technology

Here is the script I use now to convert stuff to a decent format for my Archos 705:

#!/bin/bash
 
INPUT=$1
 
ffmpeg \
-ab 128 \
-acodec mp3 \
-sameq \
-vcodec mpeg4 \
-mbd rd \
-flags +4mv+trell+aic \
-cmp 2 \
-subcmp 2 \
-g 300 \
-s 400x300 \
-aspect 4:3 \
-i "$INPUT" \
"$INPUT.lofi.avi"
 
#END

I thought I would share a trick that has eased my cross-platform and cross-network password management tasks.

I run a LAN subversion server, which keeps track of the revisions of my password vault. For storing, organizing and encrypting passwords, I use Password Gorilla which is a great cross-platform (linux, windows, mac) application using twofish encryption to secure everything. One master password unlocks all the rest. The password generator included in PG is great, and allows for customizations like not using similar digits (O and 0), as well as desired password length, etc. You can also override password defaults on a case-by-case basis.

The glue that ties this all together and makes it a networked application is a bash script on linux (I have not bothered to automate this on other platforms since I am in linux 98% of the time). For this to work, I have set up ssh keys (not necessary, but a pain to type a password each time), gentoo's cool keychain program, and ssh-askpass-fulscreen (is called different things on different distros ie: ssh-askpass-gtk on gentoo i believe).

IEs4Linux is the simpler way to have Microsoft Internet Explorer running on Linux (or any OS running Wine).

No clicks needed. No boring setup processes. No Wine complications. Just one easy script and you'll get three IE versions to test your Sites. And it's free and open source.

IEs4Linux

Xandros Takes Microsoft's Linux Patent Protection - UPDATED: Small Linux vendor gets intellectual property protection from Microsoft for
its users. [Internet.com Headlines]

Web Spiders are mostly harmless, just like in real life, they live in the background of everything, and you are never far from one. As soon as you make a piece of internet real estate by making a post for instance, there are suddenly hundreds of spiders that spin across it, ingest it, and transport the contents back to their parent.

Almost unbelievable, but Sun has open-sourced JAVA!

Go see for yourself, hear Stallman say "Sun has now contributed the most to free software of anyone out there".

This is amazing news!

The annual Semaine québécoise de l'informatique libre (SQIL) is upon us, running from November 11th until the 19th. Let's get out there and spread the word of free software!

Canonical Launches New Ubuntu Release for Desktops and Servers

Weve just installed these two donated computers in a community nursury and breakfast/after schol club in Lincolnshire, England.

Unreal. A script that is included with every version of cpanel, it is run every 5 minutes on hundreds of thousands if not millions of servers the world over. Yet, somehow, no one knows what it does, why it is there, how to use it, etc. There is NO documentation anywhere. Searching cpanel's own forums yields no hits.

# man dcpumon
No manual entry for dcpumon


#!/bin/sh

PASS=$1

for i in `/usr/bin/mysql --user=root --password=$PASS --batch --skip-column-names -e "show databases" | sed 's/ /%/g'`;do
nice -n 19 /usr/bin/mysqldump -u root -p$PASS "$i" > /home/backupsql/"$i".sql
gzip /home/backupsql/"$i".sql
done

OK, so FINALLY I figured how to get my old blog and link bookmarklets working again in Drupal.

You need to install the prepopulate module first.