pdfs on the Sony Reader

Some user-generated pdfs work fine on the Reader. No resizing, of course, but the page-turns are quick enough and links work fine. Example book Oliver Twist from beta.feedbooks.com. Also another "Survey - The Brain from the Economist" which has some illustrations too. Transferred using PRSUtil (works fine after .NET framework was installed) and Connect reader SW - in both cases, the results were the same.

using the Reader without Connect software

I'm trying to add files (PDF and RTF) to the Sony Reader PRS500 without going through the Connect SW from Sony. User developed utils from mobileread forums.

PRSUtil - tried, but it says

The system cannot execute the specified program.

- Is it because .NET framework needs to be installed? Let me check.

libprs500 - Involved process:

Following the wiki, I've downloaded and installed the other items. Running
L:\Python25\scripts\easy_install libprs500 ran for a while, then stopped with

error: Python was built with Visual Studio 2003;
extensions must be built with a compiler than can generate compatible binaries.
Visual Studio 2003 was not found on this system. If you have Cygwin installed,
you can try compiling with MingW32, by passing "-c mingw32" to setup.py.

So I tried downloading the PyXML-0.8.4 tar.gz manually, went into the directory, ran setup.py install -c

mingw32

No, that's not right, it error: option -c not recognized

Then tried setup.py build -c mingw32

This time it said error: command 'gcc' failed: No such file or directory

So I checked in the mingw32 bin directory (which was installed with QT).

Added L:\MinGW\bin to the PATH by going to Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Environment Variables

RESTARTED the system (or else path is not updated) and then tried

setup.py build -c mingw32

OK, worked.

Then setup.py install - still gave the same error of VS2003 not found. Oh, it's trying to build it again. So,

checked

setup.py --help - install has options --skip-build as well as --no-compile. Aha! Did

setup.py install --skip-build

Worked!

Ran L:\Python25\scripts\easy_install libprs500

This time it gave

error: Couldn't find a setup script in c:\docume~1\sgh\locals~1\temp\easy_install-vvkkzb\pyusb-0.3.5.win32.zip

This is in spite of having already copied the contents of this zip file to the site-packages directory before the install. Probably because this compiled version is for Python2.4.

So,

running prs500 info gave

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "L:\Python25\Scripts\prs500-script.py", line 5, in
from pkg_resources import load_entry_point
File "l:\python25\lib\site-packages\setuptools-0.6c3-py2.5.egg\pkg_resources.py", line 2479, in
File "l:\python25\lib\site-packages\setuptools-0.6c3-py2.5.egg\pkg_resources.py", line 585, in require
File "l:\python25\lib\site-packages\setuptools-0.6c3-py2.5.egg\pkg_resources.py", line 483, in resolve
pkg_resources.DistributionNotFound: pyusb>=0.3.5

OK, now try to compile pyusb from source. Downloaded from sourceforge pyusb-0.3.5-py25.zip - but this just had the same 80 kB usb.pyd which I already have in site-packages! So, checked the pkg_resources.py mentioned above, the path itself doesn't exist, because the setuptools-0.6c3-py2.5.egg is a binary file, so no wordpad editing possible. So I'm stuck.

update on BookCreator

Got BookCreator running inside VMWare player by deleting the disk images and all files and starting from scratch. But it's not very impressive - useful for layout junkies, but not for bulk conversions, I think.

Trying to get Wikipedia CD into Sony Reader

Tried out various options to get links to work so that I can get the Wikipedia CD onto the Reader with complete hyper-linked goodness. Links to the SW below are on the Mobileread forums.

1. flatLRF - was creating only LRF of first file to which it was pointed, no recursion, no links.

2. HTML2LRF from MobileRead forums - no links work except those within the same html file - and that too if referenced only with label.

3. Librie Toolbar from the Librie Yahoo group. Results same as above - only to be expected since HTML2LRF was made with the toolbar's dll. But it makes a Table of Contents and keeps images... very useful tutorial at http://www.xtmotion.com/librie/ - the wayback machine has a working link.

4. Installing BookCreator in a Virtual Machine as detailed in http://silicondependency.googlepages.com/bookcreator%40librie - details below.

5. BookDesigner on XP - needed Word installed (which I didn't have) for best results. But with the "reformat completely" option it was able to open html files - but no links. "Failed" when trying to export as Sony Librie (lrf). Later succeeded in exporting lrf by changing output option to not use "advanced Word doc and rtf export"! But still no links...

6. BookDesigner on Win98, which had Word2000. Yes, the links are seen as underlined text at least! But very very slow. More than 10 minutes for a single page! On a PII 400 MHz. And seeing the posts about BookDesigner problems, not encouraged to try more http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7897

BookCreator in VMWare was, of course the most time-consuming, especially since I had to do it twice over an hour each time since the first time I "forgot" the installing Japanese part, and landed in the soup. Without Japanese, BookCreator gives error "Standard fonts not installed". And I can attest that without the "mysterious TTEdit" which also installs along with BookCreator, BookCreator refuses to start. Installing the fonts by adding support for East-Asian languages as given in the readme of the "English" BookCreator, the BookCreator crashed every time and refused to uninstall - path not found. And somehow the clock reset and Windows wanted Activation! The Windows install takes around 45 minutes. The Ethernet refused to work at first - not pinging. A series of checking and unchecking the connected checkbox on the VMWare Player Ethernet menu and changing from Bridged to Host-Only seemed to do the trick. Somewhere along the line, the BookCreator has realised that the trial period has expired, tho' the VMWare player shows Jan 2 2005!

Finally, the result is: no working links as of now, since I can't try BookCreator. Best bet seems to be HTML2LRF, with the Table of Contents it makes, make a separate book for each alphabet. Doing

dir /B

redirecting to a file, formatting it with Find/Replace so that all the filenames come on a single line with full path and separated by spaces....

Edit: March 15 2011 - changed the Librie Toolbar link to a wayback machine link.

Google Apps for Your Domain

Now Google Apps for Your Domain is really compelling - free email hosting, free webpage hosting, no public ads!

CD writing SW

Last month, GSS told me that GS had a problem with his CD writer, SAMSUNG RW-52-24-52, not being recognized by his CD-writing SW - some version of Nero or something. Downloaded and sent him Deepburner Free since it was smaller than (and probably also more polished than) CDBurnerXP Pro. Actually, searching on Sourceforge gives many more results for free cd burning SW based on .NET.

vnstat

Installed by PB - gives useful info by running as a daemon. On my machine there is knetload, of course, but it runs only when I'm logged on....

mount iso file

This is something we sometimes need to do....

mount -o loop -t iso9660 filename.iso /mnt/mountpoint/

Jo'berg connect problem on Fri-Sat

The Joburg link was down. So I got on yahoo messenger, requested the
operator wsjhbboc to please restart the router. He did it, and after an
hour when the hourly dns update was sent, I am able to logon.

problem using flatLRF

I've downloaded flatLRF from http://monalipse.sourceforge.jp/tmp/lrf/ but it's not doing recursive downloads of all pages linked from the URL - only converting the first page. Wonder why.

opening mms links from firefox

Wonder why the firefox team did not add a nice gui for this one:

1) Type in about:config" in the FireFox address bar.
2) Right-click and select "New" and then "String"
3) In the first dialog box, as preference name, type in network.protocol-handler.app.mms
4) In the second dialog box, as string value, type in gmplayer (or whatever the path of your media player is - on Windows it will be wmplayer)

Avoiding echo in voice chat apps like skype

Make sure that your volume control settings are fine, and also move the mic and speaker as far away as possible. If possible use headphones, of course.

Double-click the speaker icon
1. Choose Options | Properties from the menu.
2. In the Adjust volumes for rectangle, click on Recording.
3. Make sure that only "Microphone" is checked - make sure all others are muted.
4. Choose OK.
5. Choose Options | Properties from the menu.
6. In the Adjust volumes for rectangle, click on Playback
7. Make sure Microphone is muted or volume is turned fully down.

The person at the other end also has to do these steps for best results.

video advice

Another question asked of the sage was:

I have some Quicktime .mov files which I want to stitch together. What software can I use? I run XP...

First recommended Windows Movie Maker as being bundled with XP. But it cannot open mov files, of course. Then lent out an old copy of Ulead VideoStudio ver 3 which had come bundled with an old ATI video card (circa 1999-2000, which says it will not work with Windows NT!) Hope it worked. If not, convert mov to avi with MOV2AVI or Rad video tools or something like that...

Ultrasound

Last night I'd been to the GH to help the doctor there with the new Philips Ultrasound Scanner (Echo machine). It had acquisition of still or video built-in, but poor Dr. G didn't know how to use it. Went thru the quick-start guide and found that hitting "Menu" while in the "Report" view brings up the images which are previously saved by hitting "Freeze" and "Acquire"..... No place to plug in a printer, either. Not very user-friendly, but better than Sirius Cybernetics products, I suppose!

Wireless networking security aka WEP aka SSID

Another question-answer session:

How to set the security bit in a wireless router ? So that neighbors do not
log into your network ?

Google the exact name of the router, find a manual or user-guide...

The technology is called WEP. (Wired Equivalent Privacy) . So what you have to look for is how to enable WEP...

Example http://support.dlink.com/emulators/wbr2310/wireless.htm

http://www.webhazard.com/html/how_to_set_wep.html

PRS-500 Sony Portable Reader - short review

Now that I've been trying out the reader for a few days, here are my thoughts.

Readability - very good.

Battery life - very good so far.

Responsiveness - very very poor. Especially large pdfs - page turn takes 5.5 seconds for a 30 MB pdf! I timed it. Even menu navigation is extremely sluggish. But page turns for BBeB and txt files are quite acceptable - just over 1 sec.

Sony Connect store - no freebies! But easy to use if you don't mind spending dollars.

Fanbase - pretty good, with sites like Mobileread

So far I've been converting whatever I want to read to txt files and then syncing with the Windows only Connect Reader software. Won't experiment too much with Linux sw, since the Reader will go to A soon. Windows sw for converting to LRF would be useful...

Planet hiccups

After our "major surgery" to the control system, again some hiccups for the "Daily Motion" and "Annual Motion" - driver cards suspected, because shuffling the cards makes them work.

Task tracker

Now we are evaluating (courtesy PB) another trouble ticket or task tracking solution - crm-ctt . Looks very nice and polished, PB reports a trouble-free and helpful install.

video

Lots of posts backlogged, will try to clear when I have time.

Anyway, here is an email exchange - nothing that videohelp.com cannot solve...

Need advice:

Video material on DV tape captured in to computer using Firewire.

1 Now needs to be converted to VCD. How to preserve the best quality.

2.Suppose the same material is converted to DivX.

3. Any good video editor (open licence) that you are aware of.

regards

My reply:

1. The best VCD encoding was by TMPGEnc - http://www.tmpgenc.net/ - free
for VCD, need to buy for DVD encoding.

2. Use Virtualdub after XVid codec is installed. http://www.xvid.org/

3. I suppose you want to edit the DV video before it is encoded? In that
case, many of the free apps bundled with DVD writers, camcorders and so on
do an acceptable job - even Microsoft Movie Maker
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/updates/moviemaker2.mspx
which is bundled with XP. Generally Titling, fading in and out of scenes
etc can be easily done with any such SW.

In case you want to cut the VCD encoded file, TMPGEnc has some rudimentary
mpg cut and join tools, which seem to be once again as good as the best in
the market.

Do you remember using the Panasonic Mpeg encoder ?

Yes, TMPG and Panasonic are equally well rated for quality. Panasonic is
non-free. (and I suspect no longer supported?)

database cleanup

Some misc stuff takes up so much time! Checking disc contents at Melb and Jo'berg, verifying which files are missing locally and which missing remotely, etc and the usual mails and so on took up the whole morning! Anyway, useful, since it cleaned up some space at Jo'berg by deleting some wav files, and got one Conversation out of hibernation which had missed being sent to Melb.

Commented out the last line of import_broadcastcenter_files.sh deleting temp table in database, did the query as

select "filename" from file_id where filename not in (select filename from temp);

and

select "filename" from temp where filename not in (select filename from file_id);