flash player archive page

Quite useful for getting Flash for Android devices and for old versions of MacOS etc - here is the link.

installing ubuntu on an old machine which can't boot from CD or USB

Here is a guest post by V:

Installing Ubuntu on an old machine

 

The Dell Inspiron laptop had 384MB RAM and a 30GB HDD. It was running Windows XP and was predictably very sluggish. So I thought installing ubuntu would give it a new lease of life.

 

Constraints:

• CD drive does not work
• BIOS does not have option to boot from USB drive 

Installation:

• Removed the HDD from the laptop  
• Connected the HDD as a external drive using IDE-USB connector  
• Created two partitions on the HDD using 'Disk utility': 1GB (FAT32) and 29GB (Free space)  
• Setup the 1GB partition for Ubuntu 8.04 install using 'Startup Disk Creator' (Lubuntu 12.04 / Lubuntu 12.10 are too heavy for the system) 
• Plugged in the HDD back into the laptop 
• Selected 'Try Ubuntu without installing' option 
• In Live Mode, selected 'Install Ubuntu' (on the top right corner of the screen) 
• Answered the questions on Language, Location and Keyboard Layout 
• Selected 'Manual' option for partitioning the drives (as against options for 'Guided' partitioning) 
• Followed instructions given in http://www.linuxbsdos.com/2011/05/23/install-ubuntu-11-04-on-external-hard-disk/

And that's it!

AmazonGlobal's free shipping - but not duty-free

Recently I got an email from Amazon - FREE AmazonGlobal Shipping on Orders of $125 or More - now available for India. But checking it out, K told me that import duties are levied at checkout, making it not so attactive. Also, only very few items are available for this free shipping to India. Import duties came to roughly 30% of the value of the product for a few which I tried out. Eg. item cost Rs. 17,000, shipping = Rs. 350 (and if we choose free shipping we save this Rs. 350) and import fees = Rs. 5000. So really not worth it. Family and friends can get small items for personal use through customs for free, this is a much more viable option.

cyberoam traffic management and QoS - solved

In an earlier post, I had mentioned how excessive "other" usage was causing issues with live audio streaming. Finally we seem to have hit upon a solution which does not need manual intervention or restarts of cyberoam.

The trick was to add a rule to reject all traffic at the Live times below the rule which allows traffic at the Live times on applying QoS rule of lower priority. There were a few hiccups due to the Live time schedule info changing during a Cyberoam upgrade - after the upgrade, we are able to set it only in intervals of 15 minutes instead of 1 minute intervals. But still, the rule appears to work fine now. I had set the traffic to be limited to 1 Mbps, and the traffic graph reflects it.

Now probably I can relax the rule to allow upto 4 Mbps traffic, but keep the QoS rule of lower priority for other traffic and higher priority for the live audio streaming.

more about making fulldome images from panoramas

My earlier observation about the panoramic image needing to be stretched 2.5 times vertically as a rule of thumb seems to be valid only for those pans which have exactly the same field of view as that particular pan! Trying out more panoramas, found that if the image appears vertically compressed after making the panorama, we need to crop the initial image by cutting off some of the top and bottom to make it more strip-like, then resize with stretching to a square shape, and then polar distort. The resizing to make a square is actually not essential, but it allows us to standardize on the image size as 2048x2048 etc. And conversely, if the image appears vertically stretched, add more sky at the top if cropping is not desired.

Then the pre-processing of the pans - the pan can be made straight with the help of the ruler by dragging it down in Gimp as mentioned at this page.

more details of rotating Pans on the dome

As mentioned in my earlier post, I'm using blender to rotate Panoramic images made into fisheye fulldome frames. By trial and error, got some insights on what looks good on our dome. A rotation from -30 degrees to +30 deg in 10 seconds is too fast. A 30 second clip seems desirable, and with only -15 deg to +15 deg of rotation.

For creating keyframes in blender, shortcut key is I (i, not L). In 3D view, select the object by right-clicking, N for numerically entering location/size values, press I after entering the desired values. Move to the next required keyframe, repeat the above. The rotations speed up and slow down at begin and end points by default - some sort of spline for velocity changes. Click on the Start and End frame to edit number of frames.

To delete a keyframe, one way is to go to Dope Sheet view, select the keyframe by right-clicking on it, and hitting the X key, or Key -> Delete Keyframes menu item.

bounce processing - flush file if too large

Bounce processing is one thing which keeps failing in the Sai Inspires list. And if the bounces are not processed, more emails will get bounced due to Yahoo and others thinking that we're spamming, and that makes the whole thing a mess.


I have been manually checking at the eventlog in phplist for the bounce processing messages. But instead of that, thought I would write a script to automatically check if the bounces file is too large - it will be large if it has not been processed, and then the processing will continue to fail, so we have to flush the file and start retrieving fresh emails as given at
http://hnsws.blogspot.in/2011/04/bounce-processing-cleanup.html

So, have written a script to run as root cron, testbouncesfile.sh, with inspiration from this post, something like this:

CURRENT_DATE=`date +%Y-%m-%d' '%H:%M:%S`
find $FILE_TO_FLUSH -size +2k

while read file; do


  echo "$file is too large = $(stat -c%s "$file") bytes, flushing it with rm   and touch." > $MAIL_FILE

  mail -s "Automatic Bounce message check at $CURRENT_DATE" -c $MAIL_COPY $MAIL_DESTINATION < $MAIL_FILE

  rm $FILE_TO_FLUSH
  touch $FILE_TO_FLUSH
  chown therelevantmailaccount:mail $FILE_TO_FLUSH
  chmod 660 $FILE_TO_FLUSH

done

The cron runs as root for the permissions required. I'd tested it with a dummy mail file which I tried making bigger / smaller etc. Today, 6 days after I made the script and put it in the cron, I got a mail from root with /var/mail/relevantfile is too large = 9209549 bytes, flushing it with rm and touch.

Virtualdub audio filter graph manipulation

Googled for help in manipulating the graphs in Virtualdub audio filters. Found this page which explains how to add and remove connections.

"To connect filters together, drag from an input pin of one node to the output pin of another. (Counter-intuitive, eh?) .... As with nodes, connections may be selected and deleted."

f4v post-processor for playing f4v files

B wanted the audio from some f4v flash video files. Though I had flash video directshow codecs, the files were not opening in Virtualdub using AviSynth. Googled and found this page which guided me to the Adobe download site, where this explanation is given:
"Adobe Flash Media Server version 3.5 and later and Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder 3 can record content in MPEG-4 (F4V) format using an industry-standard recording technology known as "fragments" or "moof atoms." Some MPEG-4 compatible tools and players do not support moof atoms, and therefore cannot recognize files recorded by Flash Media Server. The F4V Post Processor tool aggregates the information from all the moof atoms into a single moov atom and outputs a new file. Use the F4V Post Processor tool to prepare F4V files for editing in Adobe Premiere® Pro, delivery over HTTP, or in video players that support H.264 and AAC formats, including Adobe Media Player."

So, I had to run the files through the f4vpp.exe and extract the audio from the post-processed files. The f4vpp process takes around 45 seconds for a 200 MB file and so on on my machine.

irctc booking tips invalid

The new rules at the Indian Railways ticket booking site have made most of the old tips invalid. The mobile site used to be more responsive, but now booking is not allowed from the mobile site between 8 am and noon. Tatkal ticket booking is allowed only after 10 am and not at 8 am. "Quick Book" is also not allowed 8 am to noon. Also, the Tatkal ticket is available for booking only from the day before the journey date (and not two days before).

The mobile site uses user agent detection to redirect desktops to the desktop site. This detection is not so great - my HTC Wildfire with Android 2.3 has the default browser as well as Opera mobile being redirected to desktop site despite the mobile version setting being turned on. But User Agent switcher addon for firefox does the job with ease.

Edit: A couple of tips learnt from my experience this morning with Tatkal booking.

1. Patience is a virtue - try, try, try again. On the third trial, after one hour of timeouts and service unavailable messages, got through.
2. One timesaver would be to copy the From and To station fields in their entirety logging on to the site a few minutes before the 10 am deadline. Then, you can avoid waiting for the station pop-up, by pasting this info directly into the box. Confirmed working on Firefox.

wifi connection issue with HTC Wildfire

This morning, the HTC Wildfire refused to connect to wifi at work - kept saying "Scanning" after wifi was enabled. Reboots did not solve the issue. After I took it home too, it continued to refuse to connect. Many scary scenarios are described on the web, like having to do a factory reset. Anyway, turned on Airplane mode, turned off Airplane mode, and hey presto, wifi working again. In the evening after going back to work too, it connects without a hitch.

So, the solution was a simple Airplane mode toggle. Probably some hidden bug.

why people hate phone companies

A lot of angst is due to unpleasant surprises, I guess. And also mis-communication. I saw an attractive scheme, RC21 on Airtel, wherein we can call US lines, UK landlines for 4p per second, Gulf for 11 p per second and so on, for 30 days. Charged with it on 31 Oct. I also had an active RC33 - all domestic calls, local as well as STD, at 1 rupee for 3 minutes, for 90 days. On 9 Nov, I recharged this RC33 since the 90 days were over. And then when I made ISD calls, was charged the full rate. Lost around Rs. 200 like this before I noticed. I thought this might be some issue with Airtel, since my 30 days were not yet up. Customer care did not explain the reason for this to happen the first time around - they either could not understand the issue or could not communicate. Email using the form on airtel website gave me an auto reply saying they would revert in 2 days, but there was no response. Called again, and got the explanation from the supervisor that the RC33 had overridden the RC21, only one benefit at a time!

What could Airtel have done to not cause this customer to be unhappy? They could introduce SMS alerts whenever  benefit recharges expire. Or even a single line in the recharge SMS for special recharges, saying that this recharge now over-rides other recharges etc. Or, of course, the best option would be for them to allow multiple benefits, but they may have business cases against that option.

taking screenshots with HTC Wildfire android phone

I'd installed Remote Web Desktop and wanted to take some screenshots. From the help page, found that I needed the USB driver installed if I wanted screenshots from my non-rooted phone. Many posts give different directions. This post as well as this one give the lines to be added to the inf file so that the HTC Wildfire will be recognized and the ADB driver installed. But on my install, though I added the following lines,
; HTC Wildfire
%SingleAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_0BB4&PID_0C8B
%CompositeAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_0BB4&PID_0C8B&MI_01
%SingleBootLoaderInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_0BB4&PID_0C8B
to the android_winusb.inf file, the add new hardware wizard did not recognize this folder as containing a suitable driver. Checked with USBDeview as given at this post, and the device instance had the serial number also in it. So, tried editing the inf file again, with
; HTC Wildfire

%SingleAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_0BB4&PID_0C8B\SH18NPY09904
%CompositeAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_0BB4&PID_0C8B&MI_01
%SingleBootLoaderInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_0BB4&PID_0C8B\SH18NPY09904
where the last few digits have been changed to hide my actual serial number :)
That also did not work. Then, these posts indicate that installing HTC Sync would solve the driver issues. So, went over to HTC's site, downloaded HTCSync for Wildfire S hoping it would work for my Wildfire as well, installed, worked - the new hardware wizard recognized the phone in USB debug mode now.

Remote Web Desktop needed the install_capture_service.bat to be run before doing screen capture in the web desktop window. Did so, and it worked.

Unfortunately, though the software mentions that the screenshot service has to be re-installed if the phone is rebooted, in practice, it has to be reinstalled if the Remote Web Desktop service is restarted, too. Have to go through

1. Enable USB Debugging (didn't want to leave it on all the time)
2. Start Remote Web Desktop service
3. Run connect.bat, open a browser window and wait for Remote Web Desktop to appear, and then install_capture_service.bat
4. Now take the screenshot as desired.

Edit: Found that the reason for requiring re-installation is that the service is not going into the background - ran it from terminal and found it was giving an "Operation not permitted" for going to the background. Hence has to be run every time...

documenting the process of changing a filename

When we have to change a filename on one of our broadcast files, we have to do the following:

1. Ensure that the file is not currently in a pending playlist, or take suitable precautions like a backup copy of file.
2. Rename the file in the local server saiwaves in both ~/audio as well as /local/audio24
3. Rename the file or make a copy in ~/TOWRITE24KBPS and ~/TOWRITE96KBPS
4. Make changes to both downloadfilename and filename in the local database
5. Rename the file or make a copy in dl.radiosai.org
6. Rename the file or make a copy in the playout server
7. Make changes in the web server database by logging in to Plesk.

optimizing phplist tables

Saw that our bounce processing on krishna was slow. Followed this advice, and did some table optimizing.

Optimize table for the bounce table, and optimize table for the user_user table. For this, logged on to mysql commandline client using the credentials mentioned at the phplist config file, and used the table names after listing them - we have custom table name prefixes.

mysql -u user -p (will ask for password)
mysql> show databases;
mysql> use my_database_name;
mysql> show tables;

 etc. as given here. Bounce table optimization took two and a half minutes, user_user table took 8 sec.

But still, the bounce processing takes a good half an hour or forty minutes. So, decreased the frequency of the bounce processing cron jobs, commented many of them out.

bounce processing speedup in phplist

Saw that our phplist installation was not showing any bounce process events in eventlog. Tried the purging of mbox method to make it operational again. Still did not see any bounce events the next day. Tried it manually by copy-pasting the crontab commands to the shell. Found that the bounce processing was taking around half an hour. Googled, tried out this solution. Implemented it using the mysql shell, guided by this command reference again got by googling and by using the username and pw in the phplist config file. Optimize table for bounces took under three minutes. For the user_user table, it took only 8 seconds. Unfortunately, at some point, I interfered with a cron job of bounce processing, so it started giving the message "A process for this page is already running". Googled and found my own post (!) on how to resolve the issue - run it from the web interface. Now the bounce processing takes only around 20 minutes.

matlab work

Dr. S. wanted a bugfix for viewer3d.m which is work circa 2005 (or earlier?) It was working for Cardiac SPECT images, but not for Bone SPECT images. Error message was from interp3, complaining that matrix dimensions should be equal. Checked the images, found that the working images were 64x64 while the non-working images were 128x128. Luckily my Matlab install in Dharma was still intact. Found a line in the code,
six=[1:64];
Replaced this with
sizD1=size(D1);
six=[1:sizD1(1,1)];

Now it works, except there is another bug which manifests if the number of images is less than 9. Have saved that bugfix for a rainy day :) Dharma worked just long enough for this fix, now it's not booting!

stellarium for displaying panoramas - nope

Explored Stellarium for display of panoramas in our mirrordome, using the camera move and mirrordome distortion capabilities of Stellarium 0.10.2. The pan is shown dimmed in stellarium, so the way to go for full brightness panoramic views would be to create fisheye images using this technique and rotate them in blender for a camera pan effect. Mapped onto a square surface in Blender, rotated it.

using stellarium for generating fulldome scenes

Tried out both stellarium and blender for generating fulldome scenes for our mirrordome setup. Using the starball file from Ron Proctor, rotated it by 30 degrees or so over 250 frames - 10 seconds of 25 fps video. Rendering took seven hours at around 90 seconds per frame. Using stellarium, I could generate starfields and rotate them in real-time, and capture using tools like Fraps and Taksi. Performance-wise, Fraps is better, and is more user-friendly. But Taksi's price is right for me - free.

Initially had some trouble setting up Taksi - things to note are:

1. The capture shortcut key must be chosen so that it does not interfere with the software from which you're capturing. For eg. the default F6 key causes the Location window to open in Stellarium.
2. Taksi does not capture with some of the available codecs, for eg. those codecs which are decode-only, obviously! So, we have to choose the codec with care. Xvid seems to be OK, but frame-rates drop quite a bit due to processing overhead. Have to compensate by playing the scene slowly and speeding up the captured video later.
3. Had trouble hiding the gui with Stellarium 0.10.2 - the
   core.setGuiVisible(false) ; //hide tool bar
   doesn't seem to work. Upgraded to 0.11.4 and then found that the 0.10.2 was the last version where the mirror warping worked! Alexander has upgraded this bug to Critical, so hopefully it will be fixed soon. Merely installing 0.10.2 over 0.11.4 did not work - Stellarium did not load correctly at all. Uninstalled and re-installed, restarted, then it worked.
4. Since my laptop display is 1280x800, in order to get a higher resolution screen capture, hooked up an external monitor. The AOC Spectrum 7VIrA did support 1920x1080, but not 1600x1200. Had to go to
   NVIDIA Control Panel -> Set up multiple displays -> Only use one display
   for getting single display mode - the short-cut Fn-F5 was not working. Even in single display mode, the screen-grab of KMPlayer did not show the video. But stellarium was being captured OK at around 4 fps by Taksi (with Xvid codec) and 12 fps by Fraps (with it's own Fraps codec). Single display mode was required, because even though stellarium gets captured in dual-screen mode, it uses the resolution of the primary monitor - 1280 x 800 in my case and not the 1920 x 1080 of the secondary monitor when switching to full-screen mode.
5. This version 0.10.2 has a bug with the auto-hidden toolbars not popping up when moving the mouse to the left corner. Have to use false flags for auto_hide_horizontal_toolbar and auto_hide_vertical_toolbar in the config.ini at
   C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Stellarium
6. Tried out a script with screen capture after moving one degree, works.
   for(azi=90; azi<=300; azi+=1)
   {
   core.moveToAltAzi(alt, azi, 1);
   core.wait(2);
   core.screenshot("myscreenshot", false);
   }

using a usb mem key drive to improve speed

Using flash memory for virtual memory does speed things up a bit on old computers - A asked me about it, I passed on this to him -

On Windows XP, it is this way:


Right-click on My Computer

Choose Properties

Choose the Advanced Tab

Click the Settings button under Performance (Visual effects, memory usage, etc)

Choose the Advanced tab

Click the Change button under Virtual Memory

Choose your USB mem key drive letter, choose custom size and enter the amount based on how much free space is available on your USB mem key. More than 4 GB would be good.

Choose the other hard disks drive letters and choose "No Paging File" for those disks.

Choose OK and restart the computer.

Of course, once you have set the paging file like this, you should not unplug your usb drive when the machine is on :)