Kedar's Log, Stardate 2010

Received Netflix DVD for Wii yesterday.. Details here.

I never thought I would even consider a phone other than the iPhone. I went from the 1st Gen iPhone to the 3GS mainly because my son and I together killed the 1st Gen in a toilet

Once the love affair settled down, I started developing Apps for iPhone and I saw a new world opening up for my programming skills – the world of mobile app development…

Read the actual technical comparison on my tech blog : http://blog.softricks.com/apple-should-be-afraid

Please try, pleeease try.. you need to believe in it.. you can do it.. your family needs you.. your friend needs you.. I, who fed you everyday with power, need you.. I took you places, never left you alone, through thick and thin, we were inseparable, on the breakfast table, in the bedroom, at work, in meetings, while playing with my son, on the Tennis courts, in restaurants, outside the trial rooms in shopping malls, at the airports, in the car, out in traffic jams, at the salon, in grocery stores, in doctor’s waiting rooms, .. you were always the last one to say Goodnight to me.. we were so much in harmony, so much in sync, so together.. and yet.. you forsake me now..

I know I let you down when I fed you power, even when you were still wet from inside after your tragic fall into the bathtub from my son’s hands.. but I promise, I have learned my lesson.. A scalpel is on its way in mail so that I can open you up and try to operate on you.. but I ain’t no doctor, and I don’t wanna send you to one, ‘coz I fear they will just kill you and tell me to get a new one..

so please wake up, and rise from your coma, like a Phoenix.. I patiently await your resurrection….. o’ my dear iPhone!! sigh..

Trying to type in ‘Marathi‘ (my native Indian Language) here:

मराठी पोस्ट

This wasn’t working for me earlier and I completely scrapped and rebuilt my blog just for this. Before taking such a drastic step, I did basically try some of those “migrate WP db to utf8″ scripts, read scores of documents on the web related to this, tried changing the MySQL db, tables and column collation to utf8 manually, messed around with wp-config.php, but all I got was ????? in the post body (post title was working fine and the values stored in the table were fine too when I checked from phpMyAdmin!).

So finally I made a copy of whatever I wanted from wp-content/ (plugins, themes, gallery) and deleted WordPress, exported all the data from WP tables to SQL, dropped the db, created a new one, installed latest version of WordPress from the actual download (and not from Dreamhost’s One click installs), ran the installation, set the options as they were before, restored plugins, themes and NEXTGen gallery and finally imported the table data one by one taking while into account a couple of dropped fields (wp_posts.post_category and wp_links.link_category) into the new WordPress tables.

And here I am, with UTF8 characters working for me just fine and most of blog is working as desired.. Definitely not a task for the faint-hearted!

My technical notes finally found a permanent place. I have had this Tech Blog since 2003, but I did not work on it regularly. I recently resurrected it and moved it from Blogger to WordPress hosted on blog.softricks.com domain.

So here you go – http://blog.softricks.com is where my technical blog will actively reside.

I will still post some of my thoughts here on Technology in general – some examples of these are my posts on Windows vs Mac here – “Lifetime Change” and here – “Mac vs Windows.. the War begins” and here – “I broke up with my new ‘girlfriend’!!“. But the real technical discussions (like all kinds of Step-by-Step instructions etc) will be on this Tech Blog. So go check it out if you are technically minded.

I download a lot of songs. I am no position to brag about having the largest collection of songs, because I really don’t have the largest collection by any standards. Right now, I only have 535 MP3s – some Hindi, some English, a few Marathi songs and Bhajans and a handful of Marathi Stand-up comedy mp3s. Now I am a fanatic when it comes to organizing things! So I have created quite a few playlists such as Old, 70s, 80s, 90s, 200x, New Songs, Fresh, Dance, Disco, Marathi, etc to organize my audio collection.

Here is what I have been doing recently to keep a good backup of my music on an external drive and have it in the same organized manner as the way I am used to having on my iPhone.

Exporting to directories:

I don’t like the way iTunes organizes the physical files because it categorizes by the Artist and then the Album. Sometimes the ID3 tags contain all kinds of crap, and that creates strange directories in your iTunes Music folder. So there are 2 ways in which you can avoid this -

1. Fix the ID3 tags before you import the file into iTunes – I use Mp3tag (http://www.mp3tag.de/en/) and Audio Shell Mp3 Shell Extension (http://www.softpointer.com/AudioShell.htm) for this. I clean up all ID3 tags to my liking using these tools before I import the file into iTunes. But this just ensures that you don’t have weird directory names. iTunes will still organizes by Artist and Album – which doesn’t work for me.

2. You could use an exporter that can export the PLAYLISTS to physical directories. Now I did not find one that did that. So I wrote my own (iTunesXP). This will soon be available from my site – Softricks.com.

Organizing files into Playlists:

Prior to this, I used to drag the mp3s by hand into appropriate playlists.

Today, I thought about setting the ID3 tag Genre as the name of the playlist and making all playlists Smartlists that look for certain strings in the Genre. What if a song is in 2 playlists? Well, use comma separated names in the genre. The Smartlist can say – where Genre contains “xyz”.

More..

I started downloading some relevant Artwork for every song in my collection. I know it is a bit too much.. but I kinda’ like to see the artwork whenever a song is playing on my iPhone rather than have a blank space.

I realized that iTunes allows for mass updating various ID3 fields. Many downloads come with some junk in the “Comments” field or “Lyrics” field. If you select all songs and do “Get Info” in iTunes, you can, say, blank out “Comments” field for all of them at once!

I know it’s a lot of work.. but I guess I like to have a quality collection!

I am currently evaluating several video converters in my attempt to backup my home videos. The problem is as I have stated before. I want to save them so that I can find them easily and also, I want to save them in an efficient way – from storage and quality point of view. I know both these points of views go tangential to each other, but still I want to reach a middle ground that I can live with.

Now what do I have ?

• DVDs – Videos imported from old VHS cassettes and old VHS-C Camcorder cassettes – Mpeg-2 / AC3 audio (720×480)
• miniDV cassettes (DV format – (720×480)
• Mpeg-1 videos on Digital Camera – Mpeg-1 / MP2 audio (640×480)

What do I want the output format to be? I have chosen mpeg-2 as my universal output format. AVI is out of question (will take too much storage space), mpeg-4 DivX or XviD..? hmm.. not sure, it is more for the web and there is too much compression there.

Anyways, so I looked at the following:

• MPEG_Streamclip : Works if you choose “Convert to MPG with MP2 audio” or “Convert to Headed MPEG” which gets AC3 audio. It is Free!
• SUPER from eRightSoft : Too technical but does its job. And it is Free!
• TMPGEnc XPRESS : Too expensive ($99). Did not try.
• AVS Video Converter : You have to pay $59. I have read mixed reviews
• OJOSoft Total Video Converter : Did the job well. You have to pay $26.99 however. If I feel like buying something, I might go for it.

I vote for MPEG_Streamclip or SUPER obviously because they are Free! Still working on finding the easiest and fastest solution for this.. will keep updating this post I guess.

In the meanwhile, anybody has any other suggestions/comments?

I am investigating this for far too long.. I need some input on how others are doing it. I have done the usual Google search on this a lot, but nothing has convinced me on what is the best way to store your memories. I totally believe that leaving your videos on miniDV tapes is quite inefficient -

1. You can’t find the video you want quickly
2. You have to buy a new tape when you are out of blank tapes
3. Tapes can get damaged / tangled overtime (has already happened to me and I am using a professional repair shop to get my tapes fixed – Pacific Video Repair)

I was thinking of backing up my camcorder videos to external hard drives. Backup to DVDs is not so attractive – although I have done it before, since, again, finding a video quickly is an issue and DVDs can get damaged too. I have already moved my old VHS-C videos to miniDVs and then to DVDs long time ago.

There is a question about the right format too. If I back them up in an uncompressed format like AVI, I know it will take a huge amount of storage space. Hundreds of Mb’s will just fit a few minutes of video. Also if you have your hard drive in FAT32 format, then you have the 4GB / file limit. Of course, now-a-days it is usually NTFS. But on the other hand, is it wise to use compressed formats such as mpeg2 – DVD / mpeg4 – DivX/XviD etc. ‘coz you will lose some detail there in the compression? How will the resulting video look on a 50+ inch TV? Well, DVDs look good, so it should be okay?

Anyways, please take this poll and let me know what you do. I will leave the poll in the sidebar too once this post becomes old. Thanks.

[poll id="1"]

For those of you who do not remember or did not read my earlier post that had the context for this post, here it is : http://blog.somik.net/lifetime-change.

Then the war began to unfold.. (you can skip this if you are not in a technical mood) http://blog.somik.net/things-i-appreciate-now

Cracks had begun to appear here and there within 2 months of starting this new relationship, and it eventually died last week without even reaching its first anniversary! Last week, standing in front of a mirror, I looked straight in my eyes and asked – is this what you really wanted? That you can’t do things you want to do, that everything takes 5 steps when it used to take one or two, that productivity is suffering at the hands of beauty…?

I thought about it real hard, “can I go back to Ms Windows.. and what kind of a welcome will I get?”, “will it be life as usual again or have things changed irreversibly?” I had to try though.. so I knocked on the door of the “Redmond mansion” again..

..there she was.. same attire, same attitude, just the way I had left her. She welcomed me with a “crash”, as if to tell me that she hasn’t changed just because I dumped her once. I expected this, and remained nonchalant.. unperturbed. I just wanted in, and accept my fate with all its fallacies. I had learned my lessons – that all the beauty in the world is in the bias of the infactuated! That nothing is stable or reliable, that beauty does not necessarily mean practicality, that hype seldom matches reality, that awe should sometimes just stay that way and not try to be part of your day-to-day life, and that everything that gets trashed by elites is not always useless.

So I am back.. some people tease me about my choice, some say I didn’t have the guts to handle a glamorous girlfriend… all I can say is at the end of the day, I tried, I dated the hot and happening Mac for a year, but things did not really work out between us. People may laugh at Ms Windows, think it’s stupid and unreliable, but I did go over the fence and played the field… and tell you what, they are all the same!! Don’t get lured by one or the other, stick with the one you like and get going with your life!

Bill Gates stepped down last week from day to day operations at Microsoft. During the last 10 years or so, several people in the world have developed a love-hate relationship with him – for various reasons, maybe the strong monopoly he has enjoyed for so many years, maybe the riches he has earned, maybe they really see some real unbiased problems with whatever comes out of Redmond – who knows? I was never a Microsoft employee nor do I idolize Bill Gates (although there is nothing wrong in that if I would), so what I say here is my *fair* assessment of the whole “I-hate-Microsoft-and-Bill-Gates” syndrome I have observed in the tech community.

I have gone from being a 100% Windows user on the personal front, with Unix (System V + Solaris) and Windows personality at work, to, still being a, Windows and now Mac OS X person with shades of Linux on the personal front and a Linux+Mac OS X personality at work. I have completely switched over to Mac at work mostly because I wanted a change and I had heard Mac users boasting about Mac all the time and Linux isn’t so much of a day-to-day OS IMHO. I did like Mac for its style, quicker startup/shutdown times and its closeness to Unix. And I do understand, that many of the ideas everyone got used to, in Windows, came from Mac.

Having clearly stated my background, now let me say what I think about Bill Gates..

A person like Bill Gates, who works really hard when the other boys were partying, who thinks about his vision of the world ahead of everyone else, takes up challenges, tackles all kinds of problems, believes in his ideas and opinions, creates something and manages to be successful like no other in the world.. In the process, he brings about an explosive growth in the personal computing world – which I might dare say, is largely responsible for people being able to take interest in the work done by others to compete with Microsoft – such as Linux. It is sad that the world of competition, business and law, taints your success in this manner. And suddenly you become that person who everybody loves to hate. Sure, one would argue that it’s a price you pay when you become the world’s richest man.

I know people have used and liked OS’s such as Unix even before Microsoft. But needless to say, those OS’s never got mainstream. It may be hard to admit, but one has to acknowledge that computing is not and cannot afford to be a privileged activity of a handful of techies. If Microsoft dumbed your ‘oh-so-intriguing’ OS, then so be it. One has to appreciate the fact that it really brought computers to everyone’s doorstep in a way that they could use them without needing to be computer geeks.

I am a big fan of Unix and I have worked with Unix since 1990. Having been a computer programmer for at least 18 years and running, and having done my Bachelors and Masters studies in the same field, I can still see the value that Windows brought to the consumer. Yes, Unix is stable like a rock, has better command line interface, bla bla bla.. but give it to a non-geek, and I have seen it makes no sense to him. And it is not as simple as just having a GUI for it – because most Unix flavors have that interface now. It is simply not as intuitive nor it is easy to understand nor is it usable to that extent.

My point is, I have found faults and stupidities in EVERY OS I have worked with – be it Unix, Linux or Mac OS X. I have seen people ignoring or justifying idiosyncrasies of their favorite OS while being nit-picky with Windows.. What with people arguing about how it is stupid to be able to resize a window using any edge like Windows does, and how it makes *total sense* to be able to resize a window ONLY using ONE CORNER of the window like Mac OS!! I have actually found forums where people say this confidently! I find it completely insane, a bias of highest degree!

One of the main reasons I believe you find more faults in Windows, is because it is more widely used and (hence) abused. You know too much familiarity brings disrespect? Compare that with how many people really understand Mac or Unix or Linux. Put those OS’s in front of those many people, and they will get hacked into and finally ridiculed just like Windows.

I don’t dispute the monopolistic business practices of Microsoft – from Internet Explorer to Windows Media Player – all because they controlled the OS market like no other. And if I was the owner of these competing products, it would make me really mad. But think of it this way, I create an OS and start thinking that it’s my platform, my world and I can do whatever I want in it. This is a typical techie attitude. I will throw in an Internet Explorer in there, throw in a firewall, a media player… and I think I am providing everything that my users can get outside right here in MY environment. Now suddenly the world cries foul! Because my environment, over time, just became this open-to-all platform where I am not allowed to promote my own products. Sure, I can not be naive when I am running a multi-billion dollar business and I should understand these dynamics. I can just see how a techie would work in such a scenario.

Also, my objection is only with the whole bias thing. I think Bill Gates should get the respect he deserves and so does Microsoft. I have cursed Windows many times, when it crashes or if it gets slow, or when it does something really stupid. But I know I have had just as many reasons to do the same with other OS’s I have worked with. In the computer land, I don’t think anybody is a clear winner.

I think Bill Gates left a great legacy at Microsoft – one they should be proud of. A great success story does not happen because the man is one of a kind, it happens because the efforts are one of a kind. Leaving aside the legalities and technicalities, I just think the man wasn’t a gambler, he was a techie and even the possibility of any monopoly was created out of his efforts and not out of luck. He is surely not “Good riddance” as some of the internet pundits have proclaimed.. to say the least.