I started to use google bookmarks. But syncing with it is rough, if not dangerous. The gmarks extension was not very helpful, though it could be used at points.
I wanted to merge my windows and linux bookmark files. Foxymarks is currently down, so I couldn't even try that. And I didn't like the fact that I HAD to sign up for their service. Just let me do it via the FTP option, and I'll handle it myself.
Finally I decided to make copies of each file, import them both into firefox, then using the duplicate bookmark detection extension in firefox, I was able to week out the dups quite easily. Still need a solution for syncing with google tho.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Rockbox database woes on the sansa; tagtool
Adding songs to the sansa with rockbox currently still has to be done via the original firmware (OF). But, everytime I would plug in the usb cable, (with the unit off to have it automatically start up and boot to OF), the OF would insist on "refreshing the database". This could take several minutes. The latest version of the rockbox bootloader fixed that. It now prevents an OF database refresh when the unit is powered up via usb. Great. Just had to run sansapatcher -d, then sansapatcher --install.
Now, the next issue was that sometimes the files loaded from linux would show up in the rockbox database, sometimes not. Turns out that many of the music files didn't have ID3 tags. So, in RB I changed it such that I could at least temporarily browse to the files to play them.
So, enter audio tag tool for linux. Excellent tool for updating/modifying ID3 tags en mass. Yet still the files didn't show in the database. I fiddled with various settings in RB to re-initialize, update the database to no avail. Finally I just deleted the database files in the root RB folder, restarted and all was well.
Now, the next issue was that sometimes the files loaded from linux would show up in the rockbox database, sometimes not. Turns out that many of the music files didn't have ID3 tags. So, in RB I changed it such that I could at least temporarily browse to the files to play them.
So, enter audio tag tool for linux. Excellent tool for updating/modifying ID3 tags en mass. Yet still the files didn't show in the database. I fiddled with various settings in RB to re-initialize, update the database to no avail. Finally I just deleted the database files in the root RB folder, restarted and all was well.
Rockbox on the sansa E280
Got the sansa last year for xmas. Hadn't used it too much. Wanted to play video, but the sandisk software for converting was pitiful at best and the highly uncommon video container and encoding made it near impossible to encode files in linux using something like mplayer.
Enter rockbox. Plays mpeg1 and mpeg2 videos, provides a highly customizable interface, and even plays gameboy games! Check out the manual for installation, etc.
My video conversion script ended up something like this:
#!/bin/sh
# convert $1 into an mpeg named $2 for use with the sansa
# options tried:
# 15, 24 fps
# 256kbps, 512kbps
# mpeg1, mpeg2
# 256k yields poor quality video
# 512k doesn't work with 24fps
# no noticeable diff for mpeg 1/2 - 1 is simpler, use it
mencoder "${1}" -of mpeg -oac lavc -lavcopts acodec=mp2:abitrate=128 -af resample=44100:0:0 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg1video:vbitrate=512 -vf scale,harddup -ofps 15 -zoom -xy 220 -o "${2}"
Enter rockbox. Plays mpeg1 and mpeg2 videos, provides a highly customizable interface, and even plays gameboy games! Check out the manual for installation, etc.
My video conversion script ended up something like this:
#!/bin/sh
# convert $1 into an mpeg named $2 for use with the sansa
# options tried:
# 15, 24 fps
# 256kbps, 512kbps
# mpeg1, mpeg2
# 256k yields poor quality video
# 512k doesn't work with 24fps
# no noticeable diff for mpeg 1/2 - 1 is simpler, use it
mencoder "${1}" -of mpeg -oac lavc -lavcopts acodec=mp2:abitrate=128 -af resample=44100:0:0 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg1video:vbitrate=512 -vf scale,harddup -ofps 15 -zoom -xy 220 -o "${2}"
JanusVM, tor, privoxy, etc.
The need for anonymity and privacy lately has risen. The JanusVM vmware virtual machine is a simple entry into this area. This small vmx runs a whack of privacy things like tor, privoxy and squid. Just run the thing, and set your browser to http proxy localhost:8888. There are a myriad of other things that can be done with it, but this is usually sufficient.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
vmware and a broadcom gigabit ethernet adapter
My Dell SC-420 has a Broadcom BCM-5751 adapter....any large-ish transfers from the host to a vmware guest is extremely slow, when it works at all!
These two posts point to issues with the vmware adapters and the tg3 broadcom driver:
http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=687712
http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=551754
They also point to the solution which is:
ethtool -s eth0 autoneg off speed 100
ethtool -K eth0 sg off rx off tx off tso off
That seemed to fix it....
These two posts point to issues with the vmware adapters and the tg3 broadcom driver:
http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=687712
http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=551754
They also point to the solution which is:
ethtool -s eth0 autoneg off speed 100
ethtool -K eth0 sg off rx off tx off tso off
That seemed to fix it....
sshd as a socks 5 proxy & foxyproxy
This isn't new stuff, been around for a long time and been written about many times, but too cool to pass up.
If you have an ssh account on a server somewhere that you trust, that connection can be used to tunnel all your network traffic securely out to the internet....main use case probably while at internet cafe's.
OpenSSH has built-in support as a socks 5 proxy server. So, using putty for example, in the "tunnels" configuration setting, create a new entry with source port being the port you'll connect to on your local machine, leave destination text field empty and select "dynamic" as the destination. Now, make an ssh connection to the server - netstat should show that your local computer is listening on the source port you specified.
Now you can configure your browser (or whatever other application supports proxies) to point to localhost and the port you specified. Check your IP address before and after at http://www.dslreports.com/whois.
Now, to make life super simple, install the firefox plugin foxyproxy to make proxy switching a simple single click!
If you have an ssh account on a server somewhere that you trust, that connection can be used to tunnel all your network traffic securely out to the internet....main use case probably while at internet cafe's.
OpenSSH has built-in support as a socks 5 proxy server. So, using putty for example, in the "tunnels" configuration setting, create a new entry with source port being the port you'll connect to on your local machine, leave destination text field empty and select "dynamic" as the destination. Now, make an ssh connection to the server - netstat should show that your local computer is listening on the source port you specified.
Now you can configure your browser (or whatever other application supports proxies) to point to localhost and the port you specified. Check your IP address before and after at http://www.dslreports.com/whois.
Now, to make life super simple, install the firefox plugin foxyproxy to make proxy switching a simple single click!
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
general desktop and server news
well, it's been a while....
Dumped PCBSD as a desktop because after several upgrades I realized I was really only running FreeBSD with KDE on top. I wasn't using any PCBSD "benefits" and a somethings had gone screwy with the upgrades - particularly the Xorg updates that were broken along the way.
I also realized that I just didn't want to spend time configuring and playing with distros....this occurred to me because I attempted ArchLinux because it looked to be perfect for me....optimized for 686, and oriented much like BSD. However, it took some thought and maintenance to keep going.....so I abandoned that.
My requirements are few....firefox, python, and a shell. Add on top of that vmware server because I wanted to abandon the separate server and use just one machine. Has to be fast and light.....my desktop has a mere 8MB on board video RAM. Enter fluxbuntu.
I ran fluxbuntu for a while....it's quick and already has my fundamental requirements save for vmware, but that was pretty easy to install. However FB was based on dapper and the subversion client for dapper was too old for my repo. Two months into FB I decided to try the upgrade to Feisty and it failed in various ways. FB also had some annoying issues. There was supposed to be a Feisty release of it but that didn't happen. They are anticipating a Gusty release....maybe I'll try that.
For now I'm on Xubuntu, with vmware running my server. Having the server on vmware makes for simple backups of the entire vmware images onto dvd.
Dumped PCBSD as a desktop because after several upgrades I realized I was really only running FreeBSD with KDE on top. I wasn't using any PCBSD "benefits" and a somethings had gone screwy with the upgrades - particularly the Xorg updates that were broken along the way.
I also realized that I just didn't want to spend time configuring and playing with distros....this occurred to me because I attempted ArchLinux because it looked to be perfect for me....optimized for 686, and oriented much like BSD. However, it took some thought and maintenance to keep going.....so I abandoned that.
My requirements are few....firefox, python, and a shell. Add on top of that vmware server because I wanted to abandon the separate server and use just one machine. Has to be fast and light.....my desktop has a mere 8MB on board video RAM. Enter fluxbuntu.
I ran fluxbuntu for a while....it's quick and already has my fundamental requirements save for vmware, but that was pretty easy to install. However FB was based on dapper and the subversion client for dapper was too old for my repo. Two months into FB I decided to try the upgrade to Feisty and it failed in various ways. FB also had some annoying issues. There was supposed to be a Feisty release of it but that didn't happen. They are anticipating a Gusty release....maybe I'll try that.
For now I'm on Xubuntu, with vmware running my server. Having the server on vmware makes for simple backups of the entire vmware images onto dvd.
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