A Man and his Penguin

A couple of hours ago, I couldn’t get any audio from my microphone into the computer.

This was serious stuff. I fiddled around with alsamixer, tried sudo dpkg-reconfigure alsa-base, fiddled around some more, and then finally as I resigned myself to trying to upgrade to the latest kernel… I used arecord and it worked. Going into Skype and using the call test service also worked. It’s all working again now, thank god.

Maybe Feisty is a little too feisty to be put onto Dells, but I’m just happy that it’s working again now.

Today I got a call from the head office’s IT helpdesk. The guy told me that he’d been looking through some log files, and noticed that one of our computers was going to inappropriate sites that were blocked or should’ve been blocked on the proxy. He asked if I could schedule a time for him to remotely access the computer and check it for viruses, spyware and malware.

I was about to give him a time, but then I realised. The other day, my boss had been using that computer to look on Adult Friend Finder! So I told the guy that we’d give him a call back

My boss and I had a good laugh about that afterwards

Scott Miller has been doing some excellent work trying to track down the Ubiquity bug in Copland. He’s now discovered that Ubiquity on Ubuntu gives the same error messages in the log files as does the Ubiquity in Copland; so those error messages he found are not the cause of the problem.

Personally, I’m thinking that it was the way in which I uninstalled the language packs. I did these commands:

[CODE]sudo apt-get remove –purge language-pack-*
sudo apt-get install language-pack-en language-pack-gnome-en[/CODE]

I remember reading that Ubiquity crashes on Linux Mint if you apt-get language packs before installing the system to your hard disk.

I’m going to duplicate my Copland language-pack purge on Xubuntu and see what happens to the Ubiquity installer, and Scott Miller will probably try it too.

I tried encoding the same clip with Xvid.

The quality was as good as I expected, and my CPU usage during full-size playback was much less. However, and this might be because of the transcoding utility I used, encoding took a ridiculously long amount of time. I started the transcoding process in the evening, came back in the morning and it still wasn’t finished!

I will try installing a Xvid encoder in Wine and seeing if it gives good results and quick encoding.

Does anyone know of any other free-as-in-speech, non-patented video codecs?

Lately, the software libre community has been complaining about the DRM included on DVDs, HD-DVDs and Blu-ray discs. This is completely justified.

But one thing we often say is "Don’t just complain, contribute!", meaning that if there’s something you want to change about the software, you should just change it for yourself (or contribute to its implementation).

Why shouldn’t this apply to other things? Rather than just complain about formats that are intertwined with freedom-killing DRM, we should be creating an alternative. Obviously, the studios aren’t just going to adopt a DRM-free, open and unpatented format, so this might be more of a symbolic thing.

The basic idea is this: Create a format for video, audio, subtitles, and interactivity that is not tied to a particular physical media (i.e. it’s not tied to Bluray discs, for instance). This format will use patent-free audio, video and image formats that can be compressed and decompressed with open-source software, and interactivity provided through XML.

Standard Definition is slowly slowly starting to be on the way out - high definition (768p and 1080i) is where it’s at, and in the future it’ll be 1080p. Therefore, our open-source disc format should be compatible with these resolutions, as well as future-proof with the ability to support higher resolutions still!

As part of this, I performed a small test last night. I transcoded the Hi-5 Have Some Fun DVD into Ogg Theora format using Thoggen (yes! It works under Feisty!). Good results - I used the same bitrate as the DVD originally was, and didn’t seem to lose any quality. Audio and video sync was great. It took 5 hours to rip and transcode 1 hour of footage. Acceptable.

The only problem is, when I played back the footage at 100% size, my CPU was at around 100% capacity. When I tried scaling up to full-screen, it started dropping frames quite badly. Looks like this codec is not suitable for embedded devices like DVD players and HD-DVDs - this processor isn’t really a slouch, and it had only 576 lines to deal with!

Next up: XVid. Although, apparantly there are patent concerns about this one.

Lately, the software libre community has been complaining about the DRM included on DVDs, HD-DVDs and Blu-ray discs. This is completely justified.

But one thing we often say is "Don’t just complain, contribute!", meaning that if there’s something you want to change about the software, you should just change it for yourself (or contribute to its implementation).

Why shouldn’t this apply to other things? Rather than just complain about formats that are intertwined with freedom-killing DRM, we should be creating an alternative. Obviously, the studios aren’t just going to adopt a DRM-free, open and unpatented format, so this might be more of a symbolic thing.

The basic idea is this: Create a format for video, audio, subtitles, and interactivity that is not tied to a particular physical media (i.e. it’s not tied to Bluray discs, for instance). This format will use patent-free audio, video and image formats that can be compressed and decompressed with open-source software, and interactivity provided through XML.

Standard Definition is slowly slowly starting to be on the way out - high definition (768p and 1080i) is where it’s at, and in the future it’ll be 1080p. Therefore, our open-source disc format should be compatible with these resolutions, as well as future-proof with the ability to support higher resolutions still!

As part of this, I performed a small test last night. I transcoded the Hi-5 Have Some Fun DVD into Ogg Theora format using Thoggen (yes! It works under Feisty!). Good results - I used the same bitrate as the DVD originally was, and didn’t seem to lose any quality. Audio and video sync was great. It took 5 hours to rip and transcode 1 hour of footage. Acceptable.

The only problem is, when I played back the footage at 100% size, my CPU was at around 100% capacity. When I tried scaling up to full-screen, it started dropping frames quite badly. Looks like this codec is not suitable for embedded devices like DVD players and HD-DVDs - this processor isn’t really a slouch, and it had only 576 lines to deal with!

Next up: XVid. Although, apparantly there are patent concerns about this one.

Lately, the software libre community has been complaining about the DRM included on DVDs, HD-DVDs and Blu-ray discs. This is completely justified.

But one thing we often say is "Don’t just complain, contribute!", meaning that if there’s something you want to change about the software, you should just change it for yourself (or contribute to its implementation).

Why shouldn’t this apply to other things? Rather than just complain about formats that are intertwined with freedom-killing DRM, we should be creating an alternative. Obviously, the studios aren’t just going to adopt a DRM-free, open and unpatented format, so this might be more of a symbolic thing.

The basic idea is this: Create a format for video, audio, subtitles, and interactivity that is not tied to a particular physical media (i.e. it’s not tied to Bluray discs, for instance). This format will use patent-free audio, video and image formats that can be compressed and decompressed with open-source software, and interactivity provided through XML.

Standard Definition is slowly slowly starting to be on the way out - high definition (768p and 1080i) is where it’s at, and in the future it’ll be 1080p. Therefore, our open-source disc format should be compatible with these resolutions, as well as future-proof with the ability to support higher resolutions still!

As part of this, I performed a small test last night. I transcoded the Hi-5 Have Some Fun DVD into Ogg Theora format using Thoggen (yes! It works under Feisty!). Good results - I used the same bitrate as the DVD originally was, and didn’t seem to lose any quality. Audio and video sync was great. It took 5 hours to rip and transcode 1 hour of footage. Acceptable.

The only problem is, when I played back the footage at 100% size, my CPU was at around 100% capacity. When I tried scaling up to full-screen, it started dropping frames quite badly. Looks like this codec is not suitable for embedded devices like DVD players and HD-DVDs - this processor isn’t really a slouch, and it had only 576 lines to deal with!

Next up: XVid. Although, apparantly there are patent concerns about this one.

Lately, the software libre community has been complaining about the DRM included on DVDs, HD-DVDs and Blu-ray discs. This is completely justified.

But one thing we often say is "Don’t just complain, contribute!", meaning that if there’s something you want to change about the software, you should just change it for yourself (or contribute to its implementation).

Why shouldn’t this apply to other things? Rather than just complain about formats that are intertwined with freedom-killing DRM, we should be creating an alternative. Obviously, the studios aren’t just going to adopt a DRM-free, open and unpatented format, so this might be more of a symbolic thing.

The basic idea is this: Create a format for video, audio, subtitles, and interactivity that is not tied to a particular physical media (i.e. it’s not tied to Bluray discs, for instance). This format will use patent-free audio, video and image formats that can be compressed and decompressed with open-source software, and interactivity provided through XML.

Standard Definition is slowly slowly starting to be on the way out - high definition (768p and 1080i) is where it’s at, and in the future it’ll be 1080p. Therefore, our open-source disc format should be compatible with these resolutions, as well as future-proof with the ability to support higher resolutions still!

As part of this, I performed a small test last night. I transcoded the Hi-5 Have Some Fun DVD into Ogg Theora format using Thoggen (yes! It works under Feisty!). Good results - I used the same bitrate as the DVD originally was, and didn’t seem to lose any quality. Audio and video sync was great. It took 5 hours to rip and transcode 1 hour of footage. Acceptable.

The only problem is, when I played back the footage at 100% size, my CPU was at around 100% capacity. When I tried scaling up to full-screen, it started dropping frames quite badly. Looks like this codec is not suitable for embedded devices like DVD players and HD-DVDs - this processor isn’t really a slouch, and it had only 576 lines to deal with!

Next up: XVid. Although, apparantly there are patent concerns about this one.

Yes, you heard correctly - you can NOW buy a Dell with Ubuntu preinstalled. And it’s cheaper than buying the same machine with Windows.

There are only two disappointing things: I can’t buy one (because I’m in Australia) and Dell says that the Ubuntu machines are for "enthusiasts". Well, with that attitude, Linux will never get the mind-share it deserves.

Ubuntu is perfect, even better than perfect when on good compatible hardware, for those who lack computer knowledge.

I recieved my replacement Hi-5 DVD today, and I’ve just eaten a potato pizza and apple pie!

We also had a huge day at work. I honestly can’t guess how much we sold, but was a lot! We finally received the 46 inch Full HD Sony LCD TV today that we had on order… and then at 1pm we got a call from someone who was looking for one and wanted to buy it today. At 1:50pm they came in and bought our display model; possibly the fastest turnaround in the shop’s history. Spiro also sold one of those Palsonic LCDs, thanks in part to the little sign I stuck up on the front window of the shop.

I recieved my replacement Hi-5 DVD today, and I’ve just eaten a potato pizza and apple pie!

We also had a huge day at work. I honestly can’t guess how much we sold, but was a lot! We finally received the 46 inch Full HD Sony LCD TV today that we had on order… and then at 1pm we got a call from someone who was looking for one and wanted to buy it today. At 1:50pm they came in and bought our display model; possibly the fastest turnaround in the shop’s history. Spiro also sold one of those Palsonic LCDs, thanks in part to the little sign I stuck up on the front window of the shop.