JDPFu.com 2012

These days, there is a real desire to have videos on your network, but not loose any of the features that the source media provides. Things like multiple languages tracks, director’s comments and other interesting audio tracks. I like to listen to the Spanish soundtrack and have the Spanish subtitles displayed for movies that I already know. It has been possible to have all this by ripping the full DVD contents and using an appropriate playback device for a long time, but that uses a bunch of storage – perhaps 4x more than needed if modern video codecs are used.

As I try to improve my Spanish skills, I find that having both the audio and subtitles for my DVD movie collection easily available is helpful. The easiest and most accurate way to pull multiple audio tracks and multiple subtitles out of a DVD is with avidemux.

Here’s an excellent guide for converting DVD-based subtitles into SRT files.

If you’re like me, you take notes all the time. You may have tried using paper, todo lists, spreadsheets and even personal wikis like TiddlyWiki or SoloWiki to accomplish this. Having the notes available at home, at work and when you aren’t connected is a requirement. Well, I accidentally came across a new browser/javascript tool today called Memonaut

I’ve just played with Memonaut a few minutes. It does bulleted lists, indented lists, numbered lists and generic notes all with HTML and JavaScript. There’s some lite formating too – bold, italics, strike-through, etc. The setup is like TiddlyWiki – you open a specific HTML file and start adding content. Then you “Save” the file to store the updates. Certainly there will be performance/size issues when lots of content is added, but then you just archive the file and start a new one, perhaps monthly? TiddlyWiki was used at a previous employer to share How-To Team information after we were merged into an other group. That data sharing probably saved lots of jobs because about 30 people who were trying to understand how things worked AND who to call for “x” were able to centrally store and access that data.

Did I mention that this works when you’re offline?

Anyway, Memonaut could be worth a look. Obviously this is cross platform AND it requires JavaScript to be enabled in your browser for local HTML files (which could be a security concern).

Enjoy.

I like rdiff-backup to backup your HOME directories and Virtual Machines efficiently. Ok, that is a little understated, I LOVE rdiff-backup.

So, every 6 months or so, when it lets me down in some way, I have to recall all the good things that is actually does solve. Things like:

• Efficient backup times; just a few minutes to backup entire virtual machines
• Efficient backup storage; about 10% more storage for 30 days of backups than a mirror (rsync) uses.
• Easy recovery for 1 file from the latest backup (really it is trivial, just a file copy)
• Easy recovery of a complete backup set from X days ago (I’ve tested this more than I like)
• Easy to get information about backup increments and sizes for each.
• FLOSS software from GNU (not commercial)
• Backup failures get rolled back – you always get a complete, clean set.
• No screwing around with SQL databases or other less than easy to understand crap.

Today I visited the skype.com website to get a newer version of Skype for my Nokia N800. The download page has been removed for that and the N810 devices. The N900 has a download, but I don’t want to risk it.

As long as Skype on the N800 continues to work, I’m not too worried. Just like many people, I’m unhappy with my telecom provider.

• They are too costly. They think they compete with AT&T on price, not Vonage or some other $9/month VoIP services
• Calls are dropped mid-sentence
• Connectivity disappears weekly

After a recent kernel update to 2.6.32-24-server, X11 refused to restart. Recall that I’d modified my system to support dual monitors as described in this prior post. Since a new kernel was installed, rebuilding any non-standard kernel modules is expected. That’s probably all we need to do. These instructions should work for anyone using nVidia graphics cards purchased in the last 4 (?) years and running a 2.6.xx kernel. Mine is a Ge-Force 7600-GS, so nothing too fancy.

The symptoms for this new issue were that the console refused to stay on the tty that I’d used – basically, every 10-20 seconds, the dmesg log was displayed on the console and my tty was changed to console regardless of how many times that I manually selected console 1, 2, 3, 4 …. It really sucked. The error displayed was something like “no screens available”, but I don’t have the exact error message anymore.

Anyway, time to follow my prior instructions for dual monitors, perhaps updating them.

We’re on Port 80 Now

Most of you probably don’t care, but this website underwent some big changes today. We are running on port 80 now. For the last 3 years, this blog has run on port 82, which caused some problems for some corporate access where the network admin was too lazy to proxy based on protocol and only proxied based on port. Those people couldn’t access the site.

Going forward, please use http://blog.jdpfu.com/ to access the site. Nothing under that should change, in theory.

We added port 80 as a way to allow access to the blog. We didn’t stop port 82 access so that old links from external locations will continue to work, but slowly, over time, access via port 82 should go away. Initially, port 82 will only have 1 server listening with port 80 getting 4 servers. For faster performance go to port 80.

What should you do?

1. You should update your RSS reader from jdpfu.com:82/articles.rss to http://blog.jdpfu.com/articles.rss
2. Anytime you see :82 in a URL, don’t worry, provided it works. If it doesn’t work, try removing the :82 part. That shouldn’t be necessary, but you never know. http://blog.jdpfu.com/ should be the subdomain that http://jdpfu.com/ redirects to from now on, at least from the top page request.

When you have lots of servers, things can get complicated.

If you see problems, please drop a comment to us.

We run lots of internal only web servers that also listen on port 80, so some of these services could be confused at the reverse proxy server and redirect to the wrong place. Hopefully, it doesn’t become a big issue for the public users. You guys should have priority.

In a few months, we may setup an apache server for port 82 that handles the rewrites automatically and provides a permanently moved error as part of the redirect. Perhaps next week. Perhaps.

In May 2010, I decided to lose a little weight for an Aug 1 occasion. Ok, perhaps not really a little. Anyway, I’ve made some progress since then.

Monthly   Total Lost
05/20/10  0
06/20/10  7.5
07/20/10  11
08/20/10  27
09/20/10  32.5

In a recent study, it turns out that about 1/3rd of all companies with 1,000+ users experience data loss or data leaks The study says this number is probably low, since it is self reported. The data loss can be from stolen laptops or misplaced flash drives or non-working backups. We all know that we should protect the data better, but for some reason it is determined to be too much hassle.

Then your company looses or inadvertently releases some sensitive data. That data was worth a few million or more.

Now you’re working a plan to encrypt all portable devices and trying to ensure no data get release without appropriate approvals first. Yes, it is too late, but this is a prophylactic for the next time.

Every laptop should probably be full drive encrypted. You know that already, now you just need to do it. Here’s how I did it – a compromise solution.

For the last few weeks, caller ID has been showing “800 Service” calls twice a day. Today, I finally decided to deal with it and answered. It was Dell trying to sell an extended warranty on a laptop that I recently purchased. The warranty price was about 30% the cost of the laptop! Do people actually buy these ripoffs? After she read the “in-home” warranty information that I already have, I asked if she had anything that wasn’t in the contract to tell me. Whatever….

So, the best part of this was the fake Minnesotan accent. She slipped a few times into her native Indian accent, but most of the time I was waiting for a “don’t cha know” at the end of every statement. I guess Dell figured that a regional accent was a better sales tool. Basically, I don’t buy anything from someone who cold calls me. I don’t want to encourage that behavior, don’t cha know.