Dani's Blog 2009-10-13T20:30:00+01:00 Daniel http://blog.pew.cc/blog/author/Daniel/ http://blog.pew.cc/ yabs atom feed generator http://yabs.tac-ops.net <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> (Yet another) short URL service </div> http://blog.pew.cc/blog/%28Yet+another%29+short+URL+service/ 2009-10-13T20:30:00+01:00 Daniel http://blog.pew.cc/blog/author/Daniel/

I've set up a short URL service at url.pew.cc. It's basically the same as tinyurl.com, but with a cool ajax UI. Yay ;). And the best? url.pew.cc is one character shorter then tinyurl.com. Now if that ain't a perfect reason to use it.

Anyway, I just wanted to do my own url shortening and don't rely on a third party service for it. url.pew.cc is powered by php and sqlite. It has the same API as tinyurl.com. http://url.pew.cc/files/api-create.php?url=URL will respond with the short url. Adding format xml will respond with an xml file and a bit more verbose error messages, e.g. http://url.pew.cc/files/api-create.php?format=xml&amp;url=URL.

The xml format used is:

&lt;shorturl&gt;
  &lt;status&gt;0&lt;/status&gt;
  &lt;url&gt;ORIGINAL URL&lt;/url&gt;
  &lt;short&gt;SHORT VERSION&lt;/short&gt;
&lt;/shorturl&gt;

And for errors:
&lt;shorturl&gt;
  &lt;status&gt;1&lt;/status&gt;
  &lt;error&gt;ERROR MESSAGE&lt;/error&gt;
&lt;/shorturl&gt;

Sorry, there is no create.php for a fancy html output. If you want to use it as a bookmarklet, this will have to do. Bookmark this link: url.pew.cc

If it works alright I might share the code at some point.



Tags: php jquery javascript pew.cc sqlite tinyurl shorturl

<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> Craft DB WoW Addon </div> http://blog.pew.cc/blog/Craft+DB+WoW+Addon/ 2009-10-11T14:10:00+01:00 Daniel http://blog.pew.cc/blog/author/Daniel/



Craft DB keeps track of crafter on your server. Whenever you open a profession link, the skills and the name of the crafter will be saved and can be displayed when needed. If you are looking for that Blade Ward enchant and can't remember who has the recipe, you can use CraftDB to look who has it.



Craft DB will display names in different colors if they are online, offline, in your guild, on your friendlist or just some random guy who posted his profession into the trade channel

As soon as you open a profession window (either your own, or from a link), Craft DB will scan all the available recipes and saves them and the name of the person for later use.

Craft DB provides a LibDataBroker launcher to open the windows. If you don't have a LibDataBroker display addon installed, you can use /craftdb or /cdb to open Craft DB.

When you enter something into the search box, Craft DB will perform a search on the currently selected profession and only displays the matching spell names.

Here's the project on wowace.com: Craft DB
Here's the download on curse.com: Craft DB


Tags: curse wow world of warcraft wow addon lua ace wowace

<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> Video containers are shit </div> http://blog.pew.cc/blog/Video+containers+are+shit/ 2009-10-08T14:51:00+01:00 Daniel http://blog.pew.cc/blog/author/Daniel/

This is going to be a rant, so skip it if you don't care.

Video playback is a pain in the ass. It's not just about codecs and players, but the video containers themselves are shit. I only had one container that has not caused problems yet. Everything else bugged sooner or later.

WMV regularly fails to resume video playback after pause in Media Player Classic. No idea why, but pause just doesn't work here.

MP4 caused some weird problems in mplayer, where the video length is all wrong and the audio and video go out of sync. No idea what's wrong with those shitty files, but I pretty much can't watch those files like this. And to make matters worse, mplayer is the only video player that has decent performance on Linux with Compiz running. The only way to fix these files was to remux them to MKV.

AVI files sometimes come without an index, requiring rebuilding of said index. I just don't get how a encoder can fuck up a video so much that it's unplayable on some players. And why doesn't anyone check before redistributing this files?

The only container I'm happy with is Matroska (MKV). The playback works in every player I use and I have yet to encounter shitty behaviour in any player.


Tags: mkv avi mp4 wmv video mplayer

<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> checkcrc </div> http://blog.pew.cc/blog/checkcrc/ 2009-09-04T14:32:00+01:00 Daniel http://blog.pew.cc/blog/author/Daniel/

checkcrc is a programm to compare crc32 checksum. Files coming from irc
bots will often be named like "somename_[DEADBEEF].avi", where DEADBEEF
is the crc32 checksum. checkcrc will try to find checksum strings in
filenames and will compare them to the files checksum.

checkcrc can also be used to create checksums of files by using the -c
swtich.

I coded it because I wanted to use some C again and because I really needed a tool to check all those file I leeched from IRC ;). I tried a few things that were new to me, like using options and regex in C and using the GNU configure and build system.

It's fun to use but the GNU documentation sucks for someone who trys these tools for the first times. It's well documentated, but there are very few examples about how to use and there are not really examples about good practise in there. I mostly looked at other projects code and some tutorials to find out what I had to do.

Usage: checkcrc [-cvh] [file ...]
&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; -c&nbsp; Only calculate checksums, don't try to find a checksum string to compare
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; -v&nbsp; Display version number
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; -g&nbsp; Display this help

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; file can by any number of files you want to check.

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
For instructions how to compile and install checkcrc see INSTALL.

Download checkcrc-0.1.0.tar.gz


Tags: checkcrc crc32 checksum c gcc automake autoconf gnu gpl v3 make

<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> eee PCs Boot Booster </div> http://blog.pew.cc/blog/eee+PCs+Boot+Booster/ 2009-09-03T13:12:00+01:00 Daniel http://blog.pew.cc/blog/author/Daniel/

All eee PCs have a feature called Boot Booster. This caches the Bios and Video Bios onto the HDD and speeds up booting by a few seconds.

To enable it you have to set up a primary partition on the first HDD with at least 8 MB and the type code 0xEF.

After the next reboot the Bios will cache itself into this partition and a new option is available in the Boot options called Boot Booster. Enable it and the eee PC will skill Bios loading and Bios configuration and will directly load the Boot Loader.


Tags: bios eee asus