I added a new Gnomefiles section with Ubuntu packages. This is done in association with GetDeb.net which provides packages for several versions of Ubuntu, packages that don’t exist in the official repos or the repos only carry outdated versions. Each time a new Ubuntu version is released, the section will be updated to only show packages built specifically for the new version.

I am trying to give up Gnomefiles to a new maintainer who is eager to start, but the server admin mysteriously does not reply to my requests, so I can’t release control yet.

Heh, I did something evil today…
[evil laugh]Bwahahah…. [/evil laugh]

There you are, another Digg story that got burried moments before it hit front page. UPDATE: Thanks to a good reader, he resubmitted the story and it has now made front page on Digg.

I have 3 invites left for Joost, the next-gen IP TV app, so if you would like to get access to it, email me privately. They have Windows and MacIntel versions. Mac PPC and Linux versions are not ready yet. Update: All gone.

How more stupid these developers can be? FFmpeg has a lot of hype, and yet it’s the most inflexible encoder I have ever seen. There is no “letterbox” option and it doesn’t auto-calculate the height to keep the aspect ratio. You see, I wanted to write a Nautilus script where you simply right click on any video file and it would automatically create the right mp4+aac video file for cellphones. On each case I need the video size to be 320×240, but if the video is widescreen it should automatically create the letterboxing effect and keep the right aspect ratio. But with ffmpeg this is simply not possible. Except the fact that the existing padtop/padbottom options are not useful in my case (because I need the application to decide these values each time automatically), these pads are added to the existing predefined height instead of just pushing down the video (so if you add pads of 32pixels each, you are ending up with a video of 320×304 even if you have defined the size to be 320×240). To use ffmpeg to encode a video for cellphones you have to change its command line EACH time to accommodate the kind of video source file you got! Therefore, I can’t really create a proper generic script for encoding using ffmpeg.

To make things even worse, Ubuntu has compiled their ffmpeg without AAC support, so there is no way to encode compatible videos for your cellphones if are using Ubuntu. I had to recompile ffmpeg to use faac/faad and even fix a compilation error before I stumble on the rest of the problems. Email me if you require the fixed .deb ffmpeg file that has AAC support, I can send it to you.

And don’t get me started about MEncoder. The thing does not even create valid MP4 and AAC files.

Don’t you think that this looks sweet? The statusbar/toolbar font is -2 points smaller than the default font size (minimum size is 8pt). We filed a bug report on GTK+ over a year ago about this but no one seems to care, even if it makes the windows look so much better (applications like Baobab that now comes in Gnome 2.18+ by default would greatly benefit from it because it has a lot of toolbar text). So far in my Gnome desktop I had to disable the toolbar text completely, but with these changes I would leave it on. BeOS and Mac OS X’s toolbar font is also smaller than the rest of the fonts and it’s details like these that make these UIs look “cleaner”. The devil is in the details.

Please note that the above fonts are too small, as this is my personal setup, not how they would normally be in a default installation. Check the screenshot linked above to see how it would look by default should this feature gets implemented.

My friend, actor Nathan Baesel, tomorrow celebrates the release of his first film on the big screen! “Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon” is opening in limited theaters all over the country tomorrow and Nathan plays the main role. It is a sarcastic horror film with a ‘geek’ kind of humor (e.g. the Freddy Krueger actor actually plays the good guy) and has received very encouraging feedback from film critics so far. Go see it if you can.

I downloaded some 720p and 1080p trailers to test under Ubuntu in my new laptop, but Xv would crash and no video player was able to playback them. For large video resolutions you need this on your xorg.conf if you are using the i810 driver, or you’re toasted. Small-sized videos work fine out of the box.
Option VideoRam XXXXX (write how much VRAM you got)
Option CacheLines 1024 (use more if the video has more vertical lines)

So, after my changes I restarted X and what do you know? 1080p video is smooth as butter on this 1.66 Ghz CoreDuo laptop with 1 MB cache! If I had opted for the 2MB cache/2.0 Ghz Core2Duo instead the speed would have been considerably better even! It’s cool, because my other laptop, a 2.8 Ghz P4 and even my desktop a hyperthreaded 3.0 Ghz P4 can’t render 1080p without dropping frames! It’s amazing what Intel and AMD have accompliced the last few years without having to continue that pointless megahertz race!

Remember the death of Captain America? Apparently Marvel is bringing back a “new” Captain America: the Punisher is taking his place. If you are not familiar with the Punisher, he is an anti-hero. He is a psycho, with bad temper, driven by revenge. A reader at Digg put it best:

“So the hero who represents America changed from a strong, moral, boy-scout who fought using defense (a shield) to a savage, crazed, gun-toting vigilante? I keep having a feeling that they are trying force some sort of message in our faces.”

Couldn’t agree more.

And here we are, the first signs of pissing from the laptop.

1. Bluetooth does not work on Ubuntu Feisty. The service loads fine, the drivers load fine, even the gnome-applet loads fine, but nothing works. I can’t be discovered, and I can’t discover anyone (’hcitool inq’ just times out). This is plain weird. I am smelling a firmware issue. I installed bluez-firmware manually, nothing happened. This chipset used in the laptop is the BCM2045 one instead of the BCM2033 chipset that Bluez does provide a firmware for. Update: I fixed it by using this: hciconfig hci0 reset Hopefully Ubuntu will add this to the BT service.
2. No bloody microphone. This makes the laptop completely useless with VoIP because no one likes loading their bags with additional gadgets. And even if you are home, with the laptop on your lap while sitting at the couch, you can’t just hold-on on freaking microphones! How difficult would have been to add a $0.50 onboard mic?
3. The two touchpad buttons are “mushy”. Too easy to press.
4. No Line-in.

Additionally, except the missing webcam it would have been nice to also have a memory stick slot in addition to the SD one, but not a biggie really.