed-out that we'd just seen her in concert and she'd played my wife's favorite song but not mine, and now her DVD had skipped it, too. Hopefully she'll understand that I wasn't (too) serious!

The "Credit Default Swap" scam

2008-04-28T08:23:00.000-07:00

A quick follow-up to my previous comment about 'credit default swaps' being a scam. I recently came across these 2 excellent and very detailed explanations of the issue:

Longer, more detailed,
http://seekingalpha.com/article/73060-why-wall-st-needed-credit-default-swaps

Shorter, sweeter,
http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/articles/2008/04/28/toscano/843creditswaps011808.txt

Basically, these things are a kind of fake insurance but which the government accepts as real insurance. Because of a loophole in the accounting laws (e.g. GAAP) companies can decline to state their financial losses. "Because it's insured!" It's like buying PMI for your mortgage only your 'insurer' is your brother-in-law who never expects to have to cover your mortgage and doesn't have any capital reserves either (like a real insurer would).

I saw Tift Merritt in concert!

2008-04-19T19:51:00.000-07:00

Completely out of the blue, I chanced to look in the paper's Arts section and there it was -- an article about Tift Merritt in concert the next night. Well, of course, I ran around like my head was cut-off trying to arrange a babysitter, buy tickets, etc. Oh yeah, and keep it all a secret from my wife! But it all worked out and we found ourselves sitting down for a luxury dinner in a swank new downtown "Jazz Dinner Club" called Anthology. It was magnificent, and small enough that there wasn't a bad seat in the house. Of course we were seated about TEN FEET from the stage! ;-)

So how was it? After my lil' mini-review last week, it just seemed so ironic that I would now get the chance to see her perform. In general, it was a great concert ... but she didn't play my favorite song, "Late Night Pilgrim"?! So that tainted an otherwise wonderful experience, and for the rest of the evening I had the missing song in my head as if to make-up for it's absence.

One problem for me with attending live concerts -- and here comes the "technical" aspect -- is that I have over a decade of experience in live music and concert sound. I spent all five years of college, in fact, working as one of the 'lead' soundmen for the University's Associated Student Body. And so I have a hard time listening to live music without noticing myriad little details about the sound production. True to form, at last night's concert I kept wincing every time the organist swamped the mix, or Tift would get too close to her mike and overload it with false 'basso' (which is what happens when you hog a mike). I actually wondered if the venue was too small to have a proper mixing post, that the 'mains' were being handled remotely by the backstage mixing board. But at the very end of the concert, during the presentation of the band, Tift also thanked her soundman and pointed him out in the back of the club (behind me). So maybe part of the problem was the unfamiliar environment and PA. And, to be honest, the mix definitely improved as the night went on though the organ was problematic throughout.

Finally, I want to mention the guitarist. Before leaving for the concert I reviewed my initial post, where my closing comment was a criticism of "uninspired studio musicians" especially the guitar. Well the newspaper article said that she did, in fact, have a regular band -- sorry! But it did not mention a regular guitarist, so I think my criticism of the studio recording's guitarist probably still holds true, i.e., he/she was not someone with long acquaintance with Tift. I don't know if the guitarist I saw perform last night was the same person who recorded on the album. But he did let loose a bit, shred it up on a couple of opening tunes. So I was satisfied!

Google indexed my post in under 2 hours

2008-04-15T16:08:00.000-07:00

I've always wondered how long it took Google to update it's indexes. I'm sure they have pre-scheduled updates -- or even dedicated 'spiders' -- for more popular and active sites. I've setup small personal sites before but then never saw them appear in any search engines.

But today I posted a new question on UbuntuForums.org and when I tried to Google for an answer about 2 hours later I got my own post as a hit. So I guess that solves that question!

Why Isn't Tift Merritt more popular?

2008-04-08T22:33:00.000-07:00

My wife is the country music fan, not me. But I admit I am partial to country-rock, having grown-up with The Eagles, CCR, as well as John Denver. But it was only the past couple of years that I've listened to any current 'country' music. And that was a singer profiled on NPR (so she couldn't be THAT bad, right?) The singer is Tift Merritt and her music is divided between soft ballads and honky-tonk Nashville something-or-other. And I love it! Her melodies are classic and her lyrics are (mostly) poetry sung out loud.

But the only one of her songs ever played on Radio Paradise was blasted by other listeners as "I've heard this song played a million other times by a million other artists." They also said she sounded like 'someone else', e.g. Sheryl Crow or Patti Griffin. Fer crissakes people, most people sound *somewhat* like other persons! Maybe I'm not well-versed enough in modern country music to realize if she really is derivative or not. Personally, I think her music reminds me of Bonnie Raitt and her "Luck of the Draw" album.

On her previous album, the single was "Stray Paper" and while I liked it, it was never one of my favorites. This is the song that everyone on RP ripped. Instead, I really liked "Wait It Out", "Good Hearted Man", "I Am Your Tambourine" and especially "Late Night Pilgrim" (which is a classic song of late-night angst).

Apparently, her record company was disappointed with the sales of the album -- or maybe she was just resistant to immediately cranking out another -- and so she lost her contract. She spent a year slumming it in Paris and then got a new contract, with a new label, and released a new album. I immediately bought it through Amazon MP3 and listened to it every day for weeks. What am I, a teenager?

Anyways, my favorite songs on the new album are "Broken" (the single), "Another Country" (the title track and a sweet love song; I even whispered it spontaneously to my wife one night, wow!). She returns to late-night angst in "Morning is my destination" and even throws in an anti-war song "My Heart Is Free."

Actually, I have a theory about her relative lack of success. She's an excellent singer and songwriter but she doesn't have... A Band! On the new album, in particular, the guitar solos are all competent but they positively smack of studio musician. They're not inspired, at all. Maybe that undercuts all her big production numbers?

UPDATE: A month after writing this, I read an interview with her where she talks about 'her band'. So apparently the anemic guitar solo and (relatively) 'flat' chorus in "My Heart Is Free" are her producer's fault. There, I've done it. I've pissed-off all the people in her inner circle :-)

Explaining the Housing Bubble?

2008-04-08T22:13:00.000-07:00

I think it begs the question: Why am I talking about housing on my 'technical' blog? Because it's my own damn blog, that's why! Ha, just kidding. Actually, I spend a lot of time studying the housing market (and the economy) because I really really want to buy a house but don't want to get burned. And, in many ways, the financial world is technical and so -- being human -- I'm naturally inclined to try to find patterns in the noise.

The conundrum here is about these mysterious "credit default swaps" that all the big financial players seem to be buried in. The news says the market for them is TWICE the size of the actual economy, $50T versus $22T. How can this be??? The widely used description of them is 'insurance' offered inst/amongst the various institution so as to spread risk. But then why did the Federal Reserve need to throw down potentially $30B to prevent the bankruptcy of Bear Sterns?

Near as I can figure it, when the bankers talk about spreading 'risk' they're really talking about spreading LOSSES. So I wouldn't be surprised if we eventually hear about illegal collusion, and maybe an anti-trust investigation of these huge Wall St banks. Just my $.02

Software RAID really is faster

2008-04-08T22:11:00.000-07:00

I have run my personal computer on a RAID mirror for years now. I learned the primary reason for RAID on the day, more than 10 years ago, when I started my current job and discovered that my new employer's file server had been running in recovery mode -- for months -- on their RAID-5 array. I had never actually seen a RAID array much less had to recover one. Ah, yes, those were exciting days: "Must.. Fix.. Server, or.. Lose.. New.. Job!"

I've also gone through dozens of hard drives, most of which were malfunctioning by the time I trashed them (and yes, I now securely wipe them beforehand). So it makes great sense to use duplicate drives to avoid a catastrophic failure of one.

One of the other reasons is supposed to be that it's faster. More drives should equal more potential throughput. But in practice it's rarely the case. Most tests I've seen of RAID-5, for instance, show it to be much slower than the simpler forms of RAID, e.g. RAID-4 which uses more drives but avoids the need for any CRC calculations (or whatever RAID-5 is spending so much time doing).

Now, finally, I feel confident that my RAID really is faster. I did a very simple test on my test machine which is setup almost identically to my 'production' machine. The computer is a P4 with 1GB running Ubuntu 7.04 on a pair of identical IDE drives configured as a software mirror. I disabled the login prompt (in System > Administration > Login Window > Security, Enable Automatic Login) and then also set the 'Startup' to immediately load about a dozen apps (in System > Preferences > Sessions, New).

Running normally (with both drives) the test config took about 1:30 to boot and finish loading everything.

I then unplugged one of the drives, let the system figure-out that the array needed to run 'degraded', and retested. It now took over 2:00 to do the same process.

So the mirrored drives appeared to be 25% faster! Of course, a better test would be to reinstall without any RAID partitions, i.e., to eliminate the possibility that the degraded array was the culprit. But then I'd also have to try and recreate the exact same set of installed apps etc, and I'm not that interested in disproving my newfound satisfaction!

Is Ubuntu/Linux really this good?

2008-04-07T17:27:00.001-07:00

The thought that occurred to me today -- and inspired setting-up this blog -- was the realization that my current Ubuntu workstation is working so well now that it's become boring. I'm not used to this! The overwhelming majority of the time I've got a long list of tweaks I'm trying to accomplish on my home computers. Maybe I've simply forgotten the things I've given-up upon?

Currently I'm running Ubuntu 7.04 with two mirrored SATA drives. I've updated the drive configs so that I can still boot even if one fails (by default this is not the case?!). I've switched most of my daily applications to Linux equivalents, and the handful of Windows holdovers all work either 'directly' in WINE or in a Virtualbox virtual machine running Windows 2000.

So, is it really time for me to stop obsessively checking for updates and just take my computer for granted??

Introducing myself

2008-04-07T17:17:00.000-07:00

I have often had friends refer to me as "Technical Tony" (because my name is Tony). Since I solve technical problems for a living, I always have an opinion -- sometimes even advice -- for my friends and family. Since most of what I accomplish is of no interest to most of the people around me I've decided to try blogging about it. And hopefully somebody Googling for a future topic herein will find my blog and post encouraging feedback.

Honestly, I realize I should probably have just named this blog, "Things to amuse my wife, i.e., the only person reading this!"

P.S. If I say something 'dry' and seemingly self-evident, that's what passes for humor around my grove.