Lynch Consulting Blog - Gadgets

DVD to iPod conversion - Linux, Mac & Windows

Sat, 17 May 2008 01:21:00 --1000

I've been looking for a while for a way to convert DVD's and other movies that I have into iPod format and have been failing miserably. That is until today, when I came across the unusually named HandBrake. It does exactly what is says on the tin and makes it very easy to copy dvd's. Initially I used it from my Mac and it worked flawlessly. I also tried the Linux version on Ubuntu Hardy (8.04) which has no GUI but it is pretty simple when you get the hang of it. Here's a typical command line:


 HandBrakeCLI --preset="iPod Low-Rez" -i /media/cdrom -o myvideo.mp4 -t 2

This reads from /dev/cdrom and uses the handy "iPod Low-Rez" preset which fixes it all up nicely for the iPod. And here's one that takes the second title:


 HandBrakeCLI --preset="iPod Low-Rez" -i /media/cdrom -o myvideo.mp4 -t 2

The wiki has more information on command line usage. Happy iPodding. Cheers, Mark

Power saving tips for Ubuntu on laptops

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 10:36:00 --1000

One of the things that Ubuntu (gutsy 7.10) and probably most versions of linux) are currently lacking is out of the box support for power saving and hence suffers from poor battery life when unplugged. My HP nc8430 also runs particularly hot by default - but I've spent a bit of time hunting down tips for reducing the power usage and heat produced from the laptop to get a longer battery life. I'm sure there are a lot more ways that power can be saved and I suspect that future versions of Ubuntu will catch up and produce the same level of battery life or even longer than windows. Here is what I am using so far:

Set powerplay mode on ATI fglrx driver


aticonfig --lsp   # show current and available modes
aticonfig --set-powerstate=1  #set to low power mode

If anyone has equivalent code for other video cards please let me know and I'll add it here.

Disable 'hal' from polling your cdrom

From powertop: 'hal' is the component that auto-opens a window if you plug in a CD but disables SATA power saving from kicking in.

sudo hal-disable-polling --device /dev/scd0

Disable bluetooth if you are not using it


sudo hciconfig hci0 down 
sudo rmmod hci_usb

Remove the usb 1.1 kernel driver if not using it

Apparently the usb 1.1 driver does frequent polling and prevents the processor from staying in low power states for any length of time.


sudo rmmod uhci_hcd

Increase the VM dirty writeback time

From powertop: This wakes the disk up less frequenty for background VM activity.


echo 1500 |sudo tee /proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs

Turn off second processor

This is a very extreme measure and I haven't measured how much extra battery life it gives - but it is a bit cool to be able to turn it on and off if you have a dual core or dual CPU machine.


echo 0 | sudo tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/online

and to turn it back on use the following:


echo 1 | sudo tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/online

How cool is that? Let me know if you come across any more tips. Cheers, Mark Updated 17/Mar/07: Fixed commands based on feedback from Neil. Thanks Neil.

Mobile Weather for Nokia N73 (Symbian S60 3rd Edition)

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 13:09:00 --1000

I just found this very handy free weather application for the Nokia N73 (and other Symbian S60 2nd & 3rd edition devices) Now I can see how lovely the weather is in all the places that I'm not :-) Cheers, Mark

Joining video files in Ubuntu

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 21:11:00 --1000

I've been tidying up some video's that were taken on my camera and wanted to merge the short snippets of video so I could convert them to DVD for easy family viewing. A quick google turned up the relevant details:

Ensure you have mplayer & mencoder installed


sudo apt-get install mencoder mplayer

Merge the files together


cat video1.avi video2.avi video3.avi > merged.avi

Reindex the audio and video


mencoder -forceidx -oac copy -ovc copy merged.avi -o merged_final.avi

All done - if you want to convert it to a DVD check out HOWTO Create DVD's from AVI's on Ubuntu. Thanks to the good folk at ArsGeek for the tip.

Skype with Video on Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 23:42:00 --1000

I was very excited to see that Skype recently released a beta version of Skype for Linux which has video support. I duly went and downloaded the version for Ubuntu (the Fiesty Fawn one works great on Gutsy). Initial attempts to get it working met with frustration - it quickly flashed up on screen and gave the following output:


$ skype 
Aborted (core dumped)

After thinking on it a while and hearing reports of other people using it happily I had some further attempts. First plan of attack - make sure there are no settings from an old version that would conflict by (re)moving the settings directory.


$ mv .Skype .Skype.old

Try again and everything came up sweet - even the webcam! Thanks Skype. I'm very happy that this has removed the last reason I had to reboot to windows. Check out the wiki page for the list of supported webcams in Skype on Ubuntu. Cheers, Mark

HOWTO Create DVD's from AVI's on Ubuntu

Tue, 25 Dec 2007 02:05:00 --1000

To create simple DVD's (i.e. with no title menu's) you need the following software:

mplayer
videotrans
libxvidcore4
dvdauthor
mkisofs

To install all this use:


$ sudo apt-get install mplayer videotrans dvdauthor mkisofs libxvidcore4

Here are the simple steps to format a video for DVD: First, make sure you can view the video using mplayer:


$ mplayer MyMovie.avi

Then we convert if to DVD mpeg format:


$ movie-to-dvd -m pal MyMovie.avi

This will create two files: MyMovie.m2v and MyMovie.ac3 which we need to merge back together:


$ mplex -f 8 -o MyMovie.mpg MyMovie.m2v MyMovie.ac3

Format the video for DVD:


$ dvdauthor -o dvd/ -t MyMovie.mpg

Create a title page for it:


$ dvdauthor -o dvd/ -T

Create an ISO image to burn to dvd:


$ mkisofs -dvd-video -v -o MyMovie.iso dvd

Then right click on the ISO in the file browser (Nautilus) and select "Write to Disc" and you have a DVD that will play in you normal DVD player. References:

Learnosity CEO nominated for Net Visionary Awards

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 10:02:00 --1000

Lynch Consulting has been working with Learnosity (formerly Websonic Learning) to deliver mobile phone and IM based learning solutions powered by ColdFusion. Gavin Cooney the CEO of Learnosity has recently been nominated for the Irish Internet Association's "Net Visionary 2007" in three categories:

Education Contribution
Innovation Award
Mobile Internet Contribution

Details of the project are available here:

So go on - you know you want to support ColdFusion and innovation by adding your vote for Gavin Cooney of Learnosity.

iPhoney - iPhone browser emulator

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 20:57:00 --1000

A few minutes ago I somehow ended up on Mike Downey's blog and found this interesting post about iPhoney, a virtual iPhone browser. Since iPhone is still not available in Australia, I often find myself wondering if my web apps (ajax apps in particular) would work in iPhone browser. Well, thanks to iPhoney, I can now build web pages optimised for iPhone. I've just tested a couple of Ajax apps that I have built and they all work perfectly in iPhoney. It looks very cool indeed. Download iPhoney (mac only).

HowTo recover jpeg images from corrupt memory card

Sun, 23 Sep 2007 10:03:00 --1000

Today my digital camera decided that it had been too well behaved of late and the SD card decided to completely corrupt itself for no good reason, losing all the photos on it. I've spent a significant portion of my youth messing around with file system editing and partition table editing an was not going to give up on the series of photos I'd taken over the last couple of days - luckily it didn't need anything more than a couple of simple commands to recover all the photos. Go Open Source software. This tutorial is written for Ubuntu, but should be similar for most Linux machines Step 1 was to make an image of the card (to have a backup of it) using the venerable dd command.


sudo dd if=/dev/sdb of=sdcard.img bs=1M

sudo - used to perform command as root user (i.e. have correct privileges)
dd - command to copy data a byte level
if=/dev/sdb - read data from /dev/sdb - you may need to change this depending on where your memory card it located.
of=sdcard.img - save this to the sdcard.img file in the current directory
bs=1M - Copy it in 1M chunks

Once this has completed you will need to run the marvellous program recoverjpeg on it. First lets install it:


sudo apt-get install recoverjpeg

Then run it:


recoverjpeg sdcard.img

and you should get something like the following:


$ recoverjpeg sdcard.img
Restored 290 pictures

The images will be saved in the same folder. Check the images out and hopefully it works as well for you as it did for me. Cheers, Mark

Version 0.13 - NW-E00x Mp3 File Manager for Sony Walkman

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 00:05:00 --1000

Patrick has just released version 0.13 of the NW-E00x Mp3 File Manager for the Sony NW-E00x series. Release Notes:

V0.13 : Requires Java 1.6
Better handling of mp3 header
Better compatibility with Podcasts
Removed the Shoutcast tab
other minor fixes...

Go to sourceforge to download it.

Thanks for the great app Patrick. Cheers, Mark

Update to NW-E00x Mp3 File Manager

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 06:37:00 --1000

Patrick has just released version 0.12 of the NW-E00x Mp3 File Manager - just a few little fixes but always worth using the latest. Release notes:

Corrected the loading of titles that was only loading the first 255 titles
Optimization of the FFMPEG converter
When importing mp3, now removing the header of the title as expected by the player.

Go to sourceforge to download it.

Vodafone Nokia N73 Bluetooth modem with Ubuntu Linux Howto

Mon, 11 Dec 2006 22:57:00 --1000

Despite the fact that there is no "Official Support" (i.e. no linux logo on the box) it turns out that it is actually really quite simple to set up a Nokia N73 (and probably others - I based this off an N80 example referenced below) to work as a modem. I've cobbled together these instructions from a number of sources referenced below. What you need:

A Nokia N73 (or similar)
A computer with Ubuntu Linux
A bluetooth device (built in or USB dongle)
Internet access available on your N73

What you need to do:

Pair your mobile with your computer
Find your mobile's bluetooth address
Confirm you can connect to your mobile
Modify your PPP scripts as necessary

Pair your mobile with your computer

Make sure bluez-passkey-gnome is installed - if not just do:


sudo apt-get install bluez-passkey-gnome

On your phone do the following:


Menu->Tools->Bluetooth
Move pointer right to get the "Paired devices" screen. 
Under options  select "New paired device"

It should find your bluetooth device on your computer. It will prompt for a passcode on your phone: Put in something - eg: 1234 You will then be prompted to put the same passcode in on your computer. This is also a good point to copy and paste the bluetooth device address that is shown eg: Nokia 73 (xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx) For simplicity you should also select "Authorise device to make connections automatically" on your phone which will mean you don't have to go through this each time.

Find your mobile's bluetooth address

If you cut and paste this during pairing then you are all set - no need to do anything further. Otherwise you can run the following command: Note: you need to make sure that your phones visibility is: "Shown to all" You should see the following:


$ hcitool scan
Scanning ...
        xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx       Nokia 73

You can turn the phones visibility back to "Hidden" once this step is complete.

Confirm you can connect to your mobile

Modify the file: /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf


rfcomm0 {
#       # Automatically bind the device at startup
        bind yes;
#
#       # Bluetooth address of the device
        device xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx;
#
#       # RFCOMM channel for the connection
        channel 2;
#
#       # Description of the connection
        comment "Nokia N73";
}

Then enter the following (ignoring the comments - i.e. after the #):


rfcomm release 0  # make sure is it not already connected
rfcomm connect 0  # create a connection to rfcomm device 0

And you should see:


Press CTRL-C for hangup

Note - the "0 here relates to the rfcomm device number that was set in rfcomm.conf. If you're using /dev/rfcomm2, for instance, you should use "2" instead.

Modify your PPP scripts as necessary

You may need to modify these scripts - particularly the connect one if you are not on vodafone. I try a bit of gueswork and see how you go - that's how I got it working. See the example files here:

To connect you need to run the following:


$ pon vodafone

To disconnect you need to run the following:


$ poff vodafone

You should see something like the following in /var/log/messages


Dec  9 22:48:54 localhost pppd[17650]: Serial connection established.
Dec  9 22:48:54 localhost pppd[17650]: Using interface ppp0
Dec  9 22:48:54 localhost pppd[17650]: Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/rfcomm0
Dec  9 22:48:56 localhost pppd[17650]: PAP authentication succeeded
Dec  9 22:48:57 localhost pppd[17650]: local  IP address 10.130.130.70
Dec  9 22:48:57 localhost pppd[17650]: remote IP address 10.6.6.6
Dec  9 22:48:57 localhost pppd[17650]: primary   DNS address 198.6.1.2
Dec  9 22:48:57 localhost pppd[17650]: secondary DNS address 192.189.54.17

Hope this helps - and please feel free to ask if you get stuck - I can't guarantee anything but I'll try to help.

References

Another Essential Application for Nokia N73

Sun, 10 Dec 2006 17:17:00 --1000

After searching the menus of my new Nokia N73 I couldn't find any way to get the keypad to autolock. I found this very strange, as this is by far the most advanced phone I've ever had. I could autolock my Nokia 3300, and my Nokia 2100 and also my Sony Ericsson T630. What was Nokia thinking not including a way to autolock the phone keypad? However, free software to the rescue - this is another essential app: The Autolock home page gives you the info and here is the direct download for the N73 AutoLock v1.1 (.sisx) Hope this saves someone some time.

Essential Mobile Phone Applications

Sat, 02 Dec 2006 16:39:00 --1000

Got myself a new phone (Nokia N73) and can now play around with lots of the cool apps that I couldn't use previously. So far I've got the following:

Gmail - Get my gmail fast
GCalSync - Sync my google calendar to phone calendar
Google Maps - View maps of everywhere
Opera Mini - fast browsing
Putty SSH Client - in case I really need to do remote admin on an server

What else is cool or useful for a Symbian based phone?

Sony NW-E005F working in Linux - HOWTO

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 05:48:00 --1000

I recently received a present of a lovely Sony NW-E005F flash walkman and have been frustrated by the completely sub par software that came with it. I have been using the horrible Sonic Stage 4.0 to transfer files to it (from within a windows XP virtual machine) but it would intermittently just die. This made it all too much trouble to change the music I had on it as every second time I tried the sonic stage application would just die. Today however, I came across NW-E00x Mp3 File Manager which is a Java application to read and write/convert mp3 files to the correct format for the walkman (and it updates the song DB on it). It supports the following models at the moment:

NW-E002 (512 MB)
NW-E003 (1 GB)
NW-E005 (2 GB)
NW-S205 (2 GB)
NW-S703F
NW-S603
NW-E015F

After a bit of messing about it is now working beautifully in all it's cross platform goodness. For the benefit of anyone else in the same situation I thought I would document the steps I took. Download nwe00xmp3man and the optionals package: Project Files Copy to the application to the root of your usb drive


$ cp NW-E003_MP3_File_Manager-0.10.jar /media/usbdisk/

Copy the OMGAUDIO directory from the optionals package to the root of your usb drive


$ cp OMGAUDIO /media/usbdisk/

Check you have java 1.5 installed


$ java -version
java version "1.5.0_06"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0_06-b05)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.5.0_06-b05, mixed mode, sharing)

It if it says 1.5 then you are good to go - if not you need to get java installed - on ubuntu you need to do the following:


#Ensure you have universe and multiverse included 
#in your /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper main restricted
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper universe multiverse

#After this have apt updates its repository

$sudo apt-get update

#And finally, just tell it to install java :)

$sudo apt-get install sun-java5-jre

or:

$sudo apt-get install sun-java5-jdk

Once you have confirmed that java is working it's time to run the File Manager:


java -jar NW-E003_MP3_File_Manager-0.10.jar

This will create two files in the same directory as the application - i.e. the root of the usb drive (you did listen earlier didn't you?) The file playersize.txt is read by the FileManager to determine how big your player is - it defaults to a 1GB drive and so you'll need to edit it if your walkman is bigger or smaller. For bonus points you can create a small script to load the jar file which you can place in the directory beside the jar for simple double click access. Now you should be able to copy music across to your walkman safe in the knowledge that you'll never have to use sonicstage again. A big thanks to Patrick Balleux for creating and sharing this program.

Update 1:

Added notes about compatibility with different versions of NW E00x series.

Update 2:

Just tested on my Mac (PowerPC ) in the office and it works a treat. Tested and confirmed working on Ubuntu Linux 6.10 and OSX 10.4.7.

Update 3:

Added NW-S205 to list of supported models (6/Jan/07)

Update 4:

Added NW-E015F to list of supported models (13/Oct/07)