This is just a quick post. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but never got round to it and minecraft was the best excuse to do it with. Video I made is embedded at the very end (or you can click here to watch it now: http://youtu.be/JdQxXj5czrU).

How I Made The “Frames”

Basically I took many screenshots in minecraft, roughly about 3-6 screenshots per section I wanted to show in the video, using the F2 key. I did this on my laptop using the “Play Offline” feature, and setting my server to allow anyone. So I showed up in game as “Player” and set him where I wanted the “camera”. I then logged into Minecraft on my workstation using my normal account. Then I began building, every so often taking 3-6 screenshots with the laptop.

How I Rendered The Images

Now obviously I’m going to assume before you started taking screenshots that you cleared out your previous minecraft screenshots folder (or webcam stills, whatever), and that your folder is full of images that you want to make into a video only. The screenshots folder is found at “/home/your_user/.minecraft/screenshots/” without quotes. Since these are terminal commands, you’ll need to “cd” to that folder when you want to render.

Step 1: Installing “mencoder”.

First you’ll need to install “mencoder” since this is what makes the initial video. This is found in most distros repos. I’m using Ubuntu 10.10, but should work for all. Do this with the following (you should be able to find it in the software centre too):

sudo apt-get install mencoder

Step 2: Creating a file with list of images.

Now we’re going to cd to the screenshots folder, and we’re going to make a file with a list of all the images in the correct order as stated by modified date/time. This is going to be used by mencoder so that it creates the stop-motion video. To make this file we’re going to do this:

ls -1tr > files.txt

You can name the file anything you want, in this example I’m using “files.txt”, however make sure you remember what file name you give it, and please note that’s a one (1) not a lower-case L. The -1 is so that each file is on its own line, t is to list by the modified time/date, and r is for reversing the order. Please check the man pages (command: man ls) if you want to use other options. I find this the best way to do it however.

Step 3: Render the video! \o/

Now that we have our file full of all the images we’re going to be using on each line (and in the correct order), we now need to finally render it into a video. Now I’m not going to go into details about the options I have picked, but it basically outputs into a raw video file (~200MB for a 1 minute long video) and is great for editing should you wish to do so. Anyways, on with the command line stuff!

mencoder -nosound -ovc copy -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4 -mf fps=6 mf://@files.txt -o video.avi

The important thing to note by the way, is the -o option – this is to set the filename of the output. You can call this whatever you like, I just chose “video.avi”. Also note that vcodec is which codec we’re going to be using (in this case mpeg4), the -ovc copy is how I’m making this video output as raw video (basically a direct copy of the images), and one last thing I should mention is you’ll notice fps=6 – This basically defines what the framerate is, I set this to 6 because I was using ~6 images each time. However have a play with that number until you get the right results your after. Doing it this way takes less time, since it doesn’t have to process very much. Plus you get quality as good as the images your working with, which is perfect.

Step 4 (optional): Edit video, add sound.

You don’t have to do this, but well ~200MB is a bit much to upload to things like YouTube (plus it has no sound!). So I used PiTiVi Video Editing software that comes with ubuntu to import the video and song of my choice. And then rendered it how I liked it. I use MP4 Muxer with default options, because the size is decent at the end, and looks reasonable for the end quality (and works in YouTube).

That’s everything! We’ve just made a stop-motion video file! With that, I shall now present my first ever stop-motion video, using the medium of Minecraft! The song used is released under the Creative Commons licence (info in the video description), the pictures were designed by me (using popular ideas as a base), and the game used is Minecraft which is owned by Mojang. Enjoy!

I’m using Empathy inside of Ubuntu 10.10 Meerkat Maverick, but should work on any distro that has Empathy.

If you need to add freenode to the list the details are:
address: irc.freenode.net
port: 6667

Alis is a channel list search bot. For a list of commands she accepts, type in “HELP” without quotes and she’ll tell you the commands she accepts. The example I used in the video are:
LIST *ubuntu*
LIST *programming*

Hope this helps some people out, if needs be I will quite happy redo the video if people think it is really bad. Any comments on something I may have missed feel free to post them here or on the YouTube video. Thanks.

Next blog post should hopefully have some irssi stuff, and how to split up conversations. Still need to do more fiddling with it before I do actually do a write-up about it though.

Here’s what my terminal now looks like:

What You’ll Need

The packages you’ll need are fortune and cowsay. Fortune basically prints out a random quote, and cowsay basically shows you the character you can see in the screenshot. The default character in cowsay is, as the name suggests, a cow… however it does come with MANY different other characters with a default install. So lets first grab these applications. Open up a terminal and type in:

sudo apt-get install fortune cowsay

Testing They’ll Work

To test these are working, try the following commands:

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fortune
cowsay hello world
fortune | cowsay -n -f tux.cow

There are many other cow files that you can use, and you can find them in /usr/share/cowsay/cows/. If you’d like to see a list of them try this command:

ls /usr/share/cowsay/cows/

Then change the tux.cow with one of those.

Editing Your .bashrc File

To add this effect to your terminal you simply need to add it to your .bashrc file in your home directory. Type in a new terminal the following:

nano .bashrc

Then simply add this at the end of the file:

fortune | cowsay -n -f tux.cow

Save the changes with CTRL+O then enter. Then close it with CTRL+X.

Or change the tux.cow with any of your choice.

Other Cool Tools

There’s another cool little tool you can use called “figlet”.

Here’s what it does:

To install it we do:

sudo apt-get install figlet

To use it you basically do:

figlet "message"

If you’ve like it to show up in cowsay, simply do:

figlet "message" | cowsay -n

Make sure you have the -n, otherwise it will show up wrong! If you’d like to add a different cow file simply add -f tux.cow (or any other cow file).

If you’d like to add it to your terminal, add it to the end of .bashrc as mentioned earlier. If you’d like to have both, then you can do so… just make sure you have them on separate lines.

Enjoy!

Enjoy, and hope you have fun using it. Feel free to send me a comment with cool little things you’ve done with yours, maybe even send in a screenshot to show us what you’ve done :).

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So in light of this, the lovely people at #ubuntu-uk have suggested I try and setup IPv6 tunnelled over IPv4 via one of many different IPv6 brokers… and I can honestly say I have successfully managed to do so! Not just for one machine, but for any machine that gets connected to my network! Score! \o/

Before I go on, as usual, I like to take this opportunity to thank the #ubuntu-uk community (mainly through IRC) for all their help and support. The main man himself that helped me through it is MartijnVdS, without his patience and help I think I would probably still be sat trying out millions of different combinations trying to get it to work. I can’t forget shauno, since me and him were talking about IPv6 (along with MartijnVdS and possibly a few others). Shauno has also helped when I was struggling by linking me to some useful places (when most people would normally be asleep). Thank you all :). If I’ve missed anyone out, please let me know.

I’m going to essentially walk through the settings and configuration as best as I possibly can (the way I understood it as people were trying to help me), and hopefully the information here will help others get started and setup too :).

Some info on World IPv6 Day is in the spoiler.
Show Spoiler ▼

Let’s begin…

Now there are two (2) ways you can get an IPv6. You can either set each machine individually, or you can setup a machine as an IPv6 router (or IPv6 announcer) to dish out IPv6 to all machines that are capable of doing so on your network. The second method is the way I have things setup at home, however as I was learning I did do the first method first. It is entirely up to you which one you want to do, and I will be listing them both. Just click on the section you’d like to follow.

Note: Both have similar steps. Also note, using a broker you’ll essentially be assigned 2^64 address (which is a HUGE number of IPv6′s that you can have for your devices!)

Show How To Setup Individually ▼

You may need to set your router to allow pings, otherwise you cannot create a tunnel.

sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

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# This is for IPv6 tunnelbroker.net (HE)
auto he-ipv6
iface he-ipv6 inet6 v4tunnel
        endpoint 216.45.64.21
        address 2001:470:beef:a3d::2
        netmask 64
        up ip -6 route add default dev he-ipv6
        down ip -6 route del default dev he-ipv6

216.45.64.21 = Server IPv4 address
2001:470:beef:a3d::2 = Client IPv6 address (notice that the /64 is taken out, this is used in the netmask section).

sudo ifup he-ipv6

ping6 ipv6.google.com -c 5

System -> Preferences ->Network Connections

Address =Routed /64 (minus off the /64 part, and replace with 1)
Prefix = 64
Gateway = Client IPv6 address (minus the /64 part).

Show How To Setup as a Router ▼

You may need to set your router to allow pings, otherwise you cannot create a tunnel.

sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

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# This is for IPv6 tunnelbroker.net (HE)
auto he-ipv6
iface he-ipv6 inet6 v4tunnel
        endpoint 216.45.64.21
        address 2001:470:beef:a3d::2
        netmask 64
        up ip -6 route add default dev he-ipv6
        down ip -6 route del default dev he-ipv6

216.45.64.21 = Server IPv4 address
2001:470:beef:a3d::2 = Client IPv6 address (notice that the /64 is taken out, this is used in the netmask section).

sudo ifup he-ipv6

ping6 ipv6.google.com -c 5

sudo nano /etc/sysctl.conf

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# Uncomment the next line to enable packet forwarding for IPv6
#  Enabling this option disables Stateless Address Autoconfiguration
#  based on Router Advertisements for this host
net.ipv6.conf.all.forwarding=1

sudo apt-get install radvd

sudo nano /etc/radvd.conf

interface eth0
{
        AdvSendAdvert on;
        prefix 2001:470:cafe::/64
        {
                AdvOnLink on;
                AdvAutonomous on;
        };
};

2001:470:cafe::/64 = Routed /48 address
IMPORTANT: Please note, that the number they give you ends in /48 however we need to set in the config this as /64.
So instead of putting 2001:470:cafe::/48, we're putting 2001:470:cafe::/64.

sudo /etc/init.d/radvd restart

ping6 ipv6.google.com -c 5

ip -6 addr

Show Automatically Assign IPv6 ▼

System -> Preferences ->Network Connections

Hope this guide helps you, and was informative at the same time. Please feel free to post any problems you may have in the comments, and I’ll try my best to answer them for you :).

One great feature I do really like is the 3g/wifi that’s built-in, along with the browser! Obviously it’ll never have as good an experience as a tablet, or regular PC of some kind… however being able to browse gutenberg.org and freekindlebooks.org for some good old classics to fill this puppy up with and download straight from the web-page is great! Also browsing news sites is awesome too, however I’ve found using Calibre to grab the RSS feeds and save them as an eBook works much better since you don’t need to be within network reach :).

I really like the text-to-speech too (if you use a more native format, mobi; awn; etc;), means I can play the book, and potter around and do a few other tasks – which is fantastic. It also helps that the voices it comes with don’t sound as mechanical as say Microsoft Sam use to on Windows XP (I hated that voice!) – which is an added bonus. I haven’t really used the male voice much, but it is funny to hear the female voice mess up a few words – but considering the number of words she does get right, its forgiveable.

Another recent purchase of mine was a set of C64′s (bought from eBay about a month ago now). I hope to be able to compose some songs with it and maybe make a few demos/games or something later on down the line. I never owned a Commodore 64 as a kid, I had a Sharp MZ-700… so I’m making up for lost time (it is a classic! Plus, it was one of many at the time that brought computers to our homes at a affordable price!).

I shall update this with some pictures at some point :).

The thing you need to know the most, is that using a tracker allows you to programme a SID (Sound Interface Device). Now, at first glance, most trackers look very complex; they might even scare you. Once you learn about the different sections, and how they work, it’s a piece of cake. For reference, I’ll be attaching a document which explains things better (please note: the document is for GoatTracker, but the outlining concepts will work for most, if not all, trackers).

Anyway, moving on, here are some files that I’ve been using to learn the ins and outs of GoatTracker (GoatTracker SNG Songs (mw4sng)). Give credit where credit is due, most (if not all) are copyrighted by Covert Bitops (2003). Hopefully I should be able to have a song finished soon to post up :). For those interested, here’s what I have so far: Tune1 v0.3 by Haz.

Downloading/Getting GoatTracker
Website: Covert Bitops

Ubuntu/Debian Users
If your using Ubuntu, you can simply get it from the Ubuntu Software Centre by typing in GoatTracker, or type in the terminal:

sudo apt-get install goattracker

If the package isn’t in your repo you can grab a deb from here: packages.debian.org

Other Linux Users
You’ll have to download the code and compile yourself from: SourceForge

You could also try and convert/strip out of the debian file and see if you can get it working that way.

Windows Users
You can use either one of these two:
Regular Version 2.71
Stereo Version 2.71

Tracker Gallery:

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For those interested, this is for owners of the Nexus One and Nexus S, and here’s the link: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=965478.

Before I go on, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the #ubuntu-uk community (mainly through IRC) for all their help and support. Without them I don’t think I would have learned as much as I did. They helped me get started, and for that I’m really grateful. Some of the people who have helped a considerable amount are: brobostigon; shauno; AlenBell; MartijnVdS; popey; MooDoo; ali1234; and a few others. Thank you all :). If I’ve missed anyone out, please let me know.

I’ve been wanting to get into the server side of things for a long time, and like most who have come from using a Windows environment, doing so can seem like quite a challenge. Mainly because you get so wrapped up in everything being placed in a graphical interface, that you sometimes forget that there is more to the machine than what you actually see.

Let’s take me for example, the most I’ve ever done was tweaked the registry; changed a few configuration files here and there; removed/replaced files and libraries so that things worked better; heck I’ve even did some minor tweaks like placing library files in the same folder as an application to avoid installing a full framework. Thing is, all that wouldn’t have been possible if I couldn’t see anything… or so I thought…

Everything I knew, or have used in the past, was basically using an file management program of some sort, browsing files and directories to find that key file that might do something I may want it to actually do. Once I’ve found it, do a few short-cut commands type in the editor of choice and then see if I can mess with it enough to do what I wanted it to do – and I’m talking about basic config files here. Browsing the directories with a mouse/keyboard makes life so much easier – I can move a folder to one side and have something going on in the other… using my monitor screen space to the fullest. All was great!

However, one has to remember – to obtain a Licence for a Microsoft server O/S isn’t cheap. Heck, it might not even be fully secure! All it takes is for someone to find a vulnerability in any of the applications running to tamper with it, and lets face it. There’s more going on when you have a full graphical suite open at all times (even if you don’t have a monitor attached to it), which means your leaving more holes open in your system. Here is what lead me to my adventure.

I thought, lets try and build a home server using a Linux distro. I mean all that’s running is the main kernels that drives it, a terminal, and possibly a few daemons to keep it all in check. Nothing graphical other than a blinking cursor waiting for your command. Its bound to be more secure! Besides, its Open-Sourced… anything that does go wrong will have a fix eventually before you’ve even realised there was a problem. But hold on, lets rewind a second… “did you just say only a blinking cursor?”, I hear you say. Yes that is correct, I must admit I was a little shocked at first, I mean I’ve known it for a long time that server based distros are only command line based, but to actually be greeted with it was a culture shock for me.

I’ve been so use to using graphical tools for so long, to actually be greeted with a screen that shows “haz@host:~$” and nothing else was strange. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve used the terminal inside ubuntu for years! Mainly for installing/removing/clearing applications (using aptitude) and possibly copying a few tweaks I’ve read online to help fix problems. I’ve never had to navigate and control a system with only CLI tools before though. I mean think about it, if we got rid of every graphical tool we use today and throw ourselves into a pure terminal – most of us would be lost. We all take for granted what our graphical tools actually do behind the scenes that we never think; what is another way to do this, that the system is probably doing for us.

So that’s how it all began… and you know what, for the first time I feel like I am fully in control of what my system is actually doing. I can’t wait until I feel very comfortable using the terminal to finally migrate my existing server over to Linux. That will be the best day once I finally do it.

Currently I just have Ubuntu Server running in a virtual machine inside my existing server, and to access and control it I’m using a tool called ssh inside of a terminal (or on the rare occasion that I’m in Windows, using PuTTY to access it via ssh).

Anyways, I feel I’ve wrote too much on this post… so I might have to put everything I’ve been using into a separate post. I hope you enjoyed reading this, and I hope you all follow me while I take the plunge and finally start learning some new tools and ways to configure and manage my server. I will migrate my server over to Linux soon, and I can’t wait! I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time but I have been too scared to because of the thought of using only a command line interface. For those of you who are also scared, but would like to setup their own server… best way is to do like what I did, install it in a virtual machine and test all you want. Don’t be afraid to break it, I mean after all its a virtual machine – if things go really wrong, format and try again :).

I also have some new stuff I would like to blog about in the coming weeks, its my new adventure into the Open Source world!

More details will come flooding through soon, but lets me just say this… I’m getting really sick of relying on a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to do all my home server needs. Time for change. Some command-line love is much needed, and long overdue.