Catcatmu!

Meboy-F-Ctmu

2010-08-30T22:21:00.001+05:30

For those who hate reading:
http://pages.intnet.mu/digiwiz/stuff/Meboy-f-ctm.jar
(Link to meboy-f-ctm i.e meboy with filesystem read/write of gameboy (color) roms from memory card/phone memory but which allows lazy-loading so will work on phones with very little memory -- GPL v2!!)

Sometimes the only way to get what you want is to do it yourself.

Meboy is a gameboy (color) emulator which works on the javaME platform (i.e mobile phones). But requires you to pre-package the roms into the jar... but some phones have a size limit on the jar size.

Meboy-F is a fork, which allows you to read gameboy color roms from the the phone or memory card, with one catch, it pre-loads the entire rom to the phone memory.... which causes a java(..)out of memory.

The best 'meboy' would probably a combination of both, with the lazy loading (i.e partial loading of the roms) and with the file input. Problem is unless you sign the package (which costs $200/year) most phones will nag each time the rom (on the filesystem is accessed).

A small solution is to cache a bit of the file. Most roms require to be read in a more or less sequential way. By caching part of the file, it is possible to reduce the nags, to rare, rather than at each read. (cache is done via mark and reset replace is.close by is.reset and change from java...inputstream to datainputstream)

As far as modifications of the source is concerned, it's a simple copy paste, of meboy code into meboy -f (everything that says lazy loading .)

The result of this merge, and cache (compiled) is :
http://pages.intnet.mu/digiwiz/stuff/Meboy-f-ctm.jar

Just for some info:

SAVE/SUSPEND your game frequently ...just in case.
Keeping the default 1024KB max load size (look in the options: it's the last option) on a nokia 6233 (3mb ram) causes the dreaded OutofmemoryException, the solution is to reduce it to 800kb ... the 'file permissions' nags are bearable, (you get a max of 2 every two hours on PKMN yellow each hour).
After resuming a suspended game you will get a series of 'file permission nags' within the first minute as the game loads... in a non-orderly fashion ;-).
There seems to be some 'clean up' problem. When you exit one rom. CLOSE and reopen meboy!!!
NEITHER meboy OR meboy-f are mine: http://arktos.se/meboy/
For blue-tooth save file/suspend game send to pc you can use the meboy builder.

EDIT:

OTHER LINKS: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=L7P9TWHU

Kde 4 Windows in Tabs

2010-07-12T21:38:00.000+05:30

Sometimes those great extreme features are so well hidden you just can't find them... worse, no one tells you where you can find them or how to activate them. Searching is not a great help either.

Kde has a superb feature, esp if you use Kde as your main desktop... you can combine many windows,into a single title-bar and you can switch between them easy as pie - hit alt-and scroll.

Trouble is it's well hidden and appears only if you know where it is, and have the right environment:

You need the window decoration set to oxygen (systemsettings -> appearance (or was it desktop (?))
You need to activate it (Kwin -> enable window tabs)
Right click an the title-bar and select group windows (remember you need at least two windows open)

Pictures coming... soon!

Linux: Recording video from webcam with preview.

2010-05-26T19:15:00.002+05:30

A Simple program to capture the video from a web-cam, with audio and a preview of what is captured. You need mencoder (part of the mplayer package) and QT >= 4.x. You can change the mencoder options in the source code.

To Use the program, you need to set the video and audio devices in the form /dev/*

Delay is the time in seconds, before mplayer displays the captured file, WHILE it is being captured. It acts as a preview. Lower values are better, but if the value is too low, capture may not have started when mpalyer launches.

To stop the capture you need to close the xterm window.

Source Code: http://pages.intnet.mu/digiwiz/stuff/pcapture.tar.gz

Philips SemiConductors Windows 7 x64 Driver

2010-05-01T17:09:00.000+05:30

After scratching, digging, and pulling out a few hair follicals over a philips based SAA7130 tv card and Windows 7 (64 bit) , I have fianlly found a driver that works properly, with all inputs.

To install the driver you will need to do it manually:

Open device manager (startmenu -> search) then in that list find the tv card (multimedia....) right click, update driver and choose advanced, Select the location of the 3xhybid.ini file, and voila.

LINK : This

The good old taskbar...

2010-03-13T11:31:00.001+05:30

Is it just me or is the taskbar here to stay?
With around twenty programs running in the background each fighting for attention, it's not very convinient to sort through each of them using either the taskbar or the 'atl-tab'.
The startmenu needs to go too. How can you search through a hundred applications each in their own folder for the right one?

In windows you have no alternative, but why carry on the trend into every other OS...

Take KDE for example, you can find any program using 'alt-f2' and it's description. The 'start-menu' is not organised by 'company' but rather by what the application does, so much more easier. Better still the desktop isn't the regular sleepy one, it's your startmenu... so much simpler and way cooler. This also means that the entire screen can be used by the application itself, especially useful for those small netbooks.

Switching applications can be done with a simpe mouse flick which presents all the applications... much faster than any other method only one click.

Yet all these features aren't enabled by default and all the distributions refuse to look anything but Windows. It's really time to change and experiment....

P.S... I'll add some screeshots when I'm home....

Remote Destop (RDP) shutdown

2010-02-24T18:11:00.003+05:30

If you have ever tried shuting down a windows computer through rdp, you probably know that in windows 7, there is really no way to do it: the start menu doesn't help, and the task managerhas been tinkered with. By mistake, I ended up finding a loophole: click the desktop and hit 'alt+F4' and voila... a dialog box pops up and you can now shutdown...

The shift...

2010-02-01T19:33:00.002+05:30

Most people who use linux will agree. Linux is great... I mean no viruses to bug you, and incredible speed even after one year of use...

The only problem I've faced so far is the lack of a good download manager...and I've decided to do something about it; I've decided to write one.

For now, I've concentrate on the main parts i.e downloads and queues,
later I'll add scheduling, a unique way to handle some sites which make it difficult to download, and speed control (this can't be implemented yet due to a bug in the Qt 4.5 library).

Take a look: http://code.google.com/p/phelpinghand/

A partially working copy is present in the repository... you need to run setup (under downloads) first!

(The project is under the GPL v3)

Remove subfolders...

2009-12-25T15:23:00.002+05:30

Here is a small program which will 'remove' sub-folders by creating links tot he contents in another folder.

Useful if you want to batch convert pictures while preserving the sub-folder arrangement. (make a copy of the folder, create the 'sub-folderless' links then run the convertor,overwriting the 'original' copies.

Link: http://pages.intnet.mu/digiwiz/stuff/pLinks.tar.gz

A masterpiece!

2009-12-25T13:15:00.000+05:30

Don't Ask!

Kde4 - Adding a Shutdown video

2009-12-21T10:42:00.005+05:30

Wouldn't it be cool if we could have a video say an explosion of the display, just before the system shutdown?

Obviously you'll need to have such a video (The last few seconds of the first tinker bell movie look great...).

Here's how to do it:
1. Create a file called < something >.sh in the ~/.kde4/shutdown.
2. Open the file and add the folowing lines:

#bin/bash
mplayer -fs -aspect 16:10 [ path to video (FULL PATH)>]
# -nogui

3. Edit the -aspect argument to fit your screen size. For example if you have the older 'square' screens use 4:3 Or 16:9 for desktop widesreens.

4.Open dolphin and create a Link from 'shutdown' folder to 'Shutdown' folder. (You can do this by dragging the folder into the same pane and selecting 'Link Here' in the menu.)

5. Now Shutdown and enjoy your animated display...

Tip: Videos of around 5 second work best

Convert and split video (mencoder).

2009-10-20T19:54:00.003+05:30

This python script will semi-automatically take a video file and split it into pieces of 10mins.
It is however slightly complicated to use, you need to know the time of run of the file in minutes (close to 1 min rounded up).

The syntax is: python <pathToScript> <timeInMins> <inputFile>

Here the base of the script is the batch script (see previous post)

#!/usr/bin/python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import sys, os

#--------------------------------TWEAKS--------------------------------#
#Path to mencoder
MENCODER = "/usr/bin/mencoder"

#Append postfix to differentiate original and converted video
FILE_POSTFIX="cnv"

#Encoding bitrate
BITRATE = 400

#Output directory for converted videos
OUT_DIR = "/home/Arwen/Video/cnv"
#----------------------------------------------------------------------#
#author: catcatmu
encode = "%s -ss %d:00 -endpos 10:00 -noodml %s -of avi -o %s -ofps 22 -vf-add scale=320:-2,expand=320:240 -srate 44100 -ovc xvid -xvidencopts threads=2:bitrate=%d:max_bframes=0:quant_type=s16le -oac lavc -lavcopts threads=2:acodec=mp2:abitrate=128 "

file_count = len(sys.argv) - 2
sze = sys.argv[1]
noofparts = (int(sze) // 10) +1
print noofparts

f = sys.argv[2]

infile = "\"%s\"" % f
fn = f[f.rfind("/") + 1:]
fn = fn[0:fn.rfind(".")]
#now we start
x = 0
num = 0
for x in range(0,noofparts* 10 + 10 ,10):
outfile = "\"%s/%d-%s%s.avi\"" % (OUT_DIR,num, fn, FILE_POSTFIX)
num = num + 1
print encode % (MENCODER, x, infile, outfile, BITRATE )
os.system(encode % (MENCODER, x, infile, outfile, BITRATE ))

The file generated is about 38 Mb per part.

(Anyone know how to make it an automatic process??)

Python script for batch converting for the Rockchip (MP4)

2009-01-16T20:11:00.004+05:30

Information on these pages:

http://www.misticriver.net/forums/e10-series/58131-mencoder-batch-encoding-script-python.html
http://www.sprocketandlube.com/shownews/item/67

For those (like me) who want quick solutions:

Here is the python script:

#!/usr/bin/python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import sys, os

#--------------------------------TWEAKS--------------------------------#
#Path to mencoder
MENCODER = "/usr/bin/mencoder"

#Append postfix to differentiate original and converted video
FILE_POSTFIX="cnv"

#Encoding bitrate - don't change this!
BITRATE = 400

#Output directory for converted videos
OUT_DIR = "REPLACE WITH YOUR PATH!"
#----------------------------------------------------------------------#

encode = "%s -noodml %s -of avi -o %s -ofps 22 -vf-add scale=320:-2,expand=320:240 -srate 44100 -ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=%d:max_bframes=0:quant_type=s16le -oac lavc -lavcopts acodec=mp2:abitrate=128 "

file_count = len(sys.argv) - 1
for i in range(1, file_count + 1):
f = sys.argv[i]
infile = "\"%s\"" % f
fn = f[f.rfind("/") + 1:]
fn = fn[0:fn.rfind(".")]

outfile = "\"%s/%s%s.avi\"" % (OUT_DIR, fn, FILE_POSTFIX)
print "Encoding file: %d of %d" % (i, file_count)

os.system(encode % (MENCODER, infile,outfile, BITRATE ))

Just copy and paste it into a text file for example convert.py and then execute it in a konsole window:

python ./convert.py /path/tovideo/dir/*

(The start is a wildcaard)

Tip: If you don't want to see the progress of each file add '>& /dev/null' to the end of the convert line.
Tip: If you want to see the command executed add:

print encode % (MENCODER, infile,outfile, BITRATE )

to the before last line.

Installing Hamachi

2008-12-30T00:01:00.000+05:30

For those who found it toooo difficult!

Estimate time to complete: <5mins

First you need to download it, google it and get the setup. (You can choose either the commercial version or the non-commercial one)

After downloading, setting it up is very simple:

1. Simply Launch it as an administrator. (In vista you have UAC, in xp you need to right click and select 'run as...'

2. Follow the 'Next', Read the License agreement and accept it (If you don't, Don't install it!)

3. Choose where you want to install it, anywhere is fine as long as you have the space!
If you share the pc with other people, It's BEST to UNCHECK the 'Automatically...'

4. READ BEFORE clicking 'next'. If you are only going to use hamachi with friends, a good idea will be to uncheck it. But in a public network, better to check it.

5. Now madly click next till the end

7. At the first run, click the power button

8. And join the network you wish or create one for you friends to join.

9. A good idea is to create a configuration right away (last button - the gear)...

10. On a shared pc, check that 'Start...Windows' is unchecked

11. To use it as a messenger, check the last 'Presence page'
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