wonkablog

Since things are finally starting to settle down (hey, I’ve had Internet for a week now, cool), I’ve started getting back to poking at stuff, slowly. Today I cleaned up some mplayer and transcode stuff in the portage tree, and I just thought I’d mention what’s new.

First of all, mplayer. The latest revision is 1.0_rc2_p27120. The snapshot itself is about a month old, and I don’t know of anything particularly major that’s in there (I haven’t had time to follow development for the past month anyway). It’s been masked for testing, not because upstream has done anything funky, but because there are some new use flags, which have helped me to go back and clean up some stuff that I should have done a long time ago. I haven’t heard a peep from anyone on bugzilla so either no one’s tried it, or it works great.

The big changes that I can think of off the top of my head are this: first of all, there’s an ewarn added if you enable the cpudetection flag. It finally dawned on me that this one might not make sense. Here’s what it *doesn’t* do — magically make the build detect and build for your CPU architecture. The build system already automatically detects and installs with the correct instruction set by default, using stuff like MMX, SSE, and friends. The only reason (that I can think of) that you would use that, is if you were deploying the binary package on another computer, since it is a runtime feature, not a buildtime one. So, you’ll get a little warning if you enable it, because, in general, desktop users don’t need it. I also fixed the use.local.desc to be a bit more specific as well.

Secondly, there’s a new use flag: custom-cpuopts which should finally solve the long-standing dance of trying to outwit users who always break their system but still allow real tweakers to do exactly what they want. Here’s how it works. MPlayer’s build system, again, by default, will automatically detect the CPU optimizations that are supportd for your platform (MMX, SSE, again, etc.). That means that, again, if you leave everything by default — it should work fine.

Originally the problem we would have is that people would have their CPU optimization use flags turned off (like mmx), which would normally break the build. The ebuild is written to only disable them if they are turned off, so my solution for a long time was to tell people to just turn them all on and let MPlayer *not* disable them, therefore, revert back to autodetection. This would then cause problems, though, for those few who were building MPlayer for some other box, and they wanted specific CPU opts on or off. This use flag will fix just that.

What custom-cpuopts will do, when enabled, is forcibly enable or disable the actual CPU optimization use flags you set. This will help out those on certain profiles and setups who need to tweak their build for whatever reason. For normal desktop users, you don’t need to enable it — if it’s turned off, the ebuild will completely ignore the other use flags (for CPU optimizations) and just use the default checks … which work great. It also means that your build will be optimized the best it can, yay!

I know I really went into depth on that one, but it’s been an issue with the build and users for a long time and I’m glad I finally got a cleaner solution working. Now everyone has the options to do whatever they want, but by default, everything should build and be optimized wonderfully.

Oh yes, one last thing — if someone wants to fix bug 228799, and submit a patch upstream, I’d be extremely grateful. That would clean up the LINGUAS hack in our ebuild, which I’ve heard breaks on paludis anyway.

As far as transcode — I’ve been out of the loop, and the media-video team has been taking things over and cleaning up (I don’t even know who, sorry guys, haven’t taken the time to look into that either — I know loki_val fixed up some imagemagick / ffmpeg dep crap that I didn’t want to touch, thanks man!). 1.0.5 is back in the tree, and should be the next stable candidate. I also added another rc for 1.0.6, and I have to add the 1.10 beta sometime.

That’s about it for now. Have fun. Go break your box.

I’m still dealing with, what I call, novelty overload — so much new stuff to setup and play with that my head is spinning wildly with the possibilities and I’m trying to absorb it all at once.  It’s like trying to drink from a fire hose.

I’ve got my Internet back again and now a phone line to, and Ive been trying to get Grand Central all hooked up and working right.  I still haven’t been able to verify that it’s actually ringing both phones at once — there might be some latency on the Comcast line or something.  My cell phone will always ring though.  Maybe I just set something up wrong, who knows.

Also, first impressions of the Comcast digital voice setup — it sucks.  I was gonna write a whole post about it, but I’ll probably not be that coherent enough anytime soon.  One thing I don’t like about it is that you can’t turn the voice mail option off at all.  That may be an odd request, but my opinion is that if you are going to add any feature, the first option should be to have it available.  In my case, I don’t care about any voice mails that go to my home phone, because I’m not giving out that number so anyone who calls there directly has either got the wrong number or is trying to sell something.

Their online interface is just really buggy.  To delete or view details about a voicemail, you have to listen to it first.  Even then, it will only delete the very last one in the list (there’s a bug), so if you want to delete all of them you have to do it from the bottom up.  Secondly, I went into the preferences menu (I forgot which one now, and this is totally anecdotal so feel free to ignore because of lack of details), changed two options which had nothing to do with each other, and got an error response.  Whoops.  One other thing that was weird was that in my account details it has my *old* address listed on the account.  Fail.  Finally, and this is the thing that I find kind of freaky, is it shows *all* incoming and outgoing calls made up to a month back.  Normally that would be cool — if I was the one making the calls.  It should have displayed the logs based on my activation date.  Plus I already got a voicemail of someone calling the old guy’s number and mentioning him by name, so if I really wanted to be evil I could go on a little identity theft digging spree based on the past call activity.  Not that I would, but being as paranoid when it comes to security as I am, the thought just naturally comes to me.

Despite all that, I’ll probably stick with it anyway — I still want to find a decent phone, and while this request may seem odd, I’d like to get one that at least has as the same basic features as my cell phone (minus playing games, of course).  I think stuff like hanging up on an incoming call but still letting it ring through, or changing call volume or simple stuff like that should be standard.  I dunno how much home phones have changed over the years, it’s been a long time since I bought one, and I just grabbed the first one that looked decent at Shop-Ko so I could have something.

As far as everything else in my life, it’s all been busy.  I’m going to be looking for a new job here in the next month, my family has been visiting recently (which is a rare occurrence which just happened to fall on the exact time I’m moving), and I’ve still got to move in and get all that crap done.

I *started* looking at Gentoo stuff finally this morning for the first time since who remembers when.  Between it being summer, skating, and getting a new PS3, it seriously cut into my time and desire to work on Gentoo stuff a lot, so I’ve been taking a bit of a long break.  What worries me though is that this is the first time that I’m getting the feeling that there’s too much to do and users are nagging on bugzilla to get their stuff done (contribute patches, people!  “me too!” comments on bugs totally suck), so I think I really need to scale back what I’ve taken on over the years and see where I really can and want to make a difference.  I’ve already stopped supporting or maintaining a lot of stuff in the tree that I used to take care of (little stuff, mostly) because of time constraints and lack of energy.  I dunno where I’m gonna refocus my efforts yet.  I dunno.  Too much going on right now to think about it anyway.

Well, that’s all the brain dump I can leak out right now.  I sure could use a week off of work right now just to get my life in order, but I’ll have to settle with doing what I can when I can.  It’s all good, I guess.  I’m just not accustomed to having so many things going on all at once.

My brother got me a Grand Central phone number tonight (thanks, man).  No, you can’t have my phone number.  I hate getting phone calls (which I’m sure will inspire at least one of you to track me down and call me up).

Since I don’t get cell phone coverage on my block, this is going to come in really handy.  I can have it ring both my home phone and cell phone all at once.  I’m most excited about freely giving out the # to businesses though so when they sell me out, I can mark their incoming calls as spam.  I don’t know why I get a kick out of that.

Anyway, hopefully I’ll get my Internets back tomorrow and another piece of the puzzle will be put back together.  My new place is really nice, I’m liking it.  I think the best way to describe it is it’s simple.  The layout is simple and nice, the rooms are nice and big and just well designed.  Plus, the walls are really thick so I can watch movies loudly without annoying anyone.  Tonight I popped in ‘Flight of the Navigator’.  What a great flick.  The soundtrack is pretty awesome, too.  I wonder if I could find a t-shirt or something.  Okay, I did find some black and white t-shirt but it’s not that great looking.  My TRON t-shirt really rocks.  I’ll post a pic sometime.

Well, I’m all moved in to my new place now, which is actually pretty nice.  I’ve gotten the bug now to do some home improvement this time around, because I really wanna get this place cleaned up and tweaked.  I want to do some electrical and plumbing work where I can, just gotta figure out how to do that without killing myself.

In the meantime, I’m just trying to get unpacked, and get a sense of normalcy and stability back in my life.  I don’t have an Internet connection yet, and Comcast is coming out this week.  I don’t have cell phone coverage in my house (or the whole street, even), so I’ve got to get a landline installed as well.  I’m gonna have them install that as well.  Strangely enough,  all my neighbors use Qwest / DirecTV, so I’m hoping the cable guy doesn’t come out here and surprise me with the fact that they can’t install anything at my place — partially because then I’ll have to wait two weeks to get anything else in there and be cut off from the world even longer, and also because I can’t stand Qwest.

On the plus side, Civilization for the PS3 is supposed to come out tomorrow, and I can’t wait for that.  I did get Overlord this weekend, and that’s been fun (though harder than I imagined).

Anyway, I can’t wait for life to get back to a normal routine.  At least I’m sleeping, though.  Half my life might be in boxes right now, but at least I get plenty of sleep at night.

I got up early today and went to the park to go skating.  It’s always fun to go early because there’s no one there and it’s nice and cool outside.

The park I go to most often is called Fairmont, here in Sugarhouse, which is a small little district of Salt Lake City.  I live about 15 blocks away, I’d say, so I go there a lot.

It’s actually been one year today that I first went there, and what an adventure my first time was.  I remember it was like my second day of skating, and I rolled up to this ramp and thought, “oh, this looks fun!” and just dove right into it.  The first thing I remember thinking was “holy crap I’m going fast” and then I bailed at the bottom and really hurt my legs.  I got up again though and thought, “I’ll just try that again” so I went down a smaller ramp and bailed again, hurting myself even more.  Then I figured I’d just try and push up to the ramp and go down a small part, and I fell down again.  By this time I could barely walk, and I went limping to my car and got out of there.  I don’t think I even went back for like four months.  It was great.

Now, I go there quite a lot.  It’s a great layout, and perfect for my level since there’s room to both screw around and practice.

Plus, the sidewalks come with inspirational messages.

“you suck at skateboarding”

I love skateboarding.  I never thought I’d stick with it so long, but it’s been a year and I’m still having the time of my life.  I tell you what.

Well, the delirium has calmed down from my weekend of heat trauma so I’ve been able to think calmly and rationally, and do what any normal person would do — get a new apartment.  Believe it or not, I already found one and I’ll be moving in within a few weeks.

I actually can’t believe I found something so fast, though I must say I was pretty inspired (and desperate) to get out.  Lucky for me, I found a place only four blocks away so I’m still close to the parks and I don’t have to move to an unfamiliar neighborhood.

Best of all, it has a new HVAC system put in just a few months ago.  When I went and saw it at noon, it was 66 degrees inside.  Man, it was nice.  I was ready to lie down and take a nap right then and there.  That wasn’t the only thing that won me over, though.  It’s on the lower level of a fourplex, has a huge living room and bedroom, and a very nice kitchen.  Did I mention it has air conditioning?

In the meantime, I’ve done the only sensible thing to do while waiting to get into my new place: I’ve moved my bedroom into the kitchen and quarantined the bedrooms.  It’s a nice 75 degrees in there and about 85 in the living room, so I think I can live with that.  As long as I get some sleep, I should be fine.

Man, I’m glad that’s resolved.  I never expected anything to happen so quickly.

My crap it’s hot in my apartment. About 89 degrees (Farenheit) right now, which is actually *good*. And it’s 10 at night. It’s usually about 95 degrees in here.

I got sick this weekend so I had to stay home and rest the whole time, but I seriously went delirious from the heat. I went to the doctor today to find out if it was that or just something else that’d been making me tired, and I’ll get the results from the blood test tomorrow. In the meantime, I’m looking for some practical ways to cool off my house.

This morning I went to the hardware store and spent about $200 on drapes that are designed to block out supposedly 99% of the sunlight. It’s so bright in my living room that it blocks out about 80% I’d say in my main front window, and that’s with a canopy already out front. I’m on the top floor in my complex, so the heat gets in all day, and then never leaves.

I just spent about three hours drawing this awesome picture of my setup while eating ice cream.

The annoying problem I have is that in the kitchen, there is an AC unit sitting in the window, which does a great job, but only keeps the kitchen cool. The circulation in this apartment is horrible (no central air), so only the kitchen stays cool. The bedroom gets hot, but I don’t mind so much because by the time I go to bed I just open the window and turn on the ceiling fan and that’s usually enough to get me through the night. Plus, I’m sensitive to noise so I can’t get an AC unit in there.

Probably the most practical thing to do is to get another window AC unit for the living room since that’s where I spend most of my time when I’m at home. I’ve just been stubborn and don’t want to spend the money or install it, but dying from heat tends to change your mind about things like that.

Either way I still have the problem with poor circulation. The office and the bedroom both have ceiling fans that are almost always on full blast, and while it cools off a little, no air is moving from room to room. So I’m not sure how to solve that one.

Anyway, I’m open to ideas. In the meantime, suddenly work is the most exciting place to be. Now that’s pathetic.

Okay, this is great. This morning at work we were talking about YouTube videos, and then cell phone ringtones, and we got the awesome idea — let’s make some ringtones from YouTube videos! Sweet!

So I downloaded the incomparable video Charlie the Unicorn, used audacity to cut out the Candy Mountain song, and then uploaded it to my cell phone with Bluetooth using my co-worker’s Mac. Freaking right on.

It’s a mecca of love, the candy cave!

Okay, so if you wanna know the technical details, here’s specifically what I did:

Download the youtube video using youtube-dl:

$ youtube-dl -b -t “http://youtube.com/watch?v=Q5im0Ssyyus”

Extract the audio to WAV format using MPlayer:

$ mplayer charlie_the_unicorn-Q5im0Ssyyus.mp4 -ao pcm:file=candy_mountain.wav

Edit the WAV file with Audacity, select the song portion, and export it to MP3 with a64 kbps bitrate. The start point was 2:26 and it’s 42 seconds in length

$ audacity candy_mountain.wav

And that was it! Instant ringtone goodness. Here’s the MP3.

I just got back from watching Kung Fu Panda. It was awesome. I thought the trailer made it look pretty funny, but it did it no justice.

The animation was absolutely incredible, both in style and design. The fight scenes were pretty intense, too — for a kid’s movie that is — meaning, they actually *fight* and kick butt. Also, it was incredibly hilarious. I was laughing out loud about every 30 seconds.

I’m no good at reviews. I’d recommend going and seeing it though.

Actually, now that I think about it, one thing does come to mind.  The movie was filmed in scope instead of flat, and it added a real cinematic presence.  That is actually really rare for animated films, and A Bug’s Life is the only one I can think of off the top of my head that also has done that recently.

Something else I’ve been meaning to do for a while, is get the main site up for the larrythecow.org domain since I started hosting stuff there other than planet. Today I got the idea that it might be fun to just have a page of resources of community pages that people are working on. So, that’s what I did.

If I missed anything, just let me know.

Edit: If you are getting redirected to Planet, then clear out your browser’s cache.  I originally had a permanent redirect going there, which should have been temporary to start with.  Whoops.  The old RSS feed links still work though, for everyone who never updated their entries.