error '8004020e'

OK, the problem with the subscription page was actually solved: the error '8004020e' is actually due to ill-formed "From" email address, which is the email address submitted on the form. Googling gave the answer from
http://www.thescripts.com/forum/thread433129.html

Mostly routine

Most of the time spent in "routine" work of preparing audio material and so on.

1. The old Satellite Pro's floppy drive seems to have given up the ghost. So, I can't rely on typing on that and carrying stuff across on a floppy.

2. Some notes on noise reduction and an interesting result in one case.

For some interviews recorded in the field (in Africa) noise reduction was desirable in some cases. Cool Edit Pro, 69%, followed by noise gate in SoundForge at a threshold just enough to cut off the residual noise. Followed by RMS normalization, of course. In some cases, noise reduction not desirable, as when the background noise is either not constant, or very low, or as in one case, the background noise is very loud, being recorded while travelling in a van. In this case, the noise acts as a sort of prop for the voices - gives the feel of being on location.

3. A problem with the Submit button on our playlist subscription page. The first problem was that after adding the search bar, the form with the submit button was document.form(1) and not document.form(0) as was written in the validation javascript. Some other problem still persists....

4. Must try to get the google analytics javascript to work on "external links" - so that we can do our audio on demand with Coral Cache...

authoring dvds using dvedit

Since DVEDIT has the Matrox RT2000 card, it was earlier the only DVD making option. Now software encoders on saispace2 run much faster than the 4x realtime required by Matrox, or are more compatible with other DVD creation SW. So, trying various options.

First, the MPEG2 export only from the Matrox - not recognized by anything other than Sonic DVDit, I think.

Next - the Matrox DV avi export. Fast, and cuts file into 2 GB chunks, useful if using FAT32 drives. Recognized as DV avi by most sw, but the audio is a separate wav file which most sw will need prompting to find. For eg., in Nerovision Express, the audio has to be separately dragged and dropped in the video edit timeline. In Virtualdub, Audio menu, Use wav audio.

MS DV avi export from dvedit seems to be not useful - takes 4x realtime, and probably reencodes.

ReactOS

Tried out the ReactOS live Cd. Well, it is truly alpha - didn't recognize dharma's logitech serial mouse. But booted in a jiffy, only 10-20 MB for the entire live CD.

using ethereal

Used ethereal on saispace to check out the mysterious packet bursts from dharma when it boots up. Filters were useful: capture filter

(host not 192.168.2.6) and (host not our-melb-ipaddress )

since a sftp session was in progress.
Display filter would be

ip.addr ne 192.168.2.6

and so on.

Nothing suspicious. Only NTP, multicast router solicitation and antivirus updates.

Linuxjournal has a nice guided tour of ethereal.

reinstall on dvedit

Premiere was crashing on DVEDIT, even reinstalling it didn't work. So, decided to reinstall Win2K on it. Installed in another folder without removing the existing installation. Took network and promise ATA card drivers by choosing the oem0.inf and oem1.inf in the old WINNT\inf folder - found with notepad that these were their respective inf files, mentioning Promise and DLink. Windows did the rest, automagically installing the sound card also - ESS 1938.

After reinstall, the stop error and restart problem which I'd posted on PCQ forum is solved - so it was purely a software problem, as suspected. And of course Windows problems are best solved by reinstalls!

Installed WinK SP4 from PCQ Oct 2004 DVD, then Matrox video tools after the display driver.

curiosity - or the broken hand-pumping flashlight

Curiosity kills the cat, but in this case, it killed my "hand-pumping flashlight". I'd been given a low-cost one, along with several others. Some were brightly glowing while some needed continuous pumping for any light. Suspected a hidden battery inside. Opened and saw. Yes, there was a battery. But now the flashlight is dead - a resistor broke during surgery!

a brief look at ftp servers

There was a need for an ftp server to run on Windows Server 2003, with the following specs:

support for SSH2 and SSL with the following basic features:
- Runs as a NT Service (not with ServAny--not as stable)
- work with standard FTP clients
- require a secure connection
- bandwidth throttling per user and per server
- event handling (monitoring for DoS attacks or other suspicious
activities)

- DB user account support
- Lightweight with high perf
- Programmable interfaces in case sites want to automate
- 1/2 domain, 10 account support to start with

Commercial servers are >$200

A list of FTP servers is on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_FTP_servers

Sourceforge gave some more:

A good example is http://sourceforge.net/projects/wzdftpd
But will probably use SrvAny to run as a service. zFTPServer Suite also looks good....

Filezilla server looks good, too. Not much documentation on the site, but trying it
out, it has

SSL/TLS support
Speed limits
Compression settings
Admin interface

A Brute force banning script is at
http://www.delta-marketing.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3

correction to script

Corrected version of script reads

MINUTES=`echo "scale=1; ($MINUTES/15)" | bc -l`
MINUTES=$(printf "%2.0f" $MINUTES)
MINUTES=`echo "scale=0; ($MINUTES*15)" | bc -l`
MINUTES=$(printf "%02d" $MINUTES)

if [ "$MINUTES" = "60" ]
then
 HOURS=`echo "scale=0; ($HOURS+1)" | bc -l`
 HOURS=$(printf "%02d" $HOURS)
 MINUTES=00
fi

if [ "$HOURS" = "24" ]
then
 HOURS=00
fi

This has the printf part only if bc is called. Else, sometimes printf gives errors like

 printf: 08: invalid number

disabling or getting around gmail spam filter

The gmail spam filter was marking mail from our Jo'berg playout server as spam - maybe since it was from a dynamic ip. Marking as NOT SPAM did not work for mails which came later. Making a filter with an "Add flag" for the sender From address worked! No longer sent to SPAM folder.

port forwarding

And for port forwarding, followed the steps given in
http://www.portforward.com/english/routers/port_forwarding/Huawei/Smartax-MT-841/BitTorrent.htm

router screenshot

Here's a screenshot:

My collegue wanted to get internet access for 3-4 machines using a BSNL DATAONE Huawei router which already had 4 LAN ports.They were doing PPPoE dialout from individual machines; this wouldn't work with more than one machine at any one time.

Set up dialling out from the router similar to the BSNL DATAONE ADSL HOWTO

Except that the layout was different. Had to add a NEW PVC-7 - change its VPI/VCI:->0/35 after first changing PVC-0's value which was earlier 0/35 and hence causing a conflict. Most important - SAVE ALL button at the bottom did the rebooting of router. Maybe I'll put in screenshots later. And I'll need to help them with port forwarding for one of the machines to use Bittorrent.

gmail problem and google analytics invite

Gmail is crashing my Mozilla - Mozilla 1.6 - Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040115
Just after the Loading... sign appears on the left, stops responding. Probably some Javascript issue. Working OK with Opera, Konqueror (with limited functionality), etc.

Got a google analytics invite. Thought I'd add it to this site, but www.radiosai.org has priority.