Thursday, June 05, 2008
Convert FLV to play in Windows Media Player
I wanted to convert a flash FLV file to play it in Windows Media Player, so I did the following:
- Installed DownloadHelper plugin for Firefox and downloaded the FLV file.
- Played it back in VLC (Video Lan Client).
- Set the output for VLC using the following settings:
:sout=#transcode{vcodec=WMV2,vb=1024,scale=1,acodec=mp3,ab=192,channels=2}:duplicate{dst=std{access=file,mux=asf,dst="C:\Documents and Settings\foo\Desktop\Video.asf"}} - Opened it in WMP and watched it!
Friday, April 25, 2008
Creating VMplayer "appliances"
I have figured out a lot about how to create VMware virtual system images use the free VMPlayer rather than using VMware Workstation. Here are a couple of notes:
- Create disks and basic configurations: http://easyvmx.com/
This site made it easy to create large disk images split into multiple files. - Install VMware tools by installing VMware Converter and updating the tools from the installer in the vmware-tools folder.
- Fix the USB drivers to use USB 2.0:
Add line:
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Upgrade to OpenOffice.org 2.4 on Ubuntu
[Updated 2007-04-02 to use DEB packages from OO.org]
Mostly based on:
http://www.stchman.com/install_oo.html
You probably don't want to do this with Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron), as OpenOffice 2.4 is now available through the Update Manager.
The main idea is to download the Debian packages from OpenOffice.org, remove the Ubuntu OpenOffice.org packages, install the Debian ones and then lock them so the update manager doesn't try to update them.
For OpenOffice 2.4 the following should work. It might need to get updated if you need a new version:
# Get the Debian package version from http://download.openoffice.org/other.html#en-US
wget http://ftp.spnet.net/openoffice/stable/2.4.0/OOo_2.4.0_LinuxIntel_install_en-US_deb.tar.gz
# Remove the old version packages.
sudo apt-get -y remove openoffice.org openoffice.org-base openoffice.org-calc openoffice.org-common openoffice.org-core openoffice.org-draw openoffice.org-evolution openoffice.org-filter-mobiledev openoffice.org-gnome openoffice.org-gtk openoffice.org-help-en-us openoffice.org-impress openoffice.org-java-common openoffice.org-l10n-common openoffice.org-l10n-en-gb openoffice.org-l10n-en-za openoffice.org-math openoffice.org-style-human openoffice.org-writer
# Extract the files.
tar xvzf OOo_2.4.0_LinuxIntel_install_en-US_deb.tar.gz
#
cd OOH680_m12_native_packed-1_en-US.9286/DEBS
sudo dpkg -i *.deb
# Fix up the menus.
cd desktop-integration/
sudo dpkg -i openoffice.org-debian-menus_2.4-9268_all.deb
After this I go into the "System", "Administration", "Synaptic Package Manager" to search for "openoffice.org" . I selected all the 2.4 packages just installed and the use the "Package", "Lock Version" menu option to lock those versions for the Ubuntu Update Manager to ignore.
You are done. Hopefully...
Mostly based on:
http://www.stchman.com/install_oo.html
You probably don't want to do this with Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron), as OpenOffice 2.4 is now available through the Update Manager.
The main idea is to download the Debian packages from OpenOffice.org, remove the Ubuntu OpenOffice.org packages, install the Debian ones and then lock them so the update manager doesn't try to update them.
For OpenOffice 2.4 the following should work. It might need to get updated if you need a new version:
# Get the Debian package version from http://download.openoffice.org/other.html#en-US
wget http://ftp.spnet.net/openoffice/stable/2.4.0/OOo_2.4.0_LinuxIntel_install_en-US_deb.tar.gz
# Remove the old version packages.
sudo apt-get -y remove openoffice.org openoffice.org-base openoffice.org-calc openoffice.org-common openoffice.org-core openoffice.org-draw openoffice.org-evolution openoffice.org-filter-mobiledev openoffice.org-gnome openoffice.org-gtk openoffice.org-help-en-us openoffice.org-impress openoffice.org-java-common openoffice.org-l10n-common openoffice.org-l10n-en-gb openoffice.org-l10n-en-za openoffice.org-math openoffice.org-style-human openoffice.org-writer
# Extract the files.
tar xvzf OOo_2.4.0_LinuxIntel_install_en-US_deb.tar.gz
#
cd OOH680_m12_native_packed-1_en-US.9286/DEBS
sudo dpkg -i *.deb
# Fix up the menus.
cd desktop-integration/
sudo dpkg -i openoffice.org-debian-menus_2.4-9268_all.deb
After this I go into the "System", "Administration", "Synaptic Package Manager" to search for "openoffice.org" . I selected all the 2.4 packages just installed and the use the "Package", "Lock Version" menu option to lock those versions for the Ubuntu Update Manager to ignore.
You are done. Hopefully...
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Plone 3.0 install with buildout on Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy
It took me a few tries to figure this out, so I decided I'll write it up. Some of the commands are from what I remember doing, so they may not be exactly right. I am following the guide from plone.org:
http://plone.org/documentation/tutorial/buildout
# Need this package:
sudo apt-get install build-essential
# (This one took me a while to figure out, but it is what allows compilations to work. Just having # gcc and what I thought were system libraries doesn't do it.)
# Needed to install Python 2.4 package:
sudo apt-get install python2.4-dev
# Installed PIL package:
sudo apt-get install python-imaging
# Installed 'ez_setup.py' using 'python2.4':
wget http://peak.telecommunity.com/dist/ez_setup.py
sudo python2.4 ez_setup.py
# Get paster:
sudo easy_install-2.4 -U ZopeSkel
# Use paster:
# http://plone.org/documentation/tutorial/buildout/creating-a-buildout-for-your-project
http://plone.org/documentation/tutorial/buildout
# Need this package:
sudo apt-get install build-essential
# (This one took me a while to figure out, but it is what allows compilations to work. Just having # gcc and what I thought were system libraries doesn't do it.)
# Needed to install Python 2.4 package:
sudo apt-get install python2.4-dev
# Installed PIL package:
sudo apt-get install python-imaging
# Installed 'ez_setup.py' using 'python2.4':
wget http://peak.telecommunity.com/dist/ez_setup.py
sudo python2.4 ez_setup.py
# Get paster:
sudo easy_install-2.4 -U ZopeSkel
# Use paster:
# http://plone.org/documentation/tutorial/buildout/creating-a-buildout-for-your-project
Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy and Treo 680 sync
It turns out this is easy if you know what to do. I installed the 'visor' module and causes a reset on my Treo 680, but it turns out everything is already there by default.
The key is to select a "Type" of "USB", and then set "Device" to "usb:". I thought that "usb:" was just a label for something you were supposed to select below it.
Once I did that I was able to get the user info from my Treo 680 and set up the conduits. I haven't yet tried doing anything fancy like syncing with Evolution...
It is a little annoying that those things aren't clearer, as it could have been a very easy thing to setup if the selection of the "Device" were smarter or the labels were more self-explanatory.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Ubuntu 7.10 laptop with bluetooth mouse
I found it was not that easy to pair my Logitech Bluetooth Travel Mouse with my Dell Inspiron 710m laptop running Ubuntu. I found a place that described how to pair it, but then after I rebooted into Windows XP it wouldn't work again.
I think I figured out how to do it from this posting:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=227057
Once I added the "device" entry to the Bluetooth configuration and restarted, it automatically started working.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Python C3D Motion Capture to CSV File Converter
Here is a script I wrote by taking a Blender plugin I found and converting it to a standalone Python program for converting a C3D motion capture file into a comma separated value (CSV) file. Have fun with it!
c3d_convert.py
c3d_convert.py
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Python XM Radio Online command line player
I have always been a bit annoyed with how tedious it is to listen to XM Radio by streaming it from XM Radio Online, so I have finally written up a basic Python program to do it.
This code is based on the bash script I found that is mentioned in this blog page:
http://www.dragonboricua.net/2006/08/17/xm-radio-on-linux/
I don't really like using bash anymore for anything but a few lines of scripting, so I rewrote most of that in Python. My intention is to write a wxPython interface to display the song info and allow changing channels. But that is for later...
In its current incarnation this program only plays on Windows, and only uses Winamp. And it may have other limitations and errors. If you end up using it and/or changing it, let me know.
To run this you will need the following files:
This code is based on the bash script I found that is mentioned in this blog page:
http://www.dragonboricua.net/2006/08/17/xm-radio-on-linux/
I don't really like using bash anymore for anything but a few lines of scripting, so I rewrote most of that in Python. My intention is to write a wxPython interface to display the song info and allow changing channels. But that is for later...
In its current incarnation this program only plays on Windows, and only uses Winamp. And it may have other limitations and errors. If you end up using it and/or changing it, let me know.
To run this you will need the following files:
