Temp Variable

Tutorial: Installing SQL Server Reporting Services for beginners

2011-02-17T15:42:00.007-06:00

Tutorial: Getting started with SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 (SSRS)

This tutorial will help you get started with creating reports using SQL Server 2008 R2 on a local computer.

I will be installing SQL Server 2008 R2 x64 Developer Edition on Windows 7 SP1 x64. Other editions may require different steps. (Please leave comments below regarding any changes so others can follow them.) I'll then install AdventureWorks 2008R2 and create a sample report using Business Intelligence Development Studio. Note that you do not need to have Visual Studio or IIS installed to use SSRS 2008R2.

This setup is for those learning SSRS by themselves. Ideally, you'd want to host the Reporting Server on a separate computer than the development machine and probably have different security/authentication modes.

Installing SQL Server 2008 R2 Developer Edition

1. Insert and load the SQL Server 2008 R2 x64 Developer Edition DVD.

2. Installation tab

-New Installation or add features to an existing installation.

3. Follow the wizard and agree to the license terms. Install the Setup Support Files to proceed with installing SQL Server 2008 R2

4. Make sure all Setup Support Rules pass.

5. For Feature selection, choose Select All to have a full-featured installation. Click next.

6. Assuming no other SQL Server is installed on the computer, we can install using the Default instance (installation). The instance ID will be called ''MSSQLSERVER' without the quotes.

7. About 7GB of hard drive space will be required for installation.

8. For Server Configuration, click 'Use the same account for all SQL Server services' button and select 'NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE'. No password is necessary. Click OK and then click Next.

9. Database Engine Configuration: Leave the default of Windows authentication mode on. You'll need to add a User as a SQL Server administrator. Click Add Current User if you have administrator privileges. Otherwise, click 'Add', click 'Advanced', then click 'Find Now' to find and select an administrator user.

Before clicking next, click on the 'FILESTREAM' tab and enable all options for Filestream. See screenshot below. Click next.

10. Analysis Services Configuration: Click Add Current User (or a different user with administrative permissions). Click next.

11. Reporting Services Configuration: Make sure 'Install the native mode default configuration' is selected. Click next.

12. Click next and ensure all configuration rules pass. Begin installing SQL Server 2008 R2. This process may take 15-30 minutes.

13. Upon completion, we can verify the success status of the installation by opening Reporting Services Configuration Manager from the Start Menu (Start Menu -> SQL Server 2008 R2 -> Configuration Tools -> Reporting Services Configuration Manager). In those settings, you'll find these two important URLs.

*The Web Service URL is located at http://servername/ReportServer (where the reports are actually stored once deployed) (alternatively, http://localhost/ReportServer )

*The Report Manager is located at http://servername/reports (alternatively, http://localhost/reports )

Note: If a login prompt appears and you're unable to login, then make sure that your Windows user account has a password created for it. If it doesn't, go to Control Panel -> User Accounts and create a password.

Then login using the 'ComputerName\user account name'. For me, it was Gabriel-PC\Gabriel and then the password. (Right click 'My Computer' -> Properties).

You can also open SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) to test the connection to the Database Engine.

Installing AdventureWorks 2008R2 sample databases

1. Download the AdventureWorks setup file. For SQL Server 2008 R2, download this file.

http://msftdbprodsamples.codeplex.com/releases/view/55926 (mirror)

For other editions, go here.

http://msftdbprodsamples.codeplex.com/

2. The AdventureWorks installation should look like this. If the installation is missing OLTP or Data Warehouse (DW), then it's likely you forgot to Enable Filestream for your SQL Server installation. Enable Filestream then run the AdventureWorks setup file again.

3. Once installation is complete, open SQL Server Management Studio and confirm the AdventureWorks databases exist and are populated. Here are a few: AdventureWorksDW2008R2, AdventureWorksLT2008R2, AdventureWorks2008R2.

Creating a sample SSRS report using Business Intelligence Development Studio

1. After the sample databases have been installed, open Business Intelligence Development Studio.

4. Click File-> New Project. Select 'Report Server Project' (Another option is to use the Report Server Project Wizard, but I'm not a fan of magicians, so I won't go that route)

5. The first thing is to add a new Report to the empty Report Project. Right click on the Reports folder in Solution Explorer and click Add New Item, then select Report. (Alternatively, you select Add New Report for a Wizard-like approach).

5a. The Report Data window (on the left side) should appear. If it doesn't, add it via View -> Report Data.

Creating the Data source

6. Next, create a Data Source. Click the New button in Report Data and select Data Source.

6a. A new window appears. Name the DataSource appropriately (e.g. Sales) and click on Edit to construct the connection string.

6b. Select the server and the database. For me, it was Gabriel-PC and xyz. Test the connection.

Creating the Dataset

7. Create a Dataset (a resultset from a query). In the ReportData window, click New -> Dataset.

7a. Enter a name for the Dataset (e.g. ProductSales). Select 'Use a dataset embedded in my report'

7b. Select Data source you created earlier (e.g. Sales).

7c. Enter your query for the data that you want. You can use SSMS to create it and then copy and paste on here or use the Query Designer or whatever option is easiest for you. For our simple example, we'll use this one to get Product sales for January 2008. Copy this query into the Query textarea and click OK.

SELECT DimProductCategory.EnglishProductCategoryName AS ProductCategory, DimProductSubcategory.EnglishProductSubcategoryName AS ProductSubcategory,
DimProduct.EnglishProductName AS ProductName, SUM(FactResellerSales.SalesAmount) AS ResellerSales, SUM(FactInternetSales.SalesAmount)
AS InternetSales
FROM DimProduct INNER JOIN
DimProductSubcategory ON DimProduct.ProductSubcategoryKey = DimProductSubcategory.ProductSubcategoryKey INNER JOIN
DimProductCategory ON DimProductSubcategory.ProductCategoryKey = DimProductCategory.ProductCategoryKey INNER JOIN
FactInternetSales ON DimProduct.ProductKey = FactInternetSales.ProductKey INNER JOIN
FactResellerSales ON DimProduct.ProductKey = FactResellerSales.ProductKey INNER JOIN
DimDate AS D ON FactInternetSales.OrderDateKey = D.DateKey AND FactResellerSales.OrderDateKey = D.DateKey
WHERE (D.MonthNumberOfYear = '1') AND (D.CalendarYear = '2008')
GROUP BY DimProduct.EnglishProductName, DimProductCategory.EnglishProductCategoryName, DimProductSubcategory.EnglishProductSubcategoryName
ORDER BY ProductCategory, ProductSubcategory, ProductName

7d. A new dataset should be created with 5 fields.

Creating the SSRS Report

8. Ok, we now have the data source set up and we have a resultset from that datasource. Let's create a simple tabular report.

8a. Bring up the toolbox on the lefthand-side and drag a table onto the report.

8b. The table only has 3 columns. Since we have 5 fields, we're going to add 2 more columns. Right click the rightmost column and Insert Column. Do that twice.

8c. From the ReportData Window, drag ProductCategory into the leftmost column. Repeat with the other fields. The report should look like this.

8d. Click the Preview button right above the designer to see the results. It should look like this.

Deploying the SSRS Report

7. Let's Deploy the report to the report server. We need to set some configuration options first.

7a. In the Solution Explorer window, right click the project and click Properties.

7b. Set TargetServerUrl='http://localhost/reportserver'

7c. If you'll be debugging the report, set StartItem to ProductSales report.

7d. Click OK

7e. Build -> Deploy.

7f. Go to http://localhost/reports to view the reports.

Comments

Finished. I hope that was helpful. Post a comment if there are sections which are unclear.

I highly recommend you pick up a textbook to get the most out of SSRS. The one I've found to be most helpful is Applied Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services by Teo Lachev. It provides plenty of examples and is very thorough. The book uses SQL Server 2008 (not R2), so you'll have to install the 2008 version of AdventureWorks when working with the examples. (mirror)

I had some trouble getting started with SSRS so I told myself once I was all properly set up that I would create a tutorial to help others. If you found it helpful, will you please leave a thank you comment?

Tutorial: Licensing images on Flickr for use on Wikipedia

2010-05-21T14:56:00.024-05:00

Here's a quick tutorial on how to change the license of one your Flickr images so that it can be used on Wikipedia (and Wikimedia Commons).

The two licenses available on Flickr that are permitted on Wikipedia are:

1. Creative Commons - Attribution
2. Creative Commons - Attribution-ShareAlike

Tutorial
1. Go to your image on Flickr
For example
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jinwesst/3487277075/

2. In the right sidebar, you'll see a section named Additional Information. There, you will see the current license of the image. To change it, click the edit button.

3. In the 'Select a license' page, you are presented with several options. Remember, only the two licenses mentioned above are accepted on Wikipedia. I've underlined them here. "Attribution Creative Commons" is recommended, but you are also free to choose "Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons". After choosing one of these, click Save.

4. That's it. You'll notice that the licensing information has changed to "Some rights reserved". Now your image is set for use on Wikipedia. If a Wikipedia user comes across your image and find it useful, he can upload it to Wikipedia and use it in an article.

Uploading photos to Wikipedia

If you would like to upload it personally to Wikipedia, follow these steps.

5. Create an account on Wikimedia Commons, the media repository for Wikipedia. Make sure you're logged in before going to the next step.

6. Go to Commons web tool for Flickr

7. Enter your Commons username and enter the link url for the Flickr image. (example: http://www.flickr.com/photos/homersimpson/4423813860/ )

Click next.

9. In the details screen, change any information that needs to be changed, like the filename or description.

10. Click upload. This will redirect you to the Commons site.

11. Click Save Page (you'll need to scroll down past the editing textarea). This will save the page. However, the image hasn't been uploaded just yet. There's one more step.

12. After saving the page, there will be a link for you to click on. (You must then click this link to complete the upload) Click it to upload the image. (The tool you used earlier will fetch the original image from Flickr and upload it on Commons for you.)

13. If the tool succeeded in uploading the image, you will see the page below. Click on the Uploaded link to go see the image.

14. To add an image to a Wikipedia article, use something like this
[[File:SomeImage.jpg|thumb]]

15. That's it! Thanks for sharing your images on Wikipedia and everyone is in the world!

If you found this tutorial, please leave a comment or if there's a step that is unclear, let me know.

Converting video to the WebM format

2010-05-20T12:04:00.017-05:00

Update: The simplest way to convert video to WebM is to use Miro Video Converter 2.0 (Win/Mac).

Here's the official reference for creating and converting content to the WebM (VP8 / Ogg Vorbis) format. There are currently three options.
* Use a commercial service (Sorenson, Zencoder, etc)
* Merge and compile WebM patches with ffmpeg
* Use DirectShow filters

Commercial services for WebM
For most, the commercial method is not ideal. Sorenson Media is offering a free trial, though I have not tried it. Another option is freeware application Flix WebM. Other services are available at the reference site.

FFmpeg WebM Converter
If you'd like to try compiling ffmpeg with WebM support, you can follow these tutorials.

Update: Thanks to several users, there are now binaries for users to download and use.

Update 2: The simplest way to convert video to WebM is to use Miro Video Converter 2.0 (Win/Mac).

WebM DirectShow Filters
You can also use DirectShow Filters to work and encode to WebM (VP8) video. I don't have much experience with this and I've not seen any tutorials posted.

Playing WebM video - sample WebM video
Download a WebM capable web browser to view and stream these videos.
Stream sample video using VideoJS
Download sample WebM video file (second video)
Sample WebM YouTube video (must enable HTML5 in YouTube)

Also, there is now a WebM enabled VLC player for playing WebM encoded videos.

Feedback
I'll update this as more options (hopefully a simple GUI app) become available. Please leave comments if you found this helpful or if you have a particularly useful link to share.

Okkervil River - Golden Opportunities Mixtape download

2010-05-07T02:01:00.005-05:00

Okkervil River freely released this cover album, Golden Opportunities in December 2007 but strangely, it's a little difficult to find on the Internet. So here it is.

Download Golden Opportunities Mixtape

Could not load file or assembly 'System.Web.Mvc' error

2010-04-17T19:04:00.007-05:00

When deploying an ASP.NET MVC 2 application, you might encounter this error:

Configuration ErrorDescription: An error occurred during the processing of a configuration file required to service this request. Please review the specific error details below and modify your configuration file appropriately.

Parser Error Message: Could not load file or assembly 'System.Web.Mvc, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e36' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

add assembly="System.Web.Mvc, Version=2.0.0.0

Solution
The server can't find the MVC assembly on its system. The solution is to copy the local assembly to the server. If you are deploying using Visual Studio's publish feature, you can do this easily by setting the Copy Local flag to true for that particular assembly. For my server on DiscountASP (and most other servers), you only need to copy System.Web.Mvc but for others, you may need to include some other ones.
You can also copy them directly (using FTP, for example) by navigating to the directory where the assembly is stored. Just look at the References section and take note of the path. The mvc assembly is located C:\Program Files\Microsoft ASP.NET\ASP.NET MVC 2\Assemblies\System.Web.Mvc.dll

See also
Bin Deploying ASP.NET MVC

Converting an animated GIF to OGG Theora video

2010-04-15T16:24:00.002-05:00

You should be familiar with using the command line prompt in order to follow this tutorial.

Converting an animated GIF to OGG Theora video

Programs used:

mplayer.exe inside latest SMPlayer folder. Note: You aren't using the smplayer executable, but the mplayer command-line tool in one of its subdirectories.
ffmpeg2theora-0.25.exe (because version 0.26 ignores the requested frame rate)

Steps:

download the 7 frame 9 megabyte File:Scm.gif to PC
Open command line prompt in Windows.
mplayer Scm.gif -vo yuv4mpeg (This outputs a yuv file)
ffmpeg2theora-0.25.exe stream.yuv --inputfps 1 --framerate 1 --videoquality 10 --output stream025ifps1fr1vq10.ogv

Converting Theora to animated GIF

Programs used:

mplayer.exe inside latest SMPlayer folder. Note: You aren't using the smplayer executable, but the mplayer command-line tool in one of its subdirectories.
gifsicle - for fixing the framerate of the outputted GIF

Steps:

Run this command: mplayer.exe video.ogv -fps 1 -vo gif89a -nosound

The command above will convert video.ogv to "out.gif". MPlayer has problems with certain input OGG video files. This may be due to an improperly encoded Theora file.

If the GIF's framerate is off, use gifsicle to examine the created GIF:

gifsicle.exe --info out.gif

Use gifsicle to fix the framerate of the GIF that MPlayer creates, for example:

gifsicle.exe --delay 100 out.gif > out100.gif

One major problem is the colour reduction: the user must choose how the colour palette is to be reduced to GIF's 256 colour limit. If MPlayer's default reduction looks bad (it may look blocky) then the video needs to be converted to a sequence of images so that their colour palettes can be manually changed.

Hope that helps. If you found this useful, leave a thank you comment.

How to convert video to Theora and edit Theora videos

2010-04-15T15:36:00.007-05:00

Need to convert a video to the Ogg Theora format?

If you're a computer novice and don't need options to configure video:

Miro Video Converter - very simple to use. Just drag and drop. (Recommended!)
Firefogg - a Firefox extension that can convert video with options.
Online Theora Converter - the best site to convert your video to Theora (all the other ones are inconsistent)

If you're an advanced user and need to set certain parameters on the video:

Use the ffmpeg2theora command-line tool. (This is actually the underlying tool for the programs mentioned above). Use the command-line parameters to configure the output according to your requirements.

Need to edit videos already encoded in Theora?

There are no simple-to-use tools available for working directly with the Theora format. The tools that are availabe are command-line based. The following is a list of helpful programs:

Ogg Video Tools - can resize, split, join, extract audio, and more.

Some helpful resources:

Note: It's generally recommended you do all editing and enhancing in its original format.

Which is the best ASP.NET MVC CMS? Feature comparison included.

2010-04-12T23:41:00.002-05:00

I’ve been seeing quite a few questions popping up on StackOverflow on choosing the best content management system for the ASP.NET MVC platform. I’ve compiled a small table here listing some of the major ones. I’ve yet to have any experience using any of these, so please leave any comments on your experiences.

All the ASP.NET CMS listed below are open-source and free.

Features	Latest release	Date	Features	CodePlex Downloads	Notes	Sample website
Orchard CMS	0.1.2010.0312	March 15, 2010	Orchard features	>2,000	Relatively new project Developed by programmers at Microsoft	?
N2 CMS	2.0 beta	March 28, 2010	N2 CMS features	>50,000	Began in 2006	sample
Kooboo	2.1	April 10, 2010	Koboo features	>15,000		?

Note: Umbraco, an established free .NET CMS, will be transitioning to the MVC Framework for their 5.0 release, due out sometime in 2011.

There are a few other CMS available, such as Atomic CMS and Hydrogen CMS, but I don’t think they’re mature enough to be considered.

Conclusion

To me, the clear winner is N2 CMS for these reasons:

Long history of development and larger community
Used on dozens (maybe hundreds?) of websites
Impressions on StackOverflow and blogs seem to be mostly positive

However, I would keep a look out on future developments of Orchard CMS and also for the first beta of Umbraco 5.0 I think one of these two will be the first CMS choice for large-scale ASP.NET websites in the future.

Don’t forget that there are other ASP.NET options available that don’t use MVC, such as DotNetNuke, Umbraco, Sitefinity, and others.

Technorati Tags: asp.net,asp.net-mvc,cms

Theora Video Joiner for Windows

2009-12-08T15:56:00.005-06:00

Theora Joiner is an easy-to-use tool to join multiple Theora files into one larger Theora file.

Theora Joiner is designed to join Theora files quickly without recompression or reduction in quality. Files must have identical parameters, such as frame size and frame rate, in order to be joined. (If you need to change frame size or frame rate, use oggResize)

DOWNLOAD HERE

Instructions for use

Run the program
Add Theora video files (.ogv or .ogg)
Click join
The joined file is saved to your desktop.

Notes: Videos must have the same resolution and framerate prior to joining. (This will be addressed in a future update).

About

Theora Joiner uses oggCat, a command-line utility from The Ogg Video Tools suite, developed by Jön Seger.

Theora Joiner requires Microsoft .NET 3.0. Windows Vista and Windows 7 users have this pre-installed and most Windows XP users will have this installed.

SourceForge or Google Code Project Hosting

2009-12-02T12:09:00.002-06:00

I developed a small project and was looking for a good place to host the project. I know of three main ones, SourceForge, Google Project Hosting, and Microsoft CodePlex.

I'm a big fan of Google's simplicity, so I chose Google Project Hosting. I SVN'd the files and set up a small wiki page. It was all very quick and easy. The interface is clean and easy to navigate and administer. Just what I would expect from Google. My minor complaint is that it should be easier to add a Download link to the main page. I'm sure most people miss the part of adding the Featured label. I hugely letdown when I tried searching for the program through Google's own search engine, I didn't find any trace of my program. How strangely odd and disappointing. After this discovery, I figured I'd give SourceForge a try.

SourceForge's interface has always been clunky and noisy. It's a bit better now, but it still has a long way to go before it's anywhere as clean as Google. Same steps as before, add information, import project, add screenshots. To my pleasant surprise, Google and Bing indexed the page within hours and was near the top of its rankings (the project has a fairly unique name). This gives SF a huge advantage over Google, even most of the interface is still ugly.

Conclusion
SourceForge is my choice, solely for the high visibility in search engines. If getting your project out to a lot of people isn't a priority for you, go with Google.

SourceForge
Pros

Good page ranking on search engines
Largest open source software repository, which means lots of documentation
Decent IRC support
Able to create website on their domain

Cons

Clunky interface in many things including submitting bugs, forums/mailing lists, web analytics
Ads in many places

Google Code
Pros

Very clean interface
Can hook into Google Analytics for traffic and download information
simple to use

Cons

PageRank is low for such projects

vReveal review - the best video stabilizer

2009-11-25T10:01:00.010-06:00

Anyone who has recorded home videos knows how hard it is to keep the camera steady. Taking video outside on windy days makes it especially difficult. Luckily, there are a few good video stabilization programs to stabilize the video. Most of these top video stabilizers are commercial, though there is one free video stabilizer. The video stabilizer tutorials out there are long and complicated, so I was just looking for something that does it more me.

The video stabilizer I recommend is vReveal. According to their website, it's been used in forensics to sharpen video. The video stabilization in vReveal is very good, although it doesn't give you many options. For an amateur photographer and videographer like me, it's fine because I don't want to do a lot of messing around.

What I liked most about vReveal was its simplicity. If you've ever used Adobe Premiere (or even its Elements sibling), you know how long the learning curve is. With vReveal, it just takes three steps.

Import the video
Click on the stabilize button
Save

It really is as simple as that. You can also choose some of the other options that will sharpen, brighten and cleanup the video (highly recommended). Depending on the speed of your computer and length of the video, it may take 5 minutes to an hour to make the changes.

A nice feature to add would be bulk autofixing. I took about 12 videos during my trip to Yellowstone and I would love to just drag them onto vReveal and click One-click-fix and click save and then in a few hours, it'll be done. Right now, I have to do them one by one now and it is a bit tedious. Already implemented. See instructions here. It really needs to be documented somewhere (Getting started page or FAQ) because the feature is not self-evident.

Notes:

Install the free version Quicktime. This will allow you to import .mov videos (h.264), which is the video format of many digital cameras
Install DivX Pro encoder to give you more options to export the video

Conclusion

If you're looking for a simple video stabilizer program that just works, give vReveal a try. You'll be pleased with the results. I was.

http://www.vreveal.com/

Pros

Simple and easy to use
Noticeably improves video

Cons

Takes a long time to process video (faster if you use a CUDA-enabled graphics card)

Feature request

~~Batch autofixing~~ - already implemented

Finding freely licensed video content, such as creative commons videos

2009-11-15T20:35:00.001-06:00

For whatever your purpose, you may need to find free and open video files to be used in your project. Here's a list partially compiled by me and partially by Wikimedia Commons.

http://www.archive.org/details/opensource_movies (Archive.org open-source movies) - Movies under several licenses. Some licenses are accepted in the commons.
http://www.archive.org/details/movies (Archive.org movies) - Presentation of several collections of videos, some with free licenses.
http://www.ourmedia.org (Ourmedia) - Video, audio, texts, images. ''Most works on this website are non-free licenses, because they don't allow commercial use.''
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=&l=commderiv&ss=0&ct=0&mt=videos&w=all&adv=1 (Flickr Creative Commons videos) - all assortments of videos.
http://www.flickr.com/search/?mt=videos&adv=1&w=commons&q=video&m=text (Flickr The Commons) - a variety of videos licensed freely by many institutions
http://www.eso.org/gallery/v/Videos (European Southern Observatory videos) - space and astronomy videos licensed under Creative Commons Attribution[http://www.eso.org/gallery/copyright.html]
http://www.archive.org/details/prelinger (Prelinger Archives) - over 2,000 public domain videos of "historic significance"
http://www.openbeelden.nl/;jsessionid=7371C0F9B269ADB6EFF97F601D2E398E.en (Open Images project), an initiative from the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision. Many of the videos contain Dutch audio., so it's advised to remove the audio when uploading to Wikipedias other than the Dutch Wikipedia.
http://www.uncensoredinterview.com/topics/cc (Uncensored Interview cc-licensed clips) - Video Interviews. ''Specifically look for clips with the CC-BY License.''

Convert with ffmpeg2theora context menu item

2009-11-07T00:11:00.003-06:00

Here's a simple registry file that when imported will add a menu item to your right click menu. This makes it easy to simply right click on a video file and click "Convert with ffmpeg2theora". The file will be converted using the default ffmpeg2theora parameters and the resulting file will be in the same directory as the source.

The requirement is that you have ffmpeg2theora.exe (named exactly that) in your c:\ directory.

1. Download ffmpeg2theora
2. Rename it from ffmpeg2theora-0.25.exeto simply ffmpeg2theora.exe
3. Copy the file (ffmpeg2theora.exe) to your c:\ directory.
4. Download the zip below containing the registry file and double click on the registry file to add it to the right click menu.
5. Test it out on a sample video file.

Download here (Convert with ffmpeg2theora.zip)

The file simply contains
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\ffmpeg2theora]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\ffmpeg2theora\command]
@="C:\\ffmpeg2theora.exe %1"

Also attached is a reg file that will remove the context menu.

ffmpeg2theora 0.24 windows binary download - older versions

2009-11-06T20:28:00.002-06:00

The latest version of ffmpeg2theora is 0.25, released in September 2009. If you're looking for an older version of ffmpeg2theora, here are a couple.

Note, 0.25 has significant quality improvements over these older versions.

Here is the beta version of ffmpeg2theora
http://firefogg.org/nightly/

ffmpeg2theora arguments and parameters

2009-11-04T21:35:00.002-06:00

Here's a listing of the ffmpeg2theora arguments, for reference.

Official website is at
http://v2v.cc/~j/ffmpeg2theora/

Some experimental snapshot builds can be found at:
http://firefogg.org/nightly/ courtesy of the Firefogg project.

Example commands are at the end of this post.

ffmpeg2theora 0.25+svn16605 - Xiph.Org libtheora 1.1 20090822 (Thusnelda)

Usage: ffmpeg2theora [options] input

General output options:
-o, --output alternative output filename
--no-skeleton disables ogg skeleton metadata output
-s, --starttime start encoding at this time (in sec.)
-e, --endtime end encoding at this time (in sec.)
-p, --preset encode file with preset.
Right now there is preview, pro and videobin. Run
'ffmpeg2theora -p info' for more informations

Video output options:
-v, --videoquality [0 to 10] encoding quality for video (default: 6)
use higher values for better quality
-V, --videobitrate encoding bitrate for video (kb/s)
--soft-target Use a large reservoir and treat the rate
as a soft target; rate control is less
strict but resulting quality is usually
higher/smoother overall. Soft target also
allows an optional -v setting to specify
a minimum allowed quality.

--two-pass Compress input using two-pass rate control
This option requires that the input to the
to the encoder is seekable and performs
both passes automatically.

--first-pass Perform first-pass of a two-pass rate
controlled encoding, saving pass data to
for a later second pass

--second-pass Perform second-pass of a two-pass rate
controlled encoding, reading first-pass
data from . The first pass
data must come from a first encoding pass
using identical input video to work
properly.

--optimize optimize video output filesize (slower)
(same as speedlevel 0)
--speedlevel encoding is faster with higher values
the cost is quality and bandwidth
- 0: Slowest (best)
- 1: Enable early skip (default)
- 2: Disable motion compensation
-x, --width scale to given width (in pixels)
-y, --height scale to given height (in pixels)
--max_size scale output frame to be within box of
given size, height optional (%d[x%d], i.e. 640x480)
--aspect define frame aspect ratio: i.e. 4:3 or 16:9
-F, --framerate output framerate e.g 25:2 or 16
--croptop, --cropbottom, --cropleft, --cropright
crop input by given pixels before resizing
-K, --keyint [1 to 2147483647] keyframe interval (default: 64)
-d --buf-delay Buffer delay (in frames). Longer delays
allow smoother rate adaptation and provide
better overall quality, but require more
client side buffering and add latency. The
default value is the keyframe interval for
one-pass encoding (or somewhat larger if
--soft-target is used) and infinite for
two-pass encoding. (only works in bitrate mode)
--no-upscaling only scale video or resample audio if input is
bigger than provided parameters

Video transfer options:
--pp Video Postprocessing, denoise, deblock, deinterlacer
use --pp help for a list of available filters.
-C, --contrast [0.1 to 10.0] contrast correction (default: 1.0)
Note: lower values make the video darker.
-B, --brightness [-1.0 to 1.0] brightness correction (default: 0.0)
Note: lower values make the video darker.
-G, --gamma [0.1 to 10.0] gamma correction (default: 1.0)
Note: lower values make the video darker.
-Z, --saturation [0.1 to 10.0] saturation correction (default: 1.0)
Note: lower values make the video grey.

Audio output options:
-a, --audioquality [-2 to 10] encoding quality for audio (default: 1)
use higher values for better quality
-A, --audiobitrate [32 to 500] encoding bitrate for audio (kb/s)
-c, --channels set number of output channels
-H, --samplerate set output samplerate (in Hz)
--noaudio disable audio from input
--novideo disable video from input

Input options:
--deinterlace force deinterlace, otherwise only material
marked as interlaced will be deinterlaced
-f, --format specify input format
--inputfps fps override input fps
--audiostream id by default the first audio stream is selected,
use this to select another audio stream
--videostream id by default the first video stream is selected,
use this to select another video stream
--sync use A/V sync from input container. Since this does
not work with all input format you have to manually
enable it if you have issues with A/V sync
Subtitles options:
--subtitles file use subtitles from the given file (SubRip (.srt) format)
--subtitles-encoding encoding set encoding of the subtitles file
supported are utf-8, utf8, iso-8859-1, latin1
--subtitles-language language set subtitles language (de, en_GB, etc)
--subtitles-category category set subtitles category (default "subtitles")
--subtitles-ignore-non-utf8 ignores any non UTF-8 sequence in UTF-8 text
--nosubtitles disables subtitles from input

Metadata options:
--artist Name of artist (director)
--title Title
--date Date
--location Location
--organization Name of organization (studio)
--copyright Copyright
--license License
--contact Contact link
--nometadata disables metadata from input
--no-oshash do not include oshash of source file(SOURCE_OSHASH)

Other options:
-P, --pid fname write the process' id to a file
-h, --help this message
--info output json info about input file, use -o to save json to file

v2v presets:
preview Video: 320x240 if fps ~ 30, 384x288 otherwise
Quality 5
Audio: Max 2 channels - Quality 1

pro Video: 720x480 if fps ~ 30, 720x576 otherwise
Quality 7
Audio: Max 2 channels - Quality 3

videobin Video: 512x288 for 16:9 material, 448x336 for 4:3 material
Bitrate 600kbs
Audio: Max 2 channels - Quality 3

padma Video: 640x360 for 16:9 material, 640x480 for 4:3 material
Quality 5
Audio: Max 2 channels - Quality 3

padma-stream Video: 128x72 for 16:9 material, 128x96 for 4:3 material
Audio: mono quality -1

Examples:
ffmpeg2theora videoclip.avi (will write output to videoclip.ogv)

ffmpeg2theora videoclip.avi --subtitles subtitles.srt (same, with subtitles)

cat something.dv | ffmpeg2theora -f dv -o output.ogv -

Encode a series of images:
ffmpeg2theora frame%06d.png -o output.ogv

Encode a video and remove the audio:
ffmpeg2theora --noaudio file.avi -o output.ogv

Live streaming from V4L Device:
ffmpeg2theora /dev/video0 -f video4linux --inputfps 15 -x 160 -y 128 -o - \
| oggfwd icast2server 8000 password /theora.ogv

Live encoding from a DV camcorder (needs a fast machine):
dvgrab - | ffmpeg2theora -f dv -x 352 -y 288 -o output.ogv -

Live encoding and streaming to icecast server:
dvgrab --format raw - \
| ffmpeg2theora -f dv -x 160 -y 128 -o /dev/stdout - \
| oggfwd icast2server 8000 password /theora.ogv

nbtstat host not found - nbtstat problem

2009-09-18T11:26:00.001-05:00

I encountered an issue when using nbtstat (netbios over tcp/ip) on a local network. On some computers, it seemed to work and others, it didn't. Unfortunately, google didn't help much so that's why I've decided to create this blog entry. I am using Windows XP. I was able to ping the machine and even remote desktop into it, but nbtstat didn't work.

This was the error message I was getting for nbtstat -a

Node IpAddress: [10.0.1.26] Scope Id: []
Host not found.

The address or remote name used in the nbtstat failed to return the host name or IP address.

Solution
I found the solution by doing a little tinkering.

1. Enable 'File and printer sharing' in the Firewall exceptions. This will open Port 139.
.

I still have the same problem with a Mac OS X machine I have. I'm not as experienced with Macs, so if anyone has any suggestions, let me know in the comments below.

If you found this entry helpful, please leave a comment below. Thanks

Context Menu item - Run with Mono

2009-09-16T11:45:00.000-05:00

Here's a very simple registry file you can import that will add 'Run in Mono' to your Windows Explorer context menu. Just right click on an executable and select the item. It will open the application using the mono.exe virtual machine.

You must modify the change the filepath in the run-with-mono.reg to point to your mono location. (Open the .reg file in notepad to make the changes.)

DOWNLOAD HERE (run-with-mono.reg)

Here's the finished result. I have not tested this extensively, so please report any problems here.

Unable to ping a computer on the network

2009-09-04T11:21:00.001-05:00

If you have a problem pinging a networked computer, then it's likely a firewall issue. Sometimes a Windows service pack update may make the computer unable to be pinged by other computers. If the computer is still able to use the network, then try these things.

1. Try disabling the Windows firewall temporarily.
2. Are you able to ping the computer now? If so, then we know it's a firewall issue. Re-enable the firewall.

You may simply need to allow ICMP traffic in your firewall. ICMP enables a computer to be pinged.

Only the first setting needs to be enabled for pinging. The rest are optional and be kept disabled. More information about the other settings can be found at techtarget.com

You can enable ping on the command line by typing the below in the command line (start->run: cmd)

netsh firewall set icmpsetting 8 enable

Adobe InDesign - missing plugins Conditional Text.InDesignPlugin and WorldReady.InDesign

2009-09-02T15:29:00.001-05:00

If you try to open up a CS4 InDesign file in Adobe CS3 or CS2, you'll get an error message saying "Unknown plugins prevent opening this file" or something of that sort. Those plugins are new features to InDesign CS4 and can not be used on CS2 or CS3. Simply because it's displaying that message, does not mean that those plugins were used on that file. It's just an error message that says the your version of InDesign (such as CS3) can not open up the file (CS4).

For some reason, this message pops up instead of telling you the file was created in a newer version of InDesign (Illustrator does tell you in a clear, user-friendly message).

The solution:
There's just two solutions, both of which aren't ideal.

1.) Request the sender to export the file as a INX format (InDesign Interchange) so that you can open up that file in previous editions of InDesign. If your local library or a friend has Adobe CS4 installed, you can open it up then as export in INX format. If the file contains features only available in CS4, then read on to the next step.
2.) Upgrade to Adobe CS4. If the file contains the new features from CS4, there's no other option. (Or you can download a free trial of CS4)

Here's some discussion.

Wikipedia Flagged Revisions - Frequently Asked Questions

2009-08-27T16:16:00.001-05:00

This week, news spread that Wikipedia will be implementing a new software feature called flagged revisions. What this feature does is add an additional layer of oversight and validation to certain edits done by certain editors. Let's go through a FAQ to get an understanding of the changes that will be coming.

What is flagged revisions?
flagged revisions is a proposed feature to Wikipedia that would allow a given revision of an article to be "sighted" or approved as being without any obvious vandalism. "Sighting" an article revision means that that revision does not contain any obvious vandalism. Flagged protection provides an alternative to page protection.

One potential use of the implementation would be to set an article such that when a user viewed the article, they would see not the most recent edits to the article, but instead an older version of the article that had been tagged as a clean or "sighted" version. This is in regards only to obvious vandalism and such as "John Doe sucks!" This won't be used against disagreements in the actual content of the article.

What is the intent of flagged revisions?
The intent of flagged revisions is to improve the reputation of Wikipedia in regards to articles of living people. As one of the top 10 websites in the world, Wikipedia is trying to improve their policy on protecting the reputation of living people. Flagged revisions hopes to prevent instances where a user makes an edit that is an outright lie, such as declaring celebrities are dead when they are still alive or other forms of defamation.

Who flags or "sights" these articles?
A common source of misinformation is that only administrators or elite users will be able to "sight" articles. According to Jimmy Wales, there will be a low threshold for the rights to review edits and tag them as sighted. Users with this rights are called "reviewers". My understanding is that unless you're disruptive on Wikipedia, you'll be allowed to gain those rights.

Who will be reviewers?
It hasn't been decided how editors will become reviewers. There is a debate on whether there should be automatic promotion of experienced editors (x amount of edits, x amount of days active, no blocks, etc) or if reviewers should be manually promoted after careful consideration of their editing history and behavior. It's not clear how many reviewers will be needed to manage the articles. It's question the trial will help answer.

What's an example of how this works?
See this post to see a complete example.

How does flagged revisions look like?
See this post to see a complete example.

Here are a couple images that show the feature.

Which articles will be flagged?
It's not yet decided which or how many articles will be flagged during the two month trial. Personally, I think it'll be less than a thousand. Remember, flagged protection is meant to be as an alternative to semi-protection. There are only about 3,000 semi-protected articles on Wikipedia out of 3 million total articles. Out of those 3,000 semi-protected articles, about 250 are about living people.

Editors can request an article to be flagged at Requests for Page Protection. An administrator will then decide whether it warrants flag protection.

How does this compare with semi-protected articles?

levels	Anonymous / Non-Autoconfirmed	Autoconfirmed	Reviewer
Semi flagged protection	Can edit; a new edit is visible to registered users, but not to readers by default until confirmed by a `'reviewer'`	Can edit; a new edit is visible immediately if the previous version is already confirmed; otherwise not visible to readers by default until confirmed by a `'reviewer'`	Can edit; a new edit is visible immediately if the previous version is already confirmed or when the option "confirm this revision" is selected; otherwise left unconfirmed
Intermediary flagged protection	Can edit; a new edit is visible to registered users, but not to readers by default until confirmed by a `'reviewer'`
Full flagged protection	Can edit; new edits are visible to registered users, but not to readers by default until validated by an `'administrator'`

How will it affect me, an anonymous reader?
If you like to browse Wikipedia and have not registered an account, then you probably won't notice any changes. You may notice there being fewer articles with vandalism.

How will it affect me, an anonymous editor?

How will it affect me, a registered reader?

How will it affect me, a registered editor?

When will this change take in effect?
The trial will begin around November 2009.

Is this a permanent change?
At the present time, Flagged Revisions is just a trial.

When were these changes first discussed?
Discussion over the basic concept of patrolled revisions dates back to 2005. A lengthy history of the project is available as part of the Wikipedia newsletter entry.

Which other wikis have implemented flagged revisions?
http://en.wikinews.org/
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Gesichtete_Versionen (German)
http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wersje_przejrzane (Polish)
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%9F:%D0%9F%D0%90%D0%A2 (Russian)

The German Wikipedia has implemented flagged revisions on all articles with large success.

Must read links
Wikipedia:Flagged protection and patrolled revisions (proposed implementation details)
Demonstration site for Flagged Revisions (flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org) NOT YET OPEN
A quick update on Flagged Revisions (Wikimedia Blog)
Flagged Revisions Come to the English Wikipedia (TheWikipedia.net)
Wikipedia: Press talking 'nonsense' over Flagged Revisions (TechRadar)
Images and user interface

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on the right side of the page

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Top 50 most popular Wikipedia articles of 2009

2009-08-27T13:30:00.001-05:00

The 50 most popular Wikipedia articles of 2009 by hit count (via Wiki Statistics)
More stats can be found at popular pages on Wikipedia and at Wiki Statistics. Here's the most popular Wikipedia articles in 2008.
Lastly, be sure to check out Wikipedia's latest changes from a technical standpoint.
1) Wiki (131,383 page hits per day)

2) The Beatles (111,896) incl. [many] automated requests

3) Michael Jackson (79,734)

4) Favicon.ico (78,077) (incl. icon requests)

5) YouTube (72,318)

6) Wikipedia (52,542)

7) Barack Obama (49,401)

8) Deaths in 2009 (48,758)

9) United States (46,545)

10) Facebook (42,679)

11) Current events portal [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events] (40,962)

12) World War II (29,736)

13) Twitter (28,511)

14) Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (28,395)

15) Slumdog Millionaire (26,755)

16) Lil Wayne (26,210)

17) Adolf Hitler (25,481)

18) India (25,380)

19) Transformers 2 (24,842)

20) Scrubs (TV series) (24,758)

21) Sex (24,754)

22) Rhianna (24,670)

23) United Kingdom (24,300)

24) Abrham Lincoln (23,743)

25) Heroes (TV series) (23,569)

26) Watchmen (film) (23,544)

27) Lady GaGa (23,376)

28) Star Trek (film) (22,990)

29) 2009 Swine Flu outbreak (22,968)

30) Featured content portal (22,829)

31) Megan Fox (22,573)

32) Naruto (22,573)

33) Australia (22,544)

34) Canada (22,437)

35) World War I (22,307)

36) Vagina (22,295)

37) List of House episodes (21,950)

38) Japan (21,797)

39) Martin Luther King Jr (21,786)

40) Miley Cyrus (21,724)

41) Robert Pattinson (21,515)

42) Deadpool (comics) (21,264)

43) Twilight (2008 film) (21,158)

44) Windows 7 (21,018)

45) House (TV series) (20,882)

46) Terminator Salvation (20,743)

47) Kristen Stewart (20,538)

48) Internet Movie Database (20,422)

49) 2012 (20,347)

50) X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Top 20 by topic
People

1. The Beatles

2. Michael Jackson

3. Barack Obama

4. Eminem

5. Lil Wayne

6. Adolf Hitler

7. Rihanna

8. Abraham Lincoln

9. Lady Ga Ga

10. Megan Fox

11. Miley Cyrus

12. Robert Patterson

13. Kristen Stewart

14. William Shakespeare

15. Farah Fawcett

16. George W. Bush

17. Tupac Shakur

18. Taylor Swift

19. Jade Goody

20. Notorious B.I.G.

Films and TV

1. Lost

2. Watchmen

3. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

4. Slumdog Millionaire

5. Transformers 2

6. Scrubs

7. Heroes

8. Star Trek

9. List of House episodes

10. Twilight

11. House (TV series)

12. Terminator Salvation

13.X-Men Origins: Wolverine

14. American Idol

15. List of Family Guy Episodes

16. Lost Season 5

17. Family Guy

18. The Dark Knight

19. Americas next top model

20. List of Heroes Episodes

Places

1. United States

2. India

3. United Kingdom

4. Australia

5. Canada

6. Japan

7. Germany

8. Israel

9. New York City

10. France

11. Russia

12. Mexico

13. Brazil

14. Italy

15. England

16. London

17. Iran

18. Philippines

19. Spain

20. Europe

Technology

1. YouTube

2. Wikipedia

3. Facebook

4. Twitter

5. Windows 7

6. Google

7. MySpace

8. Hotmail

9. Fallout 3

10. Internet

11. Microsoft

12. Xbox 360

13. PlayStation 3

14. Hypertext transfer protocol

15. Google earth

16. iPhone

17. Computer

18. Wii

19. Grand Theft Auto IV

20. Web 2.0

The Roaring Edge - Wikipedia Beta and latest changes

2009-08-19T09:50:00.009-05:00

I'll be periodically writing blog entries on the latest technical changes for Wikipedia. I intend entries to be similar to The Burning Edge (which shows Mozilla Firefox's latest changes) and MozillaLinks. The entries will be a bit more user-friendly and more accessible to non-Wikipedia editors.

A little bit about me. I'm a longtime Wikipedia editor with over 20,000 edits and (only) one featured article. My editing habits have decreased over time but I like to keep up with how well Wikipedia is doing.

There are a few scattered sources for keeping up to date with Wikipedia.

Wikipedia Signpost - an unofficial newsletter distributed weekly. Of particular interest is the Technical Report section.
Wikipedi Signpost (wikisignpost) on Twitter - updated more frequently
Wikizine - An independent internal news bulletin for the members of the Wikimedia community
Test Wikipedia
Village Pump (Technical) - Discussions and proposals among Wikipedians about current and future changes
Usability Wikimedia
TheWikipedia on Twitter

Major changes for Wikipedia in the past year

To be expanded upon later this week.
WikiTrust extension testing (November 2008)
In Support of Open Video (January 2009)
Drafts extension enabled on the test.wiki (January 2009)
Collections extensions for exporting pages as PDFs enabled on wikibooks (January 2009)
Update on German Wikipedia Flagged Revisions (February 2009)
Add Media Wizard and Firefogg on test.wikipedia.org (March 2009)
Abuse Filter is enabled on Wikipedia and Commons (March 2009)
Collections extensions enabled on Wikipedia (March 2009)
Wikimedia traffic analyzed (April 2009)
Edit Filter enabled (May 2009)
Reader Feedback extension enabled on test wiki (July 2009)
Wikipedia Gets Beta Redesign: See The Before and After (August 2009)
Wikipedia Mobile app for iPhone (August 2009)
WikiTrust set for Wikipedia in Fall 2009 (August 2009) (Firefox extension available)
New talk page for Wikipedia in testing (September 2009)
Full TIFF Support on Wikipedia is coming! (September 2009)
File renaming enabled for admins (Sept. 2009)
Reference system updated (Sept. 2009)

B&F System BNFUSA - top dropshipper and top wholesaler with wholesale knives, wholesale jackets, wholesale handbags

2009-07-22T15:49:00.014-05:00
BNFUSA.com (or B&F System, Inc. according to its Wikipedia page) is a wholesaler and drop shipper located in the Dallas, Texas area. I assume they're a reliable and top wholesale company since they've been around for over 50 years (I haven't seen many wholesalers in the United States with that kind of history). BNFUSA is one of the few wholesale companies that offers dropshipping for their wholesale items. Their website states they are a "top wholesale supplier who is the direct source."

Looking at the website, they sell a wide assortment of wholesale products, including wholesale knives (which seem to be their most popular product), wholesale handbags, wholesale cookware and kitchenware, wholesale clothes and apparel, wholesale luggage, and interestingly enough, wholesale umbrellas.

In order to get their good pricing, be sure to create a free account on their website. And talk to their customer service representatives to answer any questions.

Drop shipping is one of the best ways a reseller can speed up their business and B&F System not only has dropshipping but they allow you to add in a custom packing slip with your own business name on it. So when your customer opens up his package, they will see your company logo and any custom text you'd like on it.

I visited their booth at the ASD/AMD trade show in Las Vegas in August and was surprised at how knowledgeable and helpful their salesmen were. The gentleman there knew everything there is to know about their knives and they had a great system for placing orders. They used pocket scanners, a laptop and a receipt printer instead of the traditional paper and pen. You could tell they were very well coordinated.

http://www.bnfusa.com/

How to add a program to run at startup in Ubuntu Linux Server edition

2009-07-15T14:23:00.005-05:00
Problem: Add a program to run at startup in Ubuntu Linux Server via the command line.

First of all, you're going to need root access.

1. Find the location of the program you wish to run at bootup. For example, MyProgram is located in
/home/me/programs/MyProgram

2. We need to create a script file in the init.d folder and we need superuser privileges for that.
2a. Run the command
sudo touch /etc/init.d/RunMyProgram
It'll prompt you for the root password, enter it. Make sure the file has been created in that directory.
2b. Make the file executable.
sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/RunMyprogram

3. Open that file in a text editor (nano /etc/init.d/RunMyProgram)
4. We're going to create a simple script that will simply call our program. Type this bit of code in that text file. Replace the second line with the file path for your program. That is all that should be in the text file.

#!/bin/bash

/home/me/programs/MyProgram &

4a. This script will automatically run as root. If you want your program to run as a standard unprivileged user, put in a 'su ' before the second line.
5. We need to assign our script to a certain runlevel (at what state in Linux's bootup you wish to run the program).
5a. Simply run
sudo update-rc.d /etc/init.d/RunMyProgram defaults
and that will put you at the appropriate runlevels.

Notes: This should also work for Debian.

The B&F System, Inc. (BNFUSA) - wholesale knives, wholesale jackets, wholesale purses, wholesale cookware

2009-07-14T14:09:00.004-05:00
According to their Wikipedia page, The B&F System, Inc. is a wholesaler and drop ship supplier established in the Dallas, Texas area and founded in 1950.

They specialize in wholesale knives and wholesale kitchenware.

I'll have a review up in a couple days. Here's the review.

Official BNFUSA website

Program to export or backup playlists in Winamp

2009-07-04T17:40:00.015-05:00
Problem: I wanted to export all my music playlists in Winamp (over 60 of them) so that I could back them up and also transfer them easily to another media player, if i wanted to. Winamp stores its playlists under the Application Data folder (Application Data\Winamp\Plugins\ml) with random numbers (e.g. plf60C1). This isn't very useful.

There's a playlists.xml file that links the playlist to its title in Winamp. So I have just created a simple program that will link them up and copy them with a proper filename to a folder on the desktop. From here, you can back them up to some other location or use them with another music player.

Winamp Playlist Exporter 0.1
Download Backup Winamp Playlists.zip

*Turn this*

*Into this*

* Winamp Playlist Exporter
* User: Gabriel Flores
* Date: 7/4/2009
* Url: http://tempvariable.blogspot.com/
* Version: 0.1

Usage:

1. Simply double click to run the program and that's it.
2. A folder called exportedPlaylists will be created on your Desktop with all your Winamp playlists.

Notes:
This has only been tested on Winamp 5.54. It should work on Winamp 5.x version, but I'm not sure if it'll work on 2.x version. Requires .NET Framework 2.0 or higher.

The program assumes the playlists are located under the Application Data folder which is where Winamp stores them by default. If you'd like to specify the location of the playlists.xml file, the program accepts a parameter to a different file path.

c:/exportplaylists.exe "c:/myfolder/foldertwo/ml/"

Edit: A user has created a user interface (GUI) for this program. It is located here:
http://alcazone.de/?page_id=191

On a related note, here's a very useful program for use with playlists, check out Listfix - Fix Broken Playlists

backup winamp playlists
export winamp playlists
transfer winamp playlists
how to export playlists in winamp

Windows XP SP3 installation stuck while "Performing cleanup"

2009-06-24T13:41:00.005-05:00
I tried updating Windows XP to the latest service pack (SP3) and after about 45 minutes or so, the installation appeared to be frozen. I was using an offline setup file of Windows XP SP3 (didn't use Windows Update).

After waiting about 15 more minutes and still no indication anything was happening on this fast dual-core computer, I decided to enter the Task Manager and terminate the SP3 update process and then reluctantly restart the computer. After a bit of waiting, the computer booted up just fine and with SP3 installed... thankfully. First check the task manager to seeing if it is processing and wait at least an hour before thinking about restarting.

To avoid this whole mess, I shut down Symantec Antivirus Corporate and its related services before starting the SP3 installation.
1. Go to control panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services. Find each Symantec service and right click -> Stop.
2. Start task manager (start->run type taskmgr). In the process tab, do an end task for "ccapp.exe, vptray.exe, savroam.exe, rtvscan.exe." You may not find some of these because you shut their services down in step 1 above.

Sample files for every file format

2009-01-31T10:56:00.002-06:00

Every now and then I need a sample of a certain format to test with an application. I often have to do some Googling and it’s not always immediately available. I started collecting a few files and storing them away in a format but I figured I’d make them available for everyone to access. The files, especially the audio/video ones, aren’t meant to indicate quality of that format, so don’t use them for comparing, for example, wmv with xvid.

A helpful tip in finding files of a specific format is to search google with the term filetype:ext (e.g. filetype:doc)
I had a whole list of files here but it looks like they expired...
A list of sample video files can be found at
http://samples.mplayerhq.hu/

Technorati Tags: samples,testing

Mozilla Firefox – open bookmarks in background tab

2009-01-26T15:40:00.009-06:00

By default, Firefox opens bookmarks middle clicked in a new foreground tab. Many users, like me, would prefer it to open in the background. To do this, follow these steps.

1. In the location bar, type about:config and hit enter. This will take you to a page that has a filter box and many preference names and values.

2. In the filter texbox, type loadbookmarksinbackground (with no spaces). One single preference will appear.

3. Double click that preference so that the value turns from “false” to “true”.

4. Restart browser and you’re set to go. Bookmarks now open in the background! No extension needed.

If you found this helpful, please leave a comment. Thank you.

Technorati Tags: firefox,bookmarks

Hundred pushups routine

2008-09-26T20:23:00.002-05:00
Two weeks ago, I learned about Hundred Pushups through Lifehacker. The goal is in 6 weeks to be able to do 100 consecutive pushups. After an initial test to see where you stand, you do a certain amount of pushups three times a week. Gradually, you'll get stronger and by the end of the 6th week, you'll ideally be able to do 100 complete pushups. Sounds challenging? It is! :D

I get the impression that it's normal for people to repeat weeks if it's too difficult. I'll probably need to do that in the later weeks.

My initial exhaustion test was 33 pushups... and I was SORE the next morning. I just finished week 2 and will be doing another exhaustion test tomorrow to see how much I've improved.

A few tips

Stretch your arms against a wall.
Eat after your pushups - a granola bar, a whole wheat bagel, something with protein and carbs
Take it slow - if you need to repeat a week, that's fine

You can track my progress through my profile on the site.

Update: January 2009. Well, I didn't make it to 100, but I did reach 72 pushups which is still a great mark, if I do say so myself. Cheers to all who made it to 100.

Also, the organizer has now created a Two Hundred Situps program. I'm always up for a good challenge.

Xdrive issues

2008-07-14T23:50:00.002-05:00

Xdrive is officially my most hated online webapp. I've never had so many problems with an online service as I have with AOL's storage website.

I had many issues with logging in after AOL acquired Xdrive, issues with my files being up. Before they started using Adobe AIR, they had another application which was a real pain. Syncing would only sometimes work. Again, more issues with logging in from the app. Uninstalling was a terrible experience. With their new app, I was one of the few in which the app cause a blue screen in my Vista system. I like the AIR technology, but their application could use a lot of work. Like how about seeing the upload speed on a file transfer?

Just yesterday, I loaded up the AIR application and my floppy drive starts making noises. The application is trying to access the floppy drive even though there's no disk inserted. There hasn't been a damn disk inserted for over 2 years now. The simple solution, of course, is to disable my solution, but that's awful programming.

It's such a great service, 5GB of free space with no file size limit. The latter is its greatest selling point but it's interface and application are so clunky. I'll continue using it, but I hope to see some improvement or else I'll be trying some other service.
Update: Looks like AOL got rid of the service now. Good riddance?

Technorati Tags: xdrive

listFix - fix broken music playlists

2008-07-07T23:39:00.001-05:00

I have been searching for a program to fix my m3u playlists for the longest time. Sometimes, I need to organize my mp3 files and doing so breaks the tracks in the playlists. I have finally found a solution to repair any m3u playlist with the listfix program. It's freeware, based on Java, and cross-platform.

Now all I'm looking for is a plugin to export all my playlists in Winamp (like Media Monkey can).

This is what the main page says:

Have you ever spent some time making a playlist, only to have it break when you reorganize your files? listFix() is a Swing application that solves this problem by finding the missing entries in your playlists automatically. Tell it where you keep your media files, load in the playlist you want to fix, and hit the locate button. The program will search your media library for the file and update the playlist accordingly when it finds a match.

If a few files are still missing, it's possible they were renamed. listFix() has a simple way of finding these files as well, by scanning your media library for files that have a similar name to the one in your playlist.

Find lost/missing playlist entries

Remove duplicates and/or missing tracks from the playlist

Advanced search for renamed tracks

http://listfix.sourceforge.net/

Technorati Tags: freeware,playlist,m3u,winamp

Save an Excel chart as an image

2008-06-27T01:08:00.007-05:00

Easiest method
The simplest way to save a chart is to install this Export Chart as Image add-in at this link (it's near the bottom) (backup). There's some instruction on how to install the add-in. All I did to install the add-on was:
1. Extract the file from the zipped file to a suitable location
2. Double click exportchart.xla which opened up Excel 2007 with the add-in installed.
3. Now open up your spreadsheet and click on the chart and click on the Export Chart item to save it.

Second method

The copy and paste method.
1. Right click on the chart and choose copy.
2. Open Microsoft Paint.
3. Click the edit menu item and click on Paste.
4. Click File->Save as
Source
Third method

Another method of exporting a chart to jpeg is to save the entire Excel document as .htm. This method is especially good if you need to export many charts.

Click Save as.

In this screen, in the 'Save as type' field, choose Webpage (.htm).

Then hit Save.

Go to the location on your computer where you saved it (e.g. Desktop) and there should be a file and a folder (e.g. book1.htm and book1_files). All the charts are available as images in that folder.

Note, if you do this, you'll begin editing the spreadsheet as a "Webpage", which you generally don't want. So once, you get the chart images out of the folder, you'll want to open your Excel spreadsheet (with extension .xls). Afterwards, you can delete the webpage file.

If you found this post helpful, please leave a comment. Thank you
save excel charts as pictures. excel graph save. excel plugin save chart as jpg. save graph as image excel. export charts as pictures

Technorati Tags: excel,graph,jpeg,chart,image

Mozilla Firefox 3 - Under reported features

2008-06-14T10:40:00.005-05:00
Since Firefox 3 is nearing its June 17, 2008 release, I wanted to make a post about some the new features that many will not notice immediately. These features may not be the most useful for every situation, but when you need it, just know that Firefox can do it. If you have any more, post a comment. I'll be updating this as I come across new features.

Bookmarking and starring websites - We all know the awesomebar is great, but many people don't know about one-click bookmarking. Bookmarking in browsers seems to have decreased since online bookmark managers like del.icio.us have opened up, but the introduction of "starring" a website is useful. When you star a website, it goes in your Unsorted Bookmarks (Bookmarks->Organize Bookmarks). When you do this, the website gets larger priority in the awesomebar search algorithm. It's best to star your most frequently used websites for quick easy access.

Disabling Firefox plugins - You can now disable specific plugins using the Add-ons window. Just go to Tools->Add-ons and click on Plugins in the header. Right click on the plugin (Flash) and click Disable.

Full Screen - Firefox 3 now has true full-screen support. Just go to View menu and click Full Screen and everything will be hidden, including your menubar, location bar, tab bar and status bar. Give it a try.

FTP and local file styling - Firefox made browsing FTP sites and your computer files easier. Go to your address bar and type ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/. Compare that with the http site Notice the difference?

Better memory management - There has been a lot of criticism on Firefox memory usage and I get the impression that the Mozilla team really took in this feedback and worked hard to improve the situation and it shows.

Malware detection - When visiting a site with a history of distributing malware (which can compromise your system), Firefox will display a warning. This is definitely something Internet Explorer should consider.

Multiple discontinuous selection - "With this new option you can make an initial selection as usual and then keep adding text chunks by pressing the Ctrl key while making and additional selection." Doesn't work perfectly on all pages but give a try.

Tabbing features - Tab duplication, want to make a copy of your current tab? Just hold Ctrl and drag the tab onto another area in the tab bar.

Zooming - Full page zooming now exists which is great for my dad since he has poor eyesight. This zooms in both the text and the images of the page. View -> Zoom

Search engine keywords - You can add keywords to sites in your search bar by going to Manage Search Engines. For example, make 'eb' your keyword for Ebay. Now, in the location bar, just type 'eb computers' and it'll search on Ebay for computers. I have 'a' for Amazon, 'g' for Google, 'w' for Wiki and so on.

Furl, Yahoo Bookmarks or Del.icio.us?

2008-05-27T22:12:00.003-05:00

I needed a web service to backup or cache certain webpages. The three main options are:
furl.net
Yahoo Bookmarks
webcitation.org
Iterasi
delicious

I included del.icio.us in there because it's the most popular one and one I use regularly. Unfortunately, it doesn't have any sort of cache feature, whether optional or standard. So I quickly ruled it out.

WebCite is a good service which I use occasionally when citing things online. Unfortunately, it's not meant for a bookmark/backup solution and thus doesn't allow you to have an account or really manage any of the bookmarks. Also, if a website chooses not to be searchable through robots.txt file, Webcitation will honor that an not cache it. Although with the bookmarklet, you can have the webcached pages emailed to your account. Despite this, I'll pass. Update: According to the comment below, Webcite will be upgrading its service to include a bookmark manager and social services.

Yahoo Bookmarks was one of my first choices. It has a Web 2.0 interface but it seems a bit too cluttered and unfriendly to keyboard users, unlike del.icio.us. It's caching is nice but I think I discovered a bug or maybe a page size limit. I tried to bookmark a relatively long thread on the Anandtech forums and it would only cache about half of the page. I tried this on a few other sites and same thing happened. The service is too unreliable to use regularly.

Furl.net was the last option. It's got a decent interface and has a bookmarklet. I've had the bookmarklet not work at all. Not sure if this is an issue with Furl or Firefox 3. (it was the Firefox blocking the pop-up) But it does a great job of automatically caching links I bookmark. I imported a test set of bookmarks to see if it would cache those retroactively and it didn't, unfortunately. I had to go through each one and tell it to update the cache webpage. That's fine, I only need to backup a page every now and then.

Summary: Use Furl.net if you want your bookmarks to be cached.
Update June 2010:
Iterasi.net - I now recommend Iterasi as the best bookmark archive/cache website. It offers a Firefox extension for archiving pages which require login or POST forms.
Webcitation - months have gone by and no update yet. It's still a useful service but it could be much better.
Furl.net has become Diigo - still a worthwhile service
Zotero - I haven't tried it, but it looks stable and powerful.
Technorati Tags: furl,yahoo bookmarks,webcite,del.icio.us,bookmarks

List of websites using Silverlight

2008-05-25T23:37:00.002-05:00

This is just a list of websites I've encountered that use either Silverlight 1.0 or 2.0. I'll add more as I come across them. Feel free to name some in the comments below.

www.mlb.com - for their video

www.nba.com - for some of their video highlights
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/01/19/silverlight-and-the-2009-presidential-inauguration.aspx
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/06/microsoft-silverlight-gets-a-high-profile-win-2008-bejing-olympics/
http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/32480856/ns/sports-nfl/ - Sunday Night Football

Sites previously using Silverlight
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/15/itv_flash/

Technorati Tags: silverlight

Top 10 Silverlight applications

GTKSharp Windows binary

2008-05-14T19:38:00.001-05:00

For those looking for GTK# runtime (with use for Mono project), they are here:

gtksharp-runtime-2.10.3.exe (built by OpenVista)

gtksharp-runtime-2.8.3-12

There is some work being done on gtksharp 2.12. More information is available at the Mono forums.

Technorati Tags: gtk#,gtksharp,mono

Installing Mono 1.9.1 on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron

2008-04-28T17:10:00.006-05:00
I came across this tutorial for Mono 1.9.1 (Mono 2.0 beta) while browsing the Mono mailing list.

If you want to use them add this to your /etc/apt/sources.list:
deb http://debian.meebey.net/etch-backports /

After that run:
apt-get update

Now you can upgrade or install Mono 1.9.1 and MonoDevelop 1.0 using your
favorite package managing tool (dselect/apt/aptitude/synaptic/whatever)

Ubuntu 8.04 only comes with the 5 month old Mono 1.2.6 (yet includes the recent MonoDevelop 1.0) and it's a huge hassle compiling Mono from source (it really shouldn't be, but it is). These packages are intended for Debian Etch, but should work under Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) and Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron). This also includes Moonlight (Silverlight for Linux) related development packages. If you just need to run Moonlight, not develop for it, then check out the prepackaged Moonlight builds.

You can also use this to install MonoDevelop 1.0, but that's already in Ubuntu repositories (for 8.04).

I hope this is useful for some people developing Mono applications on Ubuntu Linux. If there are any issues, contact Mirco 'meebey' Bauer, the maintainer of those packages.

My understanding is these will soon become available at backports.org in a week or so.

Edit: Looks like Mono has updated their Other Downloads page on their wiki to note this.

Silverlight and Firefox 3

2008-04-13T16:21:00.003-05:00

(Hint: Beta + Beta = Crash)

Update: June 6, 2008. Silverlight 2 Beta 2 is released! You can download this release now. I installed this release without uninstalling the previous and it works fine. I can confirm that this works with Firefox 3 RC2. Note: Upgrading to Beta 2 caused many sites using earlier versions Silverlight to not work (in both IE and FX). You can visit the Silverlight Showcase or the Silverlight Gallery to test out Silverlight.

Update: May 13 - Added bug reports and workaround

Presently, Silverlight 1.0 (or 2.0 beta) does not work on Firefox 3.0 Beta 5. Visiting a site with SL with Firefox 3 often results in a complete browser crash. According to Scott Guthrie in a comment post, Silverlight does not work because Firefox changed the way rendering works for plugins. Guthrie states these problems will be fixed in Silverlight 2 Beta 2.

A forum post on the SL forums says "Firefox 3 has made some changes with how objects are instantiated." It continues by saying to wait until a new silverlight.js comes out (in SL2 Beta 2).

Updated: Relevant bug reports here.

Silverlight not working on MLB site.

Microsoft's Silverlight plug-in is installed but it doesn't do anything.

Silverlight.js included in Silverlight SDK sniffs for Firefox in UA string

data="data:," in the embed/object tag casuses Firefox to abort object creation

You can temporarily disable the Silverlight plugin in Firefox by going to Tools -> Addons -> Plugins and disabling both Silverlight and WPF plugin.

So when does Silverlight 2 Beta 2 come out?

According to some bloggers, SL2 Beta 2 is scheduled to be released in the first week of June 2008. Seeing as how Silverlight 2 Final will be released this summer, probably in time to stream live video for the 2008 Olympics in China which starts on August 8, I'd guess Beta 2 will come out mid-May. This gives organizations some time to try out Beta 2 with a Go-Live license on production machines and then give Microsoft adequate feedback for bug fixes.

When does Firefox 3 come out?

Firefox 3 is entering the Release Candidate phase as I write this and the final release is expected in June.

Workaround: There is a Greasemonkey script that may make SL work on some sites. (Requires Greasemonkey)

Technorati Tags: firefox,silverlight,firefox 3

Dev-C++ - can't debug

2008-04-08T00:12:00.003-05:00

I was working on a small personal program and for that I always use the very user-friendly and free IDE, Dev-cpp. I'm using the latest version - Dev-C++ 5.0 beta 9.2 (4.9.9.2) (9.0 MB) with Mingw/GCC 3.4.2. I don't remember having problems with dev-cpp before, but as I tried to debug my program, Dev-cpp kept saying:

Your project does not have debugging information, do you want to enable debugging and rebuild your project?

No matter how many times I clicked 'Yes', it still wouldn't debug. I double checked that 'Generate debugging information' under Tools-Compiler options was turned on. GDB was installed correctly too.

After doing a bit of searching on Google with different keywords, I found a page with the solution.

"The symptom is the compile keeps asking you if you want to include debugging information and you say yes, but it never happens. Somehow Dev-C++ doesn't want to set the right compiler and linker switches to include debugging information in your compiled program."

The solution is to
"Go to the "Tools/Compiler Options" menu.
Put "-g" (without the quotation marks) in both boxes on the Compiler tab.
Make sure to check both boxes labeled "Add the following commands ..."."

So there ya go! Back to debugging!

If this worked, please let me know! If it didn't, let me know as well!
Update: There's a fork or extension of Dev-C++ called wxDevC++. This project contains support for other compilers and some extra bug fixes which might help with other problems encountered with the original Dev-C++.

Technorati Tags: dev-c++,dev-cpp,debug,debugging

.NET - Drag and drop from explorer window Component

2008-04-02T15:16:00.005-05:00

While updating my Playlist to Last.fm program to include Windows Forms, I needed a way to handle drag and drop from Windows to the application. I remembered my old book, Windows Forms 2.0 Programming, had a good component in C# for that. I went to their source code library (mirror) and found it. It is located at xF_DocumentManagement\DragAndDropFileControlLibrary\

In your Visual Studio project, just add the component to your toolbox and then drag it to your Form. In the properties for the component, use the FileDropped event to handle drag and drop. You can do something like this:

void dragAndDropFileComponent_FileDropped(
object sender, FileDroppedEventArgs e) {
// Process each file
foreach( string filename in e.Filenames ) {
// Only open files with the appropriate extension
string extension = Path.GetExtension(filename);
if( extension == ".txt" ) doSomething(filename);

Hope this helps someone.

Technorati Tags: .net,drag and drop,c#,explorer,component

YouTube .NET API (C# wrapper) and Developer Key problem

2008-03-29T16:59:00.017-05:00

YouTube .NET API

Update 2: Preliminary version up, uploading capability in mid-May

Update: Official Google YouTube .NET API in ~4 weeks (due around May 1)

With the recent announcement by Youtube to open up their APIs and allow uploading and updating videos (before it was only read access, aka retrieval), I decided to dig in and play around with the API.

The official Google .NET client library does not support YouTube surprisingly and so after some searching, I came across Scott Hanselman's blog entry on .NET libraries to popular Web2.0 applications. He provided a link to a C# wrapper for YouTube. It works but there's still some needed improvements to the code. Luckily, it's GPL'd and you can look and modify the code as you please.

Officially, Google intends to release a C# wrapper for YouTube sometime in May. You may browse the source to check out the latest developments or visit the .NET Client Library Google Group.

Developer Key problem
Near the bottom, the blogger mentions to obtain a developer key from Google. I did so and I inserted into the library for uploading. Strangely, I kept on receiving an "Invalid Developer Key" when I tried to upload. But I had copied it directly from the Google Developer page. Well, it turned out, I had not copied the entire string. You see, I only double clicked on the textbox and I assumed I had selected all of it. But the key format is a long string of characters, a dash, and a few more characters (XXXXXXXX-XXXXX). When you double click in Firefox (and IE7), it only selects the first part up to the dash. I didn't know it hadn't selected the entire string because the textbox is not wide enough to display all the characters. The entire time I was only copying the first part and so Google correctly told me it was an invalid developer key.

I spent a frustrating hour trying to figure out the issue. Google should do something because I imagine many people make the same wrong assumption I made.

Here's an image. As you can see, the textbox is not wide enough to display the 99 characters of the key. If you drag select your mouse you can see that. If you triple click, it selects everything.

Firefox 4

2008-03-21T18:38:00.002-05:00
Two bits of Mozilla Firefox news.
1. Firefox 3 is ready for primetime.

The most useful information there is that Firefox 3 Final is expected to be released near the end of June 2008. Wow, and here I was expecting an April release. Interestingly, Firefox 2 was released in October of 2006.

2. Firefox 4: Firefox 4 builds are now on Mozilla servers. For now, these are essentially the same as Firefox 3 trunk builds. A new trunk named mozilla-central is intended to become the new 'trunk' in the Mozilla 2 timeframe. That name was chosen to be unique from the trunk to avoid confusion in the short term."

Here is the Mercurial (Mozilla is switching from CVS to Mercurial) web interface for that branch. You can check the changelog there, but it's not going to show you much except for commits mirrored off of cvs trunk. As I said in another thread, most of the work is happening in the actionmonkey branch, afaik. You can see an outline of that work here. ActionMonkey is the project that will integrate Tamarin (Javascript 2 virtual machine and JIT compiler) with SpiderMonkey, Mozilla's Javascript engine. More information here. And here.

Since the specification for ECMA4 (Javascript 2) won't be complete until October 2008 at the earliest and Gecko 2 will be an enormous shift, I predict Firefox 4 will be released in March 2010, taking into account inevitable delays.

Bonus: Martha Stewart uses Firefox (and loves Macs) link

Mix 08 - Silverlight 2 and Internet Explorer 8 download links

2008-03-05T13:01:00.005-06:00
Download Silverlight 2 and Internet Explorer 8

Silverlight 2
*Silvlight 2 runtime (most people just need this)

*Silverlight 2 Tools for Visual Studio 2008 (for developers)

*Silvlight 2 SDK (for developers)

Internet Explorer 8

*Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1

*MSN Toolbar Beta

==See also==
*More helpful links

Prepacked Moonlight plugin extension

2008-03-02T21:31:00.002-06:00

Found this through Google's blog search.

theADOguy - Rant: Prepacked Moonlight Installs:

I didn't realize that Moonlight had created prepackaged installs already. If you want to try out Moonlight (and you're running Linux of course), check out these builds. Note that they extension builds do not have any Multimedia support (no video codecs or audio support, though they are working on it)."

Like the original blogger, I also didn't know it had existed. I added it to the Moonlight page on the newly created Mono Wiki.

Also, there's this really neat Video Game Sales wiki that deals with the video game industry and sales charts and all that goodness. :)

List of Mono tools

2008-02-29T22:04:00.019-06:00
Update: I've created a Mono Wiki so that the community can create and update documentation related to the Mono project.

Useful links for the mono project. If I've made any omissions or errors, please let me know by leaving a comment.

mono compiler - runtime for Mono applications

mcs - mono compiler
gmcs - mono compiler with generic support
smcs - moonlight

I think mcs/gmcs will be merged in either mono 1.9 or 2.0. Right now, it's very confusing :?

<!--
mono.exe virtual machine - command line parameters
1. using shift+right click, copy path
2. add context menu -> run with mono
--!>
OpenTK - Open Toolkit - It enables you to bring your ideas to fruition, leveraging the full power of .Net, OpenGL and OpenAL.
September 2007: 0.90

Tao Framework - The Tao Framework for .NET is a collection of bindings to facilitate cross-platform media application development utilizing the .NET and Mono platforms.
OpenGL, FFMPG, OpenAl, and more.
May 7, 2007: 2.0

Prj2Make-Sharp - Today, prj2make-sharp can read a solution file (*.sln) produced with Visual Studio .NET and generate a makefile suitable for compilation with mcs.exe or csc.exe.
April 4, 2004: 1.0

Moonlight - Mono's Linux implementation of Microsoft's Silverlight

LunarEclipse - GUI designer for generating XAML to be used in Moonlight

Mono Migration Analyzer (MoMA) - tool used to check if a program can run Mono. Lists the functions that are missing or incompatible with Mono

.NET 1.1 - fully supported
.NET 2.0 - fully implemented (minus a few WinForms stuff)
.NET 3.0 - under the olive project, not to be considered usable, additonally we have no plans to work on it anytime soon. WPF will likely use a separate codebase than Moonlight does for its gui features. ref
.NET 3.5 - C# 3.0 is fully implemented (with maybe a few LINQ bugs)
Silverlight 1 - supported
Silverlight 2 - mooonlight implements silverlight 1.1 (i assume this means the 2.0 alphas released in 2007) (canvas + ECMA CLI powered execution engine). Not certain, but 2.0 beta1 and above needs some more work.

Vmware opensuse image - VMware image with mono and development tools already installed
list of tools:
missing tools: moma

GTK-sharp - a set of .NET bindings for the GTK+ toolkit which is used to cross platform graphical user interfaces (like Windows Forms)

Cocoa-Sharp - a GUI toolkit aimed at .Net/Mono developers that want to allow their users to have a native Mac OS X application experience

MonoDevelop - IDE (like Visual Studio) for Mono development. Cross-platform, but requires a lot of work to make it run under Windows and Mac OS X. Can import Visual Studio 2005 project files. No integrated debugger.

C# plugin for Eclipse - inactive? http://www.improve-technologies.com/alpha/esharp/

List of MD addins...:

Stetik - the GUI designer used to make GTK-sharp user interfaces

ASP.NET
mod_mono - module for Apache web server to run ASP.NET applications.
http://www.mono-project.com/Mod_mono
fastgi - use the FastCGI hosting if you have a web server that supports the FastCGI protocol for extending the server.
http://www.mono-project.com/FastCGI
XSP - a lightweight and simple webserver written in C#. (simple way to start out but not recommended for real-world applications)

Cecil - a library written to generate and inspect programs and libraries in the ECMA CIL format. You can load existing managed assemblies, browse all the contained types, modify them on the fly and save back to the disk the modified assembly.
Oct 5, 2007: 0.6

Gendarme - a extensible rule-based tool to find problems in .NET applications and libraries (like FxCop). Looks for common problems with the code, problems that compiler do not typically check or have not historically checked. Uses Cecil.

Smokey - a open source command line tool used to analyze .NET or Mono assemblies for problems (like Gendarme, FxCop).

Mono Model Checker - a model checker developed on the Mono platform. MMC is a program to automatically detect errors in CIL bytecode programs, i.e. applications written for the .NET platform. an interesting research tool that exhaustively simulates execution of assemblies and looks for problems like deadlocks and invalid assertions.

HeapShot - a profiler for Mono. Profilers help you analyze performance in your program. See also HeapBuddy.

IKVM - run Java bytecode on top of .NET

Languages (Boo, IronRuby, IronPython, PHP, more) - languages that can run on Mono

Registry file that adds a context menu item to launch an .exe file (.NET) with mono. Note: You must set the environment variable to your mono installation's bin folder (since I don't know what version you're using). Name this environment variable %MONOPATH%. Then apply the .reg file and you should be all set.

<!--
Questions:
I have .NET and Mono installed. How can I make Mono the default VM for .NET programs?

Later version of prj2make? For VS 2008?

How much of C# 3.0 is complete?
--!>

Mono, a look forward

2008-02-27T21:47:00.003-06:00

Update:
I created a Mono wiki so that the community can keep mono documentation updated. Please visit and help out if you can!

I came across this article by Edd Dumbill while searching for a Mono question I had. Usually when you read impressions from people on the web, they're either anti-Microsoft programmers who despise Mono for its association with .NET or they're from journalists who haven't researched the Mono platform for very long. Edd Dumbill is unique in that he's not overly biased and he's knowledgeable enough of Mono to have written one of the few books on Mono development. He's a Mono supporter, yet his article is blindingly positive. In fact, he gives a very thorough, balanced overview of where Mono is (or was, in Aug. 2007) and what's holding it back.

He comments that Mono excitement may have peaked around October 2004 just months after its 1.0 release. That's nearly three and a half years ago. Sadly, I think he's right. However, that's not to say Mono's proverbial best day are behind it. I think 2008 will bring a resurgence to Mono awareness and chatter. This year, Mono plans on releasing 2.0 with full support for .NET 2.0 including Windows Forms. In March (maybe), Mono 1.9 will come out with C# 3.0 language support, including LINQ, and the ability to use the DLR with Mono. Silverlight 2 is garnering a lot of hype and if Moonlight can keep up and release 1.0 soon after (I'm not sure that it can, but MS is helping), it will be a major boost to the entire platform. I've been hearing good things about Mono used for embedded programming in gaming and hardware devices. Hopefully, Novell can recognize this market and do something with it.

Lastly, I have a few gripes about Mono. Edd states there's good documentation out there. I completely disagree. There main page has not changed in 2 years according to archive.org. We saw the enormous disaster that resulted from poor site design. Most pages are terribly out of date and unorganized. It would be nice if each page had a "Last modified on: " line near the bottom. I'll resort to Page Info or wiki history link. Because of this, it's very difficult to get a sense of the progress being made since most of the pages haven't been updated in months. I'm sure the SiteMap page would be useful if it were updated in the past year

If I understand correctly, there are up to 3 diff compilers.
*mcs - .NET 1.1
*gmcs - .NET 2.0
*smcs - for Moonlight

That's an awful lot for developers to understand, especially since all they probably need is gmcs and they get confused when it's not the default compiler. I think I read the two will finally be combined in the 2.0 release, but I'm guessing that won't be until Fall 2008. Edit: I forgot to mention this, but the versioning was pretty terrible and I'm glad they've fixed this (have they?). 1.2.6 has C# 3.0 features, in fact!

The release notes and Mono API listings are on a different domain (go-mono.com) than the main page. Huh? I really do hope the Mono website gets a facelift and a restructuring once 2.0 comes out.

See this call to action by Kevin Shokey about improving the build process for Mono.
Also, this 2006 review of MonoDevelop. Documentation is still severely lacking 2 years later.

Well, I'm not sure if anything constructive came out of this post, but I needed to get this out. I'll see if I can put up a wiki with some nice documentation for getting started with mono.

Installing freeglut on Visual Studio 2008

2008-02-26T21:31:00.021-06:00
I found virtually no information on how to install freeglut on Visual Studio 2008 using Google, so I thought I'd make a simple tutorial explaining how to do install freeglut on Visual Studio 2008. This tutorial might work for installing freeglut on Visual Studio 2005, but I have not tried it.

There are 3 things you need:
*Visual Studio 2008
*OpenGL
*freeglut

Assuming you have VS2008 installed, the first step then is to download the Windows header files. The official freeglut website has the latest version in source form which you'll need to compile. Luckily, I've compiled it for you. (a compiled freeglut binary)

Get the necessary binary files here:
freeglut 2.4.0
GLUT win32 binaries (backup))

Files must be placed in the correct directories. For Visual Studio .NET 2003 and above (or Windows XP/Vista) those are the following below. Note: according to a comment post below, for Windows Vista 64-bit, you have to put the libraries (*.dll) into Windows\SysWOW64 directory.

Put freeglut.h in: ‘C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\include\GL\’ (note: you'll have to create the GL folder)

Put freeglut_ext.h in: ‘C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\include\GL\’

Put freeglut_std.h in: ‘C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\include\GL\’

Put freeglut.lib in: ‘C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\lib\’

Put freeglut.dll in: ‘C:\WINDOWS\system32\’

Put glut32.dll in: ‘C:\WINDOWS\system32\’

Put glut32.lib in: ‘C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\lib\’

Put glut.h in: ‘C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\include\GL\’

Note: In previous versions of Visual Studio, you were required to install the Platform SDK. That isn't the case anymore in VS2008 since it already includes the SDK.

Ok, now that you've "installed" freeglut, you need to make the C++ project aware of freeglut.

1. Create a new C++ Console project in VS.
1a. In the Create Application Wizard, select Empty Project.

2. Add a new cpp file to the empty project. Add a bit of template code in there. For example:

#include <freeglut.h>

int main ()
{
return 0;
}

3. If you try to compile, VS will fail to compile. This is because it can't see the freeglut header files.
3a. On the menu bar, go to Project -> Properties.
3b. Go to Linker -> Input and copy and paste this line in the Additional Dependencies field. (see image below)

opengl32.lib glu32.lib glut32.lib

4. If you try to compile now, errors may still show up. You'll probably need to add directories for your header and lib files in Project/Solutions directories.
4a. Go to Tools -> Options. Expand the Project and Solutions section and select VC++ Directories. Make sure the dropdown box for 'Show directories for:' has 'Include files' selected.
4b. Add a new entry with C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\include\GL (or where your directory is). (see image below)

5. The program should now compile. Try a simple freeglut application (source file).

6. Post comments below if this tutorial worked for you or even if it didn't.

==References==
*CSCI 3161 Dirk Arnold (backup)
*CSCI 3161 ~sbrooks (backup)

In case anyone is interested, I've created a tutorial for SQL Server Reporting Services.

Adobe Air = Blue Screen of Death

2008-02-26T21:29:00.002-06:00
I installed Adobe Air the other day after looking at Xdrive's application. I installed Air just fine, but when I tried to install the app, I got a blue screen in Windows Vista. That doesn't happen very often and so I tried again. Windows crashed again. I tried it in my XP vmware image and everything worked as normal.

I couldn't find anyone else experiencing these problems, so it's probably just me. I'm going to try and uninstall/reinstall Adobe Air and see what happens.

Solution: It turns out the folder locking program I was using was causing the blue screen. I don't recall what folders I was locking, but once I uninstalled it, the problem was fixed.

Mono 1.9: Release Notes.

2008-02-26T18:00:00.002-06:00
Not quite sure about their versioning but Mono is in the process of release Mono 1.9.0. It will be a stable release and is the last release before the much anticipated 2.0 release, which will support .NET 2.0 completely. I hope they also update their website once it's released, because it's in dire need of a tune-up.

Mono 1.9 is our last release before Mono turns 2.0, it is a stable release and an update to Mono 1.2.6 in the Mono 1.2 series, it is a bug fix release for all the supported components, but also includes updates on the 2.0 and 3.5 stacks.

Download here
Mono 1.9: Release Notes.

VON# - Most Useful VS Feature No One Knows About

2008-02-07T23:15:00.001-06:00

VON# - Most Useful VS Feature No One Knows About: "It really does shock and amaze me how many developers get through the day without knowing the wonders of the Exceptions Dialog box. You can access it via Debug>Exceptions or you can hit Ctrl-Alt-E. What this dialog box allows you do is to pick a set of exceptions (or all of them for that matter) and the debugger will automatically break when the exception is thrown. This allows you to inspect your call stack and interrogate your variables to determine the state of your application when the exception occurred. No longer do you have to look through an error message to find a line number and start setting break points. This becomes especially helpful if the error is occurring in a gigantic loop and your not sure how many times the loop executes before it runs into a null reference exception. It breaks automatically and voila, you can easily see all the variables that are associated with your null object (or whatever the error may be)."

Image: http://www.vonsharp.net/content/binary/ExceptionsDialogBox2.jpg

Convert m3u playlists to Last.fm text

2008-01-27T23:22:00.007-06:00

I got tired of manually writing down the playlists so that Last.fm will link to them and preview them, so I made a quick little program that will convert a music playlist (.m3u) into text (Last.fm code) that Last.fm can link and also preview the song.

For example, it will convert this

#EXTINF:431,Rush - Working Man
D:\Classic rock\Rush\Rush - The Spirit of Radio - Greatest Hits\01.Working Man.mp3

into

1. [artist]Rush[/artist] - "[track artist=Rush]Working Man[/track]"

For an example of the result, see a journal post on my Last.fm profile.

DOWNLOAD HERE! (requires .NET 2.0)

Let me know if you find it useful. :)

Update 4/01/08: 0.2 - Added GUI with drag and drop and uploaded it to Google Code projects
Update 2/09/08: 0.1 - Fixed a bug.

last.fm
m3u to last.fm wiki code
playlist to last.fm text code
winamp playlist to last.fm code

Introduction

2008-01-27T23:06:00.001-06:00
This is a blog which I'll be updating with uncertain frequency but I'll be blogging about programming, software, technology and whatever else I can think of.

Temp Variable

Tutorial: Installing SQL Server Reporting Services for beginners

Tutorial: Licensing images on Flickr for use on Wikipedia

Converting video to the WebM format

Okkervil River - Golden Opportunities Mixtape download

Could not load file or assembly 'System.Web.Mvc' error

Converting an animated GIF to OGG Theora video

How to convert video to Theora and edit Theora videos

Which is the best ASP.NET MVC CMS? Feature comparison included.

Conclusion

Theora Video Joiner for Windows

Instructions for use

About

SourceForge or Google Code Project Hosting

vReveal review - the best video stabilizer

Conclusion

Other top video stabilizers

Finding freely licensed video content, such as creative commons videos

Convert with ffmpeg2theora context menu item

ffmpeg2theora 0.24 windows binary download - older versions

ffmpeg2theora arguments and parameters

nbtstat host not found - nbtstat problem

Context Menu item - Run with Mono

Unable to ping a computer on the network

Adobe InDesign - missing plugins Conditional Text.InDesignPlugin and WorldReady.InDesign

Wikipedia Flagged Revisions - Frequently Asked Questions

Top 50 most popular Wikipedia articles of 2009

The Roaring Edge - Wikipedia Beta and latest changes

Major changes for Wikipedia in the past year

B&F System BNFUSA - top dropshipper and top wholesaler with wholesale knives, wholesale jackets, wholesale handbags

How to add a program to run at startup in Ubuntu Linux Server edition

The B&F System, Inc. (BNFUSA) - wholesale knives, wholesale jackets, wholesale purses, wholesale cookware

Program to export or backup playlists in Winamp

Windows XP SP3 installation stuck while "Performing cleanup"

Sample files for every file format

Mozilla Firefox – open bookmarks in background tab

Hundred pushups routine

Xdrive issues

listFix - fix broken music playlists

Save an Excel chart as an image

save excel charts as pictures. excel graph save. excel plugin save chart as jpg. save graph as image excel. export charts as pictures

Mozilla Firefox 3 - Under reported features

Furl, Yahoo Bookmarks or Del.icio.us?

List of websites using Silverlight

GTKSharp Windows binary

Installing Mono 1.9.1 on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron

Silverlight and Firefox 3

Dev-C++ - can't debug

.NET - Drag and drop from explorer window Component

YouTube .NET API (C# wrapper) and Developer Key problem

YouTube .NET API

Developer Key problem

Firefox 4

Mix 08 - Silverlight 2 and Internet Explorer 8 download links

Prepacked Moonlight plugin extension

List of Mono tools

Mono, a look forward

Installing freeglut on Visual Studio 2008

Adobe Air = Blue Screen of Death

Mono 1.9: Release Notes.

VON# - Most Useful VS Feature No One Knows About

Convert m3u playlists to Last.fm text

Introduction