07.08.09
Posted in Internet at 11:26 by dalore
Got the following spam mail:
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As you can see it’s perfect for a game of madlibs.
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11.04.08
Posted in programming at 13:24 by dalore
I wrote a simple bash script that would let me convert my anime DVDs to a digital file for ease of use. Now in the past I’ve used tools like nandub and gordian knot to create high quality xvids from DVDs on windows. This time I wanted some better and on Linux.
I recently heard about a new container format called Matroska, that has a few new features over the avi container. Some of the features are:
- Complete open format
- Ability to store multiple audio tracks (anime typically comes in both english and japanese, a purist would watch it in japanese, but I wanted the option)
- Soft subtitles (with avi you could burn in the subtitles or provide it as a separate file, but with matroska you have the option of turning it off and on and having it all in 1 file)
- Chapter support (say you want to skip the beginning credits without having to fastforward to the exact spot, with chapters you can just say next chapter and it starts playing for the marker as specificed and since most DVDs comes with chapters I didn’t want to lose this information
Now I could have gone with the OGG but Matroska is superior is features and so decided to go with that.
For the video codec I chose to go with the latest high quality standard of H.264 (otherwise known as MPEG-4 AVC, not to be confused with MPEG-4 SP/ASP which is what is used in xvid/dvix etc). There is an open source library for encoding H.264 called x264, and as of August 2008, x264 implements more H.264 features than any other encoder. It also has won many a codec shoot-out competition.
As for the audio codec, I chose not to do any transcoding of the audio (as one knows everytime lossy transcoding is done, artifacts can be introduced and quality is lost). I will just take the audio tracks (which are usually AC3), and just put them in the container as is.
Here is my simple bash script (note it doesn’t do any error checking), I have called it dvd2mkv:
#!/bin/bash
TRACK=$1
MOVIE_TITLE=$2
BITRATE=$3
DVDDEV=$4
RIPPATH=.
SID=0
HEXSID=0x2${SID}
AID1=128
AID2=129
OUTFILE=${RIPPATH}/${MOVIE_TITLE}.ac3.mkv
DEF_LANG=eng
AID2_LANG=jpn
if [ -z "$MOVIE_TITLE" ] ; then
echo "USAGE: $0 trackno title [bitrate] [dvddev]"
echo "EXAMPLE: $0 2 elfien.lied.s01e01 2000 /dev/dvd"
echo "bitrate defaults to 2000"
echo "dvddev defaults to /mnt/dvd"
exit 1
fi
if [ -z "$BITRATE" ] ; then
BITRATE=2000
fi
if [ -z "$DVDDEV" ] ; then
DVDDEV=/mnt/dvd
fi
VIDEO_FPS=`lsdvd -x -t ${TRACK} ${DVDDEV} | grep FPS | cut -f6 -d' ' | cut -f1 -d,`
mplayer dvd://${TRACK} -dumpstream -dumpfile ${RIPPATH}/movie.vob -dvd-device ${DVDDEV}
dvdxchap -t ${TRACK} ${DVDDEV} > ${RIPPATH}/chapters.txt
cp ${DVDDEV}/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_0.IFO ${RIPPATH}/
tccat -i ${RIPPATH}/movie.vob -L | tcextract -x ps1 -t vob -a ${HEXSID} > ${RIPPATH}/subs-${SID}
subtitle2vobsub -o ${RIPPATH}/vobsubs -i ${RIPPATH}/VTS_01_0.IFO -a ${SID} < ${RIPPATH}/subs-${SID}
mplayer ${RIPPATH}/movie.vob -aid ${AID1} -dumpaudio -dumpfile ${RIPPATH}/audio${AID1}.ac3
mplayer ${RIPPATH}/movie.vob -aid ${AID2} -dumpaudio -dumpfile ${RIPPATH}/audio${AID2}.ac3
mencoder ${RIPPATH}/movie.vob -vf pullup,softskip,harddup -nosound -ovc x264 -x264encopts bitrate=${BITRATE}:subq=1:bframes=3:b_pyramid:weight_b:turbo=1:threads=auto:pass=1 -of rawvideo -o /dev/null
mencoder ${RIPPATH}/movie.vob -vf pullup,softskip,harddup -nosound -ovc x264 -x264encopts bitrate=${BITRATE}:subq=5:8x8dct:frameref=2:bframes=3:b_pyramid:weight_b:threads=auto:pass=2 -of rawvideo -o ${RIPPATH}/movie.264
AID_CMD="${RIPPATH}/audio${AID1}.ac3"
if [ -s "${RIPPATH}/audio${AID2}.ac3" ] ; then
AID_CMD="${AID_CMD} --language 0:${AID2_LANG} ${RIPPATH}/audio${AID2}.ac3"
fi
mkvmerge --title "${MOVIE_TITLE}" --default-language ${DEF_LANG} -o ${OUTFILE} --default-duration 0:${VIDEO_FPS}fps --chapters ${RIPPATH}/chapters.txt ${RIPPATH}/movie.264 ${AID_CMD} vobsubs.idx
# cleanup
rm -rf movie.vob chapters.txt VTS_01_0.IFO vobsubs.sub vobsubs.idx subs-${SID} audio${AID1}.ac3 audio${AID2}.ac3 divx2pass.log movie.264
Basically you run it by giving it the required arguments of the track number and the title you would like for it (note it will automatically prepend .ac3.mkv to your title when saving the file). It will automatically find out the FPS of the track (important as it can be PAL or NTSC which are different framerates). It will then dump the vob from the dvd as well as copying the chapters to a text file for use later and copying some other necessary files (like the IFO). It will then rip out 2 audio tracks, the first is usually english and the second japanese (the script assumes and labels them accordingly), but it could be any language. It then encodes the video using x264 with a two-pass encoder. Which means encoding it quickly and temporarily a first time to get information to help it encode better the second time round. Then it merges all these components into a single mkv file and cleans up after itself.
Now what track number do I give it you ask? Well to find that out use the lsdvd command. It will give you the length of each track and using that you can determine which track you want. If you have a dvd of anime which contains a few episodes there should be a few roughly around the same size, they are the ones you want. If your dvd is a movie, there should be one big one. There are always a few other smaller tracks that contain stuff like previews, extra content etc. Feel free to rip/ignore those at your leisure.
Now the other extra optional arguments are bitrate and device. The bitrate if not given is set to 2000 which is fairly high for a anime dvd. Setting it higher acheives a higher quality rip but at the expense of file size. Of course one cannot make a higher quality rip then the source material. To encode a dvd movie to a size of 1 cd, the average bitrate would be 860. The bitrate of 2000 is reasonably high quality for a DVD rip, but for HD content one would most likely go higher (but since this script doesn’t support ripping from blueray/hddvd, its a moot point).
The device argument is used for when your dvd is not at the default place for linux. One common method is to have an iso file which you mount on the loopback and then you can specify that mount point as the device. Or maybe someone has done a straight file copy of the dvd to a folder, then that folder can be your device argument.
The list of free software packages used (which could be installed by your package management system, such as apt-get, or installed from source):
If I have missed anything, or anyone can offer improvements, please feel free to comment.
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10.01.08
Posted in programming at 15:11 by dalore
Recently I did an upgrade of eclipse within eclipse using the “software updates” feature as well as adding some packages like svn and coldfusion for eclipse. When I restarted I ran into a small issue, it wouldn’t start.
The error message I kept getting was
the eclipse executable launcher was unable to locate its companion shared library
Now googling error messages normally shows someone whose experienced it and a solution, not in this case.
Digging around I found the the eclipse binary in:
/Applications/eclipse/Eclipse.app/Contents/MacOS
There is a file called eclipse and an eclipse.ini. Running this binary gave me this error:
./eclipse
dlopen(../../../plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.carbon.macosx_1.0.100.v20080509-1800, 2): image not found
Indeed I verified that such a file no longer existed, I did notice something similarly named. I edited the eclipse.ini file and replaced it:
../../../plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.carbon.macosx_1.0.101.R34x_v20080731
It then started up as normal.
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06.13.08
Posted in programming at 16:10 by dalore
Using a combination of logrotate, cron and mysqldump one can easily create a backup solution that does daily and monthly backups.
First I’d recommend setting up a mysql user that has mysqldump privileges only, in my case I created one called backup and it was only accessiable by localhost. I didn’t put a password on it. Also create a directory for your backups to go in, in my case I used /var/backups/mysql/
Create a shell script in /etc/cron.daily to be run every day. I called mine mysqldump.daily and don’t forget to chmod +x it. Here is the contents:
#!/bin/bash
DEST=/var/backups/mysql/daily.dump
mysqldump --all-database -u backup > $DEST
For the monthly, create a similar file in /etc/cron.monthly/mysqldump.monthly
#!/bin/bash
DEST=/var/backups/mysql/monthly.dump
mysqldump --all-database -u backup > $DEST
Test it out by executing them at the command line. It should create the daily.dump and monthly.dump file, verify they exist and filled with your data. You can fine tune the dump command to be just the databases your interested in, but I wanted to do all of them.
To make it rotate so you get to keep the last 7 backups for daily and 6 backups for monthly, create a logrotate configuration file in /etc/logrotate.d/mysqldump
/var/backups/mysql/daily.dump {
daily
rotate 8
compress
missingok
}
/var/backups/mysql/monthly.dump {
monthly
rotate 7
compress
missingok
}
This will rotate the daily.dump file every day keeping 8 days worth, and the monthly.dump every month keeping 7 months worth.
Test it out by running logrotate in verbose and force mode:
logrotate -fv /etc/logrotate.d/mysqldump
You should see the backups being gzipped and rotated as per your schedule. Now if that works there is nothing else to do as putting the files in the specified directories will cause them to be executed at the correct times. Good luck!
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05.19.08
Posted in programming at 23:51 by dalore
A little code tidbit, how to loop through dates a day at a time, can easily be modifed for other time periods but this is all I needed:
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use Date::Calc qw(Add_Delta_Days Delta_Days);
my @date = (2008, 1, 1);
my @enddate = (2009, 1, 1);
while (Delta_Days(@date, @enddate) >= 0)
{
print "$date[0]-$date[1]-$date[2]\n";
#... do stuff
# move to next day
@date = Add_Delta_Days(@date, 1);
}
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05.12.08
Posted in Shopping, programming at 23:01 by dalore
I just wrote my first python program. It checks a given ASIN to see if amazon has it in stock.
#!/usr/bin/python
import sys
import urllib
AWSAccessKeyId = "removed"
AmazonMerchantId = "A3P5ROKL5A1OLE"
def checkStock(asin):
try:
fh = urllib.urlopen("http://ecs.amazonaws.co.uk/onca/xml?Service=AWSECommerceService&AWSAccessKeyId="+AWSAccessKeyId+"&Operation=ItemLookup&ItemId="+asin+"&ResponseGroup=OfferFull&Version=2008-04-07")
except:
print "fail"
return -1
page = fh.read()
fh.close()
found = page.find(AmazonMerchantId)
return found != -1
try:
asin = sys.argv[1]
except:
print "Usage: " + sys.argv[0] + " asin"
else:
if checkStock(asin):
print "in stock"
else:
print "not in stock"
You of course need to sign up to amazon webservices and insert your own AWS access key.
Sample output:
# Mario Kart (Wii)
./stockcheck.py B000XJNTNS
not in stock
# Nintendo Wii Console
./stockcheck.py B0007UATDG
in stock
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04.05.08
Posted in Stuff at 15:00 by dalore
I just want to thank the nameless somebody who sent us some chocolate truffles. They were addressed to me but to another flat, but somehow (probably thanks to the building managers) it got put in my mailbox.
It was a small unassuming, no brands or labels, cardboad box. Kind of like a jewellery box for a necklace. Inside was 9 balls of tasty goodness, of 3 varieties, white (my fav) and 2 other chocolate types.
I was a bit hesitant at first, what if they were poisoned, but risked it anwyay and ate them. They were good.
Would you eat unknown food sent to your house?
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07.30.07
Posted in Internet, Marketing at 18:42 by dalore
Alot of people have been asking me for tips on this adwords thing now that they are noticing I’m making £1000 a month recurring with no extra effort besides the initial start.
Well do you think I’ll just give that info away for free seeing as I had to pay for it (both with time and ad clicks)? Shall I teach others for free and dilute my earnings? What do you think? Not likely!
Instead I’ll recommend an ebook (which you can buy and in full disclaimer, yes I recieve a kickback, just to make it fair). Well recently I thought I try one of these books that tell you how to do it, see if I could learn anything new and I settled on Adwords 180. I pretty much knew everything in it, but it is a great blueprint for those just starting out and I highly recommend it to my newbie competitors.
I for one welcome the new adwords overlords!
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06.04.07
Posted in Gambling at 20:17 by dalore
I recently got emailed this question:
If 1:1 odds are “even odds,” it means that your horse has a 1-in-2 chance of
winning. 4:1 odds are the odds when your horse has a 1-in-5 chance of
winning. In popular culture/common usage, this would be worse than even
odds. Is the usage of the terms “better than even” and “worse than even”
different in gambling?
Most people make the classic mistake of thinking the odds on display are the odds that horse (or animal/event) will win. When in reality it’s the odds that the bookie will pay out on, which has a small correlation to, but it isn’t, the odds of the horse winning.
Now to explain why “better” means the way it is look at it from a gamblers perspective (rather then a statistician). (Using the odds provided above) If I was to put down £10 and the odds were 1:1 (evens), I would win a profit of £10. Now if the same horse was paying 4:1 (5-to-1) and it came in, I would win a profit of £40. From this, one can easily see why one is “better” then the other, it is because you win more money, which is why you made the bet in the first place.
As more people bet on a particular horse, a bookmaker moves the odds as to cover his books (so he pays out less if it does win). Now if the odds were representative of a probability, then they souldn’t move at all (baring some accident to the horse). This shows clearly that bookmaker odds have nothing to do with the chance of a horse winning (which in it self, would be a very difficult thing to measure), but entirely on a combination of how many people the bookmaker thinks will take this bet, and opposing bets (and a bit of profit for themselves).
All though back to the small correlation I mentioned earlier, what tends to happen in a free market is that the odds of paying tend to drift towards the true probability odds (or more likely a global perception of the true odds), as more and more people make a bet, influencing the setting of the odds. This is the free market in action, a giant supercomputer (a living, giant computer with us as the circuits) that can calculate a true probabilty that would in otherwise be very difficult to calculate. Let’s just hope there is no interstellar bypass that needs to be built 
So continuing the lesson, to make money at gambling, it’s NOT about picking the winner (all though that helps), it’s all about the relationship of the true odds to the payout odds. If you can consistently make bets where the odds of paying out are better (pay out more), then the true odds of the event, then over time (in theory) you will come out ahead. The way to do this is to know more then the bookmaker.
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01.19.07
Posted in Gambling at 20:33 by dalore
With two massive Premiership clashes set to explode into life at the weekend, the big four will all be looking for victories which may well prove vital come the end of the season.
Chelsea will be looking to put all the recent off field speculation behind them and claw back ground on Man Utd when they visit Liverpool in the live game on Saturday.
Chelsea will also have one eye on Sunday’s live clash, where they hope Arsenal do them a favour when they host leaders Manchester Utd at the Emirates Stadium.
Theres also loads of other football matches on. Thi s means there is lots of gambling action available, especially with free bets.
Ladbrokes has a special £50 free bet on Saturday for newcomers, which would be ideal for taking advantage of with matched betting.
Or otherwise check out the Free Bets Guide site for other offers.
Good Luck!
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