Splitting MPEGs On The Command Line

I was cleaning out the basement, and came across a box of old VHS tapes. Needless to say, they went in the go to the dumpster pile. Along with a VCR, an old video capture board, and a PIII. Then it occurred to me: hey, that's a video encoding system sitting in the garbage heap.

A couple hours later, everything was assembled, and I transferred my first tape. A problem, though: it was too much effort to get the file to start and end at the right place. I spent some time screwing with some of the worthless video editing software, when I found a couple posts that solved the problem.

And, yes, its a command line solution. Your GUIs are so over rated.

ffmpeg -vcodec mpeg2video -r 29.97 -b 2000k -ab 224k
  -i Cap00.mpg -ss 00:00:37 -t 2:06:30 jurassicPark.mpg

These settings will take an input file encoded at the cards native settings, and chop off everything before 37 seconds and after 2 hours (plus change). I used Mplayer to get the time values.

Norton AV Products Still Suck

I've always hated Norton products. McAfee is way more efficent. But, Comcast decided they wanted to switch the free AV product to Norton. They probably saved a nickle doing it. So, here's what happens when you use Norton (other than your machine running slow...)

I got this pop-up:Bad news. I ran a full scan. Nothing. The message returned. Reboot, update, disconnect from the network, scan, clean. The message returned.

For lack of any other option, I clicked "Get Help". Eventually, I was thrown into a chat session with an "analyst". After some discussion, he determined I was needed to upgrade my software from 3.x to 4.x, which seemed strange. Is he telling me that v3 is known to report bogus infections?He never said "yes, v3 has a bug," but he did say there was no virus, and the upgrade would stop the messages.

Suck.

Google Earth Browser Plugin

The Google Earth browser plugin is an interesting extension of Google Maps. You can now find a location on the map, click over to an satellite view, and then extend it into a 3-D model. For downtown Washington, DC, its similar to being in a massive multi-user domain (MMUD).

That would be a first person shooter, for the children in the audience... under 30.

The cool part is that you can see the automobiles on display inside the Verizon Center and the Wizards on the outside jumbo-tron. The detail is so good, you can make read the hours on the door of the Chipotle's restaurant.

What is strange is how much territory does not exist. Go one block north to Chinatown, and the arch is not there. There are entire blocks that are missing. So this got me thinking: What determines what shows up?

A few hints. The Verizon Center always has a giant movie poster, in the MUDD, its for a "The Heartbreak Kid" that came out in October of 2007. In Stree View, its GI Joe, which came out in August of 2009. This implies that Google Earth does not depend on Street View.

I'm afraid the system may depend on crowd sourcing. It is up to the community to model the buildings. This poses two problems. First: what if someone chooses to model the buildings wrong. Second: if they are expecting me to model my own house, it isn't going to happen.

Not only would it end up looking like an MC Escher print, but I just got too many other things to do. Nothing important mind, you. It not like I've got a life, or anything.

History of the US Moon Base

As you know, we are approaching the twentieth anniversary of man's permanent habitation of the moon. Yes, ever since President Reagan insisted America implement a moon colony by 1990, astronauts have lived at Moon Base. This Nasa site chronicals the designs for a permanent moon habitat of the decades. Unfortunately, you can't zoom in on the pictures.

This is apparently part of a series designed for High School students to teach the history of space exploration. The top level page includes a history of the shuttle and discussion of a Mars mission.

Password Change Policies Do Not Enhance Security

In another example of security through "because we say so," there is a recent study that indicates changing passwords does not enhance security. The premise of the argument is that if the bad guy's compromise an account, they will exploit it immediately, rather then hang on to a password for some future use.

Started Japanese, Ended American

There was a Japanese Street Festival in downtown, but it was waaaaay too crowded. So, I went to the National Portrait Gallery instead... Which is in Chinatown... Which has sushi bars... So I got better Japanese, for less, without the long lines.

Win.

Google Earth Vehicle Shoots Self... Sort Of

Ultra-geek time. I was on Google Maps Street View looking for the hot dog guy on the roof of Polock Johnny's in Baltimore. The sun was at just the right angle, and you can see the shadow of the Google Earth vehicle. Notice the periscope. Cool.


View Larger Map

Cherry Blossom Firworks Pictures

Not really, but pictures from Saturday evenings fireworks excursion.  Ah... no fireworks pictures. (I don't know how these got lost: they were suppose to post Saturday night.)

Cherry Blossom Fireworks Fail

I got lost on the way to watch the DC Cherry Blossom Festival Fireworks last night. I'm not sure its completely my fault... So did 10,000 other people.

The paper said the fireworks would be part of the music festival going on at the Southwest Water Front (A) at 7th and Maine. The crowd assumed it would be at the Tidal Basin, and collected on its shores (B).


The problem with the waterfront, is that it is highly developed, so there are few places to kickback away from the crowd. I decided I would watch from Potomac Park (C) and have a picnic.

To get to the park, I had to foot it in through the crowd from the Smithsonian Metro. I made a wrong turn, and ended up "on the wrong island" (D). The good news was no crowd. The bad news was trees and bridges obstructing the view.

I tried my Sprint PDA's navigation system-- it said I was at the Pentagon Lagoon.

Better luck next year.

OpenNebula- Red Hat Xen Node

For the record, if your are running Red Hat, consider making the move to KVM-- That is where they will be focusing their attentions. This is not to say that Xen is dead, since it is re-included in Fedora 12. Having said that, my test cluster is old hardware that won't support KVM, so I'm having to do my OpenNebula development on Xen.

To test Red Hat functionality, I needed to build a Xen node. I could have used CrapOS... I'm sorry that was a type... I meant to say: I could have used CentOS for this test, but we all know how stupid that would be.

What follows is a little black magic used only for testing. These are the steps needed to take an @base install on 5.5 and get Xen running. Since yum sometimes gets confused on this process, it is best done directly off the CD or a mounted image:

rpm -Uvh Server/kernel-xen-[0-9]*.rpm
rpm -Uvh Server/bridge-utils-[0-9]*.rpm
rpm -Uvh Server/xen-libs-[0-9]*.rpm
rpm -Uvh --nodeps Server/SDL-[0-9]*.rpm
rpm -Uvh VT/libvirt-[0-9]*.rpm
rpm -Uvh VT/libvirt-python-[0-9]*.rpm
rpm -Uvh VT/python-virtinst-[0-9]*.rpm
rpm -Uvh VT/xen-[0-9]*.rpm
sed -i "s/default=1/default=0/" /boot/grub/grub.conf
reboot

Note: the nodeps argument is to avoid complaints about sound drivers. Since we are building a cloud node, we don't care 'bout no stinkin' sound drivers.

Now, the dependencies for OneNebula:

yum install -y ruby xmlrpc

Unfortunately, there is one dependancy missing from the Red Hat disto, so we have to grab it from Fedora. Due to some glibc versioning issues, we go back to F8:

wget http://archive.fedoraproject.org/pub/archive/fedora/linux/updates/8/i386.newkey/xmlrpc-c-1.06.31-2.fc8.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh --nodeps xmlrpc-c-1.06.31-2.fc8.i386.rpm

And lets try Open Nebula:

rpm -Uvh one-1.4.0-1.i386.rpm
Preparing...   ########## [100%]
  1:one           ########## [100%]