Audio/video

• iTunes (+Quicktime): excellent music manager and it rips to MP3 really fast
• CDBurnerXP: for burning CDs, DVDs, ISO files
• Irfanview: image viewer, editor and converter – for people who think Photoshop is overkill
• Picasa: photograph workflow & archive manager (from Google)
• VLC Player: ultimate video player, very complete set of codecs
• ffmpeg with a GUI like GVC: video conversion: AVI, MOV, MPG, MP4, …
• Handbrake: will make a good MPEG4 of any DVD in one go

Internet

• Skype: for chat, phonecalls and SMSes with people far away
• Chrome, Firefox or Opera browser – personally I like Firefox less. Opera is solid and fast, Google Chrome is an interesting new kid on the block.
• FileZilla: FTP client
• Putty: SSH and telnet terminal
• EditPlus: customisable editor for text, HTML, CMD … that also works over FTP
• uTorrent: because sometimes you need to … get stuff, you know

Tools

• Google Pack: contains Picasa, Skype, Google Toolbar and a whole bunch of other useful programs
• Adobe PDF reader: for reading PDF documents, and everything is in PDF these days
• 7-Zip: compression/expansion of ZIP, RAR and 7z archives
• CutePDF with GhostScript: printing to a PDF file (also allows converting a PostScript PS/EPS file to PDF)
• UnixUtils: I’m a sucker for GAWK and WGET
• Nokia PCSuite: for synchro with my Nokia N91 (yes, it’s still my phone!)
• XAMPP: for developing with Apache/PERL/PHP/MySQL on Windows

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ID3.exe can do several things, of which I will just cite the things I actually used:

• it can obviously set ID3 tags in MP3 files (that is, ID3v1 and v2). The first time it adds ID3v2 tags which are stored in the beginning of the file (necessary when you need the info right when you start reading the file, like with streaming), the whole file has to be rewritten, but subsequent modifications are really fast.
  id3.exe -1 -2 -g [genre] -c "[Copyright notice]" -l "[Album name]" "%OUTPUT%"
• set the ID3 tags of one file to those of another. I needed this when I transcoded MP3 files to a lower bitrate with LAME. LAME does not copy the existing ID3 tags to the new file. So I used ID3.exe to just copy those from the source file.
  id3.exe -D %INPUT% -1 -2 "%OUTPUT%"
• Rename the file according to the MP3 tags. I had a big collection of MP3 files called “01 Track01″ without any MP3 tags. I first set the ID3 tags based upon the folder structure (the folder name was the Album name), and then renamed them to “[Artist name] – [Album name] - [Track N°].mp3″.
  id3.exe -2 -f "%%a - %%l - %%t.rbs" "%OUTPUT%"
• Id3 can also deduct album names, artist, song titles and track number from the complete filename + path.

This is the complete usage of the version I used:

id3 0.78 (2006080)
usage: id3 [-1 -2 -3] [OPTIONS] filespec ...
 -v             give verbose output
 -d             clear existing tag
 -t <title>     set tag fields
 -a <artist>
 -l <album>             (i'th matched `*' wildcard  = %1-%9,%0
 -n <tracknr>            path/file name/counters    = %p %f %x %X
 -y <year>               value of tag field in file = %t %a %l %n %y %g %c)
 -g <genre>
 -c <comment>
 -D <filename   duplicate tags read from filename
 -f <template>  rename files according to template
 -q <format>    print formatted string on standard output
 -m             match variables in filespec
 -R             search recursively
 -M             preserve modification time of files
 -V             print version info
Only on last selected tag type:
 -s <size>      set tag size
 -E             only write if tag already exists
 -u             update all standard fields
 -rTYPE         erase all `TYPE' frames
 -wTYPE <data>  write a `TYPE' frameReport bugs to <squell@alumina.nl>.

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MRTG

MRTG (Multi Router Traffic Grapher) is a tool to monitor the traffic load on network-links. It is widely used around the world to generate web pages containing images that provide a live visual representation of this traffic. MRTG is mainly a Swiss open-source product written by Tobias Oetiker from ETH Zurich with some help from others.

When used in its basic form (without RRDTOOL), it generates output like the following:

MRTG “API”

While MRTG was developed with network devices (routers) in mind, it can be used to show the trend of any numeric value over time. For that, it has a very simple input API: it expects 4 lines of text:

Line 1: current state of the first variable, normally 'incoming bytes count'
Line 2: current state of the second variable, normally 'outgoing bytes count'
Line 3: string (in any human readable format), telling the uptime of the target.
Line 4: string, telling the name of the target. (*)
So there’s maximum 2 variables, which should be the same order of magnitude (or the automatic scaling of the Y-axis will make the smaller one undistinguisable of 0). The uptime and name show up in the “at which time ‘rou-rz-gw.ethz.ch’ had been up for 160 days, 8:02:55.” in the header of the HTML page.

MRTG in XML

In this world of REST, XMLRPC and SOAP interfaces, this seems so limited. Let’s try to make an XML format that allows the following:

• it should minimally contain the four data lines cited above
• it should be possible to add any parameter that influences the MRTG result (HTML and/or image) so that the XML as such is enough to define the whole MRTG configuration

This could be a minimal implementation:

<MRTGresponse>
<Sensors   name="Second Life activity"   date="2007-01-15 22:45:55 GMT"   uptime="45 days, 5:55:12" >
<SensorI value="25334" name="# logged-in users " />
<SensorO value="36951" name="# Linden$ bought per hour" />
</Sensors>
</MRTGresponse>


And this could be a more extended example:

<MRTGresponse>
<Sensors
  name="Second Life activity"
  date="2007-01-15 22:45:55 GMT"
  timezone="GMT-4"
  uptime="45 days, 5:55:12"
  showgraphs="DWM"
  countertype="gauge"
  maxvalue="50000"
  refresh="3600" >
<SensorI
  value="25334"
  color="#FF6600"
  unit="user"
  name="# logged-in users " />
<SensorO
  value="36951"
  color="#66FF00"
  unit="L$/h"
  name="# Linden$ bought per hour" />
</Sensors>
</MRTGresponse>


This would allow a script to generate a fitting mrtg.conf configuration file from any reading of the data. The response is bigger than the simple 4 text lines, but in these days of cheap bandwidth and lots of CPU, that’s not really an issue. It’s also easy to convert the XML format into the 4 lines, if need be.

Anything I forgot?

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My web page designer will let you specify headers, footers, sidebars and let you add bogus content with an easy markup syntax. [text becomes a block of text, *text becomes a bullet, _text is a link … The goal is that anyone, without any knowledge of HTML, can make a rudimentary page layout and say: see that’s what I want. I also generate ‘pretty’ URLs in the RubyOnRails syntax (list/edit/new/…).

It’s helped me, it might help you! Any remarks are welcome!

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I have never been a big believer in astrology. I am not convinced the location of stars at the moment of your birth is that important to your personality. I’m a Virgo, but I don’t feel that defines me that much. But some years ago I discovered a ‘labeling’ system that was based on the actual behaviour of a person, whose result was much more significant: the (Jung) Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI):

According to Jung’s typology all people can be classified using three criteria. These criteria are: Extraversion/Introversion – Sensing/Intuition – Thinking/Feeling
Isabel Briggs-Myers added a fourth criterion: Judging/Perceiving
from humanmetrics.com

A good explanation of each criterium is:

1. Where, primarily, do you prefer to direct your energy?

If you prefer to direct your energy to deal with people, things, situations, or “the outer world”, then your preference is for Extraversion. This is denoted by the letter “E”.

If you prefer to direct your energy to deal with ideas, information, explanations or beliefs, or “the inner world”, then your preference is for Introversion. This is denoted by the letter “I”.

2. How do you prefer to process information?

If you prefer to deal with facts, what you know, to have clarity, or to describe what you see, then your preference is for Sensing. This is denoted by the letter “S”.

If you prefer to deal with ideas, look into the unknown, to generate new possibilities or to anticipate what isn’t obvious, then your preference is for Intuition. This is denoted by the letter “N” (the letter I has already been used for Introversion).

3. How do you prefer to make decisions?

If you prefer to decide on the basis of objective logic, using an analytic and detached approach, then your preference is for Thinking. This is denoted by the letter “T”.

If you prefer to decide using values and/or personal beliefs, on the basis of what you believe is important or what you or others care about, then your preference is for Feeling. This is denoted by the letter “F”.

4. How do you prefer to organise your life?

If you prefer your life to be planned, stable and organised then your preference is for Judging (not to be confused with ‘Judgemental’, which is quite different). This is denoted by the letter “J”.

If you prefer to go with the flow, to maintain flexibility and respond to things as they arise, then your preference is for Perception. This is denoted by the letter “P”.

from teamtechnology

If, for each of these four criteria/dimensions, you choose one of the possibilities, you end up with a four-letter code that corresponds with one of 16 prototypes (e.g. INTJ, ESFP). Since the code itself doesn’t say much, some researchers have come up with a title for each of those categories. One of the better lists is that of personalitypage.com:

Or if you want to see some faces on those types (mostly actresses):

Keirsey uses the same letters but they sometimes have a different meaning.

You’re my type

When I do a test, I always end up falling into the ENFP category. Now what does that mean?

• Personalitypage: ENFPs are warm, enthusiastic people, typically very bright and full of potential. They live in the world of possibilities, and can become very passionate and excited about things. Their enthusiasm lends them the ability to inspire and motivate others, more so than we see in other types. They can talk their way in or out of anything. They love life, seeing it as a special gift, and strive to make the most out of it.
• Typelogic: ENFPs are pleasant, easygoing, and usually fun to work with. They come up with great ideas, and are a major asset in brainstorming sessions. Followthrough tends to be a problem, however; they tend to get bored quickly, especially if a newer, more interesting project comes along. They also tend to be procrastinators, both about meeting hard deadlines and about performing any small, uninteresting tasks that they’ve been assigned. ENFPs are at their most useful when working in a group with a J or two to take up the slack
• Teamtechnology: likes looking at information from a global viewpoint, spotting patterns and relationships, that lead to an understanding of the key issues – Focuses more on possibilities for the future than the here-and-now – Enjoys change, challenge, and variety – Try ideas out, to explore new possibilities and discover, by experience, which ones work – Change procedures to see if any improvement can be made, rather than just operate them – Be interested in evolutionary development, but with an eye on the strategy – Be more interested in exploring ideas than bringing them to closure
• Personalitytype: People of this type tend to be: enthusiastic, talkative, and outgoing; clever, curious, and playful; deeply caring, sensitive, and gentle; highly innovative, creative, optimistic, and unique; adaptable and resourceful but sometimes disorganized
• Keirsey: The Champion Idealists (used to be called ‘Advocates’) are abstract in thought and speech, cooperative in accomplishing their aims, and informative and expressive when relating with others. For Champions, nothing occurs which does not have some deep ethical significance, and this, coupled with their uncanny sense of the motivations of others, gives them a talent for seeing life as an exciting drama, pregnant with possibilities for both good and evil. This type is found in only about 3 percent of the general population, but they have great influence because of their extraordinary impact on others.
• lifexplore: ENFPs are initiators of change who are keenly perceptive of possibilities, and who energize and stimulate through their contagious enthusiasm. They prefer the start-up phase of a project or relationship, and are tireless in the pursuit of new-found interests. ENFPs are able to anticipate the needs of others and to offer them needed help and appreciation. They bring zest, joy, liveliness, and fun to all aspects of their lives. They are at their best in situations that are fluid and changing, and that allow them to express their creativity and use their charisma.
• CAPT: For ENFPs the dominant quality in their lives is their attention to the outer world of possibilities; they are excited by continuous involvement in anything new, whether it be new ideas, new people, or new activities. Though ENFPs thrive on what is possible and what is new, they also experience a deep concern for people as well. Thus, they are especially interested in possibilities for people. ENFPs are typically energetic, enthusiastic people who lead spontaneous and adaptable lives.

Of course I only list the stuff here that I agree with/enjoy hearing. You could tell me about the flaws of ENFPs, but I’m a optimist: apparently the only thing I need to compensate for those is an INTJ or INFJ partner. That’s a Scientist or a Protector. Evangeline Lilly? Wouldn’t kick her out of bed for eating crackers.

On-line tests

You can test for your Myers-Briggs type on-line and for free. Depending on how much time you want to spend:

• my own MBTI wizard: also shows distribution and relationships between types
• The short 4-question I-only-have-5-minutes-to-spare Myers-Briggs Type Indicator: describes for each dimension the two extremes and lets you pick one of them.
• The long ‘Jung Typology’ test: 72 Yes/No questions (type “You feel involved when watching TV soaps”) that give you not only your 4-letter code, but also the relative strength of each (e.g. you might be not really introverted but neither extraverted)
• One in French and Italian via Typelogic

Criticism

Not everyone is that pleased with the practice of using MBTI to analyze people:

As noted above, the Myers-Briggs^TM instrument generates sixteen distinct personality profiles based on which side of the four scales one tends toward. Technically, the instrument is not supposed to be used to spew out personality profiles and pigeonhole people, but the temptation to do so seems irresistible.
from skepdic.com

I can only say from experience: I have taken the 72-question test a couple of times during the last 4 years, and I have always gotten ENFP as an answer, a result that I find fairly accurate. This could be because I have pretty consistent behaviour, or because of the Forer effect. A lot of my friends turn out to be ENFP too. I just consider MBTI to be one way of understanding your own behaviour and how you tend to react under certain conditions.

PS: The method is called Myers-Briggs, but the lady’s name is Briggs-Myers. I just used Google Battle to decide on the term to use.

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I have been using the old version for quite a time already (mainly for Technorati stats), but now it even includes Alexa ranking, Egosurf, BlogPulse, -Digger, -Lines, -Shares, Google/Blogger, Sphere and Icerocket. Try it out and investigate that blog ego!

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You would use it in this way: say you want to promote a podcast client application for Windows (like the new Doppler 3.0).

• you would use the 1st box to list ‘podcast’ and all its synonyms:
  podcast, audioblog, mp3 blog
• you would use the 2nd box to list all synonyms for ‘client’
  client, podcatcher, aggregator, downloader, viewer
• you could use the 3rd box to list the versions of Windows your software runs on:
  Windows 2000 (or Win2k), Windows XP (or WinXP), Windows 2003 (or Win2003)

Combining everything together gives you a list of 90 keyphrases: Adsense keywords for a Windows podcast client. You can even add the “phrase matching” or [exact matching] options (see adwords.google.com for more info).

You can also look up suggestions for new keywords through tools from Google Adsense and Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture). A nice addition to my toolbox!

Technorati: adsense – marketing

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You solve a Sudoku puzzle by filling in numbers (1-9) in a 9×9 square.

• Rule 1: every row should contain ALL 9 numbers, and no number can occur more than once.
• Rule 2: every column should contain ALL 9 numbers, and no number can occur more than once.
• Rule 3: every 3×3 square should contain ALL 9 numbers, and no number can occur more than once.

(see also sudoku.com)

De Morgen (Belgian quality newspaper) has just started printing such puzzles in every issue, and they are an addictive hobby. Here they are: the EASY, MEDIUM and ADVANCED one for Monday June 6, 2005.

My Helper just checks the 3 rules above and will indicate which cells can easily be filled in because there is only 1 option left. Yes, it can be kind of a spoiler, so only use it to get out of a deadlock, or if you’re in a hurry, or to show off.

The more difficult puzzles will require you to cunningly plot your strategy 2 or 3 steps ahead, which my Helper page will not do or help you with. If you want to spoil even these brain gymnastics, check Sudoku Solver by Logic

For those of you who like a client program that can work off-line, check Sudoku Solver (Windows – free).

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the CD-ROM drive speed:

the original CD audio specification required a constant data rate. This was implemented by running the CD at 500 rpm for the first/inner tracks on the CD (ø 48mm) and at 200 rpm for the outer tracks (ø 118mm). If the CD would have been played at a constant 500 rpm, the data rate at the end would have been 500/200 = 2,5X. (cf Devnulled: Ripping speed)

With CD-ROM the data should be delivered as fast as possible. So the rotation speed is turned up as much as possible. The physical boundaries are the vibrations and the centrifugal forces that occur at high speeds. Maxwell claims the maximum safe speed is 48X. Since the “48X” is marketing speak, this speed is only obtained at the outer border of the CD: this means that the rotation speed would be 48 x 200 = 9200 rpm. Some CDs seem to explode above 10.000 rpm.

To convert this speed into a data rate: at 9200 rpm, the outer tracks would deliver 48x the data rate of an audio CD: 67,74 Mbps or 8.47 MB/s. The first tracks, at ø 48mm, deliver data 2,5 times slower: 27,52 Mbps or 3,44 MB/s.

Real-life tests of a whole bunch of drives on DAE speed results.

For the exact sizes: CD-R/CD-RW technical specifications

the bus speeds:

the CD-ROM drive is connected to the PC by a ATAPI, SCSI, FireWire or USB connection. In theory there could also be a network in between (e.g. when using a Ethernet connected CD Jukebox).

The slowest ATA-33 has a theoretical max throughput of 33MB/s. Most modern SCSIs go above 20MB/s and FireWire gives 50 MB/s. So they would not be the bottleneck in the ripping process.

USB1.1 is limited to 1,5 MB/s (in practice even lower). Most common networks would be a bottleneck too (even Fast Ethernet at a theoretical 12,5 MB/s since 7MB/s would be more of a realistic top rate in practice, certainly if the network is used for other stuff too. Same thing with WiFi standards: 802.11g’s advertised “54Mbps” will in real life never translate in an actual 6,75MB/s throughput.

the CPU speed:

encoding raw audio data to MP3 is CPU intensive. Main parameter will be the clock speed – which I would expect to scale linearly: a 2GHz processor does it twice as fast as a 1GHz. Extra influences: brand of processor (Intel/AMD), model (Celeron/Pentium4/Athlon/Athlon64), number of processors (or HyperThreading). Also, the software you use to encode (LAME/GOGO/RealPlayer/Windows Media Player/…) will have an impact.

Some data can be found on GamePC.com: an Intel P4 3.06 GHz encodes 200MB of raw data info 160 kbps MP3 in 57 seconds: 3,5 MB/s or 20X. The AMD AthlonXP 2700+: 3,28 MB/s or 18.6. More info on GamePC.com confirms our hunch that performance scales linearly with clock speed. For the Pentium4: (1,15 MB/s) per GHz or 6,5X per GHz.

the MP3 bitrate:

the above numbers are for 160 kbps, but what with 192 kbps and 64 kbps? Is encoding faster or slower? I found no data on the net, and I haven’t tested it myself. So no hunch here. Also, the output of the encoding process, even at a very high quality 320kbps is largely within the capacity of any output, even Bluetooth, god forbid. So I don’t take that parameter into account.

So in the following situation:

• a 24X CD-ROM drive
• a Pentium 4 2,8GHz processor
• ripping with the LAME encoder to 160 kbps

Your ripping will start at about 9,8X and speed up until your CPU is saturated at 18,2X. Which gives the graphic at the right. Now there’s a rule of fist.

Remark: looking at the benchmarks, adding a second processor (or HyperThreading) does not enhance the ripping speed (probably since the MP3 encoding code does not do parallelisation). But if you have 2 CPU’s, only one CPU will go to 100% and you keep some breathing room while your PC is creating the MP3s.

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In 1999, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) published Amendment 2 to “IEC 60027-2: Letter symbols to be used in electrical technology – Part 2: Telecommunications and electronics”;. This standard, which had been approved in 1998, introduced the prefixes kibi-, mebi-, gibi-, tebi-, pebi-, exbi-, to be used in specifying binary multiples of a quantity. The names come from the first two letters of the original SI prefixes followed by bi which is short for “binary”. It also clarifies that, from the point of view of the IEC, the SI prefixes only have their base-10 meaning and never have a base-2 meaning.
(from en.wikipedia.org)

So this is the correct usage for file, disk, memory size:

The problem is: the industry has not adopted these standards. If Windows shows the size of a disk, it converts 28.735.078.400 bytes to “26.7 GB”. It should be either 28.7 GB, or 26.7 GiB. Remember the 1.44MB floppy? It actually never existed: it is either 1.40MiB or 1.47MB.

On September 18 2003 Reuters has reported that Apple, Dell, Gateway, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba have been sued in a class-action suit in Los Angeles Superior Court for “deceiving” the true capacity of their hard drives. This of course was due to ambiguity of “GB” when used by software and hardware vendors. This precedent might prompt Apple to adapt binary prefixes in its Mac OS, as well as other companies to put pressure on Microsoft to adapt them in its Windows operating systems.
from members.optus.net

One could argue: people have always used the MB = 1024*1024 for disk drives, why change now? Well, clarity is a good reason, and unambiguity. NASA lost the Mars Orbiter because engineers had mixed metric speed (km/h) with English speed (mi/h). Don’t even get me started on miles per gallon.

So: a disk of 160GB should have 160.000.000.000 bytes. And it is about 150GiB. Get over it.

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The one most sites point to is the Kalsey.com buttonmaker, but it does not support the usage of image files. You still can make nice buttons like:

It took me a while longer to find Luca Zappa’s Brilliant Button Maker. It allows the usage of jpg/gif/png files to include in the button. With this one, I could re-use Webjay’s logo to create:

And a vanity button with my Ibanez EDC-705:

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