The CMS that I am using for the website is Joomla, and i am using the K2 extension. With K2 comes a module called K2 Tools (mod_k2_tools) and you can use it to make a list of categories or a drop-down menu for choosing the category among other things.

The category listing has a setting in the control panel to decide how to sort it. But if you choose category drop-down, you do not get any options for sorting at all.

After searching a lot, it appears that nobody knows how to do this, but at least I got a suggestion from Simon aka. k2joom to see if it would be possible to use the code from the listing option.

As I am not a programmer, this would not be an easy thing to do, but I started to look at the code. In mod_k2_tools.php there was nothing that looked like sorting, but it called another file, helper.php, so I opened this one and found this piece of code in a section that looked like it could belong to the category listing:

switch ($params->get('categoriesListOrdering')) {

case 'alpha':
$orderby = 'name';
break;

case 'ralpha':
$orderby = 'name DESC';
break;

case 'order':
$orderby = 'ordering';
break;

case 'reversedefault':
$orderby = 'id DESC';
break;

default:
$orderby = 'id ASC';
break;
}

As the category drop-down menu is the next in the settings I looked a bit further and found this code:

function treeselectbox(&$params, $id = 0, $level = 0) {

$root_id = (int) $params->get('root_id2');
$option = JRequest::getCmd('option');
$view = JRequest::getCmd('view');
$category = JRequest::getInt('id');
$id = (int) $id;
$user = &JFactory::getUser();
$aid = (int) $user->get('aid');
$db = &JFactory::getDBO();
if (($root_id != 0) && ($level == 0)) {
$query = "SELECT * FROM #__k2_categories WHERE parent={$root_id} AND published=1 AND trash=0 AND access< ={$aid} ORDER BY ordering ";
} else {
$query = "SELECT * FROM #__k2_categories WHERE parent={$id} AND published=1 AND trash=0 AND access<={$aid} ORDER BY ordering ";
}

Comparing the last couple of lines to the first block seemed to indicate that there indeed was some ordering going on in there. So I tried changing the order in the categories, and the drop-down menu immediately reflected the change!

As I needed reverse sort by ID, I would rather not sit and redo the order by hand every time something got added. So I looked at the first block of code and decided to try to replace “ordering” with “id DESC” in the last couple of lines. They would then look like this:

if (($root_id != 0) && ($level == 0)) {
$query = "SELECT * FROM #__k2_categories WHERE parent={$root_id} AND published=1 AND trash=0 AND access< ={$aid} ORDER BY id DESC ";
} else {
$query = "SELECT * FROM #__k2_categories WHERE parent={$id} AND published=1 AND trash=0 AND access<={$aid} ORDER BY id DESC ";
}

And the miracle happened! The drop-down menu is now prefectly sorted by ID in descending order!

Of course, this change will be overwritten in the next upgrade, which is part of the reason why I document it here. But I also hope that someone that knows a little bit about programming could add sort order as a setting in this module. It would certainly be welcome by me!

Joomla: http://www.joomla.org/
K2: http://getk2.org/

After a bit of research, I found a post about this that helped me get things right on the first try. Here is what I did:

First I needed to install the DHCP package:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install dhcp3-server

After that is well and done, I needed to edit the configuration for it:

sudo nano /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf

Here is what my dhcp.conf file look like now:

# DHCP configuration file for Argoz
#
# Attention: If /etc/ltsp/dhcpd.conf exists, that will be used as
# configuration file instead of this file.
#
# $Id: dhcpd.conf,v 1.1.1.1 2002/05/21 00:07:44 peloy Exp $
#

# The ddns-updates-style parameter controls whether or not the server will
# attempt to do a DNS update when a lease is confirmed. We default to the
# behavior of the version 2 packages ('none', since DHCP v2 didn't
# have support for DDNS.)
ddns-update-style none;

# option definitions common to all supported networks...
option domain-name "lan1.domainname.com";
option domain-name-servers 10.11.12.100, 208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220;

default-lease-time 600;
max-lease-time 7200;

# If this DHCP server is the official DHCP server for the local
# network, the authoritative directive should be uncommented.
authoritative;

# Use this to send dhcp log messages to a different log file (you also
# have to hack syslog.conf to complete the redirection).
# log-facility local7;

# The rest of the network info

option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
option broadcast-address 10.11.12.255;
option routers 10.11.12.1;

# The subnet

subnet 10.11.12.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
range 10.11.12.150 10.11.12.170;
}

I chose to keep the comments in there as I am not working with these things on a daily basis and thought it might be a good thing to have some reminders if I needed to edit it again.

Notice that all lines starting with # is just a comment and will not influence the DHCP server. This is a pretty common way of doing things in Ubuntu.

I chose to set the range for IP addresses from 10.11.12.150 to 10.11.12.170 as this should give me more than enough addresses for the little use I have. Your need might vary here.

After saving the configuration, the only thing left to do is starting the DHCP server:

sudo /etc/init.d/dhcp3-server start

You should now have a reliable DHCP service on your network and if you had one running in a wireless router or ADSL router, you can log on there and turn it off. Have you considered setting up your own server yet?

The photograph of the computer classrom is by Extra Ketchup and has a Creative Commons license.

The place for bind9 configuration files can differ a little between Linux distributions. On Ubuntu servers they are located in /etc/bind with the zonefiles placed under /etc/bind/zones .

The standard install of bind9 on Ubuntu server is to act as a caching DNS. But for this to work, you need to tell it where to look for an adress that it can not resolve locally. So you need to edit a file called named.conf.options .

sudo nano /etc/bind/named.conf.options

Here you have to add at least two DNS’es. I added the two from OpenDNS first, and then the two from my ISP just to be sure:

options {
        directory "/var/cache/bind";

        // If there is a firewall between you and nameservers you want
        // to talk to, you may need to fix the firewall to allow multiple
        // ports to talk.  See http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/800113

        // If your ISP provided one or more IP addresses for stable
        // nameservers, you probably want to use them as forwarders.
        // Uncomment the following block, and insert the addresses replacing
        // the all-0's placeholder.

        forwarders {
             208.67.222.222;
             208.67.220.220;
             200.251.161.2;
             200.251.161.7;
         };

        auth-nxdomain no;    # conform to RFC1035
        listen-on-v6 { any; };

};

The zone files

Before we can start editing the zonefiles, we need to let bind9 know where they are. This is as easy as editing a file called named.conf.local .

sudo nano /etc/bind/named.conf.local

Here you need to add the names for the zone definitions of your forward and reverse DNS lookups. The first one will be the name of your domain plus .db . The other will be rev. plus the IP address of your server in reverse minus the last number plus .in-addr.arpa . It is not as difficult as it sounds, but maybe easier to show you how mine looks:

//
// Do any local configuration here
//

// Consider adding the 1918 zones here, if they are not used in your
// organization
//include "/etc/bind/zones.rfc1918";

# This is the zone definition. replace example.com with your domain name
zone "lan1.domainname.com" {
        type master;
        file "/etc/bind/zones/lan1.domainname.com.db";
        };

# This is the zone definition for reverse DNS. replace 0.168.192 with your network address in $
zone "12.11.10.in-addr.arpa" {
     type master;
     file "/etc/bind/zones/rev.12.11.10.in-addr.arpa";
};

As the domain I wanted to use for my network is lan1.domainname.com, the zonefile will be called lan1.domainname.com.db .

And as my IP address for the server is 10.11.12.100, the reverse zone name will be rev.12.11.10.in-addr.arpa .

Creating these two files are as easy as editing them the usual ways:

sudo nano /etc/bind/zones/lan1.domainname.com.db

Mine looks like this – I’ll do the explanation later:

$TTL 1h
lan1.domainname.com.      IN      SOA     argoz.lan1.domainname.com.   post.otherdomain.net. (

                                                        2009072804
                                                        28800
                                                        3600
                                                        604800
                                                        38400
 )

lan1.domainname.com.      IN      NS      argoz.lan1.domainname.com.

www             IN      CNAME   argoz.lan1.domainname.com.

localhost       IN      A       10.11.12.100

argoz           IN      A       10.11.12.100
aslan           IN      A       10.11.12.30
phoenix         IN      A       10.11.12.40
alambil         IN      A       10.11.12.50

As I am not an expert in DNS, I will stick to explaining the things you need to change to make it work. The rest, you can copy as it is here.

lan1.domainname.com. is the domain. Take extra care not to forget the last period!
argoz.lan1.domainname.com. is the full name of the server.
post.otherdomain.net. is the mail address to the administrator with a period instead of the @ sign on a different server.
2009072804 is a serial number that should change every time you change this zonefile. A very common way to do this number is to use the date in reverse order and a two digit number at the end. In most cases, you will not need more than 99 changes during a 24 hour period.

I added a few special names to the list and I also added some of the other PC’s in the house just to be able to address them by name, not only by IP. Also note – I do not have an in-house mail server (yet) so there is no MX record.

The last thing you need to do is to set up the reverse zone file:

sudo nano /etc/bind/zones/rev.12.11.10.in-addr.arpa

Again, here is what this looks like on my server:

$TTL 1h
@ IN SOA argoz.lan1.domainname.com. post.otherdomain.net. (
                        2009072803;
                        28800;
                        604800;
                        604800;
                        86400
)

                IN      NS      argoz.lan1.domainname.com.
100              IN      PTR     argoz.lan1.domainname.com.
30              IN      PTR     aslan.lan1.domainname.com.
40              IN      PTR     phoenix.lan1.domainname.com.
50              IN      PTR     alambil.lan1.wdomainname.com.

After setting up the previous file, this one becomes a bit more clear. As with the other file, remember the trailing periods. And also remember to change the serial number if you open and change this file again later.

The last thing you need to do is to restart bind9 to get the whole thing to work:

sudo /etc/init.d/bind9 restart

And then you can test your DNS with this command (substitute the domainname with your own):

dig lan1.domainname.com

I am sure there are still errors in this setup, but it is working for me. I can do a dig and get a respons that seems to be ok. Was this helpful? Any tips on how to improve things?

A big thank you to the following websites and people for help and knowledge:
Ubuntu forum -  Howto: Setup a DNS server with bind
Ubuntu DNS Server Guide – BIND Caching Name Server Setup
The admins at Domenetorget.no for excellent support!

The photograph of the rack and network cables is by Cloned Milkmen and has a Creative Commons license.

Editing configuration files in Linux can be a daunting task for a person that is new to the whole concept. I do it when I have to and have done it a lot over the years. But unlike some people that almost fall in love with the command line interface (CLI), I like it less and less as the time passes. I prefer to use my time on other things than administrating and configuring the server. Once it is done, it should just work. And this makes CLI very difficult because I never remember the commands when I need them. So I have to search the internet every time.

When I have to do it, my editor of choice is nano. So to edit a file, I type

sudo nano filename.txt

The reason for the sudo is that most of the files that needs to be edited will be outside of the home directory and because of this, not possible to edit with normal user privileges. Adding sudo and giving your password takes care of that.

Checking basic server configuration

First of all, it is a good idea to check that the standard stuff of the server has been configured correct after bind9 has been installed. The first file to check would be the basic networking configuration on your server:

sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

Mine looks like this:

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 10.11.12.100
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 10.11.12.0
broadcast 10.11.12.255
gateway 10.11.12.1

Yours might differ, but this one should get you what you need.

Your server needs to know a DNS in order to look up requests. Of course, as you will have a DNS running locally, you just have to point it to itself.

sudo nano /etc/resolv.conf

My server only has two lines here. One for the DNS, the other for the domain.

search lan1.domainname.com

nameserver 127.0.0.1

The hosts file could do the job as a simple “DNS”, but as we are setting up a complete DNS, it is better to keep it clean:

sudo nano /etc/hosts

Something similar to this is ok, nothing else should be needed:

127.0.0.1       localhost

# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
::1     localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
fe00::0 ip6-localnet
ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
ff02::3 ip6-allhosts

In the last post I will cover the bind9 specific configuration.

The photograph of the web is copyright Svein Wisnæs.

I have had a server in the house on and off over the years, but after moving to Brazil, it became a real need. The server is used for developing websites, testing different installations, caching updates for the workstations in the house, sharing files and sharing our laser printer as well as a number of other small things. It is also a way for me to learn more about networking, Linux servers etc.

Learning is also one of the reasons why I would like to set up a small caching DNS that also resolves the stuff I have on my local network. This task has been a challenge, but with the help of a lot of different online documentation, friends that have given me tips about this and that, I have managed to get it to a point where I can truly say it is working. So I thought I would try to gather the information here, both to help others and for me to remember what I actually have done.

One thing has to be said loud and clear: This server is not exposed on the internet. It sits behind a firewall and is only used by us locally. No ports have been opened up for access from the outside and there is no need to update the rest of the world with the stuff running on our local network.

Before I started, I had to make a few decisions. One of them was that I wanted to use a real domain for this, so I chose to use a subdomain off my wisnaes.com domain – lan1.wisnaes.com . This way, if I ever need to set up a lan at another site, I can simply name it lan2.wisnaes.com and avoid any conflicts. But for the examples, I have substituted this with lan1.domainname.com so that nobody by accident uses my domain.

Other things I decided on either at the installation of Ubuntu server or before the configuration of the DNS:

Name of server: argoz
IP of server: 10.11.12.100
IP of gateway: 10.11.12.1
DNS1: 208.67.222.222 (OpenDNS)
DNS2: 208.67.220.220 (OpenDNS)

There are a few DNS packages to choose from, but I chose to go for bind9 as this seems to be the most common one and it can do everything from small stuff to really big stuff.

Installing it is as easy as typing

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install bind9

on the command line. Follow the prompts, and you have the basic install with a standard configuration. Note that the install has to be done with sodu/root privileges. Either use sudo or become root temporarily.

I will get into the configurations in the other two parts:
Part 2 : Basic configuration
Part 3 : Configuring bind9

The photograph of the phonebook is copyright Egil Sundal and used by permission.

It is time to update the look of this blog a little bit and make it possible to use more of the new features in the latest version of WordPress. So please don’t get alarmed if you see a strange look on this page. I am just trying out some new things, and the best way to really get a feel for it is to test it on the real stuff.

I got myself a new harddisk for my laptop. A 320GB WesternDigital with 16MB cache spinning at 7200 rpm. Great. But how do I move from the old 100GB harddisk to the new one?

So I decided to do a bit of research before doing it. And while I was doing that, I started moving all data off the old one over to a USB disk.

The first thing I quickly decided on was that I wanted a dual boot system. I have been using Linux on and off for a long time and I finally wanted to use as much time using it as possible. The next I had to decide was what distro to go for. Linux comes in many flavours, and it can be a nightmare to choose. But I had always liked the Ubuntu family and on a different computer I have Linux Mint installed. This is one of the many offsprings of Ubuntu.

My old harddisk and the necessary CD's.

But for my laptop I decided to use Kubuntu. I had heard a lot of good stuff about it and the new KDE looked great. There was also this thing of getting as close to the source as possible. Mint is great looking and has some extra features I would have loved. But as it is an offspring of Ubuntu, their releases are always behind and I wanted to be able to use all updates as they were released from the Ubuntu team. After communicating with people in the Kubuntu forum, I did what I consider to be a little bold move: I went for the Kubuntu 9.04 aplha6 release. This is a test version of Kubuntu that will be released in April this year. For Ubuntu and Kubuntu the first digit signifies the year. So for 2009 the first digit becomes 9. The two digits after the period is the month. So April is 04. The Ubuntu family has two major releases every year. One in April and one in October. As someone in the forum pointed out, we are very close to the release for April and the other people testing it reported that it was already very stable.

Partitioning the harddisk

When you want to have two operating systems on your harddisk you have a few considerations to make. Do you want them to just live side by side with no interaction, or do you want to be able to use some data in both systems? How much space do you have to give to each? And how do you want to organize each one of them?

I also had the added problems of a couple of special partitions on my old harddisk. The old one looked like this:

1. fat16 86.26MB – a rescue partition set up by Dell
2. ntfs 88.66GB – the main system partition that contained WindowsXP Pro
3. fat32 3GB – the MediaDirect partition

MediaDirect has it’s own button on my laptop, and when I press it, the laptop boots a special OS that works like a media center wher I can play DVD’s, watch pictures or listen to music.

I researched several forums to try to figure out wether to bring the rescue partition and MediaDirect over to the new harddisk. But eventually decided to scrap both. If my operating system needs rescue, it is better done from the install CD. And I will have two OS’es on the harddisk, so I did not want to take the chance of anything like that messing up the systems.
The MediaDirect partition was actually a bigger concern. Basically what I am a little afraid of is what will happen if I press the button and there is no MediaDirect partition? One of the forums mentioned a talk with Dell support where they said that the button would be dead without this partition. So that is what I am hoping for. But have not dared to try yet…

Another choice I made was to separate data and the operating systems. And as some of my work will generate a lot of data (video editing) from WindowsXP, I decided that the biggest partition would be a data partition formatted with ntfs. Here is the formatting I finally went for:

1. Primary - ntfs - WindowsXP – 30GB
2. Primary - ntfs - Data – 230GB
3. Primary - ext3 - Kubuntu – 15GB
4. Extended
5. Logical - ext3 - /home – 20GB
6. Logical - linux-swap – swap – 4GB

For the actual partitioning I used a live CD version of gparted.

I wanted to put the whole Documents and Setting plus the Program Files folder on the Data partition. That got me into another big round of research.

Preparing a special WindowsXP boot CD

To get Documents and Settings and the Program Files folder onto the Data partition, it turned out I had to modify the WindowsXP setup CD. I could have done it by making a floppy disk with the setup in a textfile and boot off that one. But I do not have a floppy drive, so I had to go for the whole CD setup.

The first step was to copy all files from the CD that I got together with my laptop over too my harddisk. As I now had moved everything in My Documents on the old harddisk over to a USB disk, I had a lot of space to do this.

I also needed to copy the bootfile from the CD. To do this I used a small program called ISOBuster. It is recommended that you write down the name of the original CD and use the same for your new one.

To get things the way I wanted, I had to do what is called an Unattended install with the setup for it in a small textfile. This file had to be called winnt.sif and should be put in the i386 folder on the CD. On some webpages it says that you need to use a batch file to start the process, but in my case it was enough to just place the file in the right folder. There was a file like that already there, but the content was only two lines and just to be sure, I included them in my file.

Here is what I put in the file:

[Data]
AutoPartition=0
MsDosInitiated=0
UnattendedInstall=Yes

[Unattended]
UnattendMode=ProvideDefault
OemPreinstall=No
TargetPath=\WINDOWS
FileSystem=*
Hibernation = No
OemSkipEula=Yes
Repartition=No
UnattendSwitch=”yes”
WaitForReboot=”No”
ProgramFilesDir=”D:\Program Files”
CommonProgramFilesDir=”D:\Program Files\Common Files”

[GuiUnattended]
AdminPassword=secret
EncryptedAdminPassword=No
OEMSkipRegional=1
TimeZone=65
ProfilesDir=”D:\Documents and Settings\”

[Components]
Msnexplr=Off
Zonegames=Off
msmsgs=Off
Fax=On

[Shell]
DefaultStartPanelOff = Yes
DefaultThemesOff = Yes

[UserData]
ProductKey=XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX
FullName=”Svein Wisnaes”
OrgName=”My org”
ComputerName=Trainer

[Display]
BitsPerPel=32
Xresolution=1280
YResolution=800
Vrefresh=60

[TapiLocation]
Dialing=Tone

[RegionalSettings]
LanguageGroup=1
SystemLocale=00000409
UserLocale=00000414
InputLocale=0414:00000414

[Identification]
JoinWorkgroup=WORKGROUP

[Networking]
InstallDefaultComponents=Yes

If you want to do this yourself, you can use this as a starting point. There were a couple of things that did not work as expected. First of all, I had one character in the license wrong. But as I used the mode UnattendMode=ProvideDefault, the settings in this file are only used as default answers and I am allowed to correct them during install.

One question I had before installing was what letter my Data partition would get. As you have to include it in the path where you want Documents and Settings and the Program Files folder, it was important to know. I could not find this anywhere on the internet, so I took a chance on the first available letter, D, and hoped the DVD drive would stay out of the way

This turned out to be correct, so that part of the winnt.sif was correct. But I got some of the timezone wrong. And the screen resolution did not matter, as the driver for my graphics card was not included on the CD. But again – I could correct anything that needed correction during the installation.

I also used the opportunity to avoid installing some programs as well as setting the theme to the classic Windows 2000 look. I prefer this when working with video editing.

WindowsXP Installation

The installation itself was pretty straightforward. After installing Windows XP, I added the drivers from the Dell driver CD. Windows XP actually occupies very little of the 30GB space as the folders that tend to grow are located on the Data partition. So I might eventually be able to decrease the WindowsXP partition and increase the Data partition. But time will show.

Since this, I have now transferred all the files from my old Documents and Settings to the new Data partition. I still have to sort things, and this time I will go through everything. The previous times I have changed computers or harddisks, I have usually copied the whole thing over and I now have files from a long time back that could have been deleted. Time to clean!

I also made another decision. The new WindowsXP installation will not have any chat programs installed at all. And my mailprogram here is Thunderbird Portable. As far as possible, I will use portable version of programs to avoid littering the filesystem too much.

Kubuntu installation

Then the time had come to install Kubuntu. As I had already done the partitioning, I chose manual partition. I then had to choose what to put where, and go on with the install. Just before the installation really starts, I was given a summary page with an Advanced button on the bottom, right side. I clicked it because I was thinking of putting the bootloader on the Kubuntu partition instead of the MBR. But as far as I could see, I did not have that choice. I could only choose sda (the whole disk). So this presumably meant that it went on the MBR. The reason why I wanted this was that I was hoping it would mean that the MediaDirect button would then boot Kubuntu if pressed when the laptop is off.

The new KDE 4.2.1 based Kubuntu desktop

The Kubuntu installation was a lot smoother than WindowsXP. Nicer graphics and no drivers to install after. I did try to activate the special nVidia drivers, but for some reason it did not work. As it is, the laptop works very well. It was easy to connect to the wireless network and the Data partition comes right up. As well as my connected USB disk. It even has detected the built-in webcam, but that part needs a little bit more finetuning to be ok.

I am slowly finding my way around Kubuntu. The Kubuntu forum is a great help with a lot of friendly people. You can ask any question and get a lot of helpful answers. I am really impressed by the positive tone in that forum.

What is next?

I have already installed Avid MediaComposer and Adobe Photoshop CS2 in WindowsXP. I might try to install Photoshop in Kubuntu under Wine, but not yet.

Kubuntu comes with OpenOffice installed and this has been my choice of office software for some time now. Some of the applications that come with Kubuntu are worth a special mention. Kopete is something like a nicer, Kubuntu version of Pidgin. I am already using it as I need it to stay in touch with customers, friends and family. Konqueror, the webbrowser in Kubuntu, looks nice. But I prefer using Firerfox so I have already installed this. I have also added the Foxmarks plugin as I do on all computers I use. This let me synchronize my bookmarks in all computers and OS’es. Works like a charm! Amarok is so far the best music player I have seen on Linux. I warned me the first time I used it that it needed some extra codecs to be able to play the music I had. The MP3 codec is not included as default in Kubuntu, but that is easily fixed. Just let Amarok take care of it!

In Kubuntu, the program that takes care of updating your system and install new software is called KpackageKit in version 9.04 . It seems this program still has some bugs, but in general it does it’s job. One of the first things to do after the installation of 9.04 alpha6 was to download updated files. There were already over 300 files that needed to be updated so I let it run over night because of the slow line here. Before the update I had some program crashes, and it seems the update has taken care of most of that. No crashes so far today.

Thunderbird has for a long time been my mailprogram of choice and I have already installed it in Kubuntu. But how do you make sure you do not make a mess with the two operating systems? The solution was to keep the mailprofile on the Data partition and point Thunderbird under Kubuntu to this folder. To do that I had to edit a settings file that is found in the /home/.mozilla-thunderbird folder. To see this folder, I had to switch on Show hidden files in the filemanager. The file to edit is called profiles.ini and it is as simple as changing this section:

IsRelative=1
Path=t633sbdp.default

Here what I put:

IsRelative=0
Path=/media/Data/Portable Program Files/ThunderbirdPortable/Data/profile

Everything comes up as normal and I read that you can even point it to a network folder so you can keep all your mail on a server.

There are several programs I still need to install. Skype being one of them. Little by little, Kubuntu will become my main workplatform.

Does this sound interesting? Would you do the same? Let me know what you think of my experiment.

One of the things that got my attention in the new version is that it should load any EXIF info into special fields so that it can be used by templates to post caption, credits etc. I am really curious how to get this working and it seems more of this is coming in version 2.6 that is close to being released.

Of course, by using Windows Live Writer, one more step and possible error source is added between the original picture and the web page you see now. I added several IPTC fields to the picture just to see how it turned out and if it came up as useful data.

Do you have any experience in using these new data fields? Leave a comment and tell about how you did it. I will add to this article as I find out more.

Update: First of all, there is a bug in Windows Live Writer that strips out all EXIF/IPTC info. So it does not help using it if you want to have caption to the pictures. Version 2.5 of WordPress was supposed to add a better way to handle pictures, but for me the picture

The blue hour at Karmøy, Norway. (Photographer: Svein Wisnaes)

inserter/uploader never worked. But after upgrading to WordPress 2.6 things seem to work great. At least everything looks ok while I am in the editor. But for some reason the align tag does not work correct. So it ends up breaking the design.

There is also a nice and very tiny border around the picture that disappear on the way from the editor to the article that shows on the page, as well as some formatting I put on the caption. I wanted the Photographer to be in italics. It might be possible to fix this through the theme that is used. I will check if there is a more general fix for it.

I am using Windows Live Writer to publish this article to my Word Press powered blog. But neither Windows Live Writer, neither Word Press has any mechanism to add a copyright (or Creative Commons), the name of the photographer and a caption (the description) to each picture.

I would like to see the possibility to add this for each picture I use in my article. For me, this is a no brainer. The photographer deserves credit just as much as the article writer. So why is it not there?

The group of websites that actually uses some form of this best are the online newspapers. I guess that stems from the photographers there knowing a lot more about their rights. But we really need this on even small blogs today.

A very good source for illustrations for a blog today are the photosharing sites like Flickr. On Flickr, you can do a search only among the Creative Commons pictures to find something that you can use. Bust most of the CC marked pictures require that you give the photographer due credit and maybe also link back to both her/him and to the correct CC webpage. Today, there is no way to do this easily and I am trying to get some attention to this.

One way that has been suggested is to use the watermark feature in some editors to add the text inside the picture itself. But this means altering the picture and a lot of photographers do not want you to do that. Also, take a look at my picture above and think about placing the caption over the picture. First of all, it would look extremely odd. Second, it would hardly be readable. Sure, I could set the text color to white. But next picture might be a high key picture that requires me to set it to black.. No, forget about putting anything inside the picture. And by the way – why use a workaround that is clearly not meant for this? What we need is a real solution.

The first way to handle it would be to ask the creators of different WYSIWYG editors and off-line editors to add this functionality. It should not be too difficult. The second step would be to get it into the core of the different CMS’es like WordPress and Joomla. That is where it really belongs.

I want to add one more thing to the list. Microsoft has made available a nice plugin or addition to Windows XP. It is called Photo Info and it allows you to add the required text to the IPTC fields of pictures. Most of the higher end photo editing programs can do the same, and as I do not like doing the same thing twice, I would love to see Windows Live Writer and WordPress being able to load the IPTC info into the correct fields for each picture when I publish them on my blog. I consider this to be the ultimate and most elegant solution, but for now I will settle for one that just let me enter and display the needed info in a nice manner.

There are several ways to display it, and here the template designers might come in with some styling. The name and copyright could be added under the picture as I have done. But I have also seen it displayed up along the right side of the picture. The caption could either be under or over. For my own blog, I would prefer something more or less the way I made the mockup in this article. I am not totally sure about the 5% grey behind the caption, but I need to make sure it is easy to separate it from the article itself.

How would you like to display photo credits and captions? Do you do it today? As far as I know, copyright laws in most countries requires us to put a credit for pictures we use. Why has this been omitted in most CMS systems?

UPDATE: I have now posted an idea on WordPress.org to try to gather support for this. Add your vote on the idea! I have also put the idea into a forum for Windows Live Writer and someone replied that he could probably make something like this. Sounds like Windows Live Writer might be the first one to get something usable. This will of course be good news for more than WordPress users. You can add your support for it here.

UPDATE2: I tried to make an example of what it could look like in Windows Live Writer. Take a look at it here.

Or you could head over to http://www.dvdflick.net/ and download DVDFlick. It is probably the easiest tool I have come across to make DVD’s. From their own description:

DVD Flick aims to be a simple but at the same time powerful DVD Authoring tool. It can take a number of video files stored on your computer and turn them into a DVD that will play back on your DVD player, Media Center or Home Cinema Set. You can add additional custom audio tracks as well as subtitles of your choice.

And here is a short list of some features:

• Burn near any video file to DVD
• Support for over 45 file formats
• Support for over 60 video codecs
• Support for over 40 audio codecs
• Add your own subtitles
• Easy to use interface
• Burn your project to disc after encoding
• Completely free without any adware, spyware or limitations

I can really recommend this program. And for the price of it, you can hardly go wrong – it is free. But if you like it and become a user, you should consider donating something. These programmers that make software and then give it out for free really deserve our support.

The interface is very easy. You add movies to a list and then you create the DVD. But before you start creating, make sure you have gone through the project settings and set the target size, target format etc. You can also decide to make an ISO-file instead of burning direct to DVD.

For each video that you add to the list, you can click on edit and adjust a number of settings. One thing to look out for here is the aspect ration. Check that it is set correct. This is also where you can add extra video sources, audio tracks and subtitles.

If you are new to making DVD’s, there is a nice tutorial online that you can get to by clicking on the guide button. It is a very easy step-by-step guide that should answer most questions.

I only have one thing to complain about. My main video editing program is Avid MediaComposer, and I have had some reports of problems with the Avid DV codec. So if you are using any of the Avid editing programs, you might want to make sure you are exporting with a more generic codec. But of course, try it out once with a couple of small videos. I have sent a mail to the author to tell him about the problem, so it might get solved in the near future.

Have you tried this program? Did you experience any problems? Let us know how it worked for you by leaving a comment. Is this the solution to all DVD authoring problems?

Some time ago, I tested Windows Live Writer and could not even get it to run properly. Yesterday, I upgraded my MSN Messenger and had the opportunity to install Live Writer at the same time. So I thought "Why not try it again"? Maybe this time it will work.

Well, the installation was easy enough and it started fine. After giving it the log-in to my first blog, Live Writer discovered that it was a WordPress blog and it was ready to go.

Writing feels like writing in a word processor. I like this feeling and I also like being able to save drafts on my laptop. Now I can work on posts even if I am on an airplane with no connection to the internet. Of course, I could do this before by just using any wordprocessor, but I like this feeling of having a dedicated tool for the job. I hope it is easy to switch between different blogs so I can manage all of them from the same interface.

I have installed WYSIWYG editors on all my blogs. I do not like using codes when I write. I feel it interrupts the natural flow of writing. If Live Writer works, I can keep the WYSIWYG plug-in out of WordPress. One less thing to think about to update and install. Now I just wish there was a way to use Live Writer as a Live Comment System…

Do you know of any system for managing comments where you do not have to log in on your website?

This is all about security for the data. First I list everything that I think is really essential. Everything else should be and add-in except for file and printer sharing.

RAID-1

Whether it is soft or hardware based (I really prefer hardware based, so I like support for Highpoint, 3ware and Promise drivers at least…), a home server needs to have a solid system for securing files. Why RAID-1? Well, a single point of failure will always be the RAID control mechanism, either as software or hardware. If you use RAID-1, you can just take one drive out of the server and mount it on a different PC and you have access to all your data. If you use RAID-5 or RAID-6, you are not sure to be able to recover your raid if the controller goes… RAID-1 is not as efficient as RAID-5 or RAID-6 in terms of storage space, but in my opinion, the security is higher.

The system drive should also be on a RAID-1 setup so it is not lost because of harddrive failure. The whole OS including programs, not any user data or backup data, should fit on a relatively small drive so there is no cost excuse to skip running a RAID-1 for it.

File system

Based on maksimum security, there should go a lot of thought into what filesystem that should be used for the data drives. FAT32 would be a good candidate if it had been a bit more robust and allowed for bigger filesizes. But with a maximum of 2GB files, it is totally out of the question since many people would like to store backups of DVD’s on a server like this. A good solution might be to to use ext-2 or ext-3 and provide Windows and OSX drivers to be able to read the drives if there should be a major crisis.

Backup

Even if we have a secure way of storing data on the server, we still need a good backup system. And I really prefer a centrally managed system. There should only be a small agent installed on each PC (Windows, OSX or Linux/BSD) and then the rest should be done from the server – setting up what to backup, when and how often. There system MUST be able to backup files that are in use and to control bandwith use so it can run in the background even if you are working on the system.

There should be a wide range of options on where to store the backups. The backups of the pc’s in the network could be stored or cached on the server. But there must also be a way to wite to an different medium e.g. DVD+R or tape. Or some other kind of attached storage. Because of this it would be smart to have the backup program divide all backup files into chunks of 2GB or less.

Health monitoring of critical components in the network.

There are protocols to monitor hardware today. Especially harddrives that are S.M.A.R.T. enabled. So why not do this centrally? Use the same agent that do the backup control to continually monitor the harddrive, fans, CPU of the pc it is running on and send any critical messages immediately to the server. There you can have a program that send alerts by e-mail, sms, make a call through an IP-Phone and play a recorded message etc. This should not be complicated to set up. And it would be a good thing to send status for each PC on a regular basis so the server builds a statistics that can be reviewed.

File sharing

This is a given. Each user needs to have their own home folder where they can store documents and folders where more people have access so pictures and other things can be shared.

IMPORTANT: Actually, there should also be some sort of version control on this. I have no idea if this is possible in any of the filesystems out there, but pictures, music and video all share one thing – you do not want to destroy the original. So a way to mark files as originals and then block all modifications would be ok. I can see one reason to modify the originals – add metadata. So this part is a bit of a challenge and I have not seen anything about this on the internet at all.

Printer sharing

This is also a given. Most people can not afford to have one or more printers for each computer in the house. There should be an easy way to get the driver for the printer from the server when you install it on a local pc.

One function that I use a lot is printing to PDF. This could be a central function as well. Yes, I know there are good, local alternatives, but it would be nice to collect all "printer" functions at a central point.

User control

This add one more to the given list. I would like to set up both users and groups and have an easy way of adding users to groups. I like using groups instead of user to control access to functions. The server need to be able to run really headless. No monitor, no keyboard and no mouse.

Communication with a UPS

A UPS is essential in a setup like this and it is equally important that the server communicates with the UPS so it knows when the power goes down and can shut down the server in a controlled manner.

Anti-virus

There should definitely be some software for this running on the server as well as malware detection. It is important to go for a software that is updated very often and that have a live scanner that do not bog down the server.

Firewall

Yes, the server need to be protected as in beeing hardened so it can withstand an attack. BUT – I do not think the server itself should be a firewall for any other component in the network. This is a task better done by a separate box as I think it is too dangerous to attach the box with the data you are trying to protect directly to the internet.

Caching DNS and DHCP server

It should be possible, but all internet routers today have DNS and DHCP built in. Still, a caching DNS might be useful and it should come with Open DNS as a predefined choice as the main DNS. The server need to be able to switch to IPv6 as soon as it is available without any reconfiguration.

Dynamic DNS client

Also present in a lot of routers, but can be a good idea to add.

Network Time Server

To make sure all things are timestamped correctly in the network, the server should have a network time server. This one should have two different ways of keeping time. One is the internet time servers and the other should be the possibility to connect a GPS and read the time from the GPS system. The last one is often used in bigger networks.

Server-to-server communication through firewalls and NAT

I absolutely see the need to have and additional server in another house and have the possibility to let the two servers communicate. This could be done through VPN, but the setup has to be very easy AND extremely secure. So using certificates that are at least 2048 bit or preferrably more with strong encryption on the traffic is a must.

VPN

Yes, it would be nice to have a way to use VPN to access the box from the outside of the home network. But it has to be real easy, and it should not be based on passwords. Use a certificate based system as this should be much less vulnerable to attack. Locally, access is best done through a HTML interface. And that brings me to:

Control of the server

As already said, the main functionality should be through an HTML interface. But for admin purposes, it might be necessary to have SSH and FTP as well. As I guess mySQL will run on the box, myPHPAdmin should also be available.

Automatic updates

There are no ways around this one. It is extremely important that the whole system is built to allow automatic updates from day one. All add-ins should also allow for this so there need to be some kind of guidelines on how to package them. The only alternative would be a kind of one-click updates. The server send the admin an e-mail about a new update. You log on and click the update button.

Add-in: Mail

This one is almost a part of the base system for me, but I realise that a lot of people are very satisfied using their normal mail client.

POP3, IMAP and SMTP server with webmail system. It should also have the possibility to act as a POP3 and IMAP client for the users that do not have their own domain. This is a part of the server that would be nice to access from the outside of the house when you are travelling.

Add-in: Calendar

This also comes close to the base system list. Having a shared calendar system with calendars for all the people in the house can be a major advantage. Especially if the calendars can use Google calendar or another internet based calendar to display busy/free times. Scheduling time in a busy family can be a good reason to install this add-in. It should also be possible to subscribe to calendars on the internet so things like football schedules, school holidays and other things can be easily added.

Add-in: Address book

The third of the "almost base system" add-ins. Beeing able to share important addresses would also be a major advantage. It is a must for me that any addressbook as a minimum can sync completely with Outlook and that I will not loose ANY of the information I have stored there when I sync.

I love any system that can take some of the work of keeping addresses updated away from me. I use Plaxo and as long as you do not pester your friends with invites and upload your whole addressbook there, I think it is a good service. I would love to see a serverbased sync with Plaxo so I don’t have to run the client on my PC. This would also mean that I would have correct addresses even when I use programs that do not sync with Plaxo as long as that program sync with the home server.

It is of course extremely important that you are able to control what addresses that are shared and what part of the info in an address that is shared. I use the comments on addresses in Outlook a lot and the info there is not always something that should be shared in a network although it would be a good thing to have it on the server so only I can see it.

Add-in: To-do list

This goes well together with the previous things and I am pretty sure there are programs developed that already cover this. But it is important that there also exist free sync systems for all major software packages (Outlook, Thunderbird, Opera etc.)

Add-in: Fax

Another type of printer function might be sending of faxes. The use of fax is diminishing by the day, but there are still companies that would like to have it. So why not add this as a printerservice?

Reception of faxes should also be an easy one with central management. It should be possible to add the e-mail addresses of each person in the house and then log on to the server, pick the right recipient for a fax and click the deliver button. It should then be sent as an attachment to the right persons e-mail.

Add-in: VOIP central

There is a beautiful box out there called Fritzbox. It is a ADSL2 modem, router, WiFi AP and VOIP router at the same time. I would love to have Asterisk added to the server and be able to do some of the things you can do with the Fritzbox. I have no idea if it is possible to use a standard modem or ISDN card as an interface to the normal phone system, but there should be a way to route the normal phone into this and use that line for local calls and emergency calls.

Then it should be possible to use something like VOIPDiscount to call international. There are now good IP handsets out there from Grandstream etc. so with a home PBX, you could have phones all over the house. Just plug them into the switch. And make sure you buy a switch with enough ports As the use of a server like this grows, it would be nice to be able connect to friends and family and set up your own small telephone network where you can call for free using this.

Add-in: Squeeze server

A server to serv all your MP3′s. I love the Squeeze box idea and the fact that you can stream audio without having to use a PC to play it back.

Add-in: *AMP server

I guess all of these will be running anyway, so it might be an idea to have a way to add php scripts. I develop websites and would really love to have a Joomla and WordPress system running locally. BUT – the directories for these things need to be on the data drives so they are backed up regularly. Maybe there should even be an automated setup where I only need to place the latest distribution of each system in a special folder and then I could go to the web interface and click on "Add new Joomla site" or "Add new WordPress site" and the server took care of setting up the database, user and install the script. Could be a cool thing. A little like Fantastico, but using the standard distributed packages so whenever there is an update from the developers, you can just replace the package.

Add-in: Web site backup server

As I work with web sites, I would love to have an efficient way to use the home server to regularly make backups of each domain so I do not have to think about it or run a separate PC to do it. But only as an add-in. Most people do not want this functionality.

Add-in: Wiki server

Making an in-house manual for different things can be a good idea. Just wish there were a way to just scan the manual of the new TV and say "Make Wiki"…

Add-in: Podcast client "server"

The people in our family have different taste. And we all love music. I like podcasts, but the others find it too difficult to mess with. But all of us use MP3 players. So my thoughts go like this: What if I had a system where they could subscribe to the podcasts on the server, then the server downloaded the podcasts automatically and put it in a folder where the Squeeze server could stream them locally? Also, there should be a way to just plug in the MP3 players, the server recognize them and load the right podcasts on them. The big feature here would be a function that would allow me to tell the server to make sure tha at any time, only the last 2 or 4 podcasts or whatever I decide are on my MP3 player. This way I will be sure it do not fill up. So I just need to set up a USB hub where we plug in the players whenever we want to update them. MP3 player central

Add-in: BitTorrent client

More and more things are distributed as BitTorrents. So it only makes sense to have a BitTorrent client available as an add-in. Not all people will care about this, but I know a lot will. I think many TV series in the future will be distributed this way. Also podcasts/vidcasts are being distributed through the BitTorrent protocol.

Keep the base system clean

There are things that I absolutely would like to keep away from this server. Home-automation, weather station, anonymous ftp server, Media Center are all examples of this. It should not be the everything-in-one box. It should be a server with the focus on security for files. Get all the basic stuff covered before any thought is given to the add-in stuff. If anyone want to tinker with the system and ad the possibility to make coffe, it is fine by me But do not add this into the base functions. Let people post it on the internet so anyone can add it if they want. But keep the base system clean.

What do you think? What is important for you in a server like this? I will add to this post as I get new input and ideas.

The picture is used under Creative Commons – Some Rights Reserved , Photographer: Zack Williams.

We all love free stuff. Especially when it is something we otherwise would have to pay for. The fine people behind Divx has decided to give out a gift this holiday season. It is unsure how long it will run, so hurry over there and get your copy of a totally free Divx Pro.

What does this give you over the free version of Divx? Here is their own explanation:

So, the primary reason to buy DivX Pro for Windows is to get full
versions of the DivX Converter and the DivX Pro Codec, two things that
let you easily create DivX videos. What are these two things, you ask,
and why should you care? Read on, kind friend, read on…

DivX Converter

The DivX Converter is the official DivX video creation software application. It lets you:

• Drag-and-drop nearly any video format to create a high-quality, highly compressed DivX video
• Merge and convert multiple videos into a single DivX file with an automatically generated menu
• Back
  up your home-made DVDs, compress a full movie to fit onto one regular
  CD (requires the optional $4.99 DivX Converter MPEG-2/DVD Plug-in)

DivX Pro Codec

The DivX Pro Codec is the top of the food chain, codec-wise. It
includes the most advanced version of the DivX video encoder so you can
create the highest-quality DivX files in combination with DivX
Converter or another third-party encoding application. DivX Pro gives
you:

• Higher performance, including multi-threaded support
  for better performance on all HyperThreaded, dual core and dual CPU
  (SMP) systems
• More encoding options, including six
  carefully optimized encoding modes that balance visual quality and
  performance for virtually any application 

What are you waiting for?

I used it back in the days of Photoshop 5 and really loved the way you could lift out any object from the white background with a click. If any pixel was not completely black, it would be partially transparent. This meant that soft shadows could be lifted off as well, something I have not been able to do with any other method so far.

But this plug-in does not work with Photoshop CS2 and I have been trying to find a newer version for a long time. Until recently when I stumbled across a way to run older plugins on newer version of Photoshop.

First of all – the Remove White plugin is as far as I know, made by Mark McLaren and you can find it here (scroll down and click on Remove White under Mark McLaren). Unpack the filter and put it in your filter folder.

But since it is an older type filter, you need an extra file to make it work. You need to add msvcrt10.dll (click here to download it) to the same folder as the Photoshop program. Do not add it to the system32 folder or anywhere else in the main Windows folder as it might interfere with how other programs work.

Reboot Photoshop, and it should start with no problems. You should now have a new category of plug-ins at the bottom of your filter list called Mac’s with a single filter called Remove White.

To apply this filter to an image, you first have to either duplicate the background layer and do it on the copy, or double-click on the background layer and turn it into a regular layer. If you want to apply this to just a portion of your image, you have to make a selection first, otherwise just choose the Remove White filter and you are done. You should now see the checkered background through the parts of your image that is not completely black.

To verify that the extraction is ok, make a new layer and fill it with white. Then place this layer under the image layer. You image should now look like it was before you removed the white background.

Most people do not like to have a transparent main object, so you need to make a quick mask of your object, fill it with white and place it under your main image layer. But you now have the option to exclude shadows so that the shadow will fall on whatever background you choose for your picture.

This is an effect that is simply not possible by using a mask or doing a selection based on color.

If you like this post, leave a comment and consider adding it to some of the social bookmarking sites.

But today I found a neat solution that will help a lot. If you have a GMail account, you are in luck. GMail has their SMTP servers on different ports than the usual 25. If you check this link, you can see that the ports are 465 or 587. I set this up in Thunderbird and had no problem bypassing the SMTP block in the network I was using at the time. Just remember to use SSL and authentication when you set it up. 

There are a couple of things to be aware of. GMail rewrites the from-address of your mail to your GMail address as well as the reply-to address. According to  Lifehacker it is possible to go to the settings of your GMail account and change the default address to change this. In addition, GMail stores all outgoing mail (and thus indexes it for it’s own use…). This probably does not appeal to everyone, but for many people is a minor issue.

If you really need to get that mail out and don’t have any other way of doing it, GMail might just save the day for you. 

There has been a lot of rumors about what kind of information Google stores about us when we search. And I guess the biggest sceptics will just call this video a smoke screen. But it makes sense and is exactly what most websites store anyway.

The difference now is that Google will start to anonymise their logs a bit when they are 18 months old. Maybe you heard this already, but here is a video explaining this, made by Google. Not only is it good information, but also a good example of how to communicate in the simplest way and get your message across.

 I love the combination of internet and video and I will be looking for more examples that can serve as ideas for anyone that want to put video online. There will also be some articles in the future about how to get maximum quality on your video. Watch this space!

Do you have any examples of great online video communication? Make a comment with a link!

 My choice of rss reader at the moment is GreatNews , but I am happy to try out new ones whenever I come across them. I think that a tool like this is invaluable for people that work in the tv and film business as it allows us to stay on top of what is happening in our fields of interest. You find the links to add this blog in the right column or in the address bar of your web browser.

What is your favorite rss reader?

Their software, SynthEyes, will set you back only USD 399 and runs on both Mac and Windows. Not too long ago they released a new version with many improvements. One of the improvements is a stabilizer that promises to do a correct stabilization of your footage. According to their website:

The hallmark of incorrect stabilization is that, though the point of interest remains stable, the corners of the image appear to be doing some very strange things, moving in and out. This is the result of 2-D stabilization, or 3-D stabilization with an incorrect field of view.

They then explain why

The underlying problem is that 2-D stabilization changes the image in a way that no real camera can. When you shift an image, it is not the same as pointing a real camera in a different direction

and explaines more about how they solve it.

The software has been used in a long list of movies, commercials and tv-programs all over the world. If you need to place a building into footage shot from a helicopter or any other moving images, I think you should have a closer look at this. You do not need to get a mortgage to buy it!

I have not been paying too much attention to my logs lately, but reading an article online on web security made me take a look. And I discovered som incoming links that were very unfamiliar. So I decided to take a look and it turned out to be a hotlinked picture from an article about RSS Owl (a splashscreen that I had permission to use).

My first thought was to contact the author of the site. But this is an Arabic site and I do neither speak the language nor write it. Then I remembered an article I read at Eirikso.com about this and thought I would try something similar just to see if it was detected.

I used a picture of George W. Bush and added a text about supporting him and USA. Then replaced the image. If the picture is still up, you can view it here.

So I will try to make an effort checking logs a little more often. Not that stealing bandwith this way means a lot, but I have to admit that the kid inside me got a little kick out of placing something like this on an Arabic website…

Update: Found another one linking to another picture. This one had not even bothered to use the size tags on the picture, so I used the same picture as in the former one, totally breaking the layout of the site. You can view the result here if it is still up.

Unfortunately, subtitling software cost a lot and is usually operated by a specialist. But that all changes with Belle Nuit Subtitler . This program, costing USD 120 for one license, can be used for making subtitles that you edit onto your video in most major editing systems, or you can include it on your DVD. If you add it to your DVD, the viewer can choose to see the subtitles or not. And choose what language to see if there are multiple translations available.

Using the software is pretty straight forward. I am a little disappointed that entering the text first and do the spotting afterwords does not work very well. But according to Matthias Buercher, the intended workflow is to do the spotting one by one, entering the titles either by copying from an open text document or by translating directly. And this workflow works very well.

During the spotting, the keyboard can be used for most of the important things and the most used shortcuts are similar to Avids editing systems. This means using JKL to play the video, I and O or E and R to mark in and out. Pressing Q and W bring the cursor to the in and out point and ESC switches between the video player and the text area.

The style of the text is adjusted in the top of the main window. Font, border, shadow, box behind text and placement in the frame can be adjusted there. I think the quality of the text Belle Nuit Subtitler output is excellent. And getting it into the Avid editing system was very easy.

First I exported the titles by selecting all in the text area and the choose File>Export . The titles are then exported as TIFF with alpha. The timing of the titles are exported as a CMX 3600 EDL and both titles and the EDL are then imported into the Avid system.

The program has a built in function called the Avid helper that essentially is a small macro the replace the Offline Media in the timeline with the correct subtitles. Or you can do it manually.

I have not had the chance yet to try adding titles to a DVD, but will get back here with some comments after I have tried it.

I can really recommend Belle Nuit Subtitler to anyone looking for a cheap and easy way to get prefessionally looking subtitles on video or DVD.

Making TV programs, you need to plan your production and write a script. There are a few programs out there that do this, but they are any good at all, they cost money. The program I found last week is the first Open Source program of this kind that I have heard about.

Celtx, which can be found on http://www.celtx.com/ is a pre-production tool that is built on the same code enginge as the Mozilla products.

It has story development tools, script writing and a calendar for the project schedule. You can add video and audio clips to the scripts and print customized reports. And on top of all this, a special server has been set up online that allows users of Celtx to share their production planning with other members of their team.

The features are good, the layout is nice. Of course, the calendar is a straight port of Sunbird, no need to change anything that is already working!

The users have already made a contribution to the project in the form of a portable version of the program. Some users, including myself, have asked for a version that can be put on a USB flash drive so you can bring it with you in your pocket. One of the users took that challenge and based on work already done for the Mozilla products, he came up with a portable Celtx. After contacting the team behind Celtx, I understood they are thinking about making an official portable version. Open Source works!

I really like this product and it will become a permanent part of my software collection. Now I am just hoping they will implement something to make it work for planning multicamera recordings as well. Keeping my fingers crossed…

If you like this idea, you can download it and give it a try. They are at version 0.9.5.1 , so it is still a very young product. Join their forum, add requests for new features. This is how open source programs are developed, and it is the perfect chance to get the tool you always wanted!

UPDATE: Volda University College (Norway) is now installing Celtx on all PC’s in their media education. They are teaching journalism for newspapers, radio, TV and have a separate education for documentary production and animation.

The Celtx blog made a comment about this article.

The reason I got it was to move data. But I found a few programs that did not need to be installed, just double-click on them to run them. I added them to the Flash Voyager and started to search for more programs like this. I am definitely not the first one that has this idea! Several websites are dedicated to this.

One of them is PortableFreeware . On the frontpage, you find the latest updates. But if you click on All in the top menu, you will find categories with a lot of programs. At the moment this site only caters for Windows users.

The first program you should get is PStart portable. This gives you a “Startmenu” in your systray (at the bottom of your screen, next to the clock). After that, it is up to you to add the programs you find interesting.

Another site for you to check out is TinyApps.org . Here you also find programs for OSX.

As with everything else that has to do with computer, it is very important to make a backup. And Microsoft has made available an application that do exactly that. It is called Microsoft USB Flash Drive Manager .

If you know any other good resources for this type of programs, or if you know any good programs that should get a mention, just leave a comment!

This is exactly what Resize.exe is. The program is made by Peter Bone and you can download it from his website, http://www.geocities.com/peter_bone_uk/resize.html . Another great thing about the program is that it does not require any installation. So you can put it on your USB drive and bring it with you all the time.

Peter Bone has a few other programs also available for download on his website. 

I promised my students in Norway to find someone that can supply labels like this, so here it is: