Ben's blog

Play MP3 files from your PC on your Wii for free

2006-12-28T08:00:00.000-08:00

I found a nice way to access the media (music, photos and even videos) on my PC through the web browser in the Wii. It's a really simple process, and all you require is some free windows software. Here's a quick guide:

1) Install winamp (great media player - you need at least v5.3.2) and winamp remote which you can download by clicking on the "winamp remote" link in the media library of winamp.

2) Set up a free winamp remote account.

3) Right click on the winamp remote system tray icon and choose configuration. Now add the directories containing the music, videos, photos etc that you want to make available through winamp remote.

And you're done. Now just browse to http://www.orb.com/winamp/ in your Wii browser and login and you can access your music.

Notes:

The video streaming didn't seem to work and photos are a small, but audio was fine
The fonts are all a little small - I don't know if the interface can be skinned
It would be nice to stream the audio over the local network without going through orb.com for better performance. If anyone knows a freeware way to do this then let us know in the comments
You can control winamp on your PC remotely through the Wii browser with the nice free winamp plugin axajamp

The perfect portable podcast player

2006-11-04T16:38:00.000-08:00

I recently decided to get a second portable mp3 player for the sole purpose of listening to podcasts. I love me my podcasts so wanted a small lightweight player to devote to them. After a lot of consideration and shopping around I bought the iAudio U2 - a well-respected flash-based player from Cowon.

I'm extremely happy with it and thought I would share the key reasons why it is the perfect portable podcast (or audiobook) player:

Podcast Essentials
1) Bookmarks: Simply hold down the record button for 2 secs to add a bookmark to a podcast. This means you can go and listen to something else and then come back to that podcast and pick up where you left off.

2) Resume: This simple feature means that if you switch off the player then back on later (even after connecting it to the PC) it will start playing from where you left off.

3) Price: The players are very inexpensive! $90 for a 1GB version or $100 for 2GB (on Amazon as of 11/06). I find that my podcasts take up around 300MB on average, so 1GB is plenty for me.

4) Mass Storage Compliant: You can plug the player into any computer (Windows/Mac/Linux/etc) and it appears as an external drive you can just drag'n'drop files to and from. This means you can also use it to transport and share any data you like.

5) Size: The players are pretty small - 2.91 X 0.98 X 0.71 inch (73.8 x 25.0 x 18.0 mm) - comfortably fitting in your pocket.

6) Change Skip Speed: Set the skip speed high to scan quickly through long podcasts or audiobooks to find the bit you want.

7) Playback Speed: Set the playback speed higher to speed up the playback of the audio files without turning the voices into pinky and perky - squeeze more podcasts into your commute!

Other Pro's
Non-essential features, but nice to have:

Excellent sound quality
FM radio and radio recording
mp3, wma, wav, asf, ogg support
Voice recording with built in mic
Line in recording
Up to 20 hours battery life
DRM support for Napster etc
Dynamic playlist - make playlists on the go
Comes with case, lanyard and cables

Negatives
The only minor gripes I have with the player are that it doesn't support m3u playlist files - I've no idea why, it should be simple! The other thing is that it doesn't have a user-replaceable battery. Finally, the player only supports a maximum of 50 folders - you can add more but they will not be visible on the player. None of these are a big deal as far as I'm concerned, but are woth bearing in mind.

Conclusion
Many other players have some of these features, but I believe that the U2 is the only to combine them all - highly recommended!

Links
CNET review
iAudiophile fan site for Cowon players - lots of useful advice in the forums

Add eventful gigs to google calendar

2006-04-18T06:00:00.000-07:00

Google have now launched their calendar service, and I've got to say I like it a lot. Here's a simple method to add upcoming events in your area to your calendar automatically.

1) Go to eventful and search for the type of events you are interested in e.g. concerts in Boston, or even just search by location to find all events.

2) On the search results page, click save as calendar, then add a description if you want and set it to be public (on the drop down menu that is private by default).

3) On the calendar page, right click on the ICAL subscribe link near the bottom right and choose copy link location (this may not work in non-firefox browsers, but you just need the URL of your calendar ICS subscribe link)

4) In your google calendar, click the plus symbol in the calendars box on the right, and select the "public calendar address" tab.

5) Here's the trick: paste in the ICS address from eventful, but change "webcal" to "http" at the start of the link.

That's all there is to it, but it can take a while (even a few days!) before the events appear in your google calendar - I don't know why.

Next time you see an event you like, add it to eventful if it is not there already and it will appear in your calendar, and also anyone else's who is looking for similar events.

Why living for 1000 years is a bad thing

2006-03-18T07:10:00.000-08:00

Bottom line: if people live for 1,000 years it will kill science and art.

A Cambridge university recently claimed that the first person to live for 1000 years has already been born. While this sounds like a great thing, it has some negative consequences. Most obviously, reproduction would have to virtually cease. The planet could not support the population if birth rates continued at the same level with vastly increased life expectancies. This has a less obvious consequence. I would argue that all major development in art, and to a large extent science requires new generations building on, but more importantly reacting against the work of the predecessors. Without new generations coming through, these fields would stagnate.

diggbash

2006-01-10T14:03:00.000-08:00

diggbash, verb:
To use the combined might, and considerable geeky knowledge of the digg.com community to stick up for the individual consumer and teach a lesson to companies who treat the consumer like sh*t. The first known diggbash is the case of priceritephoto where the digg community brought a shady New York camera store to its knees!

So I came up with what I thought was a cool term for what the diggers did to priceritephoto, and thought I'd experiment to see if it caught on. I made a wikipedia entry for diggbash (note: may be removed by now) and posted it to digg. Turns out this was a bad idea as diggbash is a protologism and so not suitable for wikipedia, so it will be removed soon. At least one person liked it though!

Moving pets from the USA to the UK

2006-01-04T15:21:00.000-08:00

These are some notes I made on how to avoid quarantine when moving pets from the USA to the UK. The main source of info was the DEFRA web page:
http://www.defra.gov.uk/animalh/quarantine/index.htm

1) Only Dogs cats and ferrets avoid quarantine

2) Must do the following steps in order:
Summary:
At least 6 months before travel:
get pet microchipped
get pet vaccinated
get pet blood test - this must be at least 6 months before travel
Then wait until 1-2 months before travel
get documentation - this will be valid for 4 months
get treated against ticks and tapeworms - 24-48 hrs before travel

Details:
* Have your pet microchipped
http://www.defra.gov.uk/animalh/quarantine/pets/procedures/support-info/micro.htm
Before any of the other procedures for pets are carried out, your pet must be fitted with a microchip so that it can be properly identified.

* Have your pet vaccinated
http://www.defra.gov.uk/animalh/quarantine/pets/procedures/support-info/vacci.htm
After the microchip has been fitted your pet must be vaccinated against rabies. There is no exemption to this requirement, even if your pet has a current rabies vaccination

* Arrange a blood test
After your pet has been vaccinated, it must be blood tested to make sure that the vaccine has given it a satisfactory level of protection against rabies. You cannot take your pet into the UK until AFTER 6 months from the date that the sample was taken which gave a satisfactory test result

* Get pets documentation
For dogs and cats being prepared for pets in a non-EU listed country you should get an official third country veterinary certificate. This can be issued by a vet in a non-EU listed country. It is headed "Veterinary certificate for domestic dogs, cats and ferrets entering the European Community for non-commercial movements (Regulation (EC) No 998/2003)". This certificate must be a single sheet in English and may also contain a translation in another language. It must be completed in block letters in the language of the EU country of entry or in English.
When you go to get the certificate take your pet, its vaccination record and blood test result. Also take evidence of the date your pet was microchipped. The documents must show your pet's microchip number. In addition to the certificate, you must be ready to show the vaccination record and blood test result when you enter the EU (including the UK) so keep them safe and bring them with you when you travel.
You need to be aware of the following. The certificate will not become valid for entry to the UK for 6 calendar months from the blood sample date shown in section V. However, it is only valid for entry to the EU and subsequent travel within the EU for 4 months from the date it was signed or endorsed, or until the "valid until" date shown in Part IV, whichever is earlier. You should therefore delay getting the certificate until a month or two before you travel to ensure that it will still be valid when you enter the UK.

* Before your pet enters the UK, it must be treated against ticks and a tapeworm
http://www.defra.gov.uk/animalh/quarantine/pets/procedures/support-info/parasites.htm
Your pet must be treated against ticks and a tapeworm between 24 - 48 hours before it is checked in with an approved transport company for its journey into the UK. This must be recorded in its documentation.

3) You must travel by an approved route:
Boston to Heathrow with British Airways or Virgin Atlantic

4) You must use an approved transport company:

British Airways
UK Reservations: + 44 (0) 870 850 9850
www.britishairways.com
www.baworldcargo.com

Virgin Atlantic Airways:
Cargo Operations
Virgin Atlantic Cargo
Number One
Cargo Point
Bedfont Road
Stanwell
TW19 7NZ
Bookings:020 8897 5265

Holiday Plans Sept 2006

2005-12-28T13:16:00.000-08:00

Planning to go for approx 2 weeks from around 30/8 to 13/9

Mileages:
Denver Airport (DEN) - Rocky Mountain Nat. Park = 77 miles (map)
Rocky Mountains Nat. Park - Dinosaur National Monument = 270 miles (map)
Dinosaur Nat. Monument - Arches Nat. Park = 182 miles (map)
Rocky Mountains Nat. Park - Arches Nat. Park = 406 miles (map)
Arches Nat. Park - Monument Valley (Mexican Hat) = 148 miles (map)
Monument Valley - Grand Canyon (Tusayan Arizona) = 201 miles (map)
Grand Canyon - Las Vegas Airport = 267 miles (map)
Total = 1145 (inc. Dinosaur)

Car hire
1-14th September, Denver - Las Vegas, unlimited miles = $750 (priceline.com)
5-19th September, unlimited miles $333 carrentalexpress.com

Flights
Boston - Denver = $150 (jetblue.com)
Las Vegas - Boston = $150

London - Denver
Las Vegas - London
470 GBP round trip (opodo.co.uk multi-stop trip 29/8 - 12/9)

Linux Tips

2005-12-21T10:48:00.000-08:00

This is a random collection of useful tricks I have picked up while using Linux over the last few years. Some are basic, some are well known, some are obscure and borderline useless to anyone but me! Hopefully some are useful too!

Remove all lines from file whose first character is #
grep -v '^ *#' file
Note - ^ is ascii newline, and " *#" means any number of instances of " " (space) before "#"

paste - like cat, but sideways!!

Find files
find $dir -name 'filename'
where $dir is the top level to begin in, and filename may contain * wildcards
find /data/bjm/images/ -name '*.jpg' -exec ln -s {} \;
here the {} stands for the files that are found

Difference between two files
diff file1 file2

Rotate an eps file
epsffit -r llx lly urx ury [infile [outfile]]
where llx lly... are the coordinates of the bounding box
Note that if the %%BoundingBox line at the top of the eps file says (atend) you must copy the coordinates from the %%BoundingBox line at the end of the file to there before using epsffit

Create archive of only .tex files that need updating
find . -name '*.tex' -exec tar -ufj a.tbz2 {} \;
Note "find" locates the .tex files, then executes the command "tar -ufj a.tbz2" on each of them, where -u tells tar to include the file only if it's newer than the archive version, j tells it to put archive through bzip2 for compression, and {} represents each file "find" finds! \; finishes the exec

run command2 if command1 completed successfully (status = 0)
command1 && command2

run command2 if command1 did not complete successfully (status != 0)
command1 || command2

Put eps files on one sheet
use psmulti perl script, available from ww.ifi.unizh.ch/staff/antonio/patch/hack.html

concatenate multiple ps files into one file
psappend file1.ps file2.ps ... | psnup >! fileall.ps

rotate and rescale jpegs with mogrify
mogrify -geometry 50%x50% rio.jpg #scales to 50% of size
mogrify -rotate '90&>gt;' rio.jpg #rotate 90 deg cwise
Or use jpegtrans - can work better!

Use RCS to control revisions of files
mkdir RCS in the directory where the files are
ci file - checks file in
co file - checks file out for editing
rlog file - gives revision history of file
e.g after writing script use ci to check in, then co -l to check out for use. The whenever you update it, do ci -l again.

make colour ps file into bw or greyscale
use bw_convert from
www-hermes.desy.de/notes/extras/postscript.html
bw_convert [-b]
-b converts to bw rather than default greyscale

replace a character (e.g. : ) with newline...
tr ':' '\012'
ascii newline = \012

get rid of ^M at end of lines in e.g. allofmp3 m3u files
tr -d '\015' <m3ulist.m3u >!new.m3u

Save space in latex see
http://www-h.eng.cam.ac.uk/help/tpl/textprocessing/squeeze.html
1) use savetrees
2) squeeze whitespace around figures
\addtolength{\textfloatsep}{-5mm}

see how long a command takes to run
time command options

sort file by column number num, numerically
sort -g -k num file

variable modifiers
:r - everything before .
:e - everything after .
:h - everything before last /
:t - everything after last /
:s/aaa/bbb/ - substitute aaa with bbb

command history
!$ last argument of last command
!^ first argument of last command
!* all arguments of last command
note, you can use variable modifiers (:r etc) on these too

remove first character from $string
echo $string | tail +2c

make small postscript files
dvired -o bigbook_red.ps bigbook.dvi

last field variable in awk
$NF (actually number of fields, but same thing)

read from standard input
use $< which reads one line from stdin
echo $<
or just use $< by itself to wait for a return to continue
if ( $< == b ) echo y
this waits for input and if you input b, it echos y

run process after logout
nohup command >& command.out &

find url generated by a web form:
see http://curl.planetmirror.com/docs/httpscripting.html
download page, and edit source to change post to get then fill in your copy
of page and submit to see url generated

find out what process is using an optical drive
fuser -v /media/cdrecorder
or the path to the device - useful if umount says "device is busy"

null display
Xvfb -ac

automatically forward mail in pine
echo newaddress@somewhere.com >! ~/.forward

find dimensions/size and other info of jpeg (or other) image
identify -format "%w %h" a.jpg

install rmps as non root (from open office install guide)
rpm -Uvh --prefix /where/ooo/should/go *.rpm
or try rpm2cpio and cpio to extract files from rpm then move them manually

extract single file from archive
tar xf archive.tar exact/file/i/want