exploring video streaming hosting options

Wowza media server gives a cost effective solution for streaming broadcast flash. Windows media server is free, of course. Hosting plans - checked out dedicated hosting at ThePlanet, for $199 for 5000 GB per month, $25 setup fee.

Bypass Gmail Spam filter

Gmail has added a nice option - making a filter to bypass the spam filter - an option "Never send it to Spam". Saw a reference in this thread.

chrome application shortcut

Created an application shortcut in the Quick Launch bar using Google Chrome for this blog. Ideal, since it will remember my login, and will open up in a jiffy. So, many recent posts....

Search and Replace

Found this great tool for find/replace whole blocks of text, googling for S who wanted to do this with some thousands of html pages. See screenshot below:

multiple recorders in Nero

Ticked the check-box to use multiple recorders, so can write mp3 backup CDs (of which I need two copies, one for Planet and one for Studio) twice as fast. When doing this, the number of copies can be kept as 1. Otherwise, it will prompt for another set of 2 blanks after finishing the first set.

videos on the iBook

Transcoding some Ted talks with Super as a background job at Planet and later watching them on the iBook at home. VCD compatible MPEG1 is always a safe bet, plays off the 8 GB mem-key. The PocketPC MPEG4 preset also works if used with DivXDoctor. DD takes around a minute to "doctor" the file and create a placeholder mov file of around 5-10 MB for the 20 minute video. Filesize of the orig video is around 10-20% of the MPEG1 file. Custom settings, using uncompressed PCM wav audio with DivX5 for video also works without DivXDoctor, filesize comparable to the MPEG1 when using 350 kbps for video.

find out which files are opened by a process

In Linux, lsof is available to find out lots of stuff about the filesystem, which files are open, by whom or which process, etc. On Windows, the solution seems to be the Sysinternals Process Explorer. The built-in tool on XP, called OpenFiles.exe, needs a flag to be enabled for it to show local non-shared files, or else it says

INFO: The system global flag 'maintain objects list' needs to be enabled to see
local opened files. See Openfiles /? for more information.

Unfortunately Openfiles /? does not give the solution so easily. Found it by googling at ExpertsExchange - The actual answer is more easily given by Openfiles /Local /? which is

OPENFILES /Local [ ON | OFF ]

Description:
   Enables an administrator to enable or disable the system global flag
   'maintain objects list' which tracks local file handles. Changes made
   by this switch will take effect only after restarting the system.
   Note: Enabling this flag adds performance overhead.

Examples:
   OPENFILES /Local
   OPENFILES /Local ON
   OPENFILES /Local OFF

The condition requiring a restart, and the performance overhead, means that we should go with ProcessExplorer....

In Process Explorer, there is a Findmenu item. Using that, just give the substring you want to search for. No wildcards. Just substring. If you want to see any file ending with .mp3, should not give *.mp3, just .mp3. And so on.

new feature in Listen Now

Added B's code for check-boxes for people to choose to skip some files in "Listen Now". Had to do some editing to remove the non-functional "Listen after ___ hour(s): ___ minutes - finally just made the fields hidden.

Data entry techniques on the PocketPC

The Toshiba e400 PocketPC gives 4 data entry methods.

• Transcriber - recognizes natural handwriting if written neatly.
• Block Recognizer - similar to Palm's Graffiti.
• Letter recognizer - supposed to recognize individual letters entered into a part of the screen
• Onscreen keyboard
  

Using the transcriber, this is what results:

This is a test of handwriting recognition where I will keep writing till it stops recognizing stuff. With this thing I can write pretty fast, but not very accurately. If I have to write with this. T,cs the time takento write neatly and then correct it waltz the effort? Or is typing with the virtual keyboard a better choice? Only timee tests will tell. But fol the moment, Tim trying it out.worth thePlncbablly it will recognizeProbablyI have to write very legibly otherwise it will recognize junk.

Using the onscreen keyboard:

This may be much slower, but less error-prone. And the suggestions also save time.

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. 40 sec. With keyboard.

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. 45 sec with transcriber after correcting with kb.

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. 42 sec. With block recognizer, many errors as I'm out of practice.

The qulck bkown fox jumpag oock tha lnzy boa 37seconds wltth eefceh necoynlzer. (letter recognizer)

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
28 seconds with transcriber! Result of writing neatly.

Of course, now when I'm entering this into the blog, I remember that the phrase is actually "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." Jumps, not jumped.

speeds of various flash memory devices

Today I forgot to bring the 8 GB mem-key when I left the room in the morning, so fleetingly thought about recording on the 512 MB SD-card in the PocketPC. Then remembered that the Mandir laptop doesn't have a card-reader built-in. Anyway, tested out the speeds, found the times taken to read and write a 100 MB file to the various devices:
Transcend 8 GB JF220 - 20 sec write, 5 sec read. 40 Mbps w / 160 Mbps r.
Sandisk 1 GB - 20 sec write, 8 sec read. 40 Mbps w /100 Mbps r.
Kingston 512 MB SD-card - 35 sec write, 14 sec read. 23 Mbps w / 57 Mbps read.

Not a very scientific test, since just transferring the 100 MB file from one hard disk to another took 7 sec - the hard disk speeds probably interfere with the results above. But gives a rough idea.

At a time, the Transcend cannot record more than 2 mono audio tracks at 16 bit 44.1 kHz from Cubase - trying to add any more results in buffer underrun and Cubase stops recording. That's just 1.4 Mbps. Relatively, then, the SD-card with a card reader can probably not handle more than one mono audio track at a time while recording.

The unbranded All-in-One card reader I have also has some issues. Twice it caused the drive to vanish while reading the 100 MB file from the SD-card - power over USB cable issue, most probably. Connected it to another USB slot, checked with scandisk and found no errors, copied OK.

more software for the PocketPC

Added the Plucker reader Vade Mecum to the Pocket PC, as well as an image viewer from PDAMill. Both working well. Must try out Plucker files as an alternative to Mobipocket and iSilo. The reader is slower to load, but if the desktop "distiller" is good, it will make up for those deficiencies...

tweaking analog referer reports

Analog reports for sssbpt.org were becoming too large due to the referer report listing all the webmail sites which were being used to read the Sai Spiritual Showers emails. Added the following lines to the config file to make the report more manageable:

REFFLOOR 1000s
#list only those with more than 1000 ref in last 7 days
REFREPEXCLUDE http://mail.google.com/* 
REFREPEXCLUDE http://*mail* 
REFREPEXCLUDE http://sss.sssbpt.org/sssbpt/?p=confirm&uid*

e-commerce

I've had a flurry of ordering stuff on the 'Net - using bank direct debit via CCAvenue at zoomin.com, using paypal at Barnes and Noble and now with HDFC's NetSafe, probably I can do much more. It took just 10 minutes to open an HDFC account with PAN card and VoterID xerox copies. New branch here, so probably they are hungry for business. 5.30 pm to 7.30 pm working hours are good for us, too.

Recording Yagnam chants

Recording in PC with Tascam US-144 and PDStudio laptop. 2 line-ins for the mornings, one mic for the evenings. Works with Audition 1.0 and Cubase 1.1 LE. Cubase has the advantage of directly writing to the mem-key.

burnt fingers with IMAP

R wanted a solution to back up his gmail. Suggested IMAP, since so much is said about IMAP being superior to POP3. But in this case,

1. His total email size is going to be more than 4 GB, and according to Murphy's law, he will probably be still on FAT32, so will crash when that happens.
2. Archiving to DVD and deleting old mbox files will probably cause catastrophe with IMAP - won't that delete files on the server?

So, recommended POP3 to him. But he needs to make a lot of filters to make folders and populate them to recreate the labels he has on gmail.

fixed stuck ups button

The UPS in Mandir had it's on-off switch jammed by spilt paint. Took it to studio after unsuccessfully trying to un-jam it using a screwdriver and a knife-blade. There, D opened it up, filed away the paint, now it's better than before tho' a bit rough looking.

DKU-5 cable installation problem

N's clone DKU-5 cable was not working with his Nokia 6070 phone. For the error mesg on the phone, 'Enhancement not supported'

http://www.susteen.com/support/kb_answers.asp?QuestionId=34

Reasons could be:

1. Phone not supported by cable.
2. No proper driver installed.
3. Cable/phone may be damaged

DKU-5 seems to be compatible with 6070. Checking it out, found that the driver had an issue - Device manager showed that the USB-UART driver had problems.

While reinstalling the driver from driver CD, error message is "name already in use as service name". Uninstalled PC Suite and tried, still no go.
Uninstalled PC Suite, booted safe mode, removed all instances, rebooted safe mode, checked no instances of USB-UART, still the problem persisted.

Some people report that the driver which came with their CD was not working, they downloaded a driver from the manufacturer's website and that worked. But in this case, googling "USB World Technology Inc" gave a driver from driverguide.com which seems to be identical to the one in the CD.

Then, following the tip at linksys forum checked C:\WINDOWS\setupapi.log. It referred to the service "Serenum". Searched with regedit, found the keys, but could not delete them: it says "Unable to delete all specified values". So, stuck till some solution for this is found.

nice web 2.0 site

zoomin.com had a promo of 30 free prints for new sign-ins. Signed in with an invite sent by K, was pleased with their implementation and ideas. Pros - cheap prints. Unlimited storage, privacy options. Responsive site, fast photo uploads. Cons - Slooow Slideshows. They say they're hiring, and are looking for *nix experience. Maybe they want to switch away from ASP.NET?

capturing from video conferencing system

There's a LifeSize installation next door, and they wanted to be able to record the HiDef video for archives. Saw the manual (pdf, 723 kB) and it says the way to record is using a Standard Def video out. Checked it out, was giving a blurry PAL signal at something like 15 fps. Nothing like the 1280x720 30 fps output on the VGA out. Their tech support email said pretty much the same thing.

Tried connecting to the box using NetMeeting, since it supports H.323 and SIP. NetMeeting only got us 320x240 video with 10fps or so.

Have to try Mizuphone SIP client next, running a local SIP server.

freeing up space in C: on saispace2

Following the excellent set of steps given at http://searchenterprisedesktop.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid192_gci1252850,00.html to clean up c:. Got around a GB freed.